Well. Dying certainly isn't all it's cracked up to be.
I stand up and brush myself off. Fortunately, I vacuum regularly, so my suit isn't too dirty now. I should change before I sweat or something. Don't want to have to find the drycleaner of the damned.
As I shrug off my jacket, I notice the newspaper on the floor. Well, at least I can rely on being well-informed of new additions to the afterlife. I pick it up and start reading.
...well, that's different. I light up a cigarette. I hadn't had my evening smoke before dying in the chair, after all. And I don't think that the landlord will be able to complain about me smoking if the world itself is broken. Though she does tend to focus on minutiae.
Hold on. My horoscope is listed as having to find "Ophiuchus." Most horoscopes aren't listed at all, but Aries, Cancer, Scorpio, and Ophiuchus are. Wait a minute...
I grab the previous issue of the newspaper and scan it quickly. Just as I thought--the three people mentioned are myself, someone named Serako, and the enigmatic "Headphone Actor." Scorpio, Cancer, and Aries. Serako was listed as dying at the same time as me, while the newspaper states that police would attempt to apprehend "Headphone Actor" at the same time.
That doesn't solve the mystery of Ophiuchus, though. Let's see if that's mentioned in any of the previous papers.
I only need to go back one further to find Ophiuchus. Alissa Cristianson (Ophiuchus) was killed by a fox spirit on the night of Sunday, July 1st. How the hell does she fit into any of this?
Well, it looks like Serako, "Headphone Actor," and I are supposed to find and protect this Alissa person. I don't know if the afterlife has WiFi, so I'll crack open my copy of the White Pages to look for contact information for Serako Treble and Alissa Cristianson--while trying to remember whether I know of the Mediarama apartments or Broken Damn Road.
Damn good thing I read that article about how laptops can reduce sperm count a few months ago, or I might have thrown out this copy of the White Pages like all the others. It makes a good insulator, though.