by Dia Reeves
Cado, without realizing it, had begun whistling Tango Etude No. 5 to give himself something nice to listen to instead of the motorman’s scabrous approach. He wished the poison in his head was back. There had been no room for fear then—now fear was the only thing he had. That and his flute case.
He reached for it, careful not to look down and see his own quivering guts, his frozen blood. He still couldn’t feel his fingers but he saw them snatching open the latches, saw through them without meaning to, his own blood not frozen but red and frantic when he grabbed the hunting knife from the case, the one he’d killed the cackler with. It was a foot long at least, bonehandled, and sharp enough to decapitate a wild hog.
Cado’s arm whipped at the motorman, at those endless legs, at the chest, at the face with its gummy eyes shocked to see prey fighting back. Cado let his seemingly demonic arm do all the work while the rest of him screamed, while blood like water, splashed over the trolley walls.
When the spider children began to scream with him, an almost beautiful sound, like wolves howling, Cado’s arm stopped swinging. Because the motorman was dead, just an untidy leggy heap.
Cado clambered over the motorman and settled into the driver’s seat. He put the trolley in reverse and hid from the light as best he could.
✽ ✽ ✽
The trolley pulled up in front of the St. Teresa stop and Cado exited, his eyes so traumatized by light that several seconds passed before they adjusted enough to see Patricia sitting on the blue bench. Her sunset gown covered with a black silk robe. Her feet bare.
Her toe polish chipped.
“You came back,” she said, wonderingly, staring at him like she’d never seen him before.
Cado grabbed her and lifted her off her feet. “Why are you running the streets barefoot like a country girl?”
“Never mind my feet!” She squeezed him even harder than he was squeezing her. “You sounded so weird on the phone. I just knew—”
Whatever she knew was drowned out by the cathedral bells striking four.
He’d only been gone an hour? It had felt like a million years. Yet there was the dead woman, as faceless as ever, but no longer animated. The lampposts were on again. Maybe they’d never gone out—he had gone out.
Cado buried his face in her neck. “You smell good.”
“Like Paris, still?” said Patricia, amused that he thought such things when he’d never been out of Texas. “Or maybe like Amsterdam?”
“Like life.”
“You know now, don’t you?” she said. “What I meant about reality?”
He nodded, then tried to speak, but it took a while. Patricia understood. She lived in a town where everyone understood such things. But only he had survived it.
He sat with her on the bench and told her what happened.
“How strange,” Patricia said, when he was done, staring at the trolley and the spidery surprise inside. “But it’ll make a nice addition to the museum exhibit, I’m sure. Can I see the knife you killed it with?”
“You can have it,” said Cado, handing her the case. “That can be our symbol, since you hate flowers.”
“Your flute can be our symbol?” said Patricia, confused.
“My flute’s in the trunk of my car still,” Cado explained, snapping the latches open. “I lost the sheath to my hunting knife, so I’ve been carrying it around in this old case ever since.”
Patricia turned the knife, cloudy with alien blood, this way and that. “What’s the symbol?”
“That our love can destroy anything.” As soon as Cado said it, he regretted it, struck by a powerful image of Patricia and him rampaging like Godzilla, trampling whole cities into rubble.
“Cado”—Patricia clutched the knife to her chest—“that’s so sweet!”
He took her in his arms, relieved, and then kissed her. “And just for the record,” he said, “that wasn’t a goodbye kiss either.”
Sometime later after Cado had insisted on dressing her feet in his Chucks, they began the walk back to Patricia’s house.
“Did you find your answer?” she asked him.
“Rice,” he said immediately. “If they’ll have me.”
Her squeal of joy echoed over the whole town.
“I feel stupid to have been so worried,” he said, the bricks of the sidewalk cool beneath his socks. “Life’s too short not to do what you want.”
“Sorry I didn’t believe in you,” Patricia said, as they stepped over the dead woman in unison. “I do now. You look like one of us—brave and confident. A touch insane.”
