Excerpt from my new novel (the one I am working on, not the one I have for sale.)

Note: This is an excerpt from the novel I am currently writing. If you are interested in buying my completed novel, please message me.

Chapter 3

I was agnostic on the subject of death. Surely white middle-class prosperity would protect me from the worst dread of all: eternal nothingness.

Being that I am now devoutly religious (I am a non-dogmatic chaos magician) I know that God and Satan were walking with me then.

At the time I wasn't sure. Nothing could be worse than eternal nothingness (the terror of the very concept drained all the blood from my face and I involuntarily screamed at the thought of my own extinction - even writing this now upsets me) and the only person that could make this thought - which loiters like a pervert in the alley - bearable was Samantha.

If only I could live and then die with her. Eternal nothingness would be okay if I could die knowing that I would turn to dust next to her.

Hadn't scientists (to my 12 year old mind) proven that life after death does not exist?

What if it did exist? In that case I wanted to spend eternity with Samantha. Our souls becoming one. Imagine my sould becoming one with Samantha Epstein's soul. Didn't it seem impossible? It would be like having tea with Hitler and Jim Morrison.

This girl who was so popular and inaccessible - our souls becoming one! Spending ETERNITY together. Imagine that!

I had this romantic image of the two of us spending eternity as little kids of a beach; playing in the sand; building sandcastles; straight to the place of my happiest memories, a place of great emotional significance, Brigantine Beach, a small island off the coast of Atlantic City. The Trump Casinos of A.C. against the hazy backdrop of an early beautiful June morning. Life is about to begin. Life in death. Samantha Epstein and me.

Dreaming of this while listening to "Coma" by Guns N' Roses:

"No one's gonna bother me anymore...
No one's gonna mess with my head no more...
I can't understand what all the fighting's for...
but it's so nice here down far the shore."

I was happy being morbid. I hugged my pillow and pretended it was her.