He was a quiet man with a basset hound that would not shut up. Which was why I stood on his doorstep at two a.m. the night before he was arrested asking him once again to please bring the dog inside. Humphrey, the soft-spoken man, answered (like he always did), listened to my polite pleas, murmured something about bones and then gingerly closed his evergreen door like it was a friend of his. As many would, I deduced from the pleasant interaction that he would be tossing a bone to the basset hound to quiet it as soon as I walked away. However, in retrospect, it was naïve of me; out of the dozens of times I had dropped by since he moved in a year ago, that dog never stopped wailing because I asked nicely.

So, perhaps it was my own fault for expecting anything different. Fifteen minutes passed, and my Monday evening was still being invaded by the sound of deep howls like a mother weeping. Feeling duped, I tugged my slippers back onto my feet and stomped outside, decidedly weary from the recent nights I’d had no rest, but also fueled by three cups of black coffee. Humphrey was not going to do this to me again; I’d make sure of it.

His backyard was predominantly covered in the shadow of a large willow tree, despite the spotlights of neighboring houses tickling its edges. I crept up on the left side of the wooden fence and peeked over without pretense. Immediately below me, the hound was howling, a lost spirit in a storm at my fence. I wanted to squeeze his lungs through his nostrils.

But I didn’t. Instead, I brought out the turkey bone I had dug out of my garbage can and held it over the fence, a few feet above his reverberating skull. The cries continued underneath me, until I banged the bone against the cedar like a dinner bell. With this, he acknowledged me, snatching the bone from my grip and lying down where he was to chomp silently. I smiled, and dumped several more scraps from dinner beside him to keep him occupied long enough for me to fall asleep. I paused only to observe the dozens of bones that were left scattered and unchewed about Humphrey’s yard. I thought it was strange, but then again, Humphrey and his dog were not normal.

Returning to my home, I went right to bed. I thought no more of Humphrey, his hound, or the bone graveyard, falling asleep as soon as I lied down to rest. However, sometime an hour later, the dog must have finished his meal, because the wails began once again shriller and (if I was not mistaken) angrier than earlier. I screamed into my pillow like a lunatic and trekked back outside without shoes on my feet.

The hound was howling back at the bottom of my fence, the remnants of the leftovers I gave him strewn on the moist grass. I couldn’t tell for sure, but they seemed unfinished. Empty-handed and desperate for a conclusion, I rapped on the inside of the fence again, hoping to draw his attention. He turned to look up at me, his mouth closed and quiet.

And the howls continued. From under where I was standing.

I ran then. Not because I was a coward, but because, to put it plainly, I thought I might be hallucinating. It was easier to blame the nights of sleeplessness than to believe a person was truly imprisoned underneath my feet. Nonetheless, I had every intention of returning and getting the police examine the spot in the ground eventually. First, however, I just needed to get away from there.

I sprinted and then walked for several miles, until halting at a twenty-four hour diner where I ordered more coffee and a plate of banana chocolate chip pancakes. By the time I finished, the sun had risen, and the morning rush was arriving. With a belly full of nerve, I decided to trudge back to my house and reexamine the patch of dirt by my fence, possibly to alert the authorities if needed. Yet, the earth was silent, so I decided I must have been delirious, and walked into my home to prepare for another workday.

Twelve minutes after five p.m. I pulled back into my driveway, the memory of the night before truly feeling like a dream. However, as soon as I saw the police outside Humphrey’s house, dragging him out in handcuffs, I remembered. A team of white jumpsuits scurried through his backyard, clustered near the back right of the dirt-covered yard around a dilapidated shed I barely noticed. I rubbed my eyes as they appeared to disappear into a doorway in the soil underneath it.

I ambled past the neighbors gathered around on the sidewalk and parts of my front lawn like flies, whispering their speculations and a few buzzing in my ear. I shooed them away, leaving them to their shock and confusion, and for the rest of the evening I sat on my side stoop watching the investigation. A few of the white spacemen put some of the hound’s bones in evidence bags, chatting (rather loudly) about how the man’s shallow basement made it so the bones could not be buried. Eventually, I also started hearing thumping from under my fence, presumably when the spacemen walked far enough into Humphrey’s hidden basement.

