The Beautiful Dead

by Banner, Daryl

  We’re seated at a small table-for-two, complete with tablecloth and candlelight. “This is quite a treat,” I finally say, overcome with the change in atmosphere. “I didn’t know places like this existed anymore.”

  “There’s a lot here in this town,” he says, laying a cloth napkin across his lap. “Hidden in every corner, a precious thing. You just have to know where to look.”

  We both order from an admittedly limited menu. The waiter goes off, and we’re left in sparkling candlelight and soft music emanating from the piano, enveloping us. I’m already putting this at the top of my very short list of favorite nights in my Final Life.

  “Oh no.” I turn the other way.

  Grimsky frowns. “What?”

  “Over there,” I mumble. “Don’t look, but the table right next to the piano, there’s Helena Trim. She’s my Reaper. The woman doesn’t like me at all.”

  Grimsky chuckles emptily, covers half his face to disguise his attempt at sneaking a peek. “Yeah, I think I see her. Don’t know her, but she doesn’t look like my top choice for a Death Mother.”

  “When do you think she lived? Like, in her Old Life? Maybe she came from an era when people were really uptight. Maybe she’s from a stuck-up mess of royalty.”

  “Maybe,” he joins in, humoring me, “she was next in line for the throne … before her untimely death. Now she spends her afterlife bitterly resenting the queenship that never was, forever and ever.”

  “We’re awful.” I laugh, maybe a touch too loud. I try a quick glance over my shoulder. Helena’s made eye contact with me. I look away. “Crap, I’m caught.”

  “Just ignore her. Ignore her to death.”

  I peek again and Helena’s turned away, busied with a forkful of salad. I hate her instantly, I can’t even.

  “Don’t let her ruin the night,” Grim asks of me. I try on a smile, forcefully batting my eyes at him.

  Then I’m all, “What’d I ever do to her except exist?”

  “Well. No one wants to be a Reaper. It’s too much pressure, even being one of our only responsibilities in Trenton. But once the Mayor calls upon you …”

  “The least she could do is look at me.”

  So fast it happens, the waiter’s already brought our food. Placing a surprisingly attractive plate before the both of us, I thank him kindly and comment how lovely it smells—which is hilarious, since we Undead smell nothing, not even the air—but he takes the sentiment anyway, apparently used to it, and plays along by saying, “And it tastes of heaven, ma’am,” then walks away.

  I look up at Grimsky, suddenly curious of something I’m surprised I never thought to ask. “Where does it go?”

  He’s taken his first bite already, looks up. “Hmm?”

  I point at my plate with a fork. “Where does the food go? Our bodies don’t really function, so …”

  “To our stomachs,” he replies. “Just like a Human.”

  “Oh.” I’m still confused, peering down at my delicious plate I can with no sense of smell or taste enjoy.

  “Of course,” he goes on, chewing, “unlike a Human, it goes nowhere else.”

  I blink. “So it just … sits in there?”

  He nods once.

  “And,” I go on, predicting the answer to my next unsettling question, “once you’ve eaten enough, I assume you pay a little visit to the—”

  “Yes, Refinery,” he finishes for me, “to … you know.”

  “Take it out,” I finish for him, finishing for me.

  And then I’m finished before I even start, dropping my fork to the table.

  The piano still plays such moving music, but all I hear are Grimsky’s last words over and over. All I see in front of me is a plate that might as well be made of wax, that might literally be wax—How could I tell otherwise? And it’ll be stuck in my bowels until an act of surgery—if one dares to dignify it with the word ‘surgery’—extracts it from my inoperative system.

  “Winter?” He’s put down his own fork.

  I can’t look up at him. I’m equal parts angry and embarrassed, being in the middle of a restaurant full of Undead who so easily play along with this whole eating façade. I would feel like a horrible person just getting up and leaving, ignoring this full plate before me. I mean, there’s starving children in the country of wherever.

  But even starving children don’t eat wax.

