Seated at a table, I wait for said fetching friend to arrive. Every person that comes into the tavern isn’t him. I’d check a clock but, you know, there isn’t one. Telling time in any way is forbidden or whatever. Makes for planning things—like a date—a little troublesome.
Honestly, I’d kill for a watch right now.
After a while, I slip into the women’s bathroom—a tight-spaced little box—and poke at my face in the mirror, deciding I could use a little touchup. I pull out a small Living Red lipstick that Marigold gave me one day. It’s for your Upkeep, she told me in secret. I rub a little of it on my lips, air-kiss my reflection like an actress. I can play this role, this Winter role. A sultry seductress who wins the unbeating hearts of zombies everywhere. Oh, excuse me, I said the horrible awful word. I meant Undead.
I ask my reflection, my living dead reflection, “Can we do this?—for the rest of eternity, can we do this?”
Then I hear a shriek in the tavern and something crashes against the bathroom door. I jump, whip around to face the noise. I hear another scream followed by what sounds like a bottle shattering. Someone with a deep voice shouts out a bunch of things I can’t make out. There is a lot of shuffling on the wooden floor, vibrating even the soles of my own feet.
A bar fight. Yes, that’s all I need. A bunch of intoxicated Undead men fighting to prove each other’s manhood. I’d never considered whether Undead men could even get intoxicated until now. Maybe they pretend, just like they pretend everything else. Clinging to the memory of a bar fight they experienced when they were alive. Let’s recreate it. Let’s relive it.
The Living Dead world, you come to learn, is just a bunch of actors, and a regretfully bad show of acting. Maybe life was like that too. Actors, playing the role of themselves. Life’s greatest contradiction is also death’s.
Closed up here in this tiny bathroom, I just shut my eyes and wait for the show to end. The shouting, the scuffle and kicking of feet against floor, the crashing and smashing of bottles, I just shut my eyes and wait it out like I would an annoying person I wish would shut up.
Thoughts entangle me like a web. I find myself staring at my face in the mirror, puzzled, captivated by … I’m not sure … Am I remembering something?
Am I remembering me?
Then without warning, a young man quickly slips into the bathroom and shuts the door behind him, pressing his body flat against it.
I wasn’t expecting this.
His panicked eyes, his warm brown eyes, they find mine—and horror fills them at once. Why he has this reaction at seeing me, I don’t know.
“You’re in the ladies,” I decide to tell him.
He puts a finger to his lips, signaling that I should be quiet. His hand is trembling.
“What’s so—?” I start to ask, but his other hand goes to my mouth, silencing me at once.
His soft, warm hand.
The violent throws of bodies and glass continues for what feels like several minutes, and then instantly falls silent. A single pair of footsteps crosses the tavern floor as though pacing, one end of the tavern to the other, back and forth.
The man holding his warm hand to my mouth, I notice how strong his arms look. His broad shoulders from which the arms come. His face reflects a warmth that stirs something deep in me, something I’d assumed was lost. His five-o’clock-shadowed rosy cheeks, I’m shocked that any miracle from the squatty pink Refinery could replicate them. Or his lush lips. A noteworthy job they did on this rugged man I have to admit, even despite the odd circumstance. His soft watery eyes are more aware than any I’ve seen yet. I watch his forehead screw up in concentration as he silently presses an ear to the door, listening with all his body.
Slowly, the steps approach us. This guy’s grip on my mouth tightens so much, I have to bring my own hand up to meet his. He seems to be holding his breath, squeezing his eyes shut like he’s in pain. The mystery walker stops just short of the door, then waits there as though he is listening too. An eternity seems to pass before finally, the footsteps slowly draw away, growing fainter, fainter, then gone at last.
He finally lets go of my mouth and whispers his first words: “Are you going to eat me?”
Not the sweetest first words I’ve heard. “What?”
“Are you going to eat me?” he asks again.
“Seriously?”
After studying my face doubtfully for a while, he seems to relax. “Okay, then.”
