The Beautiful Dead

by Banner, Daryl

  I start to feel uneasy. I brace myself against the nearest wall … Maybe that’ll stop the room from spinning.

  “Is this—Is this—Am I dying?” I rasp.

  “No. No more death or dying, not for any of us. Do you understand? You live in a Deathless world now.”

  “This,” I say, spitting out my last bite with a grimace, “tastes gritty and terrible. What kind of—?—or is—”

  And then I hear what I just said.

  I stare at the plate and the bite I spit out, astonished. I’m putting something together, but I’m still not sure what it is. “Taste,” I murmur slowly. “I … I could taste it.”

  “Could you?” the Queen asks with a crooked smile.

  The bitterness on my tongue of metal … of blood …

  “What is this?” I breathe, my tone changed, wrinkling my nose at the taste—the taste—on my tongue.

  And then something else arrests my attention entirely, something shining through the balcony, something that may have been there the whole time but only now finds me, somehow, someway. I slowly move toward it as though compelled, equally fascinated and frightened, drawn to the light … The sunlight. The sky is not a silvery-grey mess, not in this moment. Instead, it bursts with a vibrant blue, set ablaze on its far horizon by the shimmer of a rising sun which, hiding beyond the distance, I cannot yet see.

  “How is this—How is this even possible?”

  I stare off into the cloudless blue.

  “It takes a little Human … to be a little Human,” she says simply, like a riddle. “Life is ours to seize, if only we’ve the sense to reach.”

  “Human? … It takes—?”

  I peer down at the platter in my hand, sick.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she says to me, perhaps reading the expression of horror that is spreading across my face. “Don’t be afraid, because it is they who should be afraid. They asked for this, dear child.”

  “This,” I whisper, barely able to make the words, “is not … This is …”

  “Human,” she corrects me kindly. “With a pinch of nutmeg, if I’m not mistaken.”

  I set the plate onto the floor in an instant as though the thing had become scalding hot. The fact that I didn’t simply drop it in disgust, that surprises me. My reaction, perhaps, is affected by the fact that I’m still tasting blood in my mouth … that I’m still seeing blue in the sky … that I’m, in this brief moment, almost alive.

  “I’ve deceived you,” the Queen confesses, somberly shaking her head. “I had to, or you wouldn’t have tried it, I’m sure. But you must know the important things your devious Pretenders would never dare tell you. This is the reason they banish Humans and other Livings from your little town … They know the power that rests in the minutest bite of living being. It is paramount.”

  Still overwhelmed with the sights and the tastes and the aroma caught in and around my face, I can’t yet respond. I just stare at her in a silent stupor, listening.

  “They don’t wish you to know the joyous side-effect of eating such things: Life. They don’t wish you to remember … They encourage you to forget. But I, dear child, I show you the truth of this world.”

  “Whose—?” I half-ask, finally. “Whose—? Who … Who is that?” Delayed, I point at the tiny platter.

  “When you are among us, you are without name. It is the Deathless way. Your experience now, my child, is but a tiny fraction of what the Human Heart bestows. I wouldn’t dare offer you the real thing, not yet. That experience would be far too much for a soul like yours.”

  “Heart?” I exclaim, hardly able to contain my outrage. “Eating a Human Heart does … does even more than this? How—How can—??” My eyes still lost in the sky, my tongue nearly hanging out of my mouth with the overwhelming awareness of my taste buds, I can’t form my thoughts fast enough to express them.

  “Just say the words,” she murmurs, clearly satisfied with the effect that little bite of her “Fruit of Life” is having on me. “Just say you’ll join us, the Deathless, one among the many of united soul, united Anima, bearing pride in our undeath, who needn’t mend wounds or restore spoiled appendages to mask the beauty in death.” She offers her skeletal hand, awaiting the soft touch of my own. “Embrace the dead,” she urges me.

  Already, the blue sky has started to fade, the silvery grey forever returning to the world, hiding the sun that, I’m sure, is only a moment’s moment away from rising. The sun, which I’ve forever yet to truly see in this life. The taste, no matter how offensive, now departing my tongue like it were never there.

