Debs told me she ran a dress agency for a living and also supplied costumes for a roleplay group she took part in at weekends. She said it was a rewarding afterlife that brought her into contact with a lot of interesting people.

"This plane," she said, "seems to attract misfits, artists and creative people. A lot of them find communities and jobs that they never would have on the mortal plane. There are still people doing regular boring jobs, but they all have weird and kinky things to do on the side which they keep secret out of habit, even though no-one's actually bothered. It's all harmless and fun, psychos and abusers go somewhere else... let's say I'm not worried about running into Strangler McSmalldick here."

"Who?"

"Sorry, my ex-husband, the one that murdered me. Piece of shit, I don't know if he's dead yet but when he does I'm pretty sure he won't be going anywhere nice."

"So there is some kind of divine justice, then?"

"I don't know about that, but the universe does seem to put you where you're meant to be. Why do you think we ran into each other by the canal today? I just had the feeling to go down there for an afternoon stroll, then along came you. You'll get used to odd coincidences around here. Anyway, tell me about what you did. Would I have seen you in anything?"

"Probably not," I confessed. "I wasn't on TV or anything, I ran an immersive theatre company with my wife. Mostly we did interactive murder mysteries with a lot of gore effects. I've been blown up, hung and dismembered more times than you can count."
Debs smiled and tipped her drink.
"Well, there's one of those odd coincidences right there."

She went on to tell me all about the Mortal Masquerade, the roleplay club she had alluded to earlier. The club met at Morior Studios, a film set and special effects studio just outside of Ketherton run by a guy who used to work on horror movies in the 60s and early 70s. After a number of years wandering the post-mortal plane he set up the club so spirits could experience being killed over and over in various ways.

"It's all illusion," she said, "about heightening life rather than actually dying. But that's what makes it so thrilling. When I was murdered for real it was a hideous, passionless, painful tragedy at the hands of someone who had already robbed me of my happiness and identity. But here I am nobody's victim, here I have control. Control of the person I present, the people I choose to submit to and the time and manner of my character's death. I get the rush of safely having all kinds of impossibly dangerous things happen to me, laid out like chocolates in a box. Then we go chill out in a backstage area we call Limbo and come back as someone else."

Of course I understood perfectly, it had been my career for over thirty years.

The horror productions of the Blemished Theatre Company were specifically designed to let audiences face their dark sides in a safe space. Fear was the most obvious response we were there to provoke, but what made it interesting was the different ways people chose to deal with it.

For most it was a fun diversion, a Halloween boofest to make them feel like kids again. Others enjoyed a more active, vainglorious fantasy, casting themselves as rational crusaders facing and defeating evil the world would surely descend into were it not for decent people like them. Someone still had to die though - first the disposable victim, followed by an unlimited number of extra deaths to advance the plot and supply clues. For bastions of virtue, the Miss Marple brigade sure liked a high body count. Sometimes we'd give the killer their comeuppance, but by then the righteous sleuths were quite happy to tut-tut them off to police custody, their bloodlust already sated.

Others were less coy about being there for the lurid excitement of fatality, ranging from simple gore fiends and shock lovers to a particular group of thrill-seekers who lived for the adrenaline rush of being in peril themselves. A surprising number of our fans asked if they could be the victim in one of our productions, so we began offering it as a competition prize from time to time. We even ended up taking bookings for private functions and birthday parties where the main celebrant would be bloodily executed at the climax. This service, which we named Murdergrams, turned into quite the revenue stream for our misfit independent theatre company.

Then there was the matter of realism. For some, it could never be real enough - we were always hearing from know-it-alls and I-think-you'll-finds that couldn't wait to tell us how cheesy our effects were, how such-and-such would never have happened that way, why there wasn't enough blood, or too much... with the exception of the odd weirdo this was their own way of dealing with fear of mortality, the particular way they enjoyed our show, so we just nodded and let them say their piece. As for the weirdos, the ones who were a little too enthralled by real death or who were getting creepy and stalkery towards our female cast members, we were far less encouraging, stepped in for a quiet word and then handed out bans when needed. For most though (including ourselves), realism just wasn't the point. Theatrical death needs to be just plausible enough to provoke an emotional response, then as outlandish and over the top as possible. What we were producing was closer to a cartoon than a crime reconstruction, and that's how we liked it.

We still wanted to have something for the whole audience, so in our writing sessions we developed the RUSS matrix to picture the kinds of audience members we might encounter. RUSS consisted of two intersecting scales; Realistic to Unrealistic and Sadistic to Suicidal (or self-destructive, depending on mood and sensitivity). By these measures, we could hypothetically place the main kind of spectator we could expect in a particular venue and tailor the show accordingly.

Debs struck me as a textbook USu, or Unreal Suicider. She wanted the thrill of danger, peril and death, but in a way she could control, dominate and toy with. She told me that every deathplay she took part in on her own terms stole more and more back from the man who had exploited, abused and murdered her on the mortal plane. RSu's (Realistic Suiciders) weren't people who actually wanted to die - we had links with counselling and support organisations and were careful to look out for red flags in that regard - but they were drawn to the thrill of coming close, to the point of posting adverts on the internet asking for someone to really kill them. I believe that we did good by providing RSu's with a safe place to express themselves without resorting to dangerous games like that. By the same token, RSa's (Realistic Sadists) were not actual serial killers, or if they were they managed to evade police detection despite leaving a public trail of evidence on our forums and social media. We did have to rein some of them in when they got too carried away, but when we stated our company motto as Fake Death: Fun, Real Death: Not Fun, most people took the hint. The most common group were USa's, Unreal Sadists - basically everyone who ever enjoyed Bang Bang You're Dead as a silly, harmless game.

