Agnes in the Fifth Bardo

By Duncan MacLeod

major bummer, Agnes Blatt is dead.

Immediately after being struck by a car, she finds herself on a conveyor belt in the Fourth Bardo. There she joins forces with Jerry, her high school crush, and Patsy, an adorable dog who lived on her street.

The three dead souls travel together through all of the afterlife, battling demons, warding off ill-intentioned angels, and defending their three-souled union to everyone they meet.

When Agnes finds a knife that can cut through illusions, the trio hack their way through the wilderness of the afterlife, tumbling from one adventure to another.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Duncan MacLeod
• Release date: Jul 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005120795

Duncan MacLeod

I write adventure, magical realism, humor, LGBTQ and medical fiction to comfort the broken-hearted and help them laugh in the face of adversity.I’m the author of the Psychotic Break Series and the Agnes Series. I live in Southern California with my husband and our dog, Pepper.

Book preview

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Part III – The Sixth Bardo

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

About the Author

Books by Duncan MacLeod

PART I – The Fourth Bardo

Chapter 1 – Dead

Drat! I’m dead. I was rounding the corner of my street and then just BOOM it happened. We don’t have sidewalks in my neighborhood in LA, so I was walking around a big SUV parked right by the hedge - the same hedge the selfish neighbor erected to give herself privacy, while compromising the safety of everyone else who has to use the intersection. But I digress.

So, I was walking to the CVS to get some Flaming Hot Cheetos, and when I came to that corner, I was blindsided by a Cadillac limousine belonging to a different neighbor who runs a shady limo business out of his house. I’m pretty sure that’s what happened. The last thing I remember is the shocked face of the limo driver watching me fly through the air towards a big olive tree, headfirst. Then the lights went out.

When the lights came back on, I was in a forest of olive trees. It’s easy to walk through a forest without shoes when you weigh nothing. It was a satisfying sensation, really, to move without any pain or difficulty. If I had survived, I doubt I would have ever walked again. My neck vertebrae made a crunching sound. That’s really the last sound I heard. In the forest, there’s no sound other than the noises I make. I can whistle and I can talk. I’ve never really been able to sing.

Oh my god, how rude of me! I’m Agnes Blatt, and I’m dead. I live...I lived in the San Fernando Valley in Van Nuys. What else can I tell you? We lived in a ranch style home. I had a little brother who disliked me for no particular reason. My parents were proud of me, but they didn’t say it out loud. I can’t see them, by the way, in case you’re wondering. I don’t know if some people turn into ghosts and can haunt their families or whomever, but I didn’t draw that straw. I got the olive forest. Weird.

Here’s some more weird stuff about being dead: you can bring your phone, but it’s really only good for telling time. There’s no signal. I spent a while playing solitaire and then saw the battery was at less than 50% so I turned it off. I need the flashlight in case it gets dark. I'm wearing the same sloppy clothes I wore on my way to the drug store, but no shoes. I think they came off before the lights went out. Sweatpants and a Van Nuys High t-shirt are my uniform in the afterlife.

I suppose you want to know a little bit more about who I am. I’m young, so I’m not really sure who I was becoming. I was an honors student at Van Nuys High with a scholarship to Columbia University in New York. Now that’s off the table. I loved linguistics, which I had to take at Valley College because VN High didn’t offer it. I learned that words are magic. Literally. Before everyone could read, the illiterate believed the literate were magical beings, using signs and sorcery to commit words to stone or parchment. Reading the words, like a poem or an epitaph or whatever, was a magic spell. I kid you not. That’s what they teach you in linguistics.

I didn’t have any hardships other than this recent accident. I sailed through school, acing tests and essays. It was easy for me, like breathing. I couldn’t throw a ball to save my life, but then I wasn’t smart in my body that way. I was smart in my brain. I admired the football players who gracefully flew through the air to catch a ball and land face first, uninjured and unharmed. They didn’t admire me back. I wasn’t ugly, but I was a typical dork. Like most dorks, I had a gay stoner friend, Tom, and a hippy stoner friend, Pamela, but I didn’t smoke weed, so I wasn’t as cool. And I liked boys, like Tom did, but he was cool for being a gender traitor and I was just lame. I say gender traitor ironically, as in the Handmaid’s Tale but obviously he wasn’t a traitor of any kind. He was just a nice homophile teen who enjoyed talking to smart nerd girls.

Other students grow really attached to their friends. You see them linked up arm in arm, laughing and enjoying being a Valley girl. In the Valley, the Mexican girls don’t mix with the Armenian girls, but both groups are friends with black girls because they’re super stylish. Nobody’s very friendly with the Asians so they stick to themselves. Now that I’m dead, I can say all this racist stuff, and nobody will care. But really, the point I was making is that I felt only the slightest attachment, like a worn-out piece of velcro, to Pamela and Tom. I am sure they’re crying their eyes out right now, but they’ll forget me in a year. I didn’t leave a big chemtrail of emotional bonds behind me. Even my parents were indifferent. I liked it that way. I guess I don’t trust people. I had silent crushes on inappropriate boys at school. None of them noticed me. When I say inappropriate, I mean like Jerry Vitolo, a running back with a letter jacket, life of the party. I never got invited to those parties because I was just Agnes Blatt, a nobody with a scholarship to Columbia. Van Nuys High is a lot rougher than it was when Jeff Spiccoli and Danny Zucco went there. The teachers carry pepper spray in their purses. So, I got wonderful grades, but the teachers didn’t really want to chat to a threatening nerd like me.

If they had the internet in this olive grove, I would be able to do some research on life after death. Right now, I’m struggling to remember a book I read eons ago when I was eight, called The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche. I remember being really impressed how carefully the Tibetans had traced the path through the afterlife on the way to the next phase. I recall there being a period after death when they don’t disturb the body and say prayers over it so that the person wandering in the empty space would have a voice to follow. I don’t hear any voices. Nobody’s praying for me. This sucks!!

