Who is Carrie Bess?

January 14, 2014

Dear Journal,

When I was a kid, I used to get frustrated with my grandma for taking too long on paperwork. Okay, before I go any further, I want you to know she had the eyeballs of hawk, so I am not being senior-insensitive. Anyway, Grandma was obsessed with the fine print, on account of seeing a 20/20 special on predators taking advantage of the elderly by getting them to sign away their life savings. Her favorite scary story to rehash was about a lady in Birmingham who sold her house in exchange for a brown 1986 Cadillac. If you ask me, that makes about as much sense as a sleeveless turtleneck sweater, but Grandma swore she saw it.

When I got to be an adult, I found myself copying the fine print habit. I mean, really getting into it. For a couple of weeks, I got so obsessed, I was reading the itty-bitty words on boxes of things like Lemonheads before I ate them. Because you never knew... It might say 'product has been known to inhibit orgasm in lab animals' and if it happened to me, I'd be screwed, because it said it right there on the box.

Upon realizing I was becoming Granny Flynn, I threw myself to the other end of the see-saw and started putting my Jane Hancock on forms all willy-nilly without reading a single line. Those user agreement things? Pssh. Who had the time? Yeah, yeah, yeah, just gimme my freaking download, already!

While alive, I was not known for patience. It's gotten better with the concept of immortality.

I didn't sign any papers to become an Agent of the Powers That Be. When I died, I woke up in limbo-land (where they don't actually do the limbo dance, I was disappointed to learn) and it was like, hey, guess what? You're a tour gude for the recently deceased... Surprise! And here's hoping you enjoyed your life, because it's out of style like furry boots. They tossed a Policies and Procedures manual at me the size of Texas, but I was so upset over the whole newly dead thing, I didn't crack the cover. Then I got distracted with playing invisible pranks on people who crossed me during my years in Searchlight. And actually, I was hell-bent on being REBEL GIRL and ignoring their stupid rules, anyway.

Which, as it turns out, was exactly what they were counting on.

A couple months ago, I got bored.

I call your attention to page 1, 356 of Policies and Procedures: A Guide to Higher Being, Eighty-ninth Edition. A teeny-tiny footnote squeezed into the margin and written in ancient Sumerian provides an interesting tidbit of information, for those industrious enough to squirrel away a copy to a translator.

"Under such conditions that an appointed Agent no longer wishes to perform their duties, they may enter into an exchange with a suitable being, provided the transfer is voluntary and the Agent agrees to take on the circumstances of the subject."

END QUOTE.

I knew it! I knew there was no way they could knock me off and force me into unwilling, eternal slave labor without an escape clause. It'd be ludicrous, and if I was smart, I'd have marched that manual down to one of the claims lawyers in Aich Eeh Double Hockey Sticks and had them peruse it for me between sessions on the rack.

Let me tell you, when I got the news, I jumped in the air like an old Toyota commercial. The keys to my mortality and freedom dangled just out of reach, however, because I needed to find somebody willing to pull the switcheroo, who wasn't also bat-crazy. The task seemed hopeless, at least until I met Carrie Bess.

It started off simply enough. I was supposed to guide her daughter, Natalie, to a heaven dimension after a car accident took her life. I've seen a lot of awful, gut-wrenching things since I died, but this one took the cake. Natalie was only four years old. I felt like the worst kind of creature in the universe, but the part that really killed me wasn't how tiny her hand was in mine, but the sound of Carrie crying.

I went back for her. I was hoping maybe she'd handle the loss better if I promised her Natalie was in heaven, and that her heaven was filled with sno-cones and beagle puppies and back episodes of The Wiggles. But she was alone and broke and tired before the inconsolable grief. People in that much agony will consider a lot of dangerous stuff to be with their loved ones, especially when a spirit drops in and confirms the existence of an afterlife. Carrie would've done anything to have a permanent connection to Natalie, even if it meant conjuring up nasty stuff in a black magic book, or testing boundaries with sleeping pills.

But that's what she did, three nights running.

So I had a choice. I could let her do it and lead her to whatever afterlife she was going to have, or I could offer to take her place. And even after I gave her the run-down of all the dirty details that would make normal people poo bricks, she still wanted it. Now I don't mind telling you that it was an ethical quagmire, because can a grieving mom really make an informed decision? But given the choice of watching her swallow pills and being a little etchy-sketchy, I chose door number two.

There are catches. As far as the world knows, Hannah Jean Flynn is dead. I have to take up the life of Carrie Bess as it stands, although I do get to look like regular me, seeing as how my body was never buried, it just kind-of sublimated. And if Carrie ever makes peace with her daughter's death and wants her life back, I have to return it to her (indian-giver!!!).

But this is the chance of a lifetime (Okay, okay, I give, you forced it out of me! I've been dying to use that line! Ha! And that one, too!) and so you know what?

I took it.

The life and times of Carrie Nicole Bess, here I come!

Too bad I forgot to read the fine print.

Carrie is a waitress at the Golden Nugget. Oh, the bittersweet irony.

This is Hannah, signing off.