There was one person I knew who occupied the exact same place as Debs on the RUSS matrix, and that was my widow Ellen. It was quite uncanny.

--

I agreed to accompany Debs to the Mortal Masquerade the following weekend on the understanding that it was not a date - I was still in love with Ellen, who I now felt sure would be following me here when her time came and I wanted to be able to say I'd waited for her. Besides, Debs was so similar in outlook to Ellen that I'd always be thinking of my wife, which wouldn't be fair to either of them. I did want to continue our friendship, though, and met her again a couple more times through the week, at Debs' dress shop on the outskirts of Ketherton and at the canalside cafe where we had first met.

She told me more about the structure and rules of the Mortal Masquerade. First of all, everyone who attended did so under a masked avatar, which could be a detailed character or merely a mask and assumed name added to the attendee's regular clothes. The idea was that by killing off the avatar in deathplays it would feel closer to actual death, with something at stake. Once an avatar was play-killed, they would be taken to a backstage area where they would unmask and not be seen again. The wearer would then need a new avatar to wear in future.

Deathplays at the Masquerade took three forms. The most common were games pitting avatars against each other, with the losers being executed. Debs told me she was fiercely competitive about these - she'd always been good at quizzes and while she didn't mind losing, she had to know she'd put up a fight and would not submit to an inferior opponent, it was part of how she asserted control. Swansongs were highly performative and ritualised displays in which an avatar would be executed in a spectacular fashion; spirits (the name given to the Masquerade's members) qualified for more intricate swansongs by winning games and amassing points. And then there were inductions, smaller executions performed on new arrivals in order to initiate them.

Debs was willing to put a costume together for me, but I had plenty of dressy-uppy clothes and a box of masks of my own to choose from and wanted to stay fairly low key for my first time. We agreed to put together something more intricate later.

In the meantime, I settled into my new afterlife in post-mortal Ketherton. At some point I would need to find work of some kind, but for now I didn't seem to have any financial worries so could rest up and take stock.

As I mentioned, Ketherton had long had a rough reputation, festered by a frustrated populace with little to do besides drink, fight and watch the town's football club meander in lower league mediocrity. There wasn't even a cinema, the closest was a multiplex fifteen miles out of town. There was a theatre in Ketherton, but it ceased all cultural activities in the 1970s, lay derelict for over a decade and eventually became a low rent shopping centre filled with cheap and nasty knock-off goods. The council were embarrassingly proud of this and produced ads promoting Ketherton Theatre Mall as a desirable destination for visiting shoppers. The campaign fooled no-one and was a subject of much local hilarity.

Ketherton in the afterlife seemed to be undergoing something of a cultural renaissance, which I first noticed on that initial walk along the canal. Further investigation revealed a thriving cultural quarter around that area as creative spirits developed the former mills into arts and craft spaces, galleries and shops. When we'd used these buildings for cheap rehearsal space there were a few other artists who rented other rooms, we gave each other work when we could and often talked about how the town could be turned around with a little investment and imagination. We'd even had meetings with the council about cultural development ideas that always ended in frustration. Well, here was a look at what could have been.

It helped that the economy of the afterlife was more abstract concept than practical reality, as I discovered when I visited the bank in town which had apparently taken over my account. It went by the name of Charon Bank Ltd., a reference to Ancient Greek afterlife legends which was not lost on me. The lady at the front desk had a name tag marked 'Analise' and a friendly but sinister air like a supernatural being. She greeted me, appeared to look straight through me for a moment then passed me on to a colleague name Stephanie, who took me into a side room to talk.

"It's OK to talk," said Analise to Stephanie. "He's post-recall."

"So, how are you adjusting?" asked Stephanie.

"With being dead, you mean?"

"Yes, that. But since you've figured it out you can get on with finding your way. Tell me, what was your walk of life?"

I told her I was an actor.

"My daughter does a little acting over at Morior Studios," she said. "Just bit parts, it was never her ambition or anything. But you might want to go and check it out. I can give you the number of the admin lady there if you're interested."

"Funnily enough, I have an appointment of sorts there on Saturday," I said.

Steph stopped writing, looked closely at me and smiled. "You don't say. You'll find yourself guided to things a lot around here, it really is best to go along with it, then when the universe drops hints do what you're supposed to."

She produced a cardboard wallet filled with documents and slid it to me across the table.

"Now, here's your account, it's basically the same as what you had before but it mostly maintains itself. If you suddenly find yourself in need of funds for a particular purpose check, you might find you mysteriously have them after all. That happens sometimes, it's not even us doing it. I've always worked in banking, but since coming here my job has shifted entirely to helping customers get where they need to be, it's very rewarding to be a part of. I'll give you my card, if you need help with anything just give me a call."

As I left the office, we shook hands and she whispered one thing more to me.

"Enjoy the Mortal Masquerade. Tell them I said "hi"."