And without further explanation, he swings open the door and peers outside. Deciding the coast is clear I guess, he steps out of the bathroom. When I reluctantly follow, I find the tavern littered with skulls and bones of the bodies it once peacefully occupied. None of them stir. This must be part of the big pretend-scene—the part where they all lay in a mess, knocked out by one bottle or another, done in by someone’s wildly swinging fist. Skulls and bones, an unsettling but impressive touch. Among them, shattered glasses and spilled pools of waste decorate the scene.
This is an impressively disturbing tableau of undeath. I’m genuinely taken aback by its … horror.
“Is everyone okay?” I ask carelessly, looking around. “A little bit overdone, don’t you think?—this scene? I didn’t know the dead could die. Seems silly, the thought.” I blink. “So … Anyone getting up anytime soon?”
“No,” the young man murmurs, quickly locking the front door of the tavern—no idea why—then whipping over to the bar counter and inspecting it, looking for something.
“Is this normal? Bar fights? Is this what I have to look forward to for all eternity?”
“No,” he mumbles again, agitated, opening cabinets, rummaging through drawers.
“I’m Winter. That’s the name they gave me.” I watch him scavenge through every drawer behind the counter, curious. “What’s the name they gave you?”
“No,” he says, slams something shut, tears open another cabinet, a vein jutting out of his forehead with his face scrunched up in frustration. “Not a drop of anything, anywhere. Not even—Not even—”
“What are you looking for? Wait,” I say, listening carefully. “Do you hear that?”
He stops his hunting and stares at me now. I meet his eyes, pointing up at the ceiling where I think the sound is coming from. “Do you hear that? It’s like ... a gentle drum.”
“No,” he whispers, the sound barely making it from his lips this time. “I hear nothing.”
“Do you think whoever it was that started this is coming back? It sounds like footsteps, or some kind of drum, or ... Wow, I can’t believe you can’t hear that. Just listen ...”
I draw closer to him, thinking the noise is coming from the counter. Then I cross around the counter and notice him stepping away from me.
“Wait,” I tell him. “Just listen … Listen.”
His back is pressed against the wall. Before I realize how closely I’ve come in pursuit of the strange sound, I’m standing right in front of him.
Then I hear it, clear as a spoken word. A thumping. A drumming.
The horror returns to his eyes. Thumping. Thumping.
Drumming. Within him.
A heartbeat.
C H A P T E R – T H R E E
A L I V E
Neither of us move.
“Are you gonna eat me now?” he asks, his voice breaking.
Distracted, I say, “Answer’s still a resounding hell no.” But I can’t help staring at his chest in a total stupor. How hadn’t I noticed sooner? “Is that—Is that a heartbeat? Are you alive?”
“Stay away from me.”
“You are alive!”
He edges his way around me, hops back over the bar counter. I let him. What else am I going to do ... keep him cornered like some captured kitten?
“Hey,” I call out after him. “Answer me! Are you—”
“Keep your voice down!” he breathes, hardly able to keep his own. “What are you trying to do, get me killed?”
He’s searching the tables now—for what, I
could only imagine—when at once there’s a banging at the front door of the tavern. Someone outside shouts to be let in.
The Living man, in an instant he’s dived back behind the counter, his eyes peering up at me beseechingly. “Make them go away!” he breathes. “Don’t tell them I’m here! Get them gone!”
“Oh,” I say, annoyed. “Now you want my help.”
He yanks open all the lower cabinets, unsuccessful in finding one that’ll house his big muscular body. He turns to me once more. “Look, I’m begging you.” But he hardly sounds like he’s begging for all the disgust in his tone.
“Tell me how you’re alive,” I say. “Tell me and I’ll help you.”
“I haven’t died yet. Is that answer enough?”
“No.”
Now the person outside is urgently pounding the door. They very, very much want to come in.
“Please,” the man whispers, squishing himself as best as he can under the sink, his head knocking into a pipe, his thick arm wedging itself deeper inside. “Please, please, please. Don’t let them eat me. Please.”
