Why is this happening to me? I know now that there is life after death and I’ve accepted, at least to some extent, that I’m in Hell for being sinful and taking my own life. But of all the seven billion people in the world, or the hundreds of billion who have died from the beginning of time till now, why do I have to be Death’s plaything? I feel as miniscule as a dustmote when I ponder these statistics. I guess I’m still in shock. I keep yo-yoing from feeling resigned to my new home – a vast, extremely cruel penal colony where humankind is judged and punished like clockwork – to harboring the false hope of somehow escaping my tormentors and getting back to the world of the living. And my body! It takes a great deal of positivity to hold back despair at the sight and feel of my fangs, claws, thorny fur and ball-shaped tail. I sleep fitfully, tormented by vivid, psychotic nightmares that I know are but shadows of the real horrors that will greet me once I succumb to consciousness. Oh m

The question on the mind of every other child in the children’s home was what made a psychic like me different and how to get their hands on the stuff. Many started faking visions of ghosts and conversations with dead relatives or even possession by the devil (the more creative and ADD ones). But they had it all wrong because people like me didn’t only see the spirits of departed people or otherworldly entities. In my case, what I saw was balloons. And not your regular birthday-party type either; no, these balloons were sort of ethereal. Ghost-balloons. They were beautiful yet eerily alien, like jellyfish floating in air, invisible to everyone but to me. There was one for every living, breathing creature on earth, including animals, insects and even plants, though always proportionate to their size. The balloons all looked identical except for the size of their heads and the length of their stems. With perfect clarity, I walked in this astral world. I even thought at first that everyo

Day by day, my abilities grew. Being one of a kind, I felt as though I had been cast down a dried-up well where I was to spend the rest of my life in solitary confinement. Looking back, I can’t help but marvel at myself for surviving the isolation with a maturity and courage rare among children. On the other hand, it also feels as though most of my childhood passed me by while I was in some sort of trance. On my own, I learned how to control my talents and to avoid exerting myself. I became wary of very old items that had passed through too many hands as these could be damaging to both mind and spirit. During the couple of times I had to learn the hard way, I was invariably left drained. I also learned to stay away from objects that belonged to those who had already crossed over. In the same way I chose to keep silent about the balloons and their morbid significance, I knew there were things humans weren’t supposed to meddle with. Because of my extreme unconventionality, the supervis

“Good evening,” I greet, walking on my hocked hind legs into Death’s office. Septimus utters a stream of obscenities in classical Latin and ancient Greek. If sentences could consist entirely of abuse, he’s producing exactly those. I can tell even if the ubiquitous skeletons (My Helter-Skeltals, as Septimus fondly calls them) hadn’t erupted in braying laughter. I feel like an exorcist about to face the biggest demon-possession case of all time, but then it’s probably no more than what inner-city school teachers face every day, I try to reassure myself. As soon as I think this, Septimus generates a ball of fire and flings it straight at me. I scream and escape incineration by the skin of my teeth. Probably not. I’m hissing and spitting like only an actual threatened feline can. Then I notice my backside has been charred and there’s this small matter of a flame on the small tip past my ball tail. A hyperactive skeleton races to put the tremulous fire out. It runs screaming and dragging

Once in your life you’ll find the perfect love and it’ll be everything you imagined, whether or not you stayed a believer. You’ll find it at the most unexpected time and in the most unassuming place. It masquerades as something commonplace, neither remarkable nor memorable. It just happens. This is the beauty of the whole thing because later when you look back, there’s no landmark by which you can say, “Here it is. This is where love started.” Just this faint recognition of a dream you forgot you ever had and an inescapable, almost frightening sense of rightness, like the softest scrape of tumblers shifting into place as the key fits the lock. This is what Sol and I had. We WERE soulmates, and it pains me now to think I had to lose her for good before I would start believing. Worse, this is the same effect Septimus and I aim to recreate and trap Oriana Conti with. I don’t intend to teach Septimus any of those reverse-psychology seduction techniques that are peddled by pick-up artists