Kate Austen is “Lost” a Second Time

THE ISLAND – Kate Austen, who grew up in Iowa before relocating to Purgatory for six years, has died a second time due to a malfunction in the Afterlife Phase-Shifter, a device that transitions mended souls from Purgatory/The Island to a Better Place. There is confusion about whether Kate’s encore demise was more terrestrial than corporeal, being that this Island of Purgatory featured a lot of real human blood being spilled as a result of what sure looked like a lot of real guns. Then there was the Earth-like matter of all the sexual shenanigans, as demonstrated within the rambunctious love triangle involving Kate and the Island’s two alpha males, Jack Shephard and Sawyer. Some people got more ass on The Island than in all their lustful years as a mortal on Earth, a factor that made some of them reconsider the value of a higher plane of existence.

Kate’s first Island lover was Sawyer, yeah, just Sawyer – that is, until Kate began calling him by the pet name, James, which turned out to be his real name. Sawyer was the purgatorial bad boy of the group that had all died in the crash of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815. In turn, Sawyer had his own pet name for Kate:  Freckles. Kate had no problem accepting this mock designation, not because she liked it all that much, but it was better than the litany of cruel names that Sawyer bestowed on fellow Islander, and resident blimp, Hurley. Sawyer called Hurley such names as Jabba, Deep Dish, Pillsbury, and the too-long-to-fit-on-a-birth-certificate name of “International House of Pancakes.” Yes, Kate may have associated the moniker Freckles with the always laughable Howdy Doody, but it sure beat another of Sawyer’s Hurley-inspired nicknames, JumboTron.

Kate’s second lover, and Island-ordained soul mate, was Jack, who, though a doctor and all around good guy, was too sincere about his role as Hero to ever possess the light-hearted wit necessary to create nicknames. His idea of addressing Kate in an alternate way was to modify the degree of sweat pouring from his overwrought brow while uttering “Kate” through a tight grimace. The reason Kate ended up with the forever angst-ridden Jack was because the love triangle of Kate, Jack and Sawyer eventually added a new member, the blonde female doctor, Juliet. At first, it made sense that the two doctors, Jack and Juliet, should combine their unsmiling selves to form a Yuppie power-couple; while the two criminals, Sawyer (a former conman) and Kate (a fugitive wanted for the murder of her step-father), should pair off as the wild couple that other people are afraid to invite over to their house. But remember, this was Purgatory, and if Kate and Sawyer were to become better half-mortals, then it followed that both of them would need better halves, and so Sawyer teamed up with the “good” Juliet, though Sawyer did once lose moral ground when he called Hurley “Fat-Fuck,” and Kate went off with the “saint” Jack.

But Kate and Jack did share one major attribute: they loved being the ones to save the day while toting a gun. This insight was furnished by Rose, wife of Bernard, after the two of them had quit the drama of the group to live in solitude in 1970s Purgatory, a phrase which, if you stare at it long enough, especially while recalling disco and cheesy mustaches, will solidify into an oxymoron no less obvious than the term Compassionate Conservatism. Rose had not seen Jack and Kate in a year or two, when, lo and behold, the two chronic heroes came rushing through her camp, wielding guns on another of their self-induced missions, at which point Rose said, to paraphrase, “Are you people still running around the jungle shooting guns?” Of course, it was Jack and Kate that did in fact save the Island when, together, they killed the Man in Black, though, to be precise, it was Kate who put the deciding bullet through his black heart. The moral of the story was, A couple that slays the Prince of Darkness together, stays together. This extreme example of a couples-activity cemented their status as Soul Mates.

How can a non-corporeal body in Purgatory die when, last seen, Kate was all dolled up sitting next to Eternal Husband, Jack, in the church way station along with Sawyer, Juliet, Sayid and the others, all ready to ascend to the next highest spirit level, maybe Heaven or maybe a celestial chocolate factory (no, sorry, that was Hurley’s next stop)? The answer to this question was that the operator of the Afterlife Phase-Shifter was none other than the ancient Roman poet, Virgil, who had once chaperoned Dante through the three dimensions of the Afterlife: Inferno (a tenth ring has since been added for people who take forever to conduct a simple transaction at a retail store), Purgatorio (Dante saw no signs of Kate’s Purgatory of massive blood baths instigated by sadistic mercenaries armed to the teeth with automatic weapons) and Paradiso (Heavenly soul mates are forbidden from expressing carnal love, and so must be content with listening to each other talk about their feelings for eternity). Virgil had been raised on Earth to write verse on parchment, but now, to keep up with the present generation, he had bought the latest iPhone. What happened was that at the exact moment when Virgil was to transport Kate to Paradiso, he received a text-message from Julius Caesar, which distracted him just enough that he mishandled the Afterlife Phase-Shifter and thus Lost the essence of Kate, thus losing Kate to all known life.

The latest report is that Jack has again strapped on a gun and rifle and is ready to play hero and rescue Kate from Death II.

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