“Ugh, quit begging,” I tell him, annoyed. “Just stay down there, drummer. We have unfinished business.”
Circumventing the counter and daintily stepping over the skeleton bones and death—like I do this every day—I head for the tavern door, twist the lock and swing it open.
A fat and panicked face meets mine.
“You’re alive!” the fat man shouts.
“Well not exactly,” I say, confused. “Is there something I can help—?”
He pushes past me, anxiously stepping into the tavern—I can’t stop him. His eyes take in the scene of scattered bodies and bones with horror. He covers his mouth as if to keep flies out.
“Who are you?” I ask.
Then, as quickly as the look of horror had come, it’s gone. “How rude of me not to introduce mine-self! I am Mayor of Trenton. At times I’m not a very good one, admittedly so.” His voices shakes, the only hint that his merry demeanor is put on. “You don’t have to worry a bit. You’re still alive!”
“Again, I’m not. What happened here? Is this normal for an Undead bar fight?”
He watches my face for a long, intrigued moment before finally letting a chuckle wiggle its way out of his belly. “Bar fight, you say? Hah! Yes, of course … A bar fight. It was that and nothing more.”
Then his eyes are met by the sight of one particular set of bones—one with the flesh still somewhat there—and his cheer vanishes at once. “Oh, my spirits.” Pained suddenly, he lowers to one knee. “I knew you,” he whispers to the set of bones. “You who played your lute, midnights at the fountain. I’ve known you mine-self since my own Raising long, long ago. You, lady of the song.”
Mine-self. Curious word. I look down at what remains of the body, surprised he can recognize anything at all. “Can’t she just be ... fixed up? At the Refinery?”
“No,” the Mayor whispers in a daze, as though he weren’t addressing me at all. “No, she cannot.”
“What do you mean? I thought ... I thought we couldn’t—”
“No, of course not!” he agrees, snapping out of it. “We cannot die! We’re perfectly fine, the lot of us. We’re all just fine!” he keeps saying.
I stare at him, unable to make words.
And then the tavern doors burst open, revealing three very strange-looking people. One militant woman in a black beret flanked by two bony men garbed in grey.
“Survivor?” the woman barks, her eyes locked on me.
“And you are?” I ask.
“You must go with her,” the Mayor tells me, throwing his eyes from the sight of his mangled friend. “She will take care of you. Your body might be compromised.”
The woman snaps her finger. “Now, girl.”
“There’s nothing wrong!” the Mayor says, forcing the happiness onto his face again. “All’s fine!—They’re gone!”
I blink. “Who’s gone?”
And then the woman’s got me by the arm before I even realize she’d advanced on me. No use trying to pull away, this woman’s grip is humorless.
As she guides me toward the tavern door, however, my eyes flick over to the counter, having nearly forgotten the man hiding there. You know, the one with a pulse.
“Wait,” I say. “I forgot my—my purse in the—”
The militant woman isn’t having it. “This way, girl.” And with her talons on my arm, I’m ushered from the tavern. My last thought being, hope the man with the warm hands can fend for himself.
Whatever’s to come of him.
But first thing’s first: What’s to come of me? I’m led through winding streets and cobblestone roads into a part of Trenton I’ve not yet been. We stop at a stubby door in an alleyway which, at the sound of the woman’s sharp shout, is opened at once.
Through a mess of turning hallways and corridors, passing unlabeled doors and plain off-white walls, I’m finally directed into a room that bears nothing save a rickety chair into which I’m unceremoniously planted.
“Your name,” the woman demands.
“Winter?” I say, like a question.
“Your real name.”
The two bony men at either side of the woman, they stand there with arms folded, two bodyguards. As if this tough lady needs any bodyguards.
“I … haven’t had my whatever-dream yet,” I admit, squinting, “so I don’t know my ‘real name’, ma’am.” Ma’am seems the most appropriate thing to call her. I’m reminded of a livid schoolteacher here to discipline me—for what grievous offense I’ve yet to guess. “Can I ask what’s going on?”