His stomach growled.
“And hungry.”
“I can’t be hungry,” said Cado, almost offended by his stomach’s insistent rumbling. “I was nearly killed, like, ten minutes ago.”
“Life doesn’t stop just because a spider creature nearly lays eggs in you, Cado. Of course you’re hungry. There’s lobster salad left over from lunch.” She smiled. “Or we could have tea sandwiches and caviar.”
Cado sighed. “Do I have to wear a tie?”
“I’ll make an exception,” Patricia said generously, “just this once.”
Arm in arm, they disappeared blithely into the dark.
Take Your Dead Ass Home
~Hey babe.~
Trey nearly dropped his camera. “Jesus, Benni.”
~Didn’t mean to scare you,~ she said, her voice dim, as though she were speaking from the other side of a wall. Trey supposed she was in a way. She laughed. ~Sorry.~
She shimmered when she laughed. The shimmer was the only thing he recognized.
Benni had always had a glow. People had fluttered around her like moths—Trey had fluttered harder than anyone—but now, it was hard to look at her, great blob that she had become. She kept shifting, her mouth and eyes and knees and various other parts constantly exchanging places. She was a floating Picasso painting.
Trey hated Picasso.
But mostly he hated that Benni had picked today of all days to pop in on him, just when he was about to make his move.
~What’s with the huge crowd at the fountain?~ Benni asked, hovering near Pili Carmona’s statue. Hovering, in fact, right over the dead mockingbird he’d been photographing. That gave him an idea.
“It’s just some cultural thing,” he said, trying to sound bored. “Nothing important. I’m only out here because of my research.”
~What research?~
“I’m taking pictures of roadkill and trying to determine, just from the photos, how long the animals have been dead. It’s for extra credit.”
She zoomed away from the dead bird and settled herself slightly behind him. ~It’s amazing you have no concept of how gross that is.~
He rolled his eyes. “It’s not even at the putrefactive stage yet.”
~Still.~
Trey peered into her blobbiness, wishing she had a face so he could read it, see how close she was to bolting. It had to be very close—Benni hated pathology. She thought it was morbid, thought he was morbid. Last year, as they’d passed a squashed armadillo on their way to Big Mike’s yearly kegger, she’d told him, “When you stare persistently into the corpse, the corpse also stares into you.” She’d said that and then she’d vomited on his shoes.
Trey had been pissed at the time, having to spend the rest of the night in his bare feet, but he was glad now. He was counting on her to be grossed out. The sooner she left, the better.
He waited impatiently as Benni lumbered back and forth behind him, pacing, if blobs could be said to pace. Finally she said:
~At least the bird’s not all maggoty like they normally are.~
“This one isn’t.” Trey stowed the camera into his camera bag and added, slyly, “Who knows what shape the others will be in? I plan on doing this all day, you know, so if there’s something else you’d rather be doing...”
Her blob suddenly went yellow all over. ~Besides spending time with you? No way. There’s only yooooouuuu in my liiiiife...~
When Trey hea
rd himself laughing, he immediately put his hand to his throat, as though to strangle the sound. He couldn’t believe she could still act so silly, especially after everything that had happened.
A sudden burst of applause echoed throughout the Square. Trey craned his head to peer around Benni and saw the dancers in the fountain taking their bows. The audience was standing, gathering their shit, leaving.
Damn. He’d planned on making his move after the dancing was over, but here was Benni drifting around his head like pinky-yellow smog, clouding his vision.
He thought quickly. He had been telling the truth about his research project, but it had only been something to do until the performance was over, until Zoë was free. “I...uh...think I left a roll of film at Smiley’s. Maybe you could go check?”
~Cool beans. I’ve been meaning to try something out; now I have an excuse.~
“Try what out?”
Benni didn’t answer but her shifting mass suddenly stilled and two thin smoke grey tendrils began to extend from her towards Trey. He took a step backward, wide-eyed as the tendrils molded into arms and then hands. Just as she began to grow fingers, however, Benni suddenly went white all over and the arms suddenly collapsed and re-absorbed into her blob.