  I nearly miss it already, the foul taste of unwelcome blood in my teeth.

  Dead again, inside and out.

  From nowhere in particular, or maybe it was that moment of sunlight I’d been granted, I find myself thinking about the Human in my house. John, the one I told I’d be back by morning. But as I saw just a moment ago, morning has come, and back I’m not.

  These Deathless, they would eat John’s heart straight from his warm chest if they’d the chance.

  Peering at the tiny platter I’d set down, I murmur, “The only way to survive … is to surrender to you?”

  The Queen glides to the double doors, taps her fingernails on it in a little rhythm. “In, come! The girl is ready!”

  The giant doors swing open, and two decaying flesh-dripping guards reel into the room bearing knives. What they mean to do with them, I’ve only to fear.

  “I knew you were special,” the Queen tells me. “I could just feel it. You’re the one I’ve been waiting for. You’re the missing progeny.”

  The flesh-dripping monstrosities hand the knives to the Deathless King-Queen, who accepts them with a short bow, like this were some ritual to her. The guards then stand at the head of the table where Helena is still fastened. Her face, steeled with resolve, like she knew her fate from the start and already accepts what’s to come.

  But I’ve even yet to deduce what’s to come.

  “What do you want me to do?” I ask so quietly the breeze from the balcony could drown me out.

  “You will shatter your death mother, of course.”

  I stare down at Helena, helpless Helena. I feel my inner tenacity dissolving like smoke.

  “And once she is in six or seven parts,” the King goes on, “we will place them into a linen bag which will then be taken to the granary posthaste. Then, piece by piece, her parts will be grinded to bone meal.”

  I don’t say anything. The room is silent except for the whistling of wind behind us, swirling into the tower and dancing its way back out, tossing my hair around. If only my spirits were so playful, I wouldn’t be traumatized as I am.

  Too soon, the Queen offers a long serrated knife. “Your tool,” she tells me. “Begin as you please.”

  Helena just lies there, waiting, lifeless.

  I close my eyes, no longer able to stomach the sight of Helena bound to that table. All our arguments before, all the animosity between us … Had I known they were ever to lead to this, I might’ve chosen different words.

  The Queen leans into my ear. “If you’d like, I could make the first—”

  Suddenly overcome with a madness, I grip the knife and press it against Helena’s shoulder, determined, bracing myself for the first incision. Channeling whatever amount of crazy I need, whatever amount of anger, whatever amount of whatever to get the sharp edge to pass through one side of Helena’s body to the other.

  “Oh just get on with it,” Helena herself groans.

  I shut my eyes, grit my teeth, and pull.

  I pull and I push and I pull and I push.

  And I scream. I can’t bear to hear the sound of her skin breaking apart anymore, so I scream. Even physically painless as this may be for her, an unfeeling Undead, it is absolute mental anguish for me. I scream to cover up the sound of the tiny teeth eating flesh, fake or not. I scream and I yell and I cry out.

  And Helena’s right arm falls to the floor.

  “Good job,”
the Queen sings, encouraging me.

  I scream again, pressing the knife to Helena’s other arm. My voice breaking, I saw forward and back, a dance of blade and bawling, until the whole thing drops with a thud near my feet.

  Shaking, my eyes cast around the room. I wonder if I could outmaneuver the guards and bolt through the door. Maybe I could pull the remainder of Helena off the table, make a mad dash. Maybe I could actually get away.

  These thoughts are Benjamin’s fault, of course. I know better than to hope. I’ll never be free from this place, or the ghosts of the evils committed here.

  I’m forever haunted. Forever shattered within.

  “The only way free,” the Queen sings, her voice like silk, “from the binds of death, is by severing yourself from the one who brought you here. I see the doubt in your eyes, young Winter. Just press down your little hand. Break free from this woman, my child. Break free.”

  Break free, she says.

  “Winter,” I hear Helena whisper.

  I turn my head quickly, startled to hear her speak. The knife trembles in my hand, despite having no nerves.

  “I can’t do this,” I breathe, looking into my maker’s eyes. “I just can’t do this to you. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—”

  “Don’t speak to your death mother,” the Queen sings. “Speak to your Deathless mother. And listen to me. If you cannot finish the task, I will happily do it for you. But it must be done. There is no choice.”

