Chapter 47: The Dead Girl

I came to fairly quickly, I thought. But when I opened my eyes, I saw Doc, Chuck, Darren, Holly and a face that belonged to the late Caitlyn Myers. I’m sure my reaction was funny at one level, but I was still freaked out in a major way.

“How can you be here? Doc, how can she be here?” I shouted as I sat up against the headboard, hitting my head again and causing a light show behind my eyes. “Caitlyn Myers is and was 100 percent dead. I went to her funeral. Jesus, I saw her in the casket!”

She turned and looked at Doc.

“How did I die?” she asked him. But I answered.

“A good, old-fashioned college overdose,” I said. “Too much cocaine combined with someone’s prescription drugs. Paramedics tried to revive you for a half-hour, but you had fried your system a half-dozen ways.”

“Why would I do that?” she asked.

“Because you were bored with your life, with everything about it,” I said. “It wasn’t enough that you were beautiful and smart. You needed more thrills, less reality. Even sex had lost it’s thrill for you ... Jesus, why I am even explaining this? Goddam it, Doc!”

“That’s hard to believe,” she said, still very much in character. “But I guess you were there.”

“So were you! But you couldn’t possibly have been, could you?” I said, beginning to wonder if I had a concussion.

“Of course not. I’m dead,” she sighed, and turned back to Doc. “Can’t we end this stupid play? I knew this was a bad idea.”

“Wait. What’s going on here?” I said, shaking my head to clear the last of the cobwebs.

“I thought it would be obvious by now,” Doc said. “Master PC can do just about anything. We got some of her DNA from a hairbrush that her family kept. And created a new template.”

“So you’re not her? Just inhabiting her body?” I said, looking at her closely for the first time. “At least I’m not crazy.”

I paced around the room, wishing it had a front door so I could slam it behind me. Instead, I decided to get to the bottom of this charade. “I’ve got to say, you look exactly like Caitlyn. But who?”

“Let’s keep that a mystery, shall we?” she said. “Now that you know that I’m a fantasy, and not a ghost, why can’t you just go with it?”

“And I won’t know who you really are?” I asked.

“God, I hope not,” she said.

“My lips are sealed,” Doc said.

“Can I watch?” Holly said.

“Mmmm. That’s sounds like an idea,” faux Caitlyn said, turning to her. In a surreal moment that followed, the two women who got me through college sane kissed in a smoldering commitment to making this weekend even more surreal.

“I think I’m calling an audible for this weekend,” Doc said, pulling away the other guys with some effort. “You three have fun, now.”

Suddenly, we were alone, and I had a crazy hard erection.

“You know, you were taken from me so suddenly, we had a date we never kept,” I told the Caitlyn look-alike as she stripped down.

“Apparently, you told Dr. Harris that at some point in your life, so that was my mission,” she said as she slid under my fresh, clean sheets. “Was it originally supposed to be a threesome?”

I think Holly actually blushed, but I shook my head.

“No, actually, you were my rebound for Holly leaving,” I said. “And once I lost you, it was all work and no play until I graduated.”

“And you met Alyssa on your graduation cruise?” Holly asked correctly.

“Before this conversation gets boring,” the dead girl said, sounding very much like Caitlyn. “Will you two get naked with me?”

Holly was way ahead of me, as she was already there and joined Caitlyn in bed. They lay side-by-side and looked at me like a two-headed goddess.

“So, how are we going to do this?” I asked.

“If you don’t know, then I submit that you are not the man I remembered,” Holly said.