Skateghost

I'm enjoying thrashing the park in the afterlife. Once you get your mind around the fact that your body isn't really a body, but the dream of a body, the fear factor all but melts away and one is able to really bust it out. It turns out that the park is malleable--that is, if I think of a new trick combo, and I need some terrain to try it out on, nine times out of ten I can just will it into existence. But then, is "existence" really the word for this state of being?

It actually gets a little boring sometimes, once the initial thrill wears off. I mean, how many times can you do a triple-kickflip to 5-O grind, impossible out down a really LONG handrail without wondering if that's all there is? After a while, you really have to tax your imagination to come up with new stuff. And when you do, half the time one of the oldschoolers around here has already done it.

But then, memory is a different creature here. People remember things happening, but it's really hard to place when exactly they occurred--or if, perhaps, they have yet to occur. (I have a sneaking suspicion that time flows both ways now). I don't even remember when it was I arrived. Could be an eternity, or just yesterday for all I know. And it's not much like the vague ideas of heaven I had formed while alive, where I would meet famous dead people and have all sorts of interesting conversations. In fact, my only companion thus far has been Lloyd, the surfer-dude/skater who gave me my board when I first found the park.

And Lloyd has, well, he's got a kind of one or two track mind. Skateboarding and girls are the only topics that can really hold his attention, and even these don't hold it for long. But the girls here are really vapid. I mean, they just tend to sit around on the obstacles, looking pretty in their two-piece bathing suits, and saying stuff like, "Wow, that was cool" whenever you pass them or do a trick.

Frankly, I'm getting a little sick of this place. The skating is good, but there must be more to the afterlife than this. And I'm starting to get homesick, if that's the right word. I miss eating food, and the feeling of rain on your face. You can conjure up similar experiences here, but somehow they lack a certain something.

There's a blinding white-light "sun" that illuminates this entire place, and several times when doing a large ollie or air off one of the ramps I have felt a strange sort of pull from it, as if with just a little more effort I could leap into the sky and make some sort of contact with the light. But every time I start to do this, Lloyd pulls me back with this big sort of fishing rod thing that he has. He says, "Dude! How many times do I have to tell you not to go towards the sun! You'll be fried to a crisp and all of this will be over." He then makes a sweeping gesture with his arm, indicating the skatepark with its ornamental bikini girls scattered here and there.

But I'm getting better at skating the park, and I think that soon I'll be able to work a line that evades Lloyd and his grappling hook. Maybe I'll be incinerated, but at least it would be something different. I don' t know how much more of skate paradise I can take.