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Ghosts. That’s what awaited him after death. Ghosts.
No echo of consciousness without a body. No reincarnation. No Nirvanha. No moksha. No karma ladder to fall down. No ancestral spirits. No immortality. No resurrection. No final judgment. No purgatory. No heaven. No hell.
Just ghosts.
What a relief.
Clint knew a lot about religion and not because he was a man of faith. Quite the opposite, really. He’d read a fair amount of books on religion and philosophy at his middle school library, especially those exploring the idea of an afterlife. Anything to give him some kind of answer to his fears. Anything. Anything that gave him some semblance of hope for what lay ahead.
Oh, Clint wasn’t afraid of death. A rational person, in his young mind, knew all that awaited was a cessation of existence. One day, he’d croak and then there would be nothing. Not the worst thing. It wasn’t like life on Earth was all puppies and rainbows, and it wasn’t like the dead could miss it if it was. Rational people could be wrong though. Sometimes the world defied logic. That was what he feared.
You’ll have the same body you were born with when you burn in hell.
Clint wasn’t sure who told him that. He’d heard it too many times to count, or maybe that was just the deepest, darkest parts of his brain spitting the ugliest words it could find at him. He wouldn’t put his brain past it. It loved mystery, didn’t it? Clint wouldn’t listen though. If he was going to spend the rest of eternity with a body he hated, he’d try his hardest to leave behind one he didn’t.
He saw an endocrinologist. Multiple. He got surgery. More than once. He talked to therapists. He made plans. He pushed his body the best he could. He made sure he never overdid the surgery or exercise. This was his body he was dealing with. It’d never be perfect but it was his and he needed it to be… He needed it to be him. And eventually, it was.
In a thousand years when archaeologists dig up your bones, they’ll know you’re a woman.
Sometimes his brain really needed to shut up. Getting letters, finding doctors that could help him, and putting his body through all this was hard enough without those voices worming their way into his ears. Clint didn’t want to hear it. But however successful he was, however comfortable with himself he got, those fears were just something he couldn’t shake. The only certainty in life, afterall, was death. One day Clint would leave all his success in the world of the living behind and spend an eternity in the afterlife wishing he could claw his chest off or his bones would lie around until someone dug him up and declared him the wrong gender. Neither option sounded particularly appealing.
But with ghosts, maybe there was some hope. Clint wasn’t a hopeful guy but the confirmation from Jacob sent enough of a spark through him to ward off any fear of that whole- whatever it was Jacob was doing with those chains of his. It was enough to keep him at least sort of paying attention while Present did his whole spiel.
Okay, the thing awaiting him after death wasn’t exactly ghosts, not like how it was in fiction. Then again, why would fiction have the answers? It wasn’t like anyone alive had ever died before. Wait, that wasn’t true. Present just told him his retirement plan was to return to the mortal realm. Whatever. Point was Clint was just getting a glimpse. He got a few eyefuls of what went on behind the scenes and that was enough for him. Maybe not enough to eliminate his fears entirely but enough to leave him satisfied until his age started to creep up on him.
There was no angry god cursing him to stay in a form he hated. Whatever essence that made Clint himself wouldn’t be trapped in his physical form for someone to dig up. Ghosts, spirits, whatever they all were, was an unknown but it wasn’t confirmation of what Clint dreaded most about death. That counted for something, right? He had no idea what being a ghost entailed but he could see himself being alright with it.
Then the bus came and all Clint could see was Roberto. He couldn’t explain it. As corny as it sounded, his body just moved on its own and then the world was frozen. Nothing felt different though. Clint just felt like Clint. He was too distracted by Present’s celebration and Jacob’s whole spiel to really soak in what was happening though.
Then he actually died and he got that chance. Or, he did eventually. Clint always thought if there really was an afterlife, the first thing he’d do upon arriving was to check if his chest was flat or not but that wasn’t the case. He was a hell of a lot more occupied watching Present fall apart on that roadside to think about such a thing. And then Carrie was there and he was asking Jacob for a job and it completely slipped his mind. More than that. It actually took awhile to remember.
His body was something he thought about so often. That feeling of missing something, that feeling of there being something there that shouldn’t be, wanting to shrink in on himself whenever someone’s gaze fell on him, wanting to turn himself inside out whenever he was alone- Those anxieties had been a part of his life for so long that he fixated on them even when they were gone. It was such a big part of his life. He didn’t want it to be but the impact was immeasurable. It felt like it’d damaged something deep in his psyche that prevented him from not thinking about it every moment of every day.
But in the echoes of his death, Clint was free. He remembered it eventually but for a blissful night, he was unafflicted. It came back though and Clint didn’t know how he felt about it. Part of him was relieved. The only comfort in being miserable was that you knew you were miserable, right? That misery was part of him. It wasn’t just something physical that could be shaken by death. He didn’t want to be miserable though. There was relief that Clint was still himself even after dying but sometimes Clint didn’t want to be himself. He wanted to be better.
Jacob had a thing for lessons, didn’t he? Maybe this was a lesson. Death wasn’t supposed to be better. If death was better, what was the point in keeping people alive anyway? Death was supposed to suck. It was supposed to be hell. Not literally hell, or maybe it was, but it was supposed to be undesirable. And it was. Clint didn’t want to be dead. It hurt being away from the living world, even if he had his sister back and a spiffy new job. It wasn’t hell though. Not the fire and brimstone he’d been threatened with, not that fire and brimstone compared much to what he’d faced every day in his youth. He’d choose burning over being trapped in that body that wasn’t his ever again.