“Hell.” She sounded tired.
“What were you doing?”
~Trying to grow hands. So I could carry the film back to you. Wouldn’t that have been cool?~
“You can make yourself more human?! I mean,” he modulated his voice, “you can look normal?”
Benni was laughing at him. ~I can’t even grow hands, let alone a body. I don’t guess it works that way.~
Trey pushed aside that strange feeling in his stomach. It wasn’t disappointment; he was sure of that. Even if Benni could have shaped her blobbiness into something human, what good did that do him? “Don’t worry about bringing back the film,” he said, determined to stay focused. “Honestly, the film’s probably not even there. I just don’t want to walk all the way over to Claudine in this heat in order to prove it.”
~So you send me instead,~ Benni said. ~Oh the things I do for love.~ She drifted away, up past the statue.
When she was out of sight, Trey left the shade by the statue and hurried across the glare of the stone plaza to the fountain at its center.
Usually once or twice a month, somebody drained the fountain and set up a stage for a show. The fountain had been built that way, like a small amphitheater. Trey never went to any of the shows—they were usually lame and kid-friendly—but he had come to this one, as close as he dared. Because of Zoë.
He bulldozed his way through what was left of the crowd, leaping down the tiered fountain steps, but as soon as he reached the bottom, he faltered.
Zoë stood there on the makeshift stage, tall and caramelized and wearing these little shorts that still managed to look respectable on her. When she saw him, she grinned and rushed to him. “Trey!” She hugged him, surprising the hell out of him. His surprise didn’t keep him from hugging back, though. “Did you like the show? I looked for you in the crowd.”
Two other girls from student council sidled up as Zoë was speaking, glaring at him. He glared back. “I don’t do so well with crowds these days.”
“Zoë,” said one of the girls, a short freckly thing with supersize ears. “I thought you were going to help load the truck.”
“I am. I’ll be there in a minute.”
The girls looked from Zoë to Trey and then back to Zoë, their eyes flashing urgent messages: Pariah at nine o’clock. Back away. Repeat: BACK AWAY.
While Trey had to fight an overwhelming urge to flip the girls off, Zoë just smiled at them. “Go on,” she said, “and I’ll see if I can’t talk Trey into helping us out.”
Zoë took Trey’s hand as the girls walked away. “Don’t pay any attention to them.”
He squeezed her hand, marveling at the non-sweaty feel of it, marveled that she would touch him at all. He had no idea what she saw in him, why it didn’t bother her to be with him.
He shrugged. “I don’t care.”
She gave him a look. “People who say they don’t care, always care the most. Just don’t believe in it.”
“Believe in what?”
“In what they say.” She leaned forward until they were almost touching noses. “It’s not your fault she died. You know that, right?”
She was so matter-of-fact. He loved that, the way he never had to wonder if she was teasing. He leaned forward that extra bit, so that their noses were touching, and closed his eyes. “I know it now.”
“Good.” She took back her nose and pulled him toward the stage. “Come on and help me break this thing down.”
~Can I help too or was that a private invitation?~
Trey froze.
Zoë was staring at him, at the look on his face, so he knew she couldn’t see or hear Benni. Not everyone could.
He should be so lucky.
“Trey, what’s wrong?”
Benni, who’d turned an alarming shade of red, gathered herself into a tight knot and drifted between Trey and Zoë—a floating blood clot. ~Why is she holding your hand?~
“Umm...” Before Trey could come up with a good answer, a dark red tendril wrapped around his wrist and snatched his hand from Zoë’s grasp. His hand flew up and he flew with it until he was dangling, toes barely skimming the ground.
He hung there, like a fish snagged on a hook. If he had ever felt this humiliated before, he couldn’t remember it. All because Benni was jealous.
What the hell right did she have to be jealous?