  “Look,” he whispers, being sure that only I can hear him. “We can leave. It’s perfectly fine. I understand if you’re, even still, not ready to—ah—participate.”

  Even Helena’s eating, just like the countless Undead around her, around me, all of them fake-eating like this is totally normal. Like there’s nothing wrong with pretending to enjoy plates of who-knows-what. And I’m the odd one out here. The freak in a room of freaks.

  Somehow, I’m the one that’s wrong.

  “Winter. We can go.”

  “But you haven’t finished yet.”

  “As if I ever had an appetite,” he teases, playing along with me instead of this restaurant smokescreen he knows I find ridiculous to the core. He’s known this about me since day one. “The waiter won’t take it personally. He can serve your dish to the next fool who orders it … though I fear it may be a tad cold.”

  I break a smile. Grimsky, the only entity in this world who can lift my spirits in a pinch. The one who saved me from the cliff, who saves me over and over again.

  When we get up to leave the restaurant, I’m not too distracted to catch Helena taking notice of me, her beady eyes narrowing as she watches the two of us leave the restaurant hand-in-hand. Yes, Helena. I’m leaving before finishing my dinner. For all you know, I’m taking Grim home. I just couldn’t contain myself in this restaurant full of well-behaved normal dead people.

  I’m such a bad, bad, bad little dead girl. Shame on me, Helena. Take it up with the Judge for all I care.

  “You better?” Grim asks when we’ve made it outside, headed in another direction now.

  “Much. Where to now?—home?”

  “Nope. I’ve something else to show you. Something you will truly want to see. Something real.”

  A little dubious, I walk with him further down the road. It winds through other bundles of homes until at last it opens up to another set of Trenton’s tall iron gates. I ask him where we’re headed as we pass through them, but he just smiles. Through the familiar range of dead trees that surround the town, we continue down pebbly paths that go on and on. I’m excited, to be honest. I hadn’t realized how curious I was about the outer world until now. What else is there but dead trees and the Harvesting Grounds from which I was borne?

  And then the woods give way to a field that nearly knocks me over with its sheer … undeadness. I mean literally un-dead. Not dead.

  Alive. A large stretch of grass is before us. Real grass. The first of any I’ve seen. This meadow thrives somehow in the middle of a dead world … Trenton’s secret lawn.

  Without awaiting Grimsky’s go-ahead, I leap forth eagerly. Kicking off my ridiculous heels, I dance barefoot in the grass, the tiny sprigs catching between my toes. I spin in circles, the grey sky spinning with me, the little earth tentacles and plant limbs like miniature green fingers tickling my feet. I fall, no care in the world, land flat on my back in the bed of grass. A soft crunch at my side and Grimsky’s laying there next to me. Tonight just became perfect, in one little clumsy instant.

  “Told you you’d like it.”

  “This is amazing. What is this place? What is it called? It has to have a name.”

  “Nope,” he says, hardly able to contain his giggles. He’s clearly proud that he’s managed to save an otherwise sour evening. “It’s just nature working her way with us. Mother Nature surviving against all odds.”

  “You are a poet,” I tell him. “When you have your Life Dream, you’re going to say, ‘Yes, Winter. You were right all along. I was a poet in my life.’ I swear.”

  I feel like I’m floating, the grass not
even touching me.

  “Your hair looks so bright against the greenery,” he points out, moving a hand to touch it.

  “Why is it,” I go on to ask, randomly curious, “that we have certain senses and not others? I can feel the grass in my toes. But can’t feel physical pain. We can’t taste or smell, but can see and hear incredibly well.”

  “No one can say for sure why we are the way we are. Or why we’re animated at all. What brings us up from the earth? What makes us intelligent when we haven’t even a heart that beats? Winter, we’re just miracles, each and every one of us. Science never could explain the miracle of life, why bother explaining the miracle of death?”

  Miracle. I never thought to call this Second Life a miracle of any kind … the miracle it is … an impossibility that is clearly possible. The phenomena of us.