The thumps continued further than I expected, however, leading right beside me beneath my humble garden of zucchinis and sunflowers. I shivered, realizing in that moment why the howls of Humphrey’s ‘dog’ always seemed so deafening to me.

As the dusk embraced the sky above the neighborhood, Humphrey’s yard was lit for the first time in the darkness by portable lamps the police had arranged around the perimeter. A detective came to visit me around then and asked me a handful of generic questions. I told him who I was, and I told him it was all quite surprising. And when asked if I knew anything about the woman, the one Humphrey had been holding for weeks underneath my fence, I shook my head grimly and solemnly.

The following morning, instead of rushing out the door to my job, I lingered in my kitchen scanning the news on my cellphone. It didn’t take long to find the headline about the quiet man and the six women he had taken since his wife died last winter, yet there was only one woman I cared about: Lina Tafani. She was his final victim, dying just a few hours before the police raided his home. No family was left behind, but a photo has been used of her smiling with a young man looking happy. The police say she likely fought Humphrey and almost escaped, judging by the fresh scratches on Humphrey’s skin and the lump on his forehead.

However, they are not certain, because the struggle probably would have made quite a racket, and apparently, no one heard a thing that evening.

George isn’t expecting to die tonight crossing the street on his walk home, but then again, no one ever truly expects to be flung across the asphalt by a pick-up truck ramming them while they’re debating between roast beef or seafood linguine for dinner. It is quite shocking for everyone involved; he isn’t wearing boxers, so when his pants fly off from the collision it is quite revealing. It is also, undeniably, the most attention he has ever received from others. The accident has been photographed and posted on at least two social media sites and one blog before his body hits the road.

The problem is, George isn’t quite dead yet. He is, for lack of a better term, operating on extremely low battery. Which means, as he floats over the cold road away from his dying body, the liaison is about to get involved. It’s protocol for almost dead humans that meet certain requirements, and this (relatively new) liaison is itching to make a name for himself via George.

“Look at that grumpy mug. Holy Powers, I wish I could take a Polaroid of that,” the liaison approaches George from the curb, dressed as any other passerby and looks up at the floating figure. “How are you feeling, George?”

George scowls below him at the liaison like an egg salad sandwich without tomato.

“Are you an angel or something? Have you come to collect my soul, because it didn’t automatically send to heaven? Technology nowadays; even heaven can’t get the job done right.”

“Not quite, Mr. Ellington,” the liaison chuckles, delighting in the elderly man’s candor. He is even more cantankerous than the research has shown. “You are almost dead. My job, as liaison, is to ensure you make a safe passage between the plains of existence.”

“Oh, so you’re a salesman. You’re awfully young, is this your first gig? Well, no thank you. I’m very happy with my current situation,” George attempts to descend down with the intention of poking his unoccupied body beside him, only to be rudely pushed back up by a wall of air. “Please instruct me on how to return to my body before I start decomposing.”

“You can return to your body at any time,” the liaison kneels down so his jeans would be soaking up George’s blood if he had a corporeal form. “But, I’m here to inform you of your options. There are some advantages to moving to the next place. If you’ll allow me, I would like to take you back to a moment in your past.”

“Sure, sure, I’m assuming this ‘next place’ would be heaven not the other one?” George rolls his whale-like eyes before checking his wristwatch which he realizes hasn’t transferred into spirit form like the rest of his clothes. He squints down to see the time on his body’s limp wrist. “You have five minutes. That should be approximately when the ambulance arrives considering the distance we are from the hospital.”

“Sublime!” the liaison smiles like a child with no screen time limit. The scene briskly changes, and George finds himself in a coffee shop. “This setting should do well. I have also put together a list. Just give me a moment to unravel it.”

“This was my favorite coffee shop, The Mug Stain. Goodness, I haven’t seen this place in ages,” George mutters solemnly.

“Yes, I’m aware,” The liaison digs inside his pants and extracts a long scroll of parchment filled with scribbles that must be his handwriting. He holds it in his hands and reads, “Reason one for moving on to the next place: there are no smartphones in heaven.”

