And just like that, the interrogation began.

“You mean you made us crash and die? What a douche!” Elliot asked.

Beverly was more infuriated. “W-w-who are you then? Mr Mephistopheles??”

Ralph pointed a finger to the ground, meaning stone cold business. “I want answers, guy. Answers! You hear me!?”

The quiet old codger took a non-gregarious mouthful of his rootbeer that Beverly was kind enough to oblige him with. He burped without prejudice, then complimented it with a barking cough. He cleared his throat then sighed deep and long.

And then he spoke. “I’m not about to question if I chose the wrong family as it was ordered unto me but for frick sakes, everyone shut their illustrious pie holes already. Knock off the annoyance factor or nobody gets answers for Christmas, are we somewhat clear?”

The Doornails nodded heartily.

“I am not God and I’m sure as hell not the Devil. I am what you can call an agent of the most high.”

Elliot piped up. “So like an angel?”

“Boy, open your yap one more time, I sincerely dare you, I really do. Now, did you die? You’re darn rights you perished. All y’all, and I’ve never even been to the south. And then?”

He stood up, half-circled the table, looked semi-directly into Bev Jrs eyes and breathed “And then you were born again. From death to life. Why, you might ask? This is for you to discover but I will tell you this: it is a gift.”

Bev Jr held his glance and shot back. “And what about these half-assed bizarre other gifts you (finger quotes) ‘bestowed’ us with?”

The man exhaled deeply. “BJ, I like you, I do but I feel like I need to slap you silly because I already clearly stated I wanted your silence, sister! Dang it, what a crowd. What a crowd. And you even got the coolest gift, yet you question my arse.”

“Let me pose you this: Ralph, if you picked up a ukelele right this hot minute, and hadn’t played a literal lick previous.. would you or wouldn’t you suck?”

Ralph scratched his chin and looked at the ceiling. Beverly took the mic. “Oh for heavens sake, Ralph, answer the demons silly question. It’s not cancer science.”

“Never mind, I’ll do it for you. You’d suck. Royally. These gifts I’ve embedded in you take training to wield.”

Elliot raised a hand.

The man slapped his forehead, hard. “For the love of… yes, Elliot, you will be able to see other girls naked one day, too.”

Elliot smiled bigger than ever and crossed his arms.

“Any other stupid questions, Doornails?”

Bev Jr is busy hating her existance. She had become more alone and sullen than she normally was, which was saying something. She’d just drive (and fast), and question why she was this living zombie and why she didn’t just stay dead. Unlike everyone else in the fam jam, she could not just look past it. There needed to be answers and she was hell bent on finding them.

During one of her cry-rants, a very peculiar, and some might say absurd thing happened. With her eyes tightly clenched, Bev Jr saw dark water and submerged deep in this cold water was her. Not struggling or panicking but at total peace and still. She took in oxygen just the same way she did on land. And then suddenly, the family sedan came crashing in over head. She looked in and saw the family and the family looked out and saw her. Instinct kicked in and in seconds Bev Jr had helped everyone escape the car and make it above water.

Bev Jr opened her eyes to find herself parked and only feet away from where their vehicle catapulted into the drink. She became overcome in a florescent swirl of questions all pertaining to what exactly happened that night. Did she actually save them all? And if she did, they weren’t really dead after all? But.. why no memory between the accident and the next morning? What other pieces am I missing? Am I dead??

Her typical level of paranoia and self-loathing was light years darker and more intense. Rational thought was a luxury; to communicate with crazy, you must become insane. She couldn’t decide what was worse.. her family not caring about the incident and just moving on, or this huge puzzle piece revealed but with no black and white arrows pointing to the answers. It’s times like this when she wished she was a drug addict.

Meanwhile, at the Doornail house

The media is no longer staying away. All in the Doornail clan did find it crazy that besides the entire town of Flagstone Beach, there hadn’t been any reporters or cameras or questions forced down their throats. Still, a natural occurence amidst a scenario such as this, when a local family drowns in a horrific car accident then continues to draw air like every other Tom, Dirk and Henry on the planet.

Ralph would have typically called a family meeting via the astute and conniving Beverly but Elliot was more than handling it from the front porch. He addressed the horde of bloodthirsty reporters like he had seen in the movies. “I will field as many questions as I can but I feel like I should have some sort of podium. Can someone get one for me before we begin?” Dead silence was never less alive. He carried on, unscathed. He pointed at a lady wearing a chiffon blouse. “You.”

She looked left to right and squinted. “I didn’t.. have my hand up. But ok. Please tell me the series of events beginning with your family and you careening into the lake.”

