The Death and Life of Edward Wild: The Postmortem Adventures of a Modern Man

After the Shakespearean actor Edward Wild is killed in 2022 in Greenwich Village and ends up in a lower realm of the afterlife, he meets Molly Kendall. Neither of them could have guessed how their lives would change...

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From the Chapter: "Edward's Dream of Death"

Edward was a logical man. If he was not asleep and dreaming, it meant that he was awake. If he was awake but not on any Earth that he was familiar with, what then was left? With his knowledge of the ancient classics, there could be only one possibility. It was difficult for him to consider it because he wasn't religious, but with a terrible, sinking feeling in his chest, he looked at the woman with no soul and asked, "Am I in Hell? Are you the Queen of Hades?"

He thought she must be because, sitting so close to her, he could see that her vague illusion of beauty had crumbled. Her face was rough and cracked, and her lips were split with cuts from the cold. The skin of her neck and breasts looked like the scuffed and filthy leather that one would see on discarded workman's boots. What he also observed was the presence of evil crawling across her skin and swirling in her eyes, an immense evil that made him want to turn and flee. He had never experienced the intensity of dread that he felt as he sat in his coffin in front of her.

He looked at the dark liquid of her eyes and realized that his assessment of her had been observed. She was angry, and her acolytes inched away from her nervously.

"Welcome to my Kingdom."

Edward did not want to accept her words. It was a Sunday, and his parrot was waiting for breakfast, and why had he died and arrived in Hell? It was, quite plainly, unfair.

In spite of his overwhelming fear, he decided to argue.

"I do not belong here. There's been a mistake."

"There has been no mistake."

"Prove it," he said. He wondered then if she was going to snap her fingers and turn him into a blot of scum.

She snarled and bent down and whispered to an old man standing next to her. He whispered back...

(I invite you to read the book to find out what he said!): -)

Peter Falkenberg Brown writes frequently about "love, beauty, joy, and freedom," at his website https: //peterfalkenbergbrown.com. Peter was raised in Portland, Maine on the West End. His family traces its routes back to William Browne of Boston who married his sweetheart in 1655, after leaving Scotland, probably on the run from Cromwell's armies, which is ironic since Peter's seventh great-granduncle Charles Fleetwood was the commander-in- chief of Cromwell's forces in Ireland and by all reports was a Bad Man. If Charles had met William, Peter might never have existed. Isn't history exciting? Peter rode off into the sunset on his bicycle when he was eighteen, got married, had four children in Virginia, and learned how to say "Y'all." He's been back now for a number of years, and is thrilled to once again sit on the rocky seacoasts of Maine and admire the ocean. He hosts the "Love, Freedom, & the World" Video Channel, which is focused on a mix of spirituality and freedom-centered cultural and political issues.