“Are you serious?” George smacks his knee in pure bliss, his ethereal form sitting down casually at one of the café’s tables. “That’s actually really nice. I swear those devices have made people more self-centered than a chimp looking in a mirror. Hold on, there’s one right now. Look at that oblivious fool.”

A youthful man enters the hazy coffee shop his phone held steadily up to his face. Sounds ping from the device indicating he must be engaged in a fast-paced game of some kind. George frowns at him miserably as he bumps into his chair. George scowls, “Excuse me!”

“I thought you would like that,” the liaison’s grin widens. “Reason two: in heaven, there is no internet. If you want to use a computer, to type a manuscript or play solitaire however, you can rent out a desktop in the lounge with a limit of twenty minutes.”

“What? That means I wouldn’t need to remember any more Wi-Fi passwords! Unless,” George peers closer at the liaison with doubt, “You’re not telling me the whole truth. What’s the catch here?”

The liaison face sags at the accusation. “I am a liaison. I cannot lie. This is a list I have procured specifically for you, because I believed it would present the most tempting aspects of heaven to you.”

A study group of college students ambles into the shop and sets themselves up at the two tables beside George. They lay their laptops and phones out amid minor conversation with each other. George snarls as they ask him if he can scoot over so their chargers can reach the outlet under his feet.

“You okay?” the liaison asks, knowing what George’s reply will be, but asking in order to fulfill his job description.

“I’m fine. Will there be social media? My wife started ignoring me once that became a thing. Or printers? They literally never print even when they say they’re printing. Oh, and what about those code doodads they always want me to scan at stores when I forget to bring my phone?” George’s excitement is so tangible at this point, the liaison fears it may unintentionally bring him back to life before he’s made his choice.

“They all are not a problem in heaven,” the liaison assures him, surreptitiously releasing a spray of lavender into the air to calm George down. A siren wails from a few yards behind where George’s motionless body still lies for now. “It appears our time is up, however. Have you made your choice?”

“My coffee shop,” George says solemnly. “What did they do to you?”

The liaison practices the speech he has memorized once more in his head, anticipating another successful transition. As anticipated, George is reacting to the loss of his treasured coffee shop with bitterness and will surely want to leave the travesty behind. Once again, the overpopulation of the planet will be managed by an early acquisition by a liaison. The only part that could make this liaison slightly unsettled (but does not, because he is confident) is the Holy Powers prediction that Mr. Ellington would not be an easy sell.

Underestimated, as usual, he thinks. I really am naturally gifted like mom said.

“Okay, let’s go to heaven, then,” George stretches his legs out with a grunt, confused why he still feels achy as an immaterial being. He takes a final look at his wrinkled body beneath the coffee shop’s transparent floor to verify he is indeed dead, not just hallucinating, right as a flash covers the scene interrupting his careful examination. He shouts in irritation, “What on earth was that?”

But the twenty-year old woman crouched by his soon-to-be corpse does not reply. Instead, she takes another photo, flash off this time, with George’s body in the background. She uploads the image swiftly to her favorite social media platform, citing something about reckless drivers.

“Are you taking a selfie with my dead body?” George roars.

And this time, she does hear him, because in a fit of rage seconds before George had decided to break through the illusion of a floor and return to his body. In fact, the woman gets the whole thing on video as the seemingly dead man then rises from the street, screams barbarically at her as if she’s in some way angered him and comes right for her cell phone with the vivacity of someone in their prime. Sadly, for her, the crazed, old man smashes her phone to bits beneath his boots before anyone can like it.

It probably would have gone viral, too.

The liaison watches the tragic scene silently from the place between the plains of existence, completely stunned. In spite of all his planning, nothing has gone right, and George is now entirely out of reach. What will his bosses say? He sighs and prepares to travel back to the Office of Transitions, thinking this might be karma for trying to steal a man’s soul ten years too soon.

Meanwhile, George stands in the center of the avenue (still without pants) as vibrant as a spring chicken. The EMTs watch him cautiously, unsure if this is the same man that had been hit by a truck minutes earlier. Lost in their confusion, the emergency team and pedestrians simply watch as the man claps his hands and wanders off. Because he has no social media, no one ever knows his name.