  And I notice the very, very long blade at the Queen’s side now—a tool of her own she must’ve acquired when I wasn’t paying attention. I guess Helena’s appendages are coming off, whether by my own hand or another’s.

  “Winter,” Helena rasps. “L-Listen … to me …”

  “When you remove the head,” the Queen instructs me, her voice sweet and light, “be sure you cut at the top of the neck … She won’t be needing her voice hereafter.”

  “Winter … When you—When you see the Mayor—”

  “On with it.”

  “When you see him,” Helena urges me, “and you’re free, tell him who she is. Tell him!”

  “ON WITH IT!”

  “Tell him!!—The Deathless King is M—”

  And quicker than a flash of light, the Queen’s lopped off Helena’s head. It rolls along the floor, stops halfway to the balcony silent as a stone.

  Helena’s last words, now trapped within her forever.

  I stare, aghast at the sight. The tool gripped so firmly in my hand, it’s a wonder the thing doesn’t break. I feel my lips move, and it isn’t for a long while that I realize the words I’m silently making: I’m so sorry, to Helena over and over. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry …

  Over and over.

  “And that’s how you quiet a mother,” says the Queen, setting the blade on the table. “Will you aid me in putting her dead arms into this bag, sweetheart?”

  The bag rests at the end of the table, waiting for me to take it. Now, at the precipice of the Black Tower, I find myself in a similar situation to the one I was in my first day as an Undead. The bones of the Deathless Queen’s cheek jutting out like cliffs of her own, she’s tilted her decayed head to the side, those wide-set ghoulish eyeballs patiently watching me, waiting for my surrender, expecting it, willing it. She beckons me from the cliff I stand upon, just as Grim did to save my life.

  But she is not Grim.

  Before it even registers that I’ve done a thing at all, the tool I bear in my hand thrusts forth and, with more ease than I anticipated, lodges itself into the abdomen of the Deathless King.

  Slowly, she peers down at me, neither affected nor startled by my action. As though she were expecting it.

  “Was that,” she asks evenly, “satisfying?”

  I’m still holding the handle of the little blade.

  Calm as a cloud in the sky, she whispers, “Would you be kind enough to pull it back out?”

  After a moment of uncertainty, I just let go and take three steps back, the thing still most-way in her.

  As if drawing a pen from its inkwell, she delicately moves a hand to the tool in her stomach. With one little motion, she slides it out, then drops it.

  The clang it makes against the floor rattles my teeth.

  My eyes just follow the tool as it crashes to her feet. Its serrated edge still bears the scraps of flesh and bone from its successful job on Helena.

  The. Only. One. Left. To. Blame. Is. You.

  “This should be needless to say, but there isn’t an inch of steel in this city.” She smiles. “Not one little scrap. And we care not of appearances, stabbed or lacerated or burnt or disfigured as many of us are. This wound you’ve given me … it is beautiful. My sweetheart, I will proudly wear it as a symbol of our unity.”

  She’s playing with me. I can’t stand the teasing, not after what she made me do to Helena, the first person I knew in this affected, afflicted world.

  “Come, child. You are ready,” she tells me, reaching out to take my hand into her skeletal one.

  Despite my terror, confusion, and uncharacteristic emotion, another feeling overcomes me entirely: Forfeit. There’s nothing left I can possibly do.

  With great and terrible reluctance, I allow my small hand into hers.

  And then she screams.

  She backs halfway across the room, staggering and yelping out like a banshee. Clasping desperately her palm where I’d touched her, she screams on and on, wailing with an agony I cannot possibly justify.

  “I’m—I’m sorry!” I shout reflexively, with no idea what I’ve done at all, no idea what I’m apologizing for.

  I look down at my hand, uncomprehending.

  Six or seven more guards burst into the room at once to witness Her Dead Majesty bent over like I’d just thrown a sledgehammer into her gut. I notice a strange sort of steam or smoke issuing from her hands where I’d touched her … as though they were dowsed in acid.