Just then, a man emerged from the back of the crowd, assertively pushing the news seekers aside. He tromped across the sidewalk and icily half-embraced Elliot from the side. His hood covered his eyes and most of his face. Words oozed out of his crinkled lips. “Say no more. I was there that evening. Let’s go inside.”

Immediately, Elliot lead the man, as though he trusted him with his life or theoretically his death, into the house and shut the door.

A minute of quiet confusion went by for the crew on the lawn, cameras now off and microphones silenced. The chiffon lady spoke for the group. “Well that’s super retarded. Let’s pack it in, Clarence.”

The next morning, Tuesday, I’m meaning, the family stood and sat in the kitchen, eating breakfast and talking loudly. Elliot was very open with his confession. “Why do I have xray vision..?”

His dad cut him off, with a big grin. “Aw, son, that’s fantastic news! As I young boy, it was my one wish to have the ability to see through things.”

“Well, it would be cool and all if I was able to see more than naked fatties!” Elliot stared at the floor.

Beverly wasn’t having it. “Elliot Owen Doornail, you watch your language. Just because some of us have big bones doesn’t make it right to use the F word. Come on.”

“Mom, these are giant women. I mean like too big.” Elliot was using his arms as a measuring tool. “Does anyone else have this… problem? I’m cursed is what I am.”

Bev Jr chided. “Nope and this is stupid. Bye.”

The next day

Besides hot flashes, Beverly was feeling weirder than her norm. Almost clairvoyant, though she didn’t actually know the words meaning. But she felt it. For example, she was sitting in her chair, staring out into what some might refer to as oblivion, when she became overcome with a vision of her husband glued to the toilet, vomiting his very soul. Immediately, her vision shifted to the fridge and inside she just knew it was the milk. To her utter chagrin, upon opening the fridge and peering at the milks expiration date, it was 6 days ago. Like in some sort of slow motion marathon, she grabbed the jug and dumped out the contents into the sink.

Her legs like spaghetti, she plopped down into her chair. She quickly crossed herself, top to bottom then left to right, then kissed her fingers, as she saw done on TV hundreds of times.

Within minutes, another spooky premonition hit her and hit her hard.

Meanwhile, across town

Ralph is growing arms where arms should not be, and with claws, to boot. This materialized quickly and embarrassingly as he was riding the subway home from work. As more and more people squished into the rail car, Ralph did the gentlemanly thing and gave up his seat for an elderly blind man whom didn’t seem quite so without sight when took off his shades and began texting. The train took off and with both hands, Ralph held on. In that moment, a third appendage looking like an arm shot out near his crotch region and the hand on the end of it grabbed the miraculously healed blind mans phone.

Both men unsure of what exactly was taking place made panicked eye contact as the phone was returned to the man who immediately offered the seat back to Ralph. The bonus arm retracted back inside Ralph’s body as he plopped down, promising to not make eye contact with blindy again.

But out of all these fantastically queer anomalies, Bev Jr had it the worst/best…

The Doornail family, Ralph, Beverly, Elliot and Bev Jr, sat quietly around the oval kitchen table. Beverly had prepared a giant breakfast fit for the undead and it was cooling rapidly before them. They looked around at the spread, then up at each other without word and without expression.

Bev Jr broke the ice. “Um, so am I absolutely insane or did we all drown to death?”

Elliot weighed in. “I know, right? The water… it, it killed me. I was killed, wasn’t I?”

“Yes, El. The water (finger quotes) ‘killed you’”, Bev Jr taunted as she rolled her eyes.

Ralph cleared his throat then stood up. Beverly immediately quipped, “Honey, why are you standing? Sit. Sit down.”

Ralph sat down then took the hands of his wife on his right and Elliot on his left then closed his eyes. The rest of the family followed suit though with reservation, as they never said a prayer before a meal in their home. Ever.

Ralph cleared his throat again, louder this time. Bev Jr opened one eye and looked at everyone then reshut it. “Oh, Lord, what can I say? Here we are alive as one could imagine, yet you took our lives, every last one of us, yesterday. If this is hell then we appreciate it ’cause it’s just like home.”

Beverly interrupted. “Ralph, what on the green earth are you talking about and why are you praying? Please knock it off.”

Everyone released hands and opened their eyes. Scrambled eggs, bacon and whole wheat toast, all of a tepid temperature, where doled out in large portions and everyone fed, heartily. No one spoke for the next eleven and a half minutes. Only the almost musical notes of forks, knives, chewing, swallowing and belching were heard.

After a minute or two of silence, Elliot spoke. “Dad, I feel different. Like I’m me and everything but… it’s different. Am I vampire?!”

“Ya, El. You’re a vampire. Woo-ooo! But not just any vampire. A water vampire. Do you even know what the process is in becoming a vampire??” Bev Jr was semi livid.

Ralph swallowed hard then choked for a second. “Bev, baby, take it easy on the little guy, huh? And I mean come on… do you think vampires pray?”

“Ralph, I think you’re missing the point so please don’t say anything more on the subject.” Beverly always knew what to say.

Bev Jr had had enough. “Look, everybody, we died. And yet… we’re alive, as if nothing happened.”

Elliot opened his mouth and raised his hand but Bev Jr responded quicker. “Yes, El, we all feel different. It’s not just you. I say we just go on with our regular lives. What else can be said?”

Ralph opened his mouth and Beverly touched his hand. “No, Ralph. Please don’t.”

The next morning at school

Elliot walked down the hallway amidst youth standing by their lockers, whispering and staring at Elliot. One stoner dude stepped in front of him. “Hey man. Didn’t you and your family just die on Saturday?”

Every conversation stopped and the silence that came was never the more pregnant. Elliot looked around at everybody staring at him and his eyes darted to the floor. “Uh, ya. We died. It’s true. But we came back and that’s all there’s to it.”

In that second his glance rose and he saw a bunch of naked, obese girls. He quickly looked at the floor again, then back up to the hallway of people. Most kids were dressed but all the chubby girls seemed to be either completely naked or just in their undies.

With rubber soles squeakin’, Elliot made a dash for the nearest bathroom. Being the sole inhabitant, he looked in the mirror and thought aloud, “What is happening to me? Do I have some sort of xray vision but only for certain people??”

Just then, the principal Mrs Lollymeyer, rounding the scale at a cool three hundred herself, came barging in. “Elliot, what is going on? I thought you were dead!”

All he could see were nude rolls jiggling and swaying and heading straight for him. Just then, everything went black…

As the sun set slowly in the east, the McDougal family sedan soared through air and crashed violently into Caliko Lake, fully emersed by the drink in mere seconds. The man who sent them into their watery graves sat behind the wheel of his old farm truck, in a daze of disbelief, smoke funneling out of the engine and blood running down his face. High on liquid intoxicants, the man turned off his vehicle, though left in neutral, and stepped out onto the dirt, wobbly as all heck. Like a newborn giraffe, he buckled and bended, each step a terrific struggle. Knowing he would hang for this, his only fuzzy recourse was to join them in a casket of lake water. Suicide by self-drowning, as to avoid a life of shame and imprisonment. Made perfect sense at the time.

The man, bearing an intense stare and a clenched jaw, waded out into the icy November water. A few breaths away from full on catatonia, his next step touched no bottom and he found himself dunked, not unlike a chocolate chip cookie in a tall glass of cold, crisp milk. He scrambled to bob up to the surface for air and in hopes of finding proper footing because as of that exact moment, suicide was no longer on the days agenda.

When that moment subsided, another moment came to pass, this one being the arrival of several cops cars and an ambulance resembling that of a hearse more so. The man splashed his way onto the shore and fell to his knees, gasping for agitated breaths. As he was met with two officers of the law, he surveyed the bank… and his filthy truck was nowhere to be seen.

The officers, Benson and Bensin, of “no relation”, as they’d always introduce themselves, helped the shivering man to his feet. Officer Bensin called out to a woman officer as she climbed slowly out of the squad car. “Brenda, bring us a blanket, will ya?”

Brenda shot him nothing more than an icy stare. “Officer Bensin, on the job you will refer to as me Lieutenant Small or you will be reprimanded, do I make myself unadulteratedly clear?”

Bensin frowned. He hemmed and he hawed. “But Brenda… muffin! You can’t expect me to call you Small when you’re oh, so lusciously big!! Right, baby?”

Everyone present laughed, including the man dripping wet. Brenda shot back three words as loud as they were unholy. “Shut up, Teddy!!” She rummaged through the trunk and then threw it at Bensin. “Here’s your damn blanket!”

Meanwhile, divers dove and they connected chains to the rear of the sunken sedan. Upon pulling it free of the wintry waters, two things were made public news by Lieutenant Small, the acting sheriff. Firstly, a family of four had accidentally made a “wrong maneuver” and wound up “killing theyselves” and secondly, that the “cold, wet hillbilly” had tried “his doggone dangdest” to save this poor family and is therefore recognized as a hero. Case closed.

The next morning

Mother and father, Ralph and Beverly, wake up simultaneously beside each other in their bed, in their home and bolt up to a sitting position. Unbeknownst to them, at that exact second their two children, Bev junior and Elliot, also draw waking air. And everyone is soaking wet…..