Zoë yelped and grabbed Trey around his waist as though she were afraid he was about to zoom into outer space. “It’s her, isn’t? Oh my God, it’s true, isn’t it?”
Instead of answering, Trey wrenched his arm free of Benni’s hold, nearly ripping it from its socket. He fell forward into Zoë, knocking her to the ground. He pushed away from her and took off up the fountain steps.
Benni took off with him, however, racing alongside him, his very own rain cloud.
~Who was that girl?~
Trey ran out of Fountain Square, past the courthouse and almost got hit by a passing trolley on Navarro.
~Trey, slow down.~
“Leave me alone!” He circled in place, trying to remember where the hell he’d parked.
~Are you mad at me?~
“Do you have to ask? You think I like being manhandled?”
~Sorry. I didn’t know I could do that.~ She sounded bemused. ~This is all new to me. But honestly, I didn’t mean to hurt you.~
“That’s all you ever do.”
~I don’t mean to. Don’t be mad.~
“Then stop hanging around!” People were staring at him, not even pretending not to.
~But I love—~
“And don’t start that again.”
~I just want to be near you.~
Trey clenched his fists and kicked a nearby mailbox. “Benni, you’re dead! I don’t care what you want!”
✽ ✽ ✽
~There’s only you in my liiiiiife...~
Pop slammed his hand on the game table, rattling the Go stones on the little wooden board. “Will you go out there and shut up that spook!”
“Don’t be insensitive, George.” Trey’s mom looked up from the book she had chosen to read during the commercial breaks—A World of Ideas; she didn’t believe in being idle. “It’s not Trey’s fault.”
Pop lit a Durango in annoyance and the sweet smell filled the room. “I would just like to have a quiet evening at home like other people.”
“I can’t shut her up,” Trey said, glaring at the computer screen, typing. “She never listens to me. Especially not about that song. She says it’s our song; I can’t even remember why.” Trey hesitated, then looked at Pop. “I met this new girl, though.”
“Another one?” Pop blew a cloud of smoke at him. “This one’s not accident prone, is she?”
“George.” Mom actually put her book down.
“Well the last thing we need is another girl dying on account of Trey. He needs to get away from girls. Concentrate on his schoolwork, learn discipline. What he needs is Risington.”
“I don’t think enlisting him in a misogynistic boot camp is the answer, George.”
“The boy needs to learn—”
But the news was back on. Mom tuned them out and stared at the TV where some reporter was sounding concerned about something. Trey and Pop looked at each other, but only briefly. They never bothered talking to each other, not without Mom free to referee. Pop went back to beating himself at Go, and Trey turned his attention to his extra-credit assignment.
His computer screen was filled with photos of necrotic lungs—not the most appetizing sight—and he couldn’t help smiling, imagining how grossed out Benni would be if she could see the pictures.
Or maybe she wouldn’t be. He remembered her reaction to the dead bird at the Square. Maybe being dead had toughened her up.
She was still singing in the window, her smoky yellow-pink mass pulsing in time to her voice. She was right up against the glass, and every now and then he would glimpse the press of her elbow or thigh or some other random part. At one point, Trey swore he saw her mouth blowing a raspberry. Good thing his folks could only hear her.
He thought of Zoë. Zoë who didn’t shift on him and was wholly put together and didn’t make faces at him and his folks through the window. Zoë, who didn’t think he should blame himself.
When the commercials came on, he said, “It wasn’t my fault.”
Nobody asked him what he was talking about.
Mom muted the sound and picked up her book. “Of course it wasn’t, sweetie.”
“We were just...”
She arched an eyebrow. “Playing?”
Trey felt his ears burn. “We didn’t even notice we were in that construction site. We were just being...”
“Silly?” Mom sighed and looked at him. “I’m not saying it’s your fault Trey, but you are obviously too immature for a relationship.”
“I’m sixteen.”
“A young sixteen.”
“That’s just how you treat me. I mean, you won’t even let me have a computer in my room. I have to come down here and be monitored.”
