Chapter 3: Life After Life

Sunlight peeked through the window awakening Lyra from her heavenly slumber. As she fluttered her eyes open she felt invigorated and ready to start a new day in her new afterlife, in a home of her very own.

Lyra realized she could now do her morning routine on her own schedule. No more waiting in line for the bathroom, no more siblings using up all the hot water, no more first come first serve breakfast, no more sports balls flying at her head, pranks, unstable chemicals or gross things. She took a moment to sigh in relief.

And so it went on her own agenda. Lyra went into the kitchen and made herself some breakfast which luckily her new kitchen was stocked with all food she enjoyed on earth. She briefly questioned that since she was dead she no longer needed to eat but concluded that it was mostly for pleasure.

After making herself a bowl of Honeycomb cereal, toast, bacon, an egg and a glass of orange juice, she took it into the living room set it on the coffee table and sat on the couch to watch some morning TV. Lyra had taken notice that her new home hadn't come with a dining room table but concluded that since it was just her, a coffee table would suit her needs fine. She turned on the TV where she could watch whatever she chose to. Unsurprisingly being ten, she chose to watch a much beloved but underrated cartoon from her early childhood, "Yin Yang Yo!" About two Woo Foo rabbits learning martial arts from their panda sensei. Lyra loved the show mostly because she loved the brother and sister duo of Yin and Yang. It reminded her a bit of Lincoln and herself…

After finishing her morning meal and enjoying two full episodes of her program Lyra took her dishes to the kitchen which luckily came with a dishwasher included. After going through so many hardships on earth, Lyra concluded that they had decided to make the afterlife so much easier so people didn't have to do chores and physical labour anymore. She then retreated to her own bathroom where she disrobed and took a nice shower. 15 minutes later she was all clean and pristine and after drying off she put on her signature emerald green outfit. Which, in the afterlife no longer ripped and covered in bloodstains.

She then heard a knock on her front door and upon answering it she was greeted by Tahani.

"Good morning Lyra, did you enjoy your first night in the Good Place?"

"Yes it was heavenly so to speak, and I didn't have to deal with my horrible sisters ruining it. I am really getting used to being on my own." She said with pride.

"Well now that I see you're all dressed and clean I assume you're ready for the next part of the tour." Tahani asked her.

"Sure am."

"Great, if you'll just follow me, you met Eddie yesterday so today we'll be introducing you to some other residents here." With that being said, Lyra exited her new house and locked the door behind her and started following after Tahani.

"So there are 320 other people excluding me and Eddie right?"

"Indeed. Obviously not all of them at once but I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at some of the other people who reside here."

"Anyone I might know?"

"Maybe, along with Eddie there's his mother Elizabeth and his late girlfriend Chrissy who he has chosen to become his eternal soulmate. There are a few late celebrities and some national heroes who died protecting their countries. But today we'll be meeting a few other adolescents like yourself who met their demise too soon." She explained.

"Well I guess that'd be okay, I never actually had any friends before."

"I beg your pardon? No friends? None at all?" Tahani replied in surprise.

Lyra sighed knowing that Tahani deserved the truth.

"Nope, none. See, back on earth I was kind of the black sheep of my family. Almost all of my sisters were talented in their own way, apart from Lily… as for Lincoln he definitely had his own interests and talents that made him unique but I unfortunately didn't have any talents worthy of my parents attention." Lyra explained.

"None at all?"

"At school I was just Lyra Loud, when I tried to make friends they would just label me as "Oh you're (blank)'s sister!" Before proceeding to talk about how much better they were than me.

It was Lola who mostly got all the attention at Royal Woods Elementary. Lana wasn't as obsessed with popularity as Lola but people always recognized her as Lola's twin.

Lisa was intelligent but preferred to keep her accomplishments low key. Same for Lucy, she blended in but thats how she preferred it. People at least knew who she was as a member of the Morticians Club and kids always asked her to do funerals for their pets. As for Lincoln, he had his own friends but he would always make room for me if he saw me being excluded by my peers, but I didn't have much in common with them.

My teachers were nice to me, sometimes they even showed me more affection than my parents did. But mostly I was just the girl who blended into the crowd who was untalented and not special. So yeah, I had a rough life." She said finishing her rant.

"Wow, believe it or not I can relate to that."

"You can? how so?"

"My parents were complete and utter wankers, they constantly made me and my sister Kamilah compete against each other for their love. And more often than not I was on the losing end."

"Dang that sucks, at least you got to grow up and leave them behind right?" She asked.

"Yes, and believe me I got an incredible sense of satisfaction the day I moved out."

"I guess we do have some common ground between us."

They arrived at a Froyo restaurant in the town square where many other people were milling about.

Lyra looked and saw she was waving at a boy who looked about 11 years old with brown hair under a navy Boston Red Sox baseball cap. He also wore a matching red jacket for the afformentioned team over a long sleeved shirt with a white torso and black sleeves paired with dark blue jeans and sneakers.

