I looked up. The trunk was obviously not as smooth as it had first appeared. Knots as big as fists were digging their knuckles into my back and no amount of squirming on my part could ease the discomfort. Even so, I didn't bother standing or moving away. I supposed I could have lain on the ground, but I knew I'd have felt exposed. With my back against the bark, as much as the bark tried to put me off, at least I felt I had some protection. Protection from what, I didn't know. I was fairly sure that, if I didn't know where I was then Dr. Connors and the rest of the 'sane' world wouldn't know either. That was unless they'd subcutaneously implanted a tracking chip somewhere on my body and satellites were currently spinning across the sky, homing in on my location so the hounds could come a-calling.

Oh my, wee doggy, what big teeth you have!

All the better to tear you limb from juicy limb!

"Always one for melodramatics, eh?" Joy commented. Her voice was like warm chocolate, velvety and smooth and, no doubt, high in calories.

"Oh," I said, smiling, "you know me. Why make a molehill out of a mountain?"

Joy was standing in front of me, looking much the same as the last time I'd seen her. Her hair was just past her shoulders, brown with blonde streaks that were not-so-fresh out of the bottle. Her eyes sparkled their usual green, smiling even when her mouth frowned. She seemed taller than I remembered, but then I was slouched against a tree that was doing its best to make sure I never stood straight again, and she was...

... She was dead.

"You're dead," I said, matter of factly.

"You're not looking so good yourself, mister," she said. "At least I can make a clean job of it, not like some I could mention."

I assumed, by that little comment, that she meant me. Joy had a habit of, where I'd make jokes, she'd make jibes. Usually it was all in good humour, just a different slice of the funny pie to the one I tended to munch, but I couldn't always tell if she was being serious or not. She looked fairly stern right at that moment.

"Hey," I defended, "I tried. It's not my fault I didn't end up where I wanted."

It sounded like I was sulking - a petulant child with my bottom lip dragging the floor. I knew Joy was only teasing, but I couldn't help it. Perhaps I was just pissed off with myself. Perhaps I was just pissed off with the world.

"Anyway," I said, picking my lip off the floor in case it got dirty. "You're dead. You don't have an opinion."

"Who are you to say what I can and can't have?" she huffed. "You're still, even after that mightily pathetic attempt to do otherwise, alive. You don't know the first thing about being dead, so I suggest you keep your opinions to yourself, thank you very much."

"Sorry," I said, dropping my lip again. I was angry enough at myself, not least because a seagull and boy were gone thanks to me. Having my own sister picking on me was a shiver past too much.

"Sin," she said, the melted chocolate back in her voice, "Get a sense of humour."

I looked up at her again. She winked and I realised what I should have known anyway - she was teasing.

"So," I said. "Death hasn't dulled your edge then?"

"Not a bit," she replied. She stepped to my side and sank down to the ground beside me. Her movements were as fluid as if she'd poured herself. I imagined the whole cast of the Royal Ballet performing Swan Lake, or some other famous ballet dancing show thing (I wasn't up on my classical dance) pirouetting through her body. Grace would have been an appropriate name for her, but then so would Sarcky Cow.

"Death," she continued, "isn't really as bad as it's made out to be. Granted I can't enjoy a Big Mac anymore, but at least I don't have to buy tampons either."

"What a lovely thought," I said. I would have assumed that being deceased would have more going for it, or against it, than the simple pleasures of fast food and periods. Not that I'd have thought a woman's monthlies was exactly a pleasure, but you get the point. Not that Big Macs and large fries are necessarily a pleasure either, for that matter.

"Indeed," said Joy. "Now do you want to get that lazy arse moving or are you going to stay moping here for the rest of your miserable life?" She poked me in the shoulder, quite sharply actually.

"Ouch," I complained.

"Sin, when did you become such a wuss? Has having that nice Dr. Connors looking after you all this time turned you into a big baby?"

I wouldn't have called Dr. Connors care 'looking after me', nor would I have called it 'care', but I didn't think I had to point that out to my sister. I'm sure I wasn't still the handsome hunk that had checked himself into the institute. Granted, I'm sure I wasn't a handsome hunk at all, but if I looked rough back then, I'd certainly be on the dark side of shabby now. Joy, on the other hand, was glowing. I don't mean in that aural angel kind of way, but rather in that healthy holiday in the sun three times a year, gym three times a week and cleanse three times a day kind of way. More radiant than... I don't know... a radiator. A white one. With a light shining on it. Or something.

"Death's been good for you," I commented, changing the subject. A weird thing to say, perhaps, but I was talking to my dead sister, so I figured it was ok.

"I wouldn't say that," she said. "I've a devil of a time trying to get my roots done."

So there I was. Unsuccessful at suicide, hiding in a forest, talking to the ghost of my suicide-successful sister. It had been a busy day. I'd escaped a mental home, killed a bird and a boy and I still had time to watch Eastenders and maybe grab a bite to eat. Chit-chat with Joy was pleasant and totally irrelevant. I was confused.