  “That,” I whisper, having turned my head and caught sight of something, “is a tulip.” He’s running his fingers through my hair. “I think I liked tulips. I think when I was alive, I owned a beautiful garden. Tended it every day … the rosebuds, the saplings, tulips. Of course, my favorite ones to cultivate were obviously the sunflowers.”

  I reach out to touch the tulip. Strangest thing, I can swear as my finger grows close to it, the tulip pulls away, if just barely. At least I think it does.

  “If we were alive together,” Grimsky whispers into my ear, pulling my attention away from the flower. “I’d find you the biggest garden in the world.”

  “Have you heard of a place called Garden?” I ask.

  He wrinkles his face. “Just … Garden?” I nod. He shakes his head and says, “No. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason.” I look away, lost in a little thought.

  “We could call this place Garden.” His breath tickles my ear. It actually, I think, truly tickles my ear. I smile, still caught in my little dream, still staring at the strange tulip, my finger outreached for it, never having gotten close enough to touch it. “We can call this place whatever you like … It’s ours now.”

  “I think when I was alive,” I whisper, drawing my focus back to the pretty boy at my side, “I read lots and lots of poetry. Maybe I read your poetry.”

  “Maybe we were in love,” he goes on, still in my ear. “Maybe we knew each other in our Old Lives. Maybe we owned a house together … a house with a garden.”

  I turn to face him, my eyes meeting his. “Go on.”

  “And for every petal shed from every flower, I’d give it more sunlight,” he tells me. “Our house would be overcome with flowers. Healthy. Always in bloom. Every star-shape bursting with color. For every leaf that wilted, I’d plant ten more. I’d never let our garden die.”

  “Promise,” I breathe into his eyes.

  His lips answer without words.

  Later when I rise from the ground, I look back to see my shadow against the grass. I smile until it slowly occurs to me that what I’m smiling at isn’t a shadow at all. The little spot of grass we laid on has died. Burnt grey into the vivid green is a silhouette of Grimsky and Winter, like they’re still lying there in bliss.

  The tulip I reached out to touch, it has coiled into itself like a wounded insect, the tips of its petals withered.

  C H A P T E R – S I X

  D U T Y

  I guess it’s official. That’s what happens when you go on a few outings over the course of a week, people start lightning-bolt rumors that cause turns of heads wherever you go. Hilda’s making me dresses for every occasion in every exotic color. Good thing the dead aren’t colorblind.

  The neighbor Jasmine catches me on my way home one day to tell me how lovely I look on Grim’s arm when we have our “formal” outings. I have to thank her for all the food she’s been giving me, the fruits and vegetables I can’t name, and also the rare bird here and there—though they become more scarce by the day, she confesses. Hard to come by, the sky that once rained them now as barren as the earth below it. She asks me when I’ll be ready to have her over sometime to show off my cooking prowess. I tell her I’m not the best chef. She doesn’t care. How can she? Couldn’t taste a scrap of it anyway.

  On one of my walks, I pass the schoolyard. My friend Ann is sitting on the curb reading a book. After how I’d left things with the teen, I felt it appropriate to greet her.

  She looks up and smiles flatly. “You look a hundred years better than last time I saw you.”

  “I’ve settled a bit more,” I agree, smoothing out the front of my outfit. “You like? Hilda’s my new best friend, as far as apparel goes.”

  “Never liked her taste. But looks good on you. You reconsider pulling your head off for a game yet?”

  “I … don’t think it’s for me. Sorry Ann.”

  “Your loss.”

  She returns to reading her book. This Ann doesn’t remind me of the bubbly, energy-rattled teen I’d met before. I sit on the curb next to her, concerned. “Is something up?”

  “It’s nothing. I really shouldn’t have been surprised.”

  “Surprised about what?”

  “They’re not letting me advance to college.” She rolls her eyes, her fingers gripping the book tighter. “They say I still have more to learn, but I think the truth is, I don’t look old enough. Even after redoing senior year eight times with straight A’s … I’m still seventeen.” She turns her despondent, steely eyes my way. “I even asked my mom if they could reconstruct me at the Refinery, make me older. She said it’s against Trenton law, go figure.”

