ALYSSA JORDAN
Like Déjà Vu
prose finalist in our 2020-2021 Writing Contest
Pasha died on a warm spring day.
She spent some time staring at her body, the slope of her neck, hair pink like a strawberry milkshake. Several clumps looked downright garish inside the crater where her head met the staircase.
Of all the ways to die, it just figured that the ordinary would kill her.
Pasha sighed and spent hours scrubbing blood. Sunlight trickled through her windows, syrupy sweet, but muted by bleach fumes. She wrinkled her nose—did she still have a nose?—and lit candles that made the cabin smell like apple-bleach-pie.
At dusk, a knock echoed through the quiet.
Pasha closed the hall closet and slipped off her gloves, chucking them into an empty vase. Even though it had a two-story layout, the cabin was fairly small, making the hallway a straight shot to her front door.
A short man stood on the porch. He wore a three-piece suit, which looked odd against the tree line.
“Hi there.” Pasha subtly inhaled the piney freshness. “Can I help you?”
“I should be asking you that.” He smiled. It only lifted half of his mouth. “I have a business proposition. May I come inside?”
Pasha shrugged. She was already dead; what could happen?
In her living room, they sat on large sofa chairs that faced one another. A cold mug of coffee had already left a ring on the table. Pasha picked it up, rubbing a speck of red.
The man smiled again. “Listen, Ms. Anosova—”
“Pasha.”
“Right, Pasha. My name is Burim. I know this will be hard to understand, but I’m here to help you make a difficult transition, one that all people must take.”
She tapped her mug. “I’m dead.”
“Well, yes.” His smile fell. He sat back on the sofa and crossed his legs, revealing an inch of sock. It matched the mossy green of his eyes. “This must have come as quite a surprise.”
“Not really.”
Burim pursed his lips. “Normally, I’d cover clauses one through five with the recently departed, but I can see you’re…comfortable.”
He pulled a pamphlet from the inner pocket of his jacket. A man and woman laughed near a lakefront. Their teeth were toothpaste-white. On their clothes, nary a grass stain was in sight.
“This particular package is a bestseller. Housing may be competitive, but I still have a few places on the waterfront.”
When he unfolded the pamphlet, it grew ten times in size, revealing more faces with big smiles and perfect haircuts. One woman clutched her chest while staring at a Victorian house.
Burim pointed at the woman. “We’ll design your dream home, all the way down to the shower curtains. We also take your neighbor preferences into account.”
“Huh.” Pasha lifted her eyes. “Just out of curiosity, how do people pay for this?”
“Not in money or soul. You’d only need to sign a contract that states you chose to live in my district.”
Pasha laughed. “What, do you work on commission or something?”
“Or something.” He smiled, extending the pamphlet toward her. “Do I have your consent?”
Upstairs, her grandmother’s clock sang. It was long past dinner time.
For many years, the scent of rising bread had called her to another kitchen, far away in another place, surrounded by red sand and sun-split rock.
Pasha stood.
“It’s a nice dream,” she murmured. “But you can keep it.”
* * *
For the most part, death didn’t affect her life all that much.
Pasha tried to leave her cabin several times. At the tree line, she always felt like her stomach had bottomed out. Everything would grow fuzzy until she retreated inside.
It wasn’t a huge deal. Aside from monthly trips to town, she didn’t venture into the world. There was no one to miss her.
So, Pasha cleaned. She aired out the rooms and scrubbed the counters and dusted the corners. She swept the porch no matter the day. Nothing changed except for her company—they arrived every season.
In the summer, Pasha pinned her hair back, lifting pinkish clumps from her neck.
Apparently, the dead didn’t have to bother with hair dye.
She vaguely remembered buying boxes in bulk: Cotton-Candy Pink.
“So. Are we going to do this, or what?” A reaper by the name of Vera asked one day.
This time, they sat with mugs of coffee in the kitchen. Morning light set the white table aglow. It also highlighted every nook and cranny on Vera’s face. She looked like an extra from the History Channel.
Pasha fidgeted with her mug. The speck of red looked bigger.
“Well, what’s your offer?”
Vera canted her head. Otherwise, she didn’t move a muscle. Not even her navy pantsuit would budge.
“Sign the contract. I get you out of here. Done.”