"This is a strange dream."

Joy smiled. The dimples in her cheeks made her look, as ever, like a mix of cute and sultry, carrying her smile up to her eyes.

"Who says you're dreaming?" she asked.

How did I know she was going to say that? I felt like I was in the middle of a horror movie, where I knew I shouldn't go down into the cellar - especially with the light not working - but I was going to go anyway.

"So, I'm awake and you are really my dead sister's ghost, come to haunt me?"

"What makes you think I'm a ghost? What makes you think I'm haunting you at all? Just because I'm dead doesn't make me a cliché, you know."

Fair point, I thought.

"Well, if you're a zombie," I pointed out, "you're not baying for blood and you haven't got half of your head missing. I know you don't like horror films, but remember when we watched Dawn of the Dead together?"

"That was Shaun of the Dead, and if you'd prefer I look the part just to convince you, then I suppose I could play along."

As she spoke, I noticed movement in the corner of her eye. At first I thought it was a tear forming and was going to ask her why she was crying, but when I saw it wriggle and plop out onto her lap, my mouth dried up. There on her tan coloured trousers, creamy and bulbous, was a maggot. I stared at it for a moment, my usually smart mouth staying dumb. When it was joined by a second, equally bulbous cousin, I looked back at my sister's face.

Or what was left of it.

OK, so her roots needed touching up before, but now they were a mass of movement as maggots swarmed across her skull making her look like an adolescent Medusa. Sections of hair, along with the skin it they were attached to, slid down across her face leaving streaks of red and brown. Carried by the added weight of the larvae, they dragged over her still sparkling eyes until they reached her jaw and fell onto her lap. She smiled again and a cockroach worked its way out of her mouth, all spindly legs and antenna at first, then seemingly all body, hard, black and glistening. The cockroach joined the scraps of head and crawled over the writhing maggots until it fell onto the ground and scurried away, thankfully in the opposite direction to me.

One shining eye bulged outwards at me until I thought it would explode, spraying me with gloop and cornea. Instead it popped out and hung by its optic nerve, swinging lazily on her cheek. It still sparkled, even though it was now bloodshot and yellowing.

She raised one hand. The hand was missing its flesh. Skeletal, with withered tendons struggling to stay attached, it pointed at the remains of her face.

"Is this better?" she asked. Her voice oozed from between decayed lips, no longer velvet but slime, still smooth but bubbling slightly and on the edge of coagulating in her throat.

I regarded her for a long time as the maggots feasted on her flesh and wriggled into her ears and nostrils.

"Nothing a bit of foundation wouldn't fix," I said.

She laughed, spraying blood and teeth on the ground between us. A molar landed on my foot and I picked it up and handed it back to her.

"You dropped this," I said. Whether Joy was a ghost or not, this was a dream, so there was no point in being disgusted or frightened. None of it was real.

"That's the Sin I know and love. Thank you Doctor for injecting some humour back into the old misery!"

This was how I remembered our relationship. We always seemed to bounce of each other, sometimes like Sumo wrestlers but more often than not like two balls in a Newton's Cradle - tick-tack-tick-tacking, trading funny little comments with smiles on our faces - what was left of them in some cases. I relaxed and Joy's face returned to its normal pretty self. She picked up the sections of scalp off the grass and laid them back on her skull, pushing her eye back into its open socket. I'm sure this was more for theatrics than necessity as, when she opened her mouth all her teeth were back in their original places, lined up on parade for inspection, Sergeant. The maggots were gone, though I didn't notice them disappear and the bloody streaks across her face faded to nothing.

"Ugh," I said, pulling a face. "You can take off the Halloween mask, it's not for a couple of months!"

"Oh, funny boy," she smirked. "You should be on stage."

"Thanks."

"Sweeping it."

I laughed anyway, even though it was an old joke and not particularly funny. Sometimes, without being able to help myself, I'd be on the precipice of laughing at a funeral, looking down the pit of complete embarrassment. You know when it's so wrong you can't help it? Like Death By Chocolate cake smothered in double cream? You know you shouldn't but you grab the biggest spoon in the drawer anyway? It was like that, almost. I knew I was in a bit of a state. I was an escaped mental patient, had no money, no real clothes, no idea where in the world I was and I was chewing the banana with my dear old sister, R.I.P.. You've got to laugh.

No, really. You have to.

"Come on. Buck up bucko!" She jabbed me in the arm with her perfectly re-fleshed finger. It hurt. Well, at least it meant she wasn't a ghost and this had to be a dream. And at least I wasn't naked or running around school in my pyjamas.

"I'm ok." I almost meant it. "Just been a bad day, you know?"

"Oh, I know. You've the world on your shoulders, and you're no Charles Atlas!" Her voice had returned to its previous silkiness and no longer sounded like she was going to choke on her words and her own blood. "Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, taped over the video, bit the Big One. Trust me, when I bit the Big One, I think my eyes were too big for my belly. It's a pity you can't take a bite, and then if you don't like it, spit it out."

