Extend the Story - Add a Room

You hope acting a little crazy will work. As you give details concerning your junior prom, you search for the silent alarm trigger with your right hand. Within seconds, you've both found the button and pressed it.

The robber looks a little perplexed at first, then slightly amused. "Sorry, dude," he says, "seems like somebody's got a more messed-up life than myself."

Your training in the art of mediation kicks in (wait, what? You were never a peer mediator, or did any mediation of any kind. In fact, you were one of the guys on the sideline who cheered on the big guy as he damn-near killed the geek over a simple misunderstanding. How has this change in identity happened?), and you implore the robber to elaborate.

"Well, this money isn't for my own personal use. My sister is in the hospital; she's got leukemia. Her insurance company is screwing her over, all she needs is for them to cover her bone marrow transplant, and, well, my sister was never one to pay back anything that she saw as a gift. Somebody has to pay for the surgery. It won't be her, it isn't going to be her fuckin' insurance company, and I'm a janitor. What else could I have done?"

"What about friends or family?" you ask.

"I've got a rich second-cousin, works in Hollywood, could pay for it without blinking, but he hasn't returned any of my calls. The rest of the family...they don't exactly want my sister alive."

"Why are you so sure about that?"

"A couple of years ago...fuck it." He looks around, and then says, "Us fucked-up people, we got to stick together. We start shooting each other, we're never gonna amount to anything. Am I going to shoot a guy who's still lusting after a high school sweetheart? No, because we're one and the same, dude. Besides, she's got a good 2 months left, which is plenty of time for my cous' to get my message.

"Can we forget this ever happened?"

Before you can answer, you hear the sound of police sirens.

The robber looks over at the cops, then back to you. Before you can do anything, he fires the gun at your head.

At that point, your body falls to the ground. You feel your heart stop, your muscles begin to slightly atrophy, your bowels release their tension, but you are completely aware of what is going on. You can still hear and see perfectly.

The robber immediately chastises himself over shooting you. "Oh shit, oh shit, what the fuck am I gonna do, now I can't open the safe at all, what the--"

"This is the police. Come out with your hands up."

"Shut up!" he responds, and fires at the cops. The police respond with a storm of bullets that knocks the robber back. He slumps over the counter backwards, causing his mask to fall to the ground. He was in his mid-thirties, from what you could tell, and had a little bit of Irish blood in him. You would definitely be able to pick him out of a lineup. "Not that it matters," you think to yourself. "After all, we're both dead."

Then you feel yourself being pulled through the floor. Actually, that's not accurate, since the body you inhabited stays right where it is. But you only see yourself falling down a black hole, plunging to the center of the earth, with your only view being the bank ceiling getting smaller and smaller.

The Other Side Of Death.