1 PART ONE

She fell asleep reading a romance novel, and found herself in a war zone. She had to shake her head in disbelief. This was so real, she thought to herself.

"You bet lady." She jumped. The man stood at her side, slightly balding, looking like a lawyer, only in light blue pajamas and fuzzy slippers.

"What is this?" she asked. He shrugged.

"A dream, I suppose. And you're just a figment of my imagination." He grabbed her about the waist.

"What are you doing?" she cried, slapping him across the face.

"Come on pretty figment. This is my dream." She gathered her wits and freed herself from his grasp, leaving him clutching his finger and cursing in pain.

"Bitch! You broke my finger!" She stepped further away from him.

"Go away," she said distantly, wandering off. Suddenly he just didn't seem important any more. A dream, huh? What a strange dream. The sky seemed almost… broken. Starting a bit above the horizon and cracking across the sky was a gray stream of… numbers? Ones and zeros making a split in a blue sky. How strange. And a group of… children were dancing around a fire in which a man was burning, his skin charred and blistered, but his face still, like he had no idea what was going on around him. Almost like he was asleep.

His eyes opened and she screamed.

Darkness.

Liao Ming-hua sat in her bedroom, looking at herself sleeping. She felt very odd. She had no words to describe it, nothing in her experience that could compare to this feeling. She sat for a long time, as the night passed into day. When her alarm clock began to ring, she almost expected to see herself wake up and turn it off. But she didn't.

"Ming-hua?" A slight knocking at the door. She wondered what to do. She didn't know, so she stayed where she was. Her daughter Lei opened the door, a curious look on her face. "Mother, it's time to wake up." She wondered if her child was speaking to her in the chair, or her in the bed. The middle-aged woman made her way to the bed with the slow walk forced on her by her arthritic joints. She reached over to touch the old form in the bed. "Oh," she sighed, sitting suddenly. "I hadn't realized. Already? I'd hoped we'd have a few more years still... I'd hoped. Oh."

"What?" she cried. "Lei? I'm right here. Lei?" She closed her eyes. Her eyelids burned like they always did when she was very tired, or about to cry. She couldn't be dead. Everything felt so real. She felt the carpet under her feet, a slight breeze on her face. She could hear perfectly. Nothing was wrong with her. She was as alive as ever. But why was her daughter crying?

Liao Ming-hua sat in her bedroom, watching as men came and took her body away. Lei came into the room and cried a little, but only a little. Then she left and didn't come back. Ming-hua grew bored with the waiting. For the first time in… days?.. she stood up. Strange, she thought. Her legs weren't sore. She couldn't remember the last time she'd stood up without pain. I must really be dead, she thought. She wandered out of the room, not quite sure where she was going. It crossed her mind that she might be able to walk through walls, but she didn't want to try that just yet.

Throughout her family home everything seemed the same, and yet, oddly, she could feel her death hanging in the air. The door to her daughter's room was closed, and she didn't want to intrude. Her elderly son, blind for years, sat by the stove drinking a cup of coffee.

"Spiked with rum, I bet," she muttered, hoping he would hear her. She thought she saw his ears perk up, but she might have imagined it. She looked into the mirror that hung near the door, and was surprised to see that she had a reflection.

"Funny isn't it?" She turned around quickly. Her daughter-in-law stood near her husband, hand resting on his shoulder.

"Chun?" Ming-hua asked hesitantly. The old woman smiled.

"Yes dear." She approached, her step as slow and hobbled as it had been when she was alive. The women embraced, but Ming-hua was slightly frightened.

"Chun, you're…"

"Dead, love? And so are you, it would seem." Her daughter-in-law didn't seem terribly sad, only slightly regretful. "Death is a part of life, as natural as being born, and yet, it still seems wasteful when someone with so much unspent potential has to go." She was silent a while. "But why haven't you passed? What's holding you here?" Ming-hua didn't know quite what to say.

"I don't know. I thought… I don't know. I can't believe I'm really…"

"Yes, well, you'll get used to it. Strange though." She walked back to her husband. "Your son won't let me go, you see. Silly old man." She smiled fondly at him, just as she did in life. "So I stay here with him, and I'll stay here until he passes."

"But it's been nearly fifteen years!" The old woman smiled.

"I suppose I don't notice so much anymore. And it's been nice seeing the children grow up. There are other spirits that come and see me sometimes. The Chin's little boy was with me for a while. He was wonderful company. He couldn't pass until they found his body. His parents wouldn't believe he was dead."

"I remember."

"Yes, I suppose you do. He was such a nice young man. Always so polite. He loved to hear me tell stories. He liked it better here than with his parents. He said they made him sad. He hated to seem them so miserable. That's why it's important for them to go on with their lives. We don't like to see them moping around keeping us from moving on. You hear that you old man?" She laughed.

"Do you think Lei's keeping me here?" Ming-hua asked. The old woman narrowed her eyes.

"Could be. Wouldn't be like her though. Too religious, that one. Believes in the cycle of things. And you should know if she were holding you here. Everyone else seemed to. There's a bond you can feel at your core." She grunted. "How did you die?"

"I don't know." She gazed out of the window, stepping out of the way as her grandfather passed her by on his way to the toilet. "I was sleeping, having the strangest dream. A man was burning, and he looked at me, and…" she shook her head. "I woke up, only I was sitting next to my bed, and… and my body was there. And Lei came in and tried to wake me up, but I didn't."

"Hmm… Strange," Chun said. "But you were an old woman. Older than I was when I died. But you seemed so healthy... Ah well."

"But I know I died in the dream," she said, working things out as she said them. "I'm sure of it. That man killed me. It wasn't old age. I'm sure. It was him…"

"Death is a funny one. I talk to her sometimes. She came for me after my liver failed, but couldn't take me because of that damn bastard." Ming-hua blushed at her daughter-in-law's language. "Nice lady, Death."

"Death is a person?" she asked skeptically.

"Oh yes," she said, nodding her head as she took a seat at the table. "She looks young, but she really isn't. She has white skin and black hair, and when she looks at you, you can tell she knows everything about you, and that everything is alright. She told me that I could choose what happens to me when I finally pass, when your grandfather dies, or lets me go."

"I didn't see her."

"Strange, that. She's impossible to miss. I wonder… I wonder, maybe that's why you can't accept being dead. And why you haven't passed yet."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that you can't pass until Death comes for you, and if she didn't come for you, than that's why you're still here." She shook her head, clucking slightly to herself and muttering in Cantonese. "Strange. But I suppose even she can fall behind." Ming-hua closed her eyes, feeling a sudden headache.

"This is so annoying. I don't have arthritis anymore but I have a headache."

"It's all about your attitude, love. And might I add, you haven't looked that young in decades." Ming-hua looked down at herself, and realized that her body was young, and supple, the body of a woman in her 20s. In her dream… yes, in her dream she'd been young. Was that why she looked young now?

"What should I do?" Her son shuffled back into the kitchen, taking up his seat near the stove. The ghost of his wife stood and went to him, taking up her place at his side.

"You're the only one who knows that. You're not like us. You're not tied down. I suppose you could do anything you want."

"I don't know what I want," she muttered, standing. She gave Chun a kiss. "Goodbye. Perhaps I'll see you again."

"I love you, Mother. Good luck."