12+   It was a shock to learn the Bible bashers were right. There is life after death! But it's not the Heaven and Hell of their sermons. There's no omnipotent being, fire and brimstone, or paradise of milk and honey. Just eternal existence in the afterlife.

I ended up here after watching footy on the TV with Peggy. Our team kicked the winning goal, I cheered and pain gripped my chest. 

"Are you okay, Bruce?" Peggy enquired when I slumped on the sofa. 

Peggy and I have enjoyed good laughs in our thirty years of marriage, and I wish I'd quipped, "Yeah, just snoozing!" But it was too late.

At first, I couldn't cope with the loss of my corporeal body and the overwhelming thoughts of billions and billions of dead souls, and I would have curled up into a fetal position had it been possible.

Thankfully, a welcoming committee intervened and taught me how to control the panic, embrace my ethereal form, and shut the door on unwanted thoughts and conversations. They also showed me how to navigate the afterlife, process memories from my old life without melancholy, and find departed family and friends.

While I resigned myself to eternity, I wanted to let Peggy know I was okay, and we'd be together again one day. Like Heaven and Hell, however, the committee explained ghosts and spirits don't exist in the afterlife, and the dead can't visit the living. 

With no hope of reaching Peggy, I began searching for my grandparents, old aunts and uncles, and friends who had died too young. I couldn't call them or ring their front doorbells. Instead, I opened the door to other voices, carefully reaching out to avoid being overwhelmed. 

How long I searched, I can't say. Eternity warps time, and there are billions upon billions of souls in the afterlife. It was like looking for a grain of sand in the Sahara. But then I recognised a laconic drawl I hadn't heard in years.

"Bruce, is that you?" asked Uncle Pete.

"Yeah, it's me, Pete," I replied, and I would have cried if I'd had a body, eyes and tear ducts. 

"What are you doing here, son?"

"Heart attack."

"Bugger!" Pete said.

We talked about the night I died, the footy, and Peggy. And how I wanted to reassure her I was okay in the afterlife.

"Then, do it, son," Pete urged.

"But the welcoming committee told me we can't visit the living."

Pete chuckled. "The committee doesn't know everything, Bruce. I worked out how to contact your aunt after I died, and it helped us find each other when she passed."

Pete explained the process. I wouldn't return to Peggy as a ghost or a spirit.

I didn't allow for how eternity affects time, and Peggy was much older the night she dreamed of me than when I died. But in her dream, we embraced and laughed as before. And I promised to visit again and wait for her in the afterlife.

© 2025 Robert Fairhead

I took the full-time photo of the Sydney Swans / Greater Western Sydney AFL game on 7-Sport TV during COVID lockdown in August 2020. Go Swannies! 

I wrote The Afterlife for the Not Quite Write Podcast's Not Quite Write Prize for Flash Fiction in January 2025. The prompts for the 60-hour, 500-word story competition were:

1. Your story must contain the word RING. 
2. It must feature the action of "opening a door".
3. And it must break the rule "write what you know".

As I explained in a story overview field on the submission form:

I know a lot about a few things and a few things about a lot. So, how could I break the "write what you know" rule? Well, I know nothing about the afterlife (none of us does, really!), which made it the perfect plot and setting for my story.

I've shared a blog post on Tall And True about writing The Afterlife and how My Uncle's Voice helped me finish the story when I was stuck. 

The Afterlife didn't win or make the short or lost-lists for the January Not Quite Write Prize. But I revisited it after listening to the judge's critiques in their Shortlist and Longlist podcast episodes. Although this story is an edited version of my submission, I've respected the prompts and word count.

Side note: According to the Population Reference Bureau (PRB.org), "about 117 billion members of our species have ever been born on Earth." Which is why there would be billions and billions of us in the eternal afterlife I envisioned in my story!

You might also like to read my first short story for the Not Quite Write Prize in July 2023, which featured a Huntsman spider's voice communicating with my protagonist, In Her Head.