Listen to my conscience … Ezra. Just stop. Please. This has gotten embarrassing. I’ve still got plenty of story left to tell and I don’t know how much time I have left in which to do it, and I will not allow you to get in my way. Not for anything in the world.
* * *
††
That night, D____, I hesitated when you slumped back in the passenger seat and told me – ordered me – to get us back on the road. I looked down at my chest then, at the two fistfuls of skin you’d savagely grabbed hold of and how they’d retained the twisted shape you’d formed. The stitching around where the skin of the left breast met the V of my neck had split open, sending a chill between the sleeve and the body housed within. I no longer wished to strip myself clean of Bonita; I felt too naked as it were, too exposed. Instead, I thought of driving to the nearest town, finding someone – anyone – whose pattern might fit, taking from them, repairing myself and retreating further into the sleeve already on.
I drove on the side of the road for a bit, until the ground levelled out again and I was able to get us back on the highway. Like I said, the rest of the way back to LA we travelled in complete silence; it was like being alone in the car. Three hours later, tired and just … just done with it all, I pulled up in front of a building you’d never seen before.
“Where are we?” you said. The words scraped out of you like sandpaper.
“Home. This is where I live. Second floor, suite –”
You jumped out of the car and slammed the door before I could finish. I climbed quickly from the driver’s seat and watched as you stalked off down the street. I shouted at you, said something like, “You can’t keep running from me!” but you never stopped, never turned back.
* * *
††
It was three weeks later, in mid-November, at the start of the zombie apocalypse, when I saw D____ for the very last time.
He called – for the first time ever he actually used a phone and called me. I wasn’t aware he even knew my number; I figured he must have gotten it from some studio file, or maybe Ezra dug it up for him – against her better recommendation, I’m certain. His voice was panic-stricken. He said he needed to see me, that he needed to make things right before –
And then the line went dead.
My first thought: it was some low-rent thriller, and he was part of the first act’s body count. In my mind I saw him dropping the phone and taking off running, seeking help or shelter or a way out – any way out – from whatever disaster movie cliché he’d found himself in the middle of. As if it were a reflex, I instantly started piecing together an image of a strife- or battle-worn sleeve, a body that had seen more than its share of horrors yet still managed to carry on. He’d come rushing through my door and throw his tired body into my arms, and I’d tell him that he was safe there, with me, that we could deal with whatever was happening out there so long as we dealt with it together.
No, I thought. Not again. Not fucking again. I swore to myself when he walked away from the car after the trip home from New Mexico that I was done letting him drag me into whatever personalized hell was next on his list. It was finished – I wanted to burn every single sleeve hanging limp and vacant in my closet, everything that was linked to him in any way. I wanted the smoke from their flesh, the waxy, awful stench, to clog my airway and suffocate me beneath the miserable realization of all that I’d left behind.
* * *
††
You called again an hour later. Your voice was hoarse, and you were huffing into the receiver as if you’d just come in from a run. I couldn’t tell at that point who you were even trying to be.
D____
(Exhausted)
I'm safe. For now, anyway.
“Look,” I said while pacing my apartment, staring for a moment at the mirror on the dresser in front of me – at the two softball-sized purple blotches on my chest that had not even started to fade. “I … I don’t think I can do this anymore. I think … I’m tired, D____. Of this. Of us.”
D____
Listen to me! I'm not fucking around right now. Shit's gone out of control and I need a place to lay low for a while.
“No. Don’t even think about it. Out of bounds.”
D____
You've got to help me!
“Not this time. Not until you drop this.”
D____
I can't go back out there. Not after everything that's happened. Not after … all those bodies … they were everywhere, strewn all over the place … broken, torn in two, and … and …
“I’m hanging up,” I said.
D____
I'm coming over.
“No, you’re not.”
D____
I'll be there as soon as possible. Keep a light burning for me. I'll outrun this hoard if it's the last thing I --
“Shut up and listen to me, please. You are not coming over here.”
D____
Wish me luck.
“Fuck you with a fence post.”
D____
I'll see you soon, love.
And the line went dead again.
It was only ten, maybe fifteen minutes later that he was pounding on my door, begging me to let him in, screaming his throat raw. Because, of course, his life was at risk from zombie hoards or biker gangs or rabid Shriners or whatever the fuck. Don’t do it, I said to myself. Don’t let him in.
D____
(Frantic)
Don't do this to me! They're coming for me, and they're going to kill me if they find out where I am!
Furious, borderline apoplectic, I opened the door and pulled him inside before any of my neighbours felt an urge to call the police and report the very unhinged idiot screaming bloody murder through the hallway.
Do you have any idea what he looked like right then? Like a junkie, strung out on meth, ready to chew a hole through his bottom lip. He stunk, too, like ground beef and motor oil. If he’d revealed to me that he’d been squatting for the better part of a week in the Dumpster behind a McDonald’s I’d have believed it.