“Who is your Reaper?”
I have to think a moment before remembering what the hell a Reaper is. “H-Helena Trim. I’m her—Raise.”
“How long ago?”
“No clue.” Partial lie. With Grimsky’s help, I’ve been counting the two months and two days I’ve been Undead.
“Are you a Human?”
“Weren’t we all, once?”
“Do you work for Humans?”
I smirk. “Isn’t having a job discouraged?”
“No time for smarts,” she says shortly, narrowing her eyes. “Answer the question.”
“No, I don’t work for anyone.”
“Have you encountered any Humans?”
And now I hesitate. I think on warm skin. Watery eyes. I think on my stupidity for not knowing the moment I saw him what he was. But now he’s gone, probably forever. Like my Old Life. Like life at all. Does this world even have green trees?—grass?—birds?
I know it has cockroaches.
“Any Humans, girl,” she snaps. “Answer.”
Lying’s easy when you’re dead. “No.”
“Are you a Deathless?”
I blink. “A say-what-less?”
The woman nods abruptly at one of her bony men. “Dreck, perform the final test.”
My eyes flit from one face to another, alarmed. “Final test? What final—”
And before I even get the word out, there’s a sword through my chest. A ringing silence fills the room. I do not move. I cannot move. No one so much as curls a finger as I sit here, stabbed like a note to the wall. We all idly stare at me like we’re watching the evening news.
A curious headline that’d make. This just in: Dead girl impaled with sword.
“I don’t feel anything,” I whisper finally.
Then quick as it went in, one of the bony men grabs its hilt, slides the sword out of me like I’m a sheath. He hands the gleaming thing back to the woman.
I’m still staring at my chest. “And that was for—?”
“Just a test,” the woman says simply, and her voice is less aggressive now, almost kind.
“A test? Spearing me with a sword was just a test?”
“A steel sword,” she corrects me, using a bit of cloth to wipe the blade down. “The Deathless,” she goes on while wiping, “are sensitive,” wipe, wipe, “to steel.”
“Ca
n someone explain to me what’s going on? I’ve not been around for long. Things are still new to me. Hilda’s not going to be happy you stabbed this new red dress.”
“Send her my regards,” the woman says, hands off the blade to one of her men, then leaves the room with him.
“Hello??” I call out after her. “I have questions …!”
“Come,” the remaining man says, indicating a door.
“Where are you taking me now?”
“To the Refinery for a little Upkeep,” he says, then adds, “unless you prefer keeping that hole in your heart.”
My hand moves there. I suddenly feel very self-conscious, almost hurt, almost wishing I hurt.
“Are you ready?” he asks with patiently hanging eyes.
“Okay,” says me, says Winter, says whoever.
It’s about an hour later that I’m leaving the squatty pink building I was somewhat created in, thanking a strange mouthless woman (who isn’t Marigold or Roxie or the twelve-year-old girl I’d met before) for filling my chest-chasm. It’s amazing, the things you’re so quick to accept about this peculiar world. When the door shuts, I feel utterly alone and dismal. There’s even a howling wind snaking between the buildings that, had I any real hairs on the back of my neck, would raise them chillingly.
I’m need to accept that there will be many things I’ll never understand here. I could pull my arm off a hundred times, it won’t make me like my new life any better.
I want my old one back. Whatever it was.
Thinking of the tavern makes the walk back to my house a very forlorn one. I can’t stop picturing the man I left behind. Maybe he’s dead already, that little flame of Life I was so fortunate to run into, already extinguished. I find no offense in living people, I don’t see what the big deal is. I find it thrilling, the idea of having real eyesight again, being able to smell the flowers. That is, if there’s any left. Maybe my favorite are sunflowers. When I have my Waking Dream, I wonder if that will change too. Maybe I like daisies instead. Tulips.
The Beautiful Dead Page 4
