Millie and Mabel’s Afterlife Adventure Chapter One
Millie and Mabel's Afterlife Adventure: Chapter One
MABEL
I grabbed a flat, smooth stone from the edge of the dock and wound my arm back.
“What are you doing?” my best friend, Millie, asked from her spot beside me.
“Nothing.” A mischievous grin spread across my face. “Just seeing if I can still nail a good skip.”
But that wasn’t true. I wasn’t aiming for skips—I wanted a huge splash to drench my best friend. I hurled the stone with all my strength, targeting the spot right in front of her perfectly pedicured toes.
Instead of a satisfying splat, the stone hit the surface and took off, a small whirring blur that skipped perfectly seven times before sinking without a sound.
“Wow!” Millie exclaimed. “Seven perfect skips! Nice work!”
I groaned, planting my hands on my hips. “I wasn’t trying to skip it. I was trying to splash you.”
Millie let out a soft laugh. “I know, Mabel. We’ve been friends for ninety years. I can always tell when you’re lying.”
Unwilling to give up, I tried again, but as I tried to spike it into the water right in front of her, the stone just skipped a perfect, flawless series of hops across the pond’s surface. I tried again. And again. My frustration grew with each failed attempt.
Her soft, grey curls moved in the gentle breeze.
She looked over, her plump cheeks swelling with the smile that deepened the wrinkles around her eyes.
“Are you done yet? I don’t think Heaven will let you soak me since I don’t want to be soaked right now.
You know, Heaven. It always gives you exactly what you want. ”
I did know Heaven. Perfectly perfect Heaven we’d been living in for months of endless bliss... the kind of flawless paradise that was slowly driving me insane.
“Except I want to soak you! And this damn rock just keeps skipping off perfectly like I’m a freaking rock skipping champion!”
I tossed the last stone in my hand, watching it once again take off perfectly.
Exhausted from my attempts, I flopped down on the dock beside her.
“What’s wrong with me, Millie? We have everything we could ever want with just a thought.
We can paint masterpieces, learn any instrument, go anywhere we want with just a blink.
Why can’t I seem to be excited about it?
What’s wrong with me for not loving this endless perfection all the time? ”
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Millie said, her silver eyebrows furrowing slightly.
“You’re Mabel. You were never one for perfection.
I know you’re restless here, and Heaven can be a little…
predictable,” she said, then she opened her hand and with one big blink, a piece of chocolate cake appeared it.
“But for all its constant happiness I know can irritate you, at least there’s endless cake…
and no calories.” She grinned widely, her eyes lighting up as she looked at the plate.
She took a bite, moaning with pleasure as she savored the taste.
“Here. Have some cake. It will make you feel better.”
I leaned forward and took a bite, the perfect flavors of the best cake I’d ever had filling my mouth. But in Heaven, everything I put in my mouth was the best thing I’d ever had, and instead of being excited for the perfect blend of chocolate and sweetness, I just felt more irritated.
I slung an arm around her shoulder. “Maybe Heaven is sometimes frustrating for me because I still feel like I don’t belong here. Honestly, I’m still not sure why they let us into the good place. You know, back on Earth, we got into a heck of a lot of trouble.”
“Oh yes we did. Kinda worried we’d end up down there.” She pointed a chocolate-covered finger at our feet, and I burst into laughter.
I grinned at the memories. “I gotta admit, when I was fading away, I started to panic that Heaven had a list of all the things we’d done, and we were gonna get a big fat door slammed in our faces.”
Her blue eyes widened. “Oh, that list would have been very, very long.”
She pulled a face, and the two of us burst into laughter as memories of our legendary mischief invaded my mind.
“Like that time in third grade when Jenny called you an ugly troll, so I put gum in her hair?”
Millie started laughing. “Or that time sophomore year that Jimmy and his friends were tormenting you about your botched haircut, so I copied his handwriting and wrote a sappy love letter to the most popular senior girl, oh man, what was her name? Lacy? Lucy? I forgot. But then I slipped it in her locker, and she read it aloud to all her friends? Oh my word, everyone teased him the whole year even though he was constantly screaming he didn’t write it.
