After the initial shock of hearing myself proclaim our death, I feel myself start to deflate.

“Anne, do you know how I died?” he asks, breaking eye contact with me.

“No, Lian. I met you a couple minutes ago.” I say.

“Oh. Well. I think I died by a head injury. I felt a… a pain in my head, and now I’m here. I woke up, laying on my back, just the way I fell asleep. I didn’t notice a difference until I stood up. Did you know there are no stars here?” He asks. I look up, and it’s true. The sky is dark enough to pass for night, but light enough that you can see the utter emptiness that’s around you. We’re the only two people for as far as I can see in either direction.

I understand now why he was so excited to see the road. My head starts to spin, and suddenly I can’t see. I feel myself falling backwards, and I hear Lian shout from far away. My head hurts like hell and I don’t even think I’ve hit the ground yet. I know what’s happening. It happens sometimes when I stand up too fast.

I hit the ground.

My head hurts a lot. I can’t think of any words for it. It’s just a lot. I think I managed to hurt the palms of my hands too. I guess dream roads hurt too. I guess I really am solid. I can’t tell if my eyes are closed… they must be, it’s darker than it used to be.

“Anne! Anne!” His voice seems to echo, almost. I scrunch up my face, and that doesn’t help at all. It makes it worse. “Anne what happened? Are you alright?” I know I should answer but talking is impossible and I don’t want to. I manage to bring my arms up to my head, but clutching my own head doesn’t help. Go figure.

“Can you sit up? I need to see if you’re bleeding.” There’s an almost frantic tone to his voice. What does it matter? We’re both already dead. I wonder if you die when you’re dead, do you come back to life? Or do you just become even more dead. Other than the fact that I have no idea where I am and I was definitely struck by lighting, I feel pretty alive. Still have my body and everything. Except I don’t, because it’s lying in the middle of the road.

“That was unpleasant.” Wow, understatement of the year. Biggest understatement since I died. Now that I’m dead, I wonder what the biggest understatement of my life was.

“Are you okay?” He asks again.

“Probably. It happens to me sometimes, but usually there’s something to hold onto until it passes. Like, if I just stood up too fast, I can sit back down again, or I can grab the back of the chair or something. I guess the lack of… anything here just threw me off.” He smiles a smile that isn’t really a smile. It’s like… the corners of his mouth turn up, but his face is concerned. Not exactly sure what to call that. I realize that I’m still laying on the ground with my elbows in front of my face.

“Well, next time could you let me know? Given that I’m the only other solid object here, I think it would be okay if you needed to hold onto me.” I want to nod, but honestly I think I’d manage to hurt my head against the road again. Suddenly I smile.

“Are you sure you’re solid?” I reach my arm up to him, and he extends his arm down to me. Just as I’m pretty sure our hands are about to touch, I move my hand to the side. “Wooooo… ghostly.” He rolls his eyes at me.

“Very much so.” He comes to stand in front of me, and uses my extended hand to pull me to a sitting position. “Is this better?” He asks, crouching in front of me. It’s not, but I don’t feel like moving my head.

“I guess so.” And now we both know we’re physical. At least to each other. There really isn’t anything else to try to touch. Except the road, I suppose, but I tested that already. “I think the falling over hurt me a lot more than the losing vision did. I’ll be alright in a second.” It occurs to me that I’d be very embarrassed if I wasn’t dead. I effectively just demonstrated that I’m completely useless and I have no control over my own actions. But I'm dead, so I don’t care.

“Good. We have to figure out what to do, because I am not staying here for the rest of my life. Death.” He corrects himself, pushing his hair out of his face.

“I wonder if modifications to our bodies work since we’re dead. I’d love to cut all of my hair off, but I’m gonna be really annoyed if it all grows back in minutes.” He gives me a strange look.

“But… your hair is short already?” He says, leaning sideways to see my ponytail. I tug at it, releasing my hair to almost cover my face.

“I mean yeah it’s already pretty short, but it’s a couple inches longer than I want it. And I kinda want to shave the sides.” I say, running a hand from the base of my neck up. My hair’s always been pretty thick, I think it’s the Italian in me.

“Good luck finding hair clippers.” He says, gesturing to the emptiness.

“Fair enough,” I reply, holding my hand out again. “Help me up?” He grabs my hand and helps me up, and I glance at both ends of the road. “Which way do you think we should walk?”

The road stretches forever in both directions, and I’m not sure which direction I woke up facing. Nothing is different, any way I face, the only landmark is Lian. Slowly I look at the ground at my feet. The road is made of an almost gravel-like substance, but I can’t say for sure. It’s not like I extensively studied roads and what they’re made of. Crouching down, I touch the ground outside the road. It’s almost ashy, like sand but finer. I smile.

“I think I know which way you came from.” I say, looking up at Lian. “the road bits kinda displaced, and the sand bits kinda did too. When you did your whole arm wavy thing, that was….” I glance around, and find a break in the distinct borders between the road and the outside land. “Here. It was here. Do you remember which direction you were walking towards?”

I swear his eyes almost sparkle. “Yeah. I was travelling this way.” He points. I turn towards that point, and it’s as good as the other direction.

“Well. Let’s go. Better way to go than the way you came, yeah?” I ask, glancing at him. He nods.

“Better way than how I came.”