Dying to Live: Last Rites

by Kim Paffenroth

  “All right.”

  “So—what’s your name?”

  “Truman.”

  She repeated the name. It sounded nicer when she said it. She’d wiped off the lipstick and her mouth looked much more delicate now. “You can call me Ramona. It’s a nice name they gave me. They gave poor Lou a stupid name, so I called him Lou instead and he liked it.”

  Truman nodded. “How can you do that?” he asked after a moment.

  “Do what?”

  “What they make you do. That show you put on for them.”

  “Oh. I think some stuff is missing inside, so the ball just goes through. I still have to work at it, but it’s not too hard.”

  “No, I meant how can you do that at all? Don’t you mind doing it?”

  “Mind it?” She might’ve shrugged under the oversized coat, or she might’ve just been shifting her weight. “Sure. But they like it and it keeps them from shooting me. And it’s comfortable enough here the rest of the time.”

  Truman didn’t know what to say to that. They just stared at one another for a moment before she added, “I’m sorry if you don’t like it.”

  “No, that’s not the point. I just feel sorry for you.”

  “You don’t have to. But thank you.”

  That had been a few days ago. They had spoken each night since, and Truman had spoken to Lou as well, who wasn’t quite as taciturn as Ramona had indicated. Truman suspected he might’ve been shyer around her, just as Truman had felt intimidated by her at first. What normal man wouldn’t be, after he saw her on display, and heard her matter-of-fact reaction to it? It wasn’t natural; it wasn’t right. But now Truman enjoyed talking to both of them. They didn’t talk about the carnival and their present existence—there wasn’t much to discuss in that, after all. Instead, they tried to remember different things, though their memories always tumbled out in a disconnected mess. But they helped each other remember snow and birds and all sorts of different people who’d made them happy in some way, though they usually didn’t remember how, and they never remembered when, or what had happened to the other people.

  As Ramona had said, it was pleasant enough in this place. Truman only wished he didn’t have to listen to her entertain the living men. But turning his eyes away at least made it easier, and each night he looked forward to talking to her afterward, letting her soft voice push the evening’s show from his mind. She’d always ask him about the books he’d read, what was in them, and Truman was glad and proud to tell her whatever he could remember.

  The only time he’d felt really apprehensive and frightened was last night. When Doctor Jack was closing up after the show, he had looked at Truman and told him they’d have to get to work tomorrow on training him. Something in the way he’d said it sounded as if he might want to include Truman in the act with Ramona. So Truman spent the rest of the night trying to think of ways to kill himself, though nothing seemed feasible. It was another indignity of their existence: they couldn’t even remove themselves from all the pain other people inflicted on them.

  In the morning, when the tent flaps parted and were tied back, Doctor Jack strode in, the bright sunlight pouring in all around him. Truman could only feel the deepest despair and shame. Squinting at the larger man, however, one small but powerful revelation consoled him: a lunge and snarl and bite would most likely bring about the desired end of a bullet to his tortured brain. Truman bared his teeth slightly and prepared himself for that fate. The unfairness of it was far less appalling to him, the potential pain far less terrifying, than the powerlessness and humiliation he had felt throughout the night.

  Chapter 16: Will

  “Hi, Will,” Ken called as Will walked down the path to the street.

  “Hey, Ken,” Will said, stopping to wait at the curb.

  As Ken said goodbye to his wife, Shayna, Will watched a street sweeper churn up dirt and leaves down the street. There’d been a truck picking up trash the day before, too. They ran vehicles and machinery for everything in New Sparta. It was amazing, compared to how Will was used to living.

  He turned his attention back to the couple in the doorway, his new next-door neighbors. Ken and Shayna were African-American, a few years older than Will and Rachel, with a baby girl named Aisha. Ken was a big guy and worked construction, which there seemed to be a lot of in the city. Shayna stayed with the baby for now, and they talked about trying to have another. They were both so polished, educated, well-dressed—sort of intimidating, really. Not uncomfortable, like the weird bureaucrat Julia, but Will felt as though he didn’t fit in. Rachel seemed more at ease with their neighbors. They all had met the day before, as both couples returned to their houses with food and various other purchases.

