A Meal in the Afterlife

Date: 10/4/2020

An old man had lived a full life, & died peacefully in his 90's. The first time I fell asleep, this old man was reincarnated into a (mostly peaceful) fantasy world. In his reincarnated form, he had ridiculous powers. He could've taken down dragons with barely any effort, or terraformed the world itself. Instead, he used his abilities to do the same thing he has always prioritized doing in his original life: feeding others. He'd wanted nothing more in his first life than to make sure his children & grandchildren were fed. He'd especially enjoyed meals with his youngest grandson. So it was only natural to him that in this life, now being a kid/teenager himself & not yet having any children, he'd feed anyone who seemed to need or want food -- or simply anyone who was nearby. At one point, some guys who were casually fishing asked to borrow the old man's gear. He said yes, but after watching them catch such a small amount of fish he asked to have the gear back. He said he didn't mean any offense, nor to ruin their fun, but if they wanted to eat fish for dinner then they would need a lot more. He took back his gear &, using his absurd abilities, caught enough fish to feed the entire town they were in. A huge fish feast was thrown in the middle of town, & everyone was happy & grateful to be eating so well. The old man in particular ate the most. Apparently, the cost to his abilities was a practically bottomless stomach that he was always trying to fill. It took a lot of calories just to exist as an overpowered person, so he was pretty much always eating. He had an assistant/friend who followed him almost everywhere & was mainly responsible for making sure he ate enough. It wasn't hard when he was feeding everyone else anyway, but there were times he failed to feed himself properly & the assistant had committed himself to helping the old man out at those times. It was hard to say when, but at some point in their meeting & getting to know each other the assistant had learned the truth of the old man's nature as a reincarnated soul. Knowing what he did, the assistant had also given himself a mission he kept mostly secret from his charge: to make sure nobody else noticed anything amiss at the times when the old man started acting like his previous self. That didn't happen terribly often, but it hurt the assistant a little when it did happen. I think he was sad that the old man couldn't go back to his original life, like he felt the old man had lingering regrets & wished they could be fulfilled in some way. He walked in on the old man eating & staring at a picture of children from town once. He asked if the old man was okay, to which he replied with the reason why he feeds others. He smiled sadly, his voice started to sound much older & more worn out, & he said that if he doesn't put food on the table for that dear grandson of his then he won't be able to sleep peacefully at night. He says a few more things, caught in the nostalgia, & the assistant smiles just as sadly while he listens. He nods & says things like "of course," but in the back of his mind he's wondering if the young version -- his version -- of the old man will return this time or not. He kind of wishes he could meet this grandson, to compare what they know of the old man & see if he too has the same compulsion to feed the grandson on sight. I woke up briefly after this, & when I fell back asleep the old man was there again. This time, he had died peacefully but he hadn't been reincarnated into that fantasy world at all. Instead, he'd ended up in an apartment complex for the dead. It was either the actual afterlife, or a sort of waiting place where souls passed the time until they were ready to actually move on. It was sort of unclear. Each resident had a narrow area of perception. They could perceive their own apartment, some areas in the town around it, & any other place immediately relevant to them. That was all. They couldn't perceive a neighbor's apartment as anything more than an empty white box until after they'd met the neighbor somewhere else. The old man shared his apartment with a vampire who liked garlic bread, a robot who loved space & astronauts (big fan of NASA), a gentle-looking middle-aged guy who loved fish, & a woman in her 20's who loved holidays. All holidays, but especially Thanksgiving & Christmas. They also had a pet cat, who changed from kitten to adult & back again more or less as she pleased. At some point, I also joined this particular apartment. There were enough rooms for everyone, so I just settled in as a newly dead soul. Everyone used my chosen name, instead of my given name, as if it was totally natural & my given name didn't exist at all. It was surprisingly nice, though I was constantly on edge about the whole being dead thing itself. I kept thinking of my family, & how they must have felt losing me. My sister, especially, came to mind often. But the afterlife went on. The space robot & I figured out how to rig up retro video games in our apartment & play them. The vampire did regular scouting work to make sure we were safe. The fish guy looked after our cat. The holiday girl figured out how to change clothes, which none of the rest of us could do -- we weren't wearing what we died in, but what was apparently fitted to us when we arrived at the apartment complex. Certain key items of clothing acted as anchors to keep us connected to this world & our own sense of rationality, but otherwise clothing could be freely changed if we wanted. Most of us in the apartment didn't care, but we supported holiday girl anyway. One day, a large husky dog showed up in the apartment & the old man got unexpectedly emotional. He talked to & hugged the dog, but the dog seemed to be limited in what he could say back. The vampire asked who the husky was, & why he was making our friend so worked up. The old man replied that this was his son, & he was having