* * *

Okay, so I tried to stop and sit down and without even realizing it, I was walking again. WTF? If I had a physical body, I would have collapsed by now, but this endless march forward through a maze of trees is harsh! My mind is tired. Hmm, I wonder if this is a mind or a soul? Well, probably both.

I tried to walk straight into a tree to see what would happen and it was like that OK GO treadmill video. My feet just wouldn’t step in the right spot to allow me to smack into a tree. If it didn’t make me queasy, I think I would try to keep going through the trees because it’s at least a challenge to break up the monotony. You know, I have no stomach so feeling queasy isn’t really such a terrible thing. I’m not going to hurl. I just tried to climb a tree and the branches turned to powder, which clouded my vision for a minute. When I looked up, the branches were back in their original spot.

I’m so sick of this wandering. What if this is it? What if after you die, you’re all alone with no companions and nowhere to go except a forest of the very trees that killed you? Why couldn’t I have at least died at a flea market? It would be so much more interesting. But then again, if I died by a vintage manual typewriter falling from a high shelf in one of the stalls, I’d just end up wandering through an endless forest of QWERTY keyboards, ribbon, ink and sticky keys.

No, this is fine, I guess. I wonder how much time has passed on Earth. Am I on Earth? Has it been six months or six seconds? The forest is cloudy. The light source, presumably the sun but maybe something more supernatural, is pale at best. There’s no rain to water the trees and no river.

Okay what was that? I just heard a murmur or a sob. I think maybe Tom or Pamela is crying over me. No wait. It’s a prayer. Pamela is really into Wicca - I think she’s chanting the Isis song. Tom is with her. I hear them both.

Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna - We all come from the goddess, and to her we shall return like a drop of rain flowing to the ocean.

Holy shit that felt good. If you’re reading this, remember to pray for your loved ones. We hear you!

Chapter 2 – Jerry

The prayer must have set off a chain reaction. First the clouds grew dark, then rain came down soaking me except that I wasn’t in a body, exactly, so the water went THROUGH me! The rain formed rivulets that turned into little creeks that flowed to a river! I found a river! I don’t see the ferryman waiting to take me across. That’s an old concept of death. Poetic, yes, but really outdated. The river winds off to infinity in both directions. I want to walk along the river. Maybe I’ll find a bridge. My only dilemma is whether to go upstream to the left or downstream to the right. It actually doesn’t matter so I turn right and head downstream. The psychic treadmill had other ideas, and pretty soon I was moving left upstream. The rain stopped, but the river was still flowing fast. There were branches of olive trees whizzing by. Then I saw pieces of the bleacher stand from Van Nuys High School. That’s odd. Where did they come from?

I walked right through him. We both screamed. It was Jerry Vitolo, the running back. My secret shameful inappropriate crush.

J-Jerry? What happened to you?

Jerry stammered. I don’t know. I got tackled and my helmet flew off. I hit my head pretty bad on the bleachers. You’re Agnes, that girl that got hit by a car, yeah?

I nodded, glowing inside that he knew my name. I don’t know why I had a ridiculous crush on this numbskull. Was he just here to torture me? No, it sounded like he really died too. The school must have spent the entire Spring budget on grief counselors. Especially for Jerry. He was Mr. Popular.

Do you have any idea where we are?

I shrugged. If I had to say, I would guess we’re in the fourth bardo.

Jerry gave a blank stare. In English, please.

He’s dimwitted and a jock and cute as shit. I hate myself for wanting him. We can’t exactly have each other anyway. We’re a bit too disincorporated.

Okay so the bardo is the afterlife in Tibetan Buddhism. I read a book years ago.

Jerry nodded. He wiped tears from his eyes.

Oh, sweetie, what’s wrong? I tried to hold his hand, but we were like two magnets with the same poles.

I’m dead! What do you think is wrong?

Well, at least there’s another dead person to talk to. How long were you wandering through bleachers before you found the river and me?

How did you know I was wandering through bleachers?

Just a lucky guess.

It was like a stadium in hell. The seats just went on forever. I tried to sit but I couldn’t.

OMG me too! I winced at my nerdy 1990s slang. I mean, I wandered through an endless forest of olive trees until I found the river. I couldn’t sit down - I was just up and walking again.

Yeah, weird, right? Jerry scratched his chin like Pappy Yokum in Li’l Abner. Don’t ask me how I know that reference. It involves Children’s Theater and gender-bending role assignments.

So, I know I’m not the most interesting girl at school, but I hope you find some small comfort in my companionship here where there’s no one else.

You’re one of the cool kids. The smart ones.

I did not know that was how the football crowd saw my insanely tiny clique.

The Isis chant started up again, which startled Jerry badly.

It’s Tom and Pamela, they’re praying for me. And I guess for you too.

The stoner twins. Why would they pray for me?

I laughed to myself at the never-before-heard nickname that Jerry had for them. I didn’t want to know what mine was, though.

They pray a lot. Pamela is into Wicca.

She’s a witch?

Um, yeah, sort of. In a loosey-goosey stoner sort of way.

Jerry laughed. You talk like a Charles Dickens novel.

I hardly think Dickens used the word stoner. Loosey-goosey was from the 1960s. I guess to a dumb jock like Jerry Vitolo, that was Victorian. You read Dickens, Jerry?

Oliver Twist. Oh, and Great Expectations.

Did you enjoy them?

Actually, yeah, when my mind didn’t wander off while I was reading, I was enjoying the story and the characters.

I’m shocked.

Why? Because you’re the smart one? Jocks can read books too.

"No, I didn’t mean it like that. I can’t catch a ball if