  People here bought an awful lot of stuff on what they called “credit.” People didn’t do that in Will’s town, where you’d ask someone for something and then give them something in return at some point. This “credit” was something much more complex and long term, and it could only be expressed by lengthening the amount of time they had to stay here and work. Which is what Will had to take care of today—finding a job so they could start the process of cutting loose.

  Will waved to Shayna as she stood in the doorway. Nice looking lady, with her hair straightened and some red tints in it. He hadn’t seen that in years, and it looked good on her. She was about the same height and build as Rachel, and they seemed to hit it off yesterday.

  Ken smiled at Will and started walking down the street with him. “Where you off to today?” he asked.

  Will reached in his pocket and retrieved another of the business cards Julia had given him. “The lady from the city council said to go to the employment office as soon as possible. Is it this way? She said it was, but I didn’t really follow her directions.”

  “Sure. It’s on my way to the construction site. I’ll show you.”

  “Thanks. Hey, do you know if they’re hiring at your construction job?”

  “I’d imagine. We’re working on a couple big projects, now that the weather’s nice. You’d probably like working there.”

  “Well, maybe, but I wasn’t asking so much for me. That’s what Rachel’s always done for work—construction.”

  “Really? Wow.”

  Maybe he’d said something wrong or ignorant. Maybe women didn’t do “men’s” work around here. Julia sure was overly feminine. Shayna wasn’t quite so much, but she’d worn a skirt both times Will had seen her. Maybe he’d just confirmed that he and Rachel were weird “hill people,” the way the men had talked about them at the docks. Or maybe it was something more personal. Ken’s tone didn’t have anything judgmental or negative in it, really—he just sounded surprised—but Will felt himself getting defensive. Could the other man detect some suspicion in Will’s tone, some hint of jealousy that Rachel was always around other guys? She’d been so wild when they first met, but he trusted her now. Well, sort of. He wanted to. He meant to.

  “What?” Will asked.

  Ken smiled again and put Will more at ease. The guy had that kind of personality. “Nothing. She just looks a little small and, you know, girly. That’s all I meant.”

  “She’s strong, and she’s learned to work with the equipment. I mean, the equipment we have up in our town. I guess you guys probably have a lot more here. This place is so much more built up than we’re used to, so much more developed.”

  “It’s been good. We were lucky. But if Rachel wants to work at the site, send her over to the employment office. I’m sure they could use her.”

  “Great.” Will tried his best to sound nonchalant. “I think Rachel should rest another day, but I need to go get a job right away.”

  “Yeah. Got to pay the bills. I know.”

  They walked in silence for a while. Will saw a man in a blue uniform putting papers into the mailboxes on the other side of the street; another man waved to them before pulling the starter cord on a lawnmower. Mailmen? Fuel being used to mow grass? This place was so different.

>   Will had enjoyed making love to Rachel on shag carpet that smelled of detergent and had probably just been vacuumed. Afterward, he’d laughed with her when they’d gone to the corner store to get popcorn, which they fixed on the gas stove and then devoured, before making love again, this time in the shower with that unbelievable supply of hot water. But overall, Will wasn’t too sure about New Sparta and all its offerings. Things were simpler, safer on the boat. A little dirt never hurt anyone.

  “Did you really live on a boat?” Ken asked. “Out there? With all those things? Now you just see them chained up and stuff, not running around loose and shit. I don’t know how you did it.”

  Will took a second to process the question, which had come as such a strange coincidence with what he’d been thinking. “It wasn’t so bad. It was kind of nice. Alone—the wind, the sun. Nothing to worry about.” Best not to mention Truman and Lucy to the neighbors—that was definitely the kind of thing you kept to yourself when you moved in. That was what got him thrown out of his own town—it certainly wouldn’t sit well with these people and their order and cleanliness.