” She leaned in, whispering as a sly smile lifted her lips, “And only you and I know he wasn’t lying. He didn’t.”
“It served him right!” I frowned, remembering the hell that little brat had put me through. “I wanted to drop out of school he was bullying me so badly.”
Her sly smile grew into a full one. “He was too busy getting tormented himself to torment you after that. I had your back. I had it then, and I had it when your jerk of a husband cheated, and we got payback by hacking his email and forwarding his boss all those horrifyingly disgusting emails he wrote to his assistant and got him fired for sleeping with a subordinate.”
Her eyes glistened and mine lit up too, remembering his total and utter devastation when I’d left him, and then he’d lost his job and his side chick all in one fell swoop. And he’d thought he’d accidentally sent the emails to the whole staff and never once figured out it had been us.
I slung an arm around her shoulder. “You had my back, and I had yours. Best friends for life.”
“And afterlife,” she noted, gesturing to the celestial world around us.
Best friends for afterlife we were. We’d met in a foster home when we were only three years old, and the two of us had been closer than sisters ever since.
We’d become each other’s family growing up as we navigated a world without our own.
We chose each other as family, creating a bond stronger than if we’d merely been blood relatives.
Both notorious pranksters, we’d had our share of mishaps, but I’d loved every minute of our unpredictable lives causing mischief and sharing endless laughter over all the trouble we got ourselves into.
A warm breeze, always the perfect temperature, rippled across the water. I closed my eyes and leaned back on my hands, my toes drifting in the cool pond while the sun warmed my face.
Another perfect moment. Dying at ninety-one in my nursing home had its perks, apparently.
Millie had gone first, and I’d held her hand when she’d left, my grief so profound that my heart gave out only a few hours later.
They called it a heart attack. I called I a broken heart.
We’d been best friends for almost nine decades, and now here we were, together again, forever and ever, enjoying nothing but bliss.
Wonderful, beautiful, incredibly boring bliss.
At first, Heaven had been exhilarating, a non-stop adventure of discovery and wish fulfillment.
But as the days wore on, the luster began to fade.
Everything was perfect, yes, but that perfection came at the cost of challenge, of risk, of the very imperfections that had made life on Earth so thrilling.
“I guess I miss the unknown.” I sighed, looking out at the still water.
“Half the fun of doing things is not knowing if you’re going to succeed.
Like when we tried surfing the other day, the waves were perfectly calibrated.
No wipeouts, no fear, no fun. Every painting we do turns out perfect, just like always.
Where’s the challenge in that? I picked up a violin last week and even though I’d never touched one in my life, I was playing like I deserved a spot at the head of a symphony.
I wanted to go cliff diving back on Earth for the rush, but here, there’s no rush when you know you’re completely safe.
No adrenaline, no thrill. That was the whole point. ”
“I suppose you’re right,” Millie said quietly, her smile fading a little. “Not much risk of dying when you’re already dead. But, at least we have each other.”
That simple statement soothed me as I recognized that even though I didn’t seem cut out for this endless perfection business, at least the one thing I never wanted to change was getting to spend eternity with Millie.
I gazed at my friend’s face, so familiar and yet so different from the one I’d known as a child. Despite the decades that had weathered us both, turning our once-brown hair to grey, her eyes sparkled with the same mischievous gleam I remembered from my earliest memories.
When we landed in Heaven, they explained we’d look like we did at our happiest. Some folks turned back into their twenty-something selves, but Millie and I only rewound a couple of decades.
Apparently, our seventies were peak happiness—free from husbands and jobs, just the two of us in our little house, gardening by day and binge-watching by night.
We sat in comfortable silence for a moment, but I could feel the restlessness building inside me again.
I looked around at the peaceful spot away from all the other souls that we’d chosen for our morning routine.
In Heaven, things worked similar to Earth.
We had homes, and each home was constructed to the exact specifications of our deepest desires.
Some people had mansions, others had cabins on a lake, and others, like Millie and me, had a little stone house surrounded with gardens that we shared together, since being together is what made us happiest. An exact replica of the house we’d been so happy in on Earth decades ago.