Sighing, Pasha abandoned her mug. “Look, I just… I can’t yet. I’m still waiting on the right deal.”
Vera stood. She towered over Pasha. “This won’t stop.”
“I had a feeling.”
In the light, her irises were some shade of rust. Like a desert long gone.
Whenever she visited, Pasha’s mouth would fill with the steam of bread, the rush of salt, and she’d clutch her mug a little harder—stare at the hall closet a little longer.
* * *
Qiu—or “Call me Q, darling”—appeared on her doorstep at the start of autumn. Tall and slender, he stood with a grin on his face, casually brushing dead leaves from his shoulders. Unlike the others, he didn’t wear a tie or jacket.
“What’s this I hear about a difficult customer?” His grin settled into a smirk. “You look like the sweetest of souls.”
Pasha smiled too brightly and led him inside.
“My colleagues make the mistake of going too big. Oh, do you mind, darling?” He paused mid light, a cigarette dangling between his fingers.
At her nod, Q lit it with a snap of his fingers.
He smiled around the flames as she gaped. Even in the smoke, his eyes gleamed orange.
“Here’s my offer: We create your afterlife together. Tell me what you want, I build it, we tweak it. Sound good?”
Pasha tore her eyes from his general vicinity. She coughed. “I haven’t offered you anything. How about some coffee? I don’t have cream anymore, but there’s still sugar. I think.”
“You think?”
“I went through a pie-baking phase.” She shrugged. “It was comforting.”
Flicking his cigarette, Q sprinkled the carpet with ash. It disappeared before Pasha could open her mouth.
“Oh, dear. You’re one of those.”
* * *
Ice frosted the windows when Pasha opened the closet again. She stared at her body. It was something familiar that had become alien, like running into a broken friendship years later.
Half of her wanted to walk away, but the other half burned to say hello.
A beaded bracelet encircled her body’s left wrist. It was pink and yellow and very, very worn.
She slammed the door shut.
A tapping sound echoed through the cabin. Pasha shuffled toward the front door, opening it with confidence her living self would have envied.
The reaper of winter looked like a forty-something man. He was broad. Brownish hair. Two-colored eyes: one blue, one white. On his shoulders, he wore a heavy coat over the customary suit.
Pasha never thought she’d miss frigid air searing her bones.
Stepping aside, she followed him to the kitchen, where he started a pot of coffee. When he handed her a mug, the coffee froze solid. Grimacing, he grasped the bottom, warming it enough to hiss.
They drank for a few moments.
“I’m Vetle.” After a beat, he asked: “Why pink?”
Pasha swallowed a too-large mouthful of coffee. She cleared her throat.
“Lots of colors you could dye your hair.” Vetle looked thoughtful as he sipped his coffee. “Why that one?”
“It’s…pretty.”
“You don’t think so,” he said slowly. “But someone else does. Maybe your mother, or a friend.”
Without meeting his eyes, Pasha rose to refill their cups, forcing a smile on to her face. “No offense, but what does this have to do with your offer? Aren’t you going to give me the whole spiel?”
Vetle gazed back at Pasha. “Was it your sister?”
Her smile fell.
“You don’t want to move on. The people you love are still here, but they want nothing to do with you. You’re stuck.”
“Nothing new,” she whispered.
It felt as if the air had been sucked from her lungs. Somewhere, past Pasha remembered that feeling; it started the first time a soccer ball hit her in the stomach, but it hurt more when she left, after her sister had said words too true to take back.
It felt like that every time she wore the bracelet.
Soft footfalls reached Pasha’s ears as Vetle joined her by the counter. The sound reminded her of falling snow.
“I remember what this was like.”
He put his mug in the sink. “Here’s my proposition. I’ll help you get to your sister. After you speak with her, we go beyond. Agreed?”
Pasha studied his outstretched hand. Around them, the bones of her cabin still stood. A home that was never really hers.
She took his hand.
“Deal.”
Alyssa Jordan is a writer living in the United States. She pens literary horoscopes for F(r)iction Series. Her stories can be found or are forthcoming in X–R-A-Y Literary Magazine, LEON Literary Review, and more. In 2020, she won The Molotov Cocktail’s Flash Monster contest. You can find her on Twitter @ajordan901 or Instagram @ajordanwriter.