  “I don’t know!” I cry out, answering a question no one asked. “I—I don’t know! I didn’t do anything!”

  Then the six or seven—no, it’s nine—guards turn their ghoulish gazes on me. The combination of each of their decrepit faces, some missing jaws, some missing ears and noses, devoid of patches of flesh that ought to be covering insides I’d rather not see, is enough to induce fear in the steeliest of souls.

  In the cacophony of Queenly screams, the nine of them slowly approach, teeth bared.

  “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!!” she belts out.

  Backing away from the guards, I stagger, my heels having reached the very edge of the balcony. There’s nowhere left to retreat now but into the giant sky.

  “YOU STUPID LITTLE GIRL!!—YOU BRAT!!—YOU SPOILED, STUPID, SELFISH GIRL!!”

  Here at the edge of the tower, words Grimsky once uttered to me, warning me of how our bodies tend to shatter, even persisting without breath or blood as they are, swim in my ears as my heel hits the very edge of the floor where, hundreds of feet below, the grassless streets of the Necropolis patiently wait like a friend. I suspect this friend won’t kindly catch me.

  “I chose you!” the Queen growls, still as the nine guards cross the room toward me. “I’d welcomed you home! You, the girl of impervious Anima … the girl who embraces the dead. How could you do such a thing to your—to your Queen??”

  For a moment, it was like she was intent on calling herself something else. What was she about to say?

  Balanced on the precipice, I peer at my hand once more, the shimmer of John’s ring catching my eye, and that’s when I realize …

  John’s ring. It’s made of steel.

  My hope renewed, I clench the ring tightly, this gift from John that just saved my life, and I make a very rash decision.

  “Because I embrace the living,” I say for an answer, before jumping backwards from the mouth of the tower.

  C H A P T E R – T W E L V E

  S H A T T E R E D

  Blindly tumbling through the colorless sky from the
high, gaping mouth of the Black Tower, for a wicked brief moment, I feel completely free.

  Then I land.

  For another wicked brief moment, I imagine my body splayed out in pieces on some street in the middle of the Necropolis. My arms somewhere, my legs somewhere else, my head staring up into the silver nothing beyond, incapable of anything except longing for my body to come back together by some miraculous force.

  Then almost by reflex, I sit up, shocked to find my body completely intact. Though it’d be nice to just sit here and marvel at how durable my body must be, it’s probably a better idea to get the hell up and run.

  I quickly rise to my feet … only to discover I did not endure the plunge as well as I’d supposed; there’s clearly something wrong with my left leg, but I can’t tell what. I take one step and my body buckles. I’m going to have to limp. Yes, like some wounded, broken thing.

  Of course I don’t get a second to pity myself. Already there’s a frightful-looking half-person hurrying toward me. Fast as I can manage, I hop on my good leg down the street, escaping the pursuing abomination.

  Abomination. Listen to me, I sound just like a Human.

  Turning the side of a small building, I race as fast as I can with just one operating leg. In my race, I discover there’s something wrong with my left arm too, as it doesn’t quite move the way my mind (or whatever) directs it to. Frustrated, I hop myself around another building’s corner, edging down a narrow alley. I’m lost, I have no idea where I’m headed, if an exit to this vile city is anywhere nearby at all … I wouldn’t know which direction to head. Hopelessness quickly fills me like a heavy liquid, each hop heavier than the last.

  Breaking into an area of cages, I realize I’m about to pass my old holding cell. I must’ve unknowingly backtracked from the Black Tower. With a rush of hope, I hurry to the cage of my across-the-aisle neighbor. I want to free him … I want to escape this place together.

  But Benjamin’s door is wide-open. The cell, empty.

  I sigh, so very doubtful that it’s a good sign, so very certain that he’s been taken away to meet his own end. No use loafing about. I push on, moving back into the dirty streets of the city. I no longer hear a half-thing pursuing me, but realize it still may be wise to hide. Awkwardly, I slip into a building through an opening where a door surely used to be some distant decade ago. Inside, I see astonishingly tall shelves full of what appear to be appendages. For a second, I humor myself and assume this place is a mannequin factory, but I’m sure upon closer inspection I’d change my mind right quick.