Before the door had even closed he’d locked his arms around my neck and was thanking me, reciting his love for me as if I’d actually just saved his sorry skin. And his voice – it was more his than I was used to hearing by this point. I pushed him away – the stench of rotting meat was too sickening to ignore.
“What is this?” I said. “You’re method acting as a homeless man now?”
D____
(Hurt)
I don't … What are you talking about?
“You reek. You smell like you’ve been rolling in pig shit.”
What happened next I remember vividly; the scene is etched into my brain. He smiled at me, as if he was expecting a punchline to follow my previous statement. Once he realized none was coming, however, his smile turned sour and D____ parted his teeth with his tongue.
D____
(Angry)
So terribly sorry to have bothered you. I'd hate to think my literal peril was an inconvenience or anything. I'll just go and toss myself into the mouth of hell then.
“Oh, fuck right off with that. There’s no murderous hoard out for your blood. Listen to me very carefully now: nothing and no one is hunting you. You’re alone and you stink like a vegan on a bean kick.”
He nodded several times, but said nothing. If he was actually hurt or just playing I couldn’t tell. Then, like he’d suddenly remembered why he’d come in the first place, he stepped forward and pulled a scrunched up collection of papers from his back pocket. D____ thrust them at me; they were damp with sweat.
“What’s this?” I asked.
He twitched, the pages shaking in his hand.
“No. No way,” I said, backing away from the loose pages of script. I could see fresh ink written over some of the type – dialogue, I ima
gine, for whoever he dreamed me to be. “I’m done. I’m finished with all that.”
D____
Take it.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Take it!” he shouted.
I heard movement in the room adjacent, quiet shuffling along the floor as if they were wearing plastic bags on their feet, like at a crime scene. In my head I pictured my neighbours huddled against the thin wall separating our apartments with a single drinking glass shared between them, pressed up against the surface as they listened to every soap-operatic invective. I snatched the pages from his outstretched hand and looked at them before he could scream again. Scenes from a plague flick: somewhere, somehow, a diseased monkey that escaped from a classified pharmaceutical lab had come into contact with a herd of cows, and the resulting illness, a plague the likes of which humanity had not seen since the fourteenth century, swept quickly through the populace leaving most dead, and a few unlucky enough to have risen again as zombies – sorry, I mean, “Plague Z carriers.” For fuck’s sake, people, a zombie’s a zombie no matter what stupid name you give it.
D____’s character was naive enough to think it was possible to escape something like that. And I, as he’d written me into the margins with his halfway-legible scrawl, was apparently dumb enough to follow him into oblivion. I quickly scanned through the pages while he paced in front of me like an agitated Jack Russell terrier. We were nameless lovers; he was coming for me, to see if I was okay, to hide out from the dead and dying, futilely assuming there was some place to go or something we could do to stave off the coming end of humanity. As he’d written it, I was supposed to welcome him in only to be forced to watch as he sweated through his clothes, the illness taking hold, sapping his remaining strength with incredible speed. Then he died – or was supposed to die – in my arms, the scene ending on an ambiguous note as I coughed softly into my fist, wondering to myself if he’d rise again as one of the infected. Fuck.
Knowing there was no other way to satisfy him, I began to read.
M_____
(Hesitantly)
I … I was worried about you. I didn't know where you'd gone.
D____
It's bad out there.
D____ coughs loudly into his palm. He pulls his hand away and sees BLOOD.
D____ (Cont.)
Something's happened. Something's going down, something real wrong.
M_____
(Sighs)
What is it?
D____
It's the people, man. It's like they're being turned inside out … like peeled fruit, insides spilling out all over the place. This is end of days shit.
M_____
Calm down. Tell me what happened.
D____ clutches his sides and doubles over as if kicked in the ribs.
D____
It's a virus, and it's gonna kill us all.
(Hysterical)
Oh god, I don't wanna die!
M_____ gently strokes the side of D____'s face. He is hot to the touch.
M_____
(Lying)
Shhh, it's going to be all right.
D____ shakes his head. His brow is wet and shining with sweat.
D____
No, it ain't.
M_____
Just lie down for a bit. We'll figure this out. I promise.
D____
No …
M_____
Trust me.
D____
I …
D____ collapses into M_____'s arms.
M_____ turns D____ over and stares longingly into his eyes, watching as they slowly roll back into his head. D____ GURGLES and GASPS a thick slug's trail of saliva down the side of one cheek.
M_____ holds D____'s body close and begins to cry.
FADE TO BLACK
* * *
††
“M_____, are you awake?”