"Lyra this is Sam St. Cloud, Sam this is Lyra Loud."

"Nice to meet you." Sam said extending his hand to Lyra which she took.

"Sam arrived here in 2010, although he died in 2005."

"How about I get you two some yogurt and you can sit down and get better acquainted?"

"Sure."

"Sounds good to me." Sam and Lyra agreed respectively.

"Any requests?" She asked.

"Make mine chocolate." Sam requested.

"If they have cookie dough. I'll take that." She said.

"Lyra, they have every flavour imaginable. Cookie dough it is." Tahani said before going inside the shop.

Lyra sat down at a table with an umbrella across from Sam.

"So you just got here huh?" Sam asked her.

"Yep, I actually died in 2016 but I was trapped in limbo for 7 years and didn't ascend until after I let go of my hatred and fury."

"Wow, so I guess we both got here after a limbo period."

"I guess so. So what happened with you."

"In June 2005, me and my older brother Charlie was driving me to a friend's house to watch a baseball game until we got rear-ended by a drunk driver and T-boned by a semi. I didn't survive the crash, but my spirit stayed on Earth and Charlie was able to still see my spirit. So we made a deal to meet in the forest every evening, he kept the promise for 5 years, but eventually he met this girl named Tess who also near death so after I helped Charlie find her and save her life, she helped him move on and they went off to sail around the world together. I miss him, but now I realize I have to let him be free to live his own life." Sam said finishing his tale.

"Wow, sounds like a pretty harsh death."

Just then Tahani returned with our froyo. "Here we are, cookie dough for the lady and chocolate for the gentleman."

"Thanks Tahani." Said Sam.

"Yes thank you" Lyra added.

"You guys getting acquainted well?"

"Yep, I learned all about Sam's departure from the mortal realm and I still haven't told him mine yet."

"Well it's a pretty long story so I'll let you tell him, if you need me I've got a meeting with some architects from the Bad Place."

"I was dragging a boulder around a jogging track for almost a year so I probably never met them." Lyra pointed out remembering her period in the Bad Place.

"We're going to save them for later, you guys can carry on." She said before walking off.

"Anyway, what about you?" Sam asked, resuming their conversation.

"Well my story is a bit more complicated. See I came from a family of 12 kids."

"12?! Man that's a lot!"

"It was, just like you I had an older brother who was pretty much my best and only friend. Unfortunately we had 10 sisters, most of whom looked down on me and treated me like garbage."

"That sounds rough." Sam noted.

"It was, one day my academically gifted little sister Lisa wanted me to test out her latest experiment, which was a mind-control device unfortunately it got broken by my older sister Lynn, and due to her breaking the microphone, I heard Lisa say "Kill Lynn", which I took is a command. I grabbed a knife and went upstairs to do away with her but unfortunately, when I jumped at her in front of the stairs, Lincoln pushed her out of the way and I tumbled down the stairs and landed with the knife piercing my heart."

"Goddamn, that's brutal!" Sam said cringing at the thought of it.

"Yeah it was, and thanks to Lisa and her super intelligence she not only made a new mind control invention, but also a memory eraser. Which she then used to make the rest of my siblings take my corpse out of town to bury my body, throw all my belongings away at the dump and erase the memories of our parents, my teachers, my fellow students and anyone who knew me. They basically chose to erase me from existence.

"Man, I don't know how that must've felt for you. Charlie and I fought sometimes but he would never forget about me, heck! He sacrificed 5 years of his life just so he wouldn't lose me."

"My sisters weren't exactly the loving kind, at least not towards me. I'm sure they're all going to live their own lives without me, but they're never going to forget what I did to them."

"You don't have to go into detail about that." Sam said waving his hand. "My death was already plenty gruesome so I think Ive heard enough torment."

"Okay, case in point: I'll always love Lincoln, but I know that he needs his freedom. So I'll let him live his life with our family and I think that I need to respect him by moving on with my new afterlife.

"That's really admirable of you. I know Charlie would want the same thing for me."

"Then I guess we owe it to our big brothers to be happy here."

"I think you've got it Lyra."

"I guess we do."

With that, Lyra and Sam parted ways and remembering that Tahani was still in her meeting, decided to meander around the Good Place and explore a little. She took a stroll through the neighborhood and spent some time on a park bench adjacent to a nearby duck pond, full of ducks, koi, butterflies, dragonflies, frogs and turtles which she could only assume were all deceased animals that could live a peaceful existence in the Good Place. Although the thought of a pond full of dead animals sounded depressing to her, despite knowing her treatment of animals back on earth.

After spending most of the day peacefully strolling around her new home she was eventually found by Tahani who escorted her back home where Lyra ended her day and after dinner and some evening TV returned to her cozy bed where she drifted off to sleep.

(Whew! That was a good effort to get that done, a lot of small talk and descriptions of what people are doing. Ill try to work on conciseness in future chapters, until then… Peace out yo!)