  Ken chuckled. It was deep and good-natured, but still made Will wonder if he’d said something wrong. “Nothing to worry about? Man, you are one crazy mother fucker, Will. I’m surprised you can walk, your balls must be so big. I haven’t been outside in years. Well, sometimes the construction sites are right outside the walls, but then they have guards.” He gestured to the pistol at his hip. It was a 9mm and looked so tiny on his large frame it was almost comical, like a man carrying a toy gun. “And I’m supposed to know how to use this, but come on. We have to pass a test on the pistol range once a year, but shit—paper targets just hanging there? I don’t think that’s the same as a bunch of those things around, trying to get you. I’d freak. And never mind if the girls were with me. They’d probably have to hustle me out of there themselves, and not the other way around.”

  “I guess we’re just more used to dead people. They’re not so bad. There aren’t as many as before, and the ones that are out there move even slower than before. You just move away from them when you see them. Some don’t even try to chase you. I think mostly they’re tired and want to be left alone.”

  Ken slapped him on the back. “Crazy! You are so crazy! Now you’re talking like they’re people and shit.” He pointed across the street. “Well, there’s the employment office. They’ll fix you up. Hey—why don’t you and Rachel come over later? We’ll put the baby to bed and we can talk, play cards or dominoes. You guys know how to play tonk?”

  Tonk? Will guessed it was a card game, but he had no idea. “Um, no, but I guess we could learn.”

  “Sure. It’s like rummy. We’ll show you.”

  “That’d be fun. Thanks.”

  “No problem. I’ll give you a holler when the baby’s asleep. See you.”

  Will turned to face the building Ken had indicated. Carved above the door were the words “City Library,” but a different sign had been hung under that, designating the building as the “City Employment Office.” Will imagined a building full of people like Julia—clipped, pert, sparkling women and men. They would be shuffling mountains of papers, scribbling lines of figures, all of it to enforce myriads of stated and implied rules, most of which could not exactly be explained or rationalized, but none of which could be questioned or altered in any way. The thought so terrified Will that he nearly ran back down the street. But after a moment, he had steeled himself enough to duck his head and bound up the steps to the entrance, two at a time.

  Chapter 17: Lucy

  The first few days in the compound had not been as bad for Lucy as those first few minutes. Not knowing where to go, and with no further demands from the guards, she had entered the building from which the girl had emerged. It was the ruins of what had once been a small home. All the windows were broken, and the front door was a pile of shattered wood and glass next to the doorway. Lucy stepped through the entrance and let her eye adjust to the darker interior before proceeding.

  Lucy heard a grunt and scrape to her left. She turned and saw a tall, dead woman. She wore the same stupid striped shirt as Lucy now did; under that her pants looked like black jeans, covered with mud and grime. Lucy had been forced to pull on similarly filthy pants, though they were a lighter color. The woman stood in the middle of the room next to a chair, the cushions of which had split open, letting the stuffing spill out in grey strands.

  The window was partly covered by tattered cloths that flapped in the light breeze, but the woman must’ve seen what had happened outside. She had a long, black metal rod in her right hand, which hung down at her side. It was one of those pointy metal poles people used to stab at the fire in a fireplace. What were those called? Not stabbers, not pointers. What was it? Pokers—that was it. The scraping sound had been made by the tip of it sliding along the wooden floor as the woman turned toward Lucy.

  They faced each other for some time. The woman did not appear as uncomprehending as the girl had. The gaze that came from under her short black hair had more reason and purpose behind it, though her eyes were much cloudier and uglier than the girl’s had been. And her movements were stiffer and less graceful than the girl’s; she nodded to Lucy, then turned to walk toward the other doorway that led to a room farther back in the house.

  Lucy followed her, their shoes crunching on the bits of plaster and glass everywhere on the floor. Most of the ceiling and walls had disintegrated, leaving the beams exposed in many places, though here and there pieces of wood, cloth, and cardboard formed makeshift patches.