This wasn’t hell. There was no weight on his chest. There was no emptiness between his legs. The softness his body once held hadn’t returned. There was still rough scruff on his face. It wasn’t perfect, not by any means. His hips still curved more than he’d like. His eyebrows were still thin, not enough for people to question but enough to be considered feminine. His lips were still a bit too thick for him to not try to wish away when he looked in the mirror.
Clint put a hand to his chest, running his fingertips over a familiar line on either side. Through his shirt, he couldn’t feel the skin but he could still feel the pressure. Or not feel it. Clint wasn’t exactly sure how to describe sensation over his scar tissue but the point was he could tell this body, this ghost, had his scars. Clint was in his body, his old one. Not the physical one but some manifestation of it. It was the same.
Suddenly, Clint was immensely grateful he’d prospered enough in life to afford top surgery. And all the other stuff. He imagined whatever higher power decided all this wasn’t cruel enough to curse someone to an eternity with the body they hated just because they’d died in it but Clint wasn’t a guy to take those kinds of chances. Selfish, maybe, but Clint was happy he didn’t have to take that risk. More than happy. Ecstatic? Maybe. Carrie commented on it, actually. That had to mean something, right?
Death wasn’t a relief. Clint couldn’t fault it for that. It wasn’t supposed to be and it wasn’t. It might’ve made what came next a little easier though.
Clint didn’t have specific instructions regarding what to do in the event of his death. He was young and he wasn’t expecting it quite yet but young didn’t mean dumb. He had his will all squared away but he hadn’t exactly told anyone what to do with his body. Owen took care of it, which Clint found a bit surprising. He knew he shouldn’t– Owen was his brother after all, the last of the Brigg siblings, and he’d done this before– but after his whole story with Roberto, it almost felt appropriate that he do it. But no, he’d only really known Present a couple nights and he’d known Owen his whole life. It was appropriate that he took care of it. Maybe not right but still, appropriate.
Clint always sort of imagined getting buried, probably because of the whole stress of his bones being found and all, but he knew that wasn’t all that common nowadays and it wasn’t like what was left was all that pretty. He’d been hit by a bus for crying out loud. He didn’t even know how they’d managed to scrape together anything for Owen to deal with. Maybe it would be better if they hadn’t.
Owen decided to burn him. His body, rather. That was a weird thought. Clint had always felt a disconnect from his body– brain in a jar, mind-body dualism, all that jazz– but now that he really was disconnected from his body, it felt weird to refer to it that way. Owen wasn’t burning him. It wasn’t even his body, really. It was his remains. But it was still a piece of him. The only thing he left behind, other than his media empire he supposed but Clint thought Carrie and Kimberly would scold him pretty bad if he called that part of him.
Owen was burning his… something. Clint couldn’t think of a metaphor. It probably symbolized something but Clint’s brain wasn’t geared that way and he didn’t care enough to really think about it for long. Owen was burning something that Clint always hated because he didn’t need it anymore. Thinking about it that way felt almost sterilized. That was still his body. Only it wasn’t.
Clint’s thoughts kept looping for hours. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do. Well, he did. He had work to do. But it wasn’t like Owen himself was physically burning his body. He had someone else do it, a professional of course, and Clint wasn’t about to watch that. Maybe there would be something symbolic there, like some kind of closure, but even if his brain couldn’t exactly get any more trauma now that he was dead, Clint knew watching his remains get dealt with was just plain horrifying.
The closure came when he got to watch what Owen did with the ashes. Would he scatter them? Would he keep them in an urn on top of the fridge? Would he give them away? Would he give them to Wren? That last one might be a bit weird. More than weird. Clint really hoped he didn’t do that.
There was a funeral and Owen ended up sticking his ashes in one of those lockers they had at cemeteries for poor people who couldn’t afford one of the limited plots of land. Okay, maybe that wasn’t fair. This wasn’t about finances and it was probably better for the planet that Clint wasn’t getting stuck in the ground or littered around the countryside anyway. It felt impersonal though. Owen cried enough at his funeral to make up for it though so Clint couldn’t stay mad. Then again, part of him wished he didn’t cry so much in front of Wren. But he was being genuine instead of trying to be strong for her.
This again. Clint could go on forever. In life, he’d never been this indecisive. Maybe now that he didn’t have a body to regulate his feelings, he just felt them a lot more. Sure, that was what he was going with. Not the trauma of death cranking all his emotions up to eleven. Nope. Definitely not that.
Owen and Wren put up a picture of him in their home. They didn’t have anything personal to put beside it– his fault, he knew– and they didn’t use any of their newly acquired wealth to buy anything to make up for it. Clint thought he liked it that way. The personal fortune he’d left behind should be spent on better things than being sentimental.
Kimberly put up a photo of him in her new office. No more 39th floor for her. She was all the way at the top, much to the displeasure of the numerous executives sitting below CEO. Kimberly had helped make this company and frankly she was the only one he trusted with it. She’d do good with it, good he hadn’t done with it.
Roberto didn’t have a photo of him but Clint wasn’t offended. He hadn’t taken any pictures of him. It’d be pretty strange if he just selected one he hadn’t taken and had utterly uninvolved him. He drew a picture though and slapped it on his fridge. A bit unsettling but Roberto had signed it bro so Clint could get over it.
This was how he wanted to be remembered. Whatever physical remains he left behind didn’t matter. He was satisfied in the afterlife so the logistics didn’t matter much. What remained of Clint Briggs was the memories that lingered in the hearts of the people he cared about. He’d face whatever fate any part of science or religion had to throw at him if it meant his family would remember him.