mixed feelings seeing him again since it meant that both of them were now dead. It didn't seem like his son had died of old age, either. When the old man asked, the husky (somehow) replied that he was only visiting in a half-dead state. If he survived, he'd return to the living world. The old man fed him a lot of luxurious food while he stayed, watched TV with him, & talked as much as he could talk. We usually found him just sitting on the ground & hugging his son the way a lost child hugs a soft animal for comfort. Like he was scared. We understood, but it was still a little painful for everyone in the apartment to see. We thought of the people we'd left behind, too. At some point before the son returned, I learned that it was possible for dead souls to visit places in the living world as well. As long as we kept our anchoring clothing close at hand (without actually wearing it) & nobody who was aware that we had died met with us, any one of us from the apartment complex could go do things in the living world for short periods of time. I went to watch a cheerleading competition, for some reason. I wondered why the cheerleaders were being so haphazard about their social distancing, & kept having to move to emptier sections of the bleachers when people tried to sit next to me, but I generally enjoyed the show itself. After it was over, I went up to the top of the bleachers & looked at a bulletin board posted beside the stadium exit. Someone I'd briefly known in high school -- a friend of my sister's, though even she hadn't spoken to this person in years -- spotted me by the board, & came to greet me. We made small talk like long-silent ex-friends do, & they used my chosen name the whole time despite my never having told them my name in high school. It was slightly awkward, but not awful. They didn't know I was dead, so it was almost nice to talk to someone outside the apartment for a change. Then I saw who'd come to the cheerleading event with her. We were talking about a cool hat on a for sale poster on the board when my sister started walking over to rope her wayward friend back into the group. I did my best to hide my face, but the ex-friend wasn't helping. They pointed to the hat & laughed, saying they thought it suited me. They asked if I'd like to wear it, then turned to my sister & asked her if she also thought it suited my style. My sister recognized me then, & started to cry. She realized she was talking to a ghost, & tried to speak carefully. I was worried about breaking the rules, & hurting her by staying too long, so I muttered a line like "I think I'll stick with the hat I have now" in reference to my anchor back to the apartment. I smiled sadly at my sister, then put on my hat & started to run. As the hat went on, objects in the world started to crumble into glittery black sand that got swept away by some intangible wind. My sister chased me, seeing none of the world crumbling & only me gradually fading until I was back at the apartment & she was in a park all alone. I felt terrible that I'd left her & relieved that I'd made it back before anything bad happened. Both while I was gone & after I'd returned, simultaneously, there was a weird thing where the residents of our apartment got into some kind of fight with the residents of a ship docked somewhere outside the apartment complex. Once we became able to perceive the ship, we'd start doing spying & thieving missions to take things from them without revealing our own apartment. We mainly took computer components, so we could have a computer & internet in our apartment. They eventually caught us, & shot at us with some kind of shotguns. They destroyed the docks, but mostly missed us. Then they hit the vampire. We returned to our apartment, where he told us it was either being shot or having that one last adventure but either way he'd be leaving us soon. We waited with him, sharing old stories & hearing about his life. Eventually, he crumbled into black sand just like the living world had when I'd returned to the afterlife. He was carried away by the wind, & we were left behind. We held a memorial for him on the roof of the apartment complex, where the fish guy suddenly seemed like an actual dad to the old man who had begun acting like a child. He comforted the old man with the same kind of lines someone would use to comfort a child after they've lost a family member, & they worked. It made us all feel closer as family. Holiday girl even felt like a second sister to me, on a way, & space robot was my best friend. The last scene in this dream was holiday girl having us all set up for Christmas. Space robot was decorating the tree in our family room, fish guy & the old man were cooking food, holiday girl was setting presents under the tree. I was the only person not actively participating, though not for lack of trying. I'd started to cry every time I'd made an attempt to help, so at that point I was just sitting on our couch wringing my hat in my hands & remembering the cheerleader event. I couldn't go check in on what my family was doing for the holiday. My sister might recognize me again. The old man remembers he had his own family, & in a moment where he's an old man once again he empathizes with me. Everyone else does their best to comfort me, too. Holiday girl tells me that it's not a bad thing to have fun with your second family when you have the chance. We're allowed to enjoy this holiday together. The cat meows from the other room & I get up to go refill her food bowl. They're right, I decide. I haven't stopped feeling sad about my family, but I can at least have fun with this one. A few other things happened after that, but the dream was losing coherence. I only clearly remember up to the Christmas scene. I think there are things in this dream that have story potential, but I'll have to read through it again some time to see what I'd like to pick out of it for my own writing. Until next I wander.