It took a second to register what you’d said – the surprise in hearing my name, my real name, from you. I opened my eyes and saw only darkness, though I could feel you behind me; your back was pressed against mine beneath the sheets, our cold feet touching. For a curious few moments I wondered what was different, why I was so much colder with you than I’d ever been. It was then I realized I was naked – sleeveless – and it was, in fact, the first time our true skins had actually, completely, touched.
I didn’t respond to you at first, waiting instead to see if you’d say anything more.
“I’ve been thinking,” you went on. “About Ezra. Is she … Do you think she’s taking advantage of me?”
My voice was barely above a whisper: “What do you mean?”
“I heard her.” I could feel you shifting uncomfortably, skating your feet across the mattress as if looking for a warm spot that wasn’t there. “Last week, when I went to her office to renew my contract. She doesn’t know … I was outside, waiting for her, and I could hear her talking to someone on the phone.”
“What was she saying?” I asked, unsure how long this precarious sincerity would last.
“I thought she was talking about a job for me, but then she started to laugh.”
“At what?”
“Me.” You paused to collect your thoughts. “She called me her own personal Jesus Christ. She said I just didn’t know when to stay dead.”
“It was just industry small talk,” I said reassuringly, though I didn’t for a second believe it. “You can’t even be sure she was talking about you.”
“Am I a joke?”
I rolled my head toward you, but you were still facing the other direction, looking out my small, barred bedroom window at a street light on the sidewalk outside my building. At the back of your head I saw the beginnings of a bald spot you probably hadn’t known was there. A sign that time wasn’t standing quite as still as you thought. Proof that you were, in fact, as mortal as every corpse you’ve portrayed. “You’re not a joke,” I said.
“How can you know for sure? You don’t know anything about me.”
I bristled, not knowing if you’d meant it as an admission or an accusation. Not for lack of trying, I remember thinking bitterly. Burying the urge to confront you for what you’d just said, I instead lunged at the opportunity. “I want to. I want to know everything there is to know about you.”
“It’s how she markets me,” you continued, abandoning my invitation, leaving it to flicker and die. “I’m the greatest corpse in the business.”
“But I thought …”
“What?”
Exhale. “I thought that’s what you wanted to be.”
It was impossible to tell in the silence that followed if what I’d said had stung or not. However grim, I’d long ago begun to question what it was you wanted: to live a thousand different lives, embracing each new and unique experience, or to be wiped clean and reborn anew whenever any one life became too claustrophobic.
“I think …” you began.
“Yes?”
“… one of these days, I’d like to know what it’s like to do something else.”
“To live?”
“To not die.”
* * *
††
It was a much different experience, waking up next to you, still in bed with me – in my bed, with the real me. Or as real a me as I knew. I remember optimistically thinking we’d turned a corner. I was elated. Things are going to be different now, I said to myself. We’ll figure everything out, take life as it comes. Like this was now some fucking Hallmark movie of the week and we’d been given our second chance, the opportunity to get things right in time for our happily ever after. For ten minutes I lay there on my side, arms crossed beneath my pillow, watching you sleep soundly with your back to me. To this day I wonder if you were faking it; if you could feel my eyes trained on you, half expect
ing you to leap out of bed, throw on your clothes and barrel out my front door, but hoping with everything I had for the opposite.
When three-quarters of an hour later you finally stumbled out of bed and into my tiny kitchenette, you looked like the lesser of two … well, zombies. You bumped into the counter, almost tripped over the small curled-up corner of the rug in the middle of the floor. It was like you were hungover, though on what I didn’t know. You put your hand out to brace yourself against the wall, and right then I knew something wasn’t right.
“Did you sleep okay?” I asked.
You cricked your neck to one side, attempting to stifle a lion’s yawn; your breath was a post-slaughter horror show. “Where am I?”
“Home. My home.”
“What?”
“Where I live, D____.”
“What did you just say?”
“This is where I live. D____.” A pause, then: “That is your name, isn’t it?” I couldn’t resist.
At the sound of your real name, the very tenor of the scene changed. I witnessed as your face slowly screwed itself into a minor key, a glimmer of malice in your eyes.
What is it people complain about the most when they go to the movies? They say they couldn’t relate to the characters onscreen – that they tried, they really did, but they just didn’t care as much as they needed to, or they didn’t believe the performances. “If only things had been more relatable … more realistic.” This – and I mean what I’m about to say from the very bottom of my arrhythmic heart – is bullshit. That uncanny valley of realism will never be crossed. You will never experience capital R reality onscreen, because reality will always be worse. It will always hurt more, seem more evil, feel more antagonistic. What you witness on the screen cannot reflect what it’s like to have your organs and muscles eaten away by metastasized shadows until all that’s left is a faint silhouette projected outward, or what it’s like when your stomach shrinks and contracts and you feel bile rising in you, soaking your throat in a thick primer coat of fire as the person you thought you loved more than anyone advances on you with a glare more villainous than you’d have thought possible.
The Death Scene Artist Page 16