  They entered the other room, which was darker, so Lucy paused again to adjust. After a moment she could see two more dead women sitting in the room—one on a sofa, one on a large stuffed chair. The furniture here was in better shape than the chair in the first room, and the ceiling and walls here were also more intact. The back of the room, however, was a jumble of broken furniture, as though someone had barricaded this room off from the back of the house. The furniture blocking the back windows was what made it darker in here. Only a little light seeped in from the front room, and from a small window on the side, which was covered more thoroughly with cloths than the window in the other room. This back room seemed safer, more private.

  As the tall woman sat down in an empty chair, Lucy surveyed the other women. The one on the sofa looked like she had a larger frame than the rest of them, though it was hard to tell under the striped shirt—they were all cut so large and loose-fitting. She had shoulder-length brown hair that had become a nondescript, sandy color; it might’ve been much darker before—there was no way to tell. Her face was torn on the right side—not as badly as Lucy’s, but she’d lost a lot of hair on that side of her head as well, so it looked ugly in its own way. She was probably the oldest of the group, while the other woman who sat in the chair looked like the youngest. Her red hair had faded to an odd rust color, the sort of shade that human hair wasn’t supposed to be. Lucy thought she looked a little like Rachel—similar hair color, allowing for the age and decay; same eyes, too, though now they were clouded; same plump face; same build—busty, with a short, thick body. Though she didn’t look nearly as miserable as Rachel had when Lucy last saw her, Lucy knew this woman would never have the joy of the living girl. None of them would, though this was probably the calmest and most content she’d seen dead people—other than Truman, of course.

  “Angie’s g-g-gone,” the tall woman said softly after a while.

  Lucy couldn’t help letting her jaw drop at that. She and Truman had struggled so hard to relearn speech, and this woman could talk too. She had the same problems they did—the pauses to take a breath or to think of the next word, the little catches and stammers, the vowel sounds coming out wrong—but she could speak. If the living people in this place were not particularly surprising or interesting, the dead people certainly were.

  “I should’ve gone,” the short red-haired girl said, looking down.

  “No, they were gonna get
her anyway,” said the brown-haired woman on the couch. “They liked her better. Fed her more. Always looked at her ass. Then she got hurt. They got tired of her. That’s how they are.”

  The other two nodded in silent agreement.

  “You talk?” Lucy finally asked.

  “Yes,” the tall woman said as they all stared at Lucy. “So do you. Good. Sit. We’ll talk.”

  “Thank you.” Lucy sat on the sofa next to the brown-haired woman.

  “Most of us talk,” the tall woman continued. “But not in front of food men. Never. You remember that.”

  “Food men?” Lucy asked.

  “The living,” the tall woman answered, tapping the tip of the fire poker on the floor. “They bring us food sometimes, so we call them food men.”

  “Yes, and some day maybe they are the food again,” the woman next to Lucy said. The three women gave the same awkward, huffing kind of laugh that Lucy did.

  “I’m Carole,” said the tall woman.

  “Becca,” said the redhead.

  “Christine,” said the brown-haired woman.

  “I’m Lucy. You remember your names from before?” Jealousy overwhelmed her at that moment, to think that they might.

  “No,” said Christine. “They’re just names other people picked. When I got here, women called me Christine. Said I looked like a Christine. They’re all gone now. All dead.”

  Lucy nodded, looking again at each woman, getting more used to them and their ways. They seemed so gentle, and sort of resigned, like Truman.

  “Did you remember your name?” Becca asked.

  “No, it was like with you. Someone called me that.”

  “Not a food person, I bet,” said Christine. “They always call us something stupid—like Lucky or Skinny or Cutie. Dumb fucks.”

  “No, it was a—one of us.”

  “Your man?” asked Christine.

  “Well,” Lucy hesitated. It was so weird, trying to explain it to them, and she didn’t know how they did things here. “Yes. I guess that’s what he is.”