The Naked and the Dead

I looked down at myself. I was naked. This was strange. As far as I could remember I’d just reached over to turn the light on, so I could finish my book. Then I must have fallen back asleep or something, because it was - it seemed – long past dawn and it was already light outside.

I must have slept all night in my chair, but this didn’t explain how I was here, standing up across the other side of the room… and naked.

I wondered if I’d gone insane and this was some manifestation of a loss of lucidity.

Then I looked around and saw myself, still fully dressed, sitting in my chair behind me.

I looked down at my naked self, then at myself in the chair, just sitting there.

Just sitting there… and dead.

I was dead.

‘I am dead,’ I said, surprised to hear my own voice. ‘Dead and naked.’

‘You’ll get used to it,’ a voice said.

I turned.

She was young… well, younger than me anyway, and she was naked too.

She saw me not looking and laughed. ‘Like I said: you’ll get used to it. After all, why should your clothes die too?’

‘I am dead, then?’ I repeated it too myself too. ‘Naked and dead.’ I was so bewildered by it all, it didn’t occur to me to ask what she was doing there, in my house, there at my death.

It wasn’t until much later that I learnt it had been her house too, and – unlike mine – her death had been no accident with a faulty-wired reading lamp, she had been murdered.

At least, so she said.