A Fate Totally Worse Than Death

by Paul Fleischman

  She averted her eyes from them as she entered the shower and began to wash. She raged at Helga, begging God to smite her with acne, AIDS, cellulite. The list was cut short when she reached behind herself to wash her buttocks and found, in dismay, that they weren’t where they used to be. She craned her neck, dropped her washcloth, and felt frantically with her hands. Aghast, she found them six inches lower than usual, sagging like a pair of flat tires. She wavered, disbelieving, oblivious of her surroundings. She thought back to her taut, faultless figure, recalling her lengthy sessions beneath the outdoor shower at the beach, ostensibly to remove the sand, knowing the guys were stripping her in their minds. She closed her eyes, revolted by her body. Sinking down slowly, she sat on the tiles and let the water strike her head. She’d read horror novels by the score, had met demons, werewolves, and demented killers with blood on their hands and murder in their hearts. None of that, she swore, could touch the gruesome, ghastly terror of aging. She rested her head on her knees and cried.

  Forty minutes later, she set out for school. She’d lost two more teeth at breakfast, but had been fortunate that both were molars. She reminded herself not to open her mouth wide. Sunglasses hid the dark bags below her eyes. Each strand of her hair had been pulled up and pinned tight, safe from sight beneath her red beret. She’d scooped her breasts into her jogging bra. She’d raised her posterior in similar fashion, squeezing it into her tightest lycra shorts. She wondered if others could sense the strain of wearing this clown’s trunk of disguises or whether she looked perfectly normal. She crossed Via Serena, looked up, and ardently hoped for the latter answer. Drew was marching down his walk just at the moment she passed it.

  “Hi,” she said, delighted at her luck. She’d been trying to attract his attention for weeks, but could never find him without Helga at his side. “How ya doin?” She flashed a big smile, then feared she’d revealed her missing teeth and quickly snapped her mouth shut.

  “I’m late, as a matter of fact.”

  “Yeah?” She pushed the word out through her sealed lips. She glimpsed his BMW in the garage, between the Ferrari and the silver Rolls Royce. Laboring to match his long strides, she imagined riding with him in the Rolls, the envy of all the Huns. She wondered why he no longer drove, and why someone so rich would wear the same patched jeans and ratty shoes every day. Once they were a couple, she’d give his wardrobe a do-over.

  “I usually leave at seven,” he said.

  Danielle pretended fascination with his words while stealthily checking her beret’s position.

  “Helga and I usually meet before school. To talk about what we’ve been reading.”

  Danielle strained to maintain her blithe expression. There’d been no trace of apology in his words, no remorse, no thought of her at all. For the first time, the fact struck her square between the eyes. He never had given her a thought. Though she saw him constantly in her mind, and saw herself as the love of his life and heir to his staggering fortune, he never noticed her at all unless, as today, she was blocking his path. Was he immune to good looks? Gay perhaps? Then why was he surgically attached to Helga? And before Helga there’d been Charity. Danielle’s body outshone both of theirs, or had until that morning. She stared daggers at him from behind her dark glasses. Enraged at his rejection, clinging by her fingernails to her fantasies, she decided to lay her ace on the table.

  “I suppose that you’re aware,” she stated, her voice trembling, “that Helga is a ghost.” She waited smugly for her words to take effect.

  “Right,” said Drew.

  They walked through the Hundred Palms Estates gateway.

  “You think I’m kidding?” panted Danielle. She had a long coughing attack. She was having trouble keeping up and felt painfully short of breath.

  “Kidding or crazy,” Drew replied.

  “I’m telling the truth!” shouted Danielle. “And I’m telling it for your own good!” She gazed at him, imploring him both to see her as his savior and to stop so that she could catch her breath. Her appeals went unheard. He increased his speed, seeming anxious to be rid of her.

  “She’s not real!” she cried. “There’s no blood in her body!” She withheld Helga’s connection with Charity, fearing it might increase his devotion.

  “Her body seemed warm-blooded enough when we were kissing last night.”

  Like a tranquilizing dart, the line halted Danielle. Drew strode briskly onward.

  “This is no joke!” she screamed at him. She took a few steps, then clung to a street sign, wheezing hoarsely. “I’m serious!”

  “Try ‘delirious,’” Drew called back. He vanished around a corner.

  Lungs aching, Danielle sat on the curb, inhaling deeply and sobbing. She was used to getting her own way and seethed at Drew for disregarding her grand plan. She now detested him as passionately as she’d loved him ten minutes before. She vowed he would pay for spurning her.

  It was then that she remembered Honeymoon in Hades and realized it held the solution to all her problems.

  CHAPTER 13

  ………Brooke grasped the wheelbarrow’s wooden handles, lifted with a dramatic groan, and steered the mountain of compost toward the garden. It was late afternoon on Thursday. She’d made the same trip thirteen times and felt like a Chinese peasant from the pages of The Good Earth, which her class was reading in English. She resembled one, too, she reflected, in her baggy workshirt and big-brimmed straw hat. Plus her short stature, she reminded herself. She’d lost another half-inch that day. Only her Walkman and headphones, transmitting the latest release by Pus, placed her in present-day America.