  “I thought we were free to do as we pleased,” I murmur, noting how naïve that sounds even as I say it.

  “The tragedy with this New Life is, you have to accept a lack of natural progress.” Ann sighs, leans into me. “Hope you weren’t looking forward to having kids.”

  I stare at the ground, overcome with what she just said. I hadn’t considered other things I’m giving up with this new existence … like pregnancy, carrying a child, a real baby. Growing old and grey, being some kid’s grandma. Instead, I’ll be twenty-something … forever. I know it sounds like someone’s long-desired fantasy, but in this context it makes me feel anything but grateful.

  “Some people dream about staying in high school,” I joke, trying to lighten her mood despite what she’s doing to my own. “No one wants to grow old, not really. Age is overrated.”

  “So’s high school.” She tosses her book to the side. “I’ve read that damn thing sixteen times anyway.”

  “Maybe you can graduate and—you know—stay graduated,” I offer. “Not everyone goes to college.”

  “Whatever. Wanna do something fun?”

  I stare at her. “Sorry, I’m still not up for decapitation.”

  “Something else.”

  Oh.

  Abandoning her book on the sidewalk, she takes my hand and together we move down a couple streets into the Town Square. I’m about to ask where we’re going when she hushes me, then leads me down a narrow alley between two very tall brick buildings. Through an opened sliding door, we enter a room with vending machines—ugh, I’ll never get used to all the pretend eating in this place—and move down a hallway that seems to be lined with offices, storage closets, janitorial closets, bathrooms … and then suddenly we stop.

  “Quiet,” she whispers the second I was about to ask her why we stopped.

  In the room nearest us, I hear a conversation happening between a man and a woman. It seems a little heated, but I’m not really paying attention to what they’re saying. On the wall opposite of us, I see a giant picture of the Mayor of Trenton with the words “Grand And Great The Leader Of All Of Us Dead And Dead Again, 9999” engraved on a little plaque below.

  “It’s the year 9,999?” I whisper, and she hushes me again.

  And I wasn’t tuning into the conversation we’re eavesdropping on a second ago, but when I realize the male voice is the Mayor’s and the woman’s the Judge who so kindly put a sword through my body not too long ago, my ears perk up.

  “How can you be so cer
tain?” I hear him say.

  “The scene was unmistakable,” the Judge responds, her every word like a falling hammer. “They came for one person only, and it has to be her. Everything fits, down to her winter-white head. You should have allowed me to carry on with my hunch instead of wimping out and—”

  “You are not thinking clearly. Her hair was the Refinery’s doing. We’ve had others—many others—of the same color! Tetra, remember her? And the girl from the parlor, and the white-haired boy from—oh what’s his name—the one from the east quarter hardware store—”

  “Theirs is artificial!” she barks back. “Hers is real.”

  “You are wrong, Enea. Pure superstition. Trenton is at peace, mine-dear, and it will remain so. Do not our people have enough on their minds? We have the walls watched, every gate supervised … They will not be returning.”

  “Twenty-seven lives were lost in the tavern,” she presses on, sternly, “including your lute-loving lady.”

  “Watch your tone, Judge.”

  “And not a single one of them survived—except her! And still, you’re willing to just let it go,” she persists, her anger mounting, “until another tavern is vexed by those terrorists?—until one of our quarters full of children is overrun by death-hungry heathens? Would you rather sacrifice them, just to pretend everything is fine when clearly it is not? All you’d have to do is give them the girl, Mayor. She is who they’re after.”

  Ann is suddenly tugging at my hand, trying to pull me back down the hall toward the way out, but I stand my ground. I have to hear more. Especially because, well …

  Because it’s obviously about me.

  “Given up on your Human theory?” the Mayor asks calmly. “You know how very much they enjoy the taste of a man’s flesh. I think it’s still fully possible they were drawn here by a stray Living.”