I hope you enjoy this fic as much as I enjoyed writing it, because it was a LOT of fun, if a bit depressing in places. It starts a little slow - please bare with, the background info is important. Oh, and the ending - it's not a plot twist, because a seven year old could come up with something more surprising; I actually hope you see it coming. (Obviously I can't let my fics out into the world without apologising profusely for them first - please treat them kindly, they mean well.)

Reviews are the stuff dreams are made of.

Disclaimer: not mine, never was.

Being dead sucks.

Neil sighs as he walks along the beach, careful not to trip over any waves. A group of teenagers stampede to the water and he braces himself as they pass through him; he's too tired (in an existential sense, of course) to move out of their way, though he shudders as their flailing arms and legs fill his space.

He's effectively weightless – a form without mass, a body without parts. No longer being made of any real stuff, Neil has no effect on the world. He can't open doors, because he can't turn the handle or push against the wood. He can't pick things up, kick them, or change their shape. He can't walk through walls, or people, or even through water because compared to him, everything is solid, impermeable - which is why he's avoiding the waves now. Instead he just sort of floats along in the spaces between things – not so much flying but bouncing in the air, like the astronauts he saw on the tv show about the moon landing, caught on a draft of wind. He makes no impression, no imprints. He's a shadow.

But in the unfair world of the dead among the living, people can walk through him, and where their body intersects with his grey globby frame he sure can feel it.

Neil remembers the first time that happened, all those years ago when he was still hanging around his parents' house. He was watching his mother cook dinner one evening in the kitchen; she reached out for a jar of sauce and Neil didn't have time to move before her arm went straight through where he was standing. She sneezed, but otherwise seemed unfazed. Neil, on the other hand, could feel bone and muscle and blood at every point where her real human arm intersected with his shadow. It freaked him out so much he actually screamed. He's made a point to try and avoid direct contact with people since then.

Unless, of course – Neil spies an old man walking along the sand carrying a bag of hot chips. The man is clearly looking for a place to sit, and Neil anticipates that he will choose the low green bench under the palm tree. Neil can't resist hot chips. He bounds lightly across the beach, thankful for once that his feet don't sink into the sand, and he slides onto the bench.

Not a moment too soon. The man (quite unawares) sits on top of Neil, and where the man's real stomach intersects the place where Neil's stomach should be, he feels hunger. And this man is really hungry. Neil savours the feeling.

Funny, when Neil was a teenager, hunger was something to be sated as soon as possible, so that he could get back to more pressing matters such as forging letters of permission and teasing his roommate. Now he appreciates hunger as the beautiful counterpart to that other human feeling, full. And he's gotten lucky – the man is the same height as Neil so that, when the man holds his head still, Neil can actually taste the hot chips – the fat, crunch, the soft potato, the salt – in his mouth.

The weird, weird feeling of taking on another person's body will always lose to the feeling of hot chips. For a few blissful moments, too rare in Neil's otherwise senseless death, he is completely satisfied.

Then the man finishes the chips, and Neil is brought back to reality. He starts to feel other things in the man's body, like the heartburn he's suffering from eating too quickly. Neil can also feel the man's shallow breathing, so obvious to him now that he's been ten years without lungs of his own. This guy isn't healthy. Partly Neil feels sorry for the man; partly he feels frustrated that he is unable to help the guy; and partly he really wishes the man would move along, so that he can stop feeling these things.

When the old man finally gets up to go, wheezing at the exertion of simply standing, Neil stretches out his legs and continues watching the ocean. He'll stay there till sunset – no matter that sunset isn't for another six hours. He can wait. Then he'll make his way to the airport somehow, sneak aboard a plane, and head north. He's had enough of California. He wants to go home.