  She dumped her load beside the huge garden and squeegeed the sweat from her face with her finger. Though the day was sweltering, her shirt’s long sleeves were buttoned at the wrist to cover her liver spots. That morning she’d spied an ad in the paper for a cream that claimed to remove them. She’d clipped it out secretly in the bathroom, had used a false name, and had mailed it with studied nonchalance before school. The address was in Puerto Rico. She wondered if she’d live to receive the product.

  “First Daughter, you have visitors!”

  Brooke started. She realized her mother was shouting. Between the music and her failing hearing, she wouldn’t have noticed Godzilla approaching. She pulled out her headphones and listened to her mother repeat her announcement.

  “May I go, Honored Mother?” she asked.

  She couldn’t make out the soft-voiced answer, but had schooled herself in reading lips and thought that her mother had agreed. She washed her hands and face and found Danielle and Tiffany in the den.

  “Incense—cool,” said Tiffany.

  Brooke let the comment pass, closed her nose against the hated scent, and led the way past her brother’s room.

  “What’s going on in there?” asked Danielle. They listened to the low chanting from within.

  “His tutor,” said Brooke. “Teaching him prayers for the dead. Confucians are big on funeral rites.”

  “Could come in handy,” Tiffany noted.

  They reached Brooke’s room, closed the door, and studied each other while making small talk. Suspiciously, Danielle eyed the red bandana on Tiffany’s head. Brooke pondered Danielle’s beret. Tiffany considered Danielle’s sunglasses, an accessory she’d donned herself when she’d found, with a shriek, the wrinkles beside her eyes. She feigned scratching her wrist and glanced at her watch. Another four hours until the Lazarus 12-hour Wrinkle-Fighting Creme took full effect. She preferred to undergo this transformation, so lyrically described in the ad, in the privacy of her own room and felt anxious to be on her way.

  “So what did you find out?” pressed Tiffany. “You know. In the horror books.”

  “Not much,” said Danielle. “Except that getting rid of a ghost isn’t easy. If you try to kill ’em, they usually just laugh and kill you instead. Then they come back in the sequel.”

  Danielle watched their faces fall. “Then, this morning,” she continued, “I rememb
ered Honeymoon in Hades.”

  The others leaned toward her as if magnetized.

  “This boy and girl had got engaged in secret, on the first day of their senior year. They were going to get married right after graduation. But then he fell off the balcony of her apartment. Like thirty floors up. So then the girl, who’s really hot, starts going out with all these other guys. And one by one they all get killed by the boyfriend’s ghost. Wipes out half the football team.” She paused for three deep, lung-dredging coughs. “The girlfriend tries to kill the boyfriend’s ghost but can’t. Then she realizes that he won’t leave the earth till he gets what he wants—her. So she jumps off her balcony. Presto, the ghost disappears. He joins her in the underworld and everybody lives happily ever after.”

  Brooke cleaned out both her ears with a finger. “So what are we supposed to do?”

  Danielle lowered her voice. “We kill Drew.”

  Silence reigned. Eyes expanded. Brooke’s palms suddenly felt damp. Fearing they might be overheard, she closed all the windows, then stood on a chair and shut the heating vent.

  “The only way to get rid of a ghost is to give it what it wants,” whispered Danielle. “Charity wanted Drew, but we wouldn’t let her have him. If we finally give him to her, she might forget about punishing us. She’ll be happy at last. She can rest in peace. Just like in the book.”

  “What about Helga?” asked Tiffany.

  “Helga is Charity. The minute Drew’s dead, Helga will vanish, to be with him in the afterlife. I’m almost sure of it.”

  Brooke’s face showed distaste. “I don’t want to kill Drew.”

  “I’m not wild about it either,” lied Danielle. After realizing she’d never possess him, she’d sworn that no other girl would either, or at least no other girl on earth. She smirked. Hadn’t she warned him about Helga? And hadn’t he rudely ridiculed her? Saving her own life by taking his would be sweet as clover honey.

  “I don’t know,” murmured Tiffany.

  “It’s him or us!” said Danielle. She coughed again. “It’s our only hope. Don’t you understand that we’re dying?” She tugged off her beret and pulled out her bobby pins. The others gasped. Her hair tumbled down. It was now entirely white.

  “I skipped the nursing home this week because of my stupid breathing,” she said. “And now this. I look like one of them!”

  By way of comfort, Brooke raised her pant leg. Her skin was cobwebbed with neon-purple varicose veins. She began to cry. Tiffany panicked, hoping she wouldn’t be asked to ante up a matching revelation.

  Danielle coughed again. “I swear I’ve got pneumonia or something.” She cleared her throat. “She’s killing us.

  Maybe it won’t work. But ending Drew’s life could save all three of ours. Maybe the aging will even reverse. We’ve got nothing to lose.”

  “But Drew does,” said Brooke.

  “He’ll be happier there,” Tiffany spoke up, casting her lot with Danielle. She began to pee into her diaper, an act she’d dreaded performing in public at first, but which she brought off now with perfect aplomb. “He’ll be with the woman he loves. Forever.” With Helga out of the picture, she wondered if she and Jonathan might be reunited as well. She recalled the last twenty times they’d made up—the tears, the euphoria, the reinstating of her special discount on all his merchandise. She prayed that Danielle’s strategy would work.

  Danielