Fatman in Eternity — Anthony Schmitz

Fatman and his wife, Doris, have come to a ridiculous end. A pair of bored hooligans dropped a watermelon from a freeway pass that splattered onto Fatman's car. The resulting accident sent the couple on a path to the Underworld.It's not all fire and brimstone down there. It's more like a sewer tunnel, with weeping stone walls, poor ventilation, and a host of other not-quite-deads, all trying to make sense of their new status on the life-to-death continuum.On an unpredictable schedule, they are allowed to travel from the Underworld to what is dubbed topside — the world they formerly inhabited. There they are given the opportunity to interfere in the affairs of the living. They can right wrongs, if that's their inclination. They can settle old scores. They can attempt to make their survivors happier.But in the Underworld as it is on Earth: things don't always work out as planned.There is another path, which is to accept one's mortality, set hubris to the side, and perceive that the fate of all once-living creatures is to fade into utter nothingness. It's not an easy choice, especially for Fatman and Doris. Doris is a hard-charger, who has always been intent on working out the world's many wrinkles. Fatman, the most uxorious of husbands, mostly wants what Doris wants and strives to keep her content. But he's also less inclined to believe that the world can be noticeably improved, especially by the nearly-dead.Because the Underworld is a province of profound uncertainty, there is no easy way to choose a correct course of action. There is no telling the time, there are no mirrors, there is no sense of how long one might remain, or if there is necessarily any end at all. If anyone is running the show, it's unclear who it might be.The differences between Fatman and Doris eventually come to a messy end, in which their posse of ghouls confront a pack of thieving schemers in a showdown that leads to a moment where the couple must make a choice: to take a chance on a possible eternity in the Underworld, or to accept the prospect of oblivion.