"You mean like Marmite?" I asked.

"Marmite?"

"Yes. I tasted it once. Bloody disgusting. I spat it out and it took about an hour to get rid of the taste."

"Yes, then," she said, a little sadly, "like Marmite. I took a great chomp at a Marmite sandwich and now I'm not living to regret it."

"So," I said, wanting to bring the conversation back to something resembling normality, even though the subject matter was far from normal. For someone who could kill people thousands of miles away and who could teleport his body in the blink of a wink with no strings or mirrors required, what really counted as normal any more, anyway? "What can I do for you?"

Joy frowned playfully. "Can't a sister visit her brother nowadays?"

I nodded. "Of course she can," I said. "But since you're dead and I'm supposed to be, I figured you were here for something else. Are you in my head, conjured up just to keep me company? Or am I actually dead and this is hell?"

"So you think I'd have ended up down there, do you? Thanks a bunch bro'!"

"Well, I don't know. Did you?"

"Do I have horns and a sexy little tail? Not as far as I can tell. So no, I didn't end up 'down there', but thanks for thinking I might."

I shrugged. How was I to know what went on after death? I'd tried to take a peek but the door had been slammed firmly in my face. There might be Heaven, there might be Hell, there might be a great white light or there might be endless repeats of Crossroads with nothing to eat but cheesy Wotsits or prawn cocktail Monster Munch. I didn't want to piss Joy off whether she was real, ghost, dream or cannibalistic zombie eyeing up my liver for lunch, but I hadn't had the best day. Give a guy a break, eh?

Still. She was my sister. I hadn't seen her since before she'd killed herself, naturally, so perhaps I should be nicer. Depending on your religion, by committing suicide you could either be a blessed martyr or damned for all eternity, doomed to walk the earth in new shoes with no plasters. Did your religion dictate your afterlife - if there was one? Just because I was having a wee tête-à-tête with her didn't mean life after death was a reality. Maybe it was a surreality? I was dreaming and she was a conjuration of my mind, a sleight of hand illusion performed by the snoozing synapses of my brain. But it made me think. Did your own personal beliefs create your Heavens, Hells and Asguards? Was reincarnation real for those that believed in it, but if you didn't you had no chance of coming back, whether as a dolphin, a butterfly or a fresh pile of steaming doggy-doo-doo? And what if you believed in nothing? Was death the snuffing of your not so eternal flame?

Who knew? Ask me another.

Either way, I was pleased to be reunited with Joy, even if it was all in my not completely stable head. I'm not saying I was as crazy as Dr. Connors liked to insist I was, but there had to be something a little whoo, a little whee up there, didn't there? I hadn't lost the plot entirely, but I'd possibly skimmed a few pages. Otherwise I'd still be sitting in my cell waiting for the needles to come and pay a visit. Saying that, if all was jolly double-dandy, I wouldn't be at the hospital at all. I'd be in a comfortable job, earning a comfortable wage, maybe even with a comfortable girlfriend. I'd have a dog called Frank and be trying to stop next door's cat from leaving little presents between my lobelias.

Hmmm. I'm not sure which is the better deal now.

Hey ho, away we go.

"I don't think that," I said. "Of course I don't. I don't even know if there is a 'down there' for you to end up in." And besides, this was Joy. She'd made so many people happy it had sent her over the edge and she'd felt forced to take her own life. It was better than taking other lives like I had a penchant for doing. How could someone like that end up 'down there'?

Not that I'm implying Australia is all that bad.

"Well, alrighty then," said Joy in her best Ace Ventura voice. It was, basically, crap. My sister was always one to get up and sing at a Karaoke or dance on a table or see if she could down a pint of lager in three seconds without it coming out of her nose. She knew magic tricks which, though recent events and discoveries dulled their shine, Siegfried & Roy might not exactly be impressed by, but they'd certainly appreciate the effort. When it came to voices and such, though, Joy was pants. Her Welsh accent sounded Pakistani and her Sean Connery was akin to Father Ted after he'd had a few. As for Ace Ventura, I didn't think Jim Carrey had anything to worry about. She sounded like Joy doing an impression of Joy, but badly.

I smiled anyway, deciding to leave the deep and meaningful behind. Thoughts of life and death and cheesy Wotsits could wait for another day. Enjoy the dream because when I awoke I'd be back in the nightmare.

I belched loudly. It was one to be proud of and Joy slapped my arm in mock disgust. She could lay a good one out when she wanted to, so she was probably only jealous.

"You horrible, stinking, filthy pig!" she said as she smacked me again. "You really disgust me, you know that?"

And everything was ok. I was sitting in the woods having a laugh with my sister. The fact that she was dead was irrelevant. The fact that, but a short time before, I'd caused a young lad to make his car more intimate with a tree than he'd have probably wanted to was also, for now, irrelevant. Old times and daisy-chains were the tea on the table tonight, with a healthy helping of nostalgia for dessert.

"You couldn't help that boy, you know."

Well that was a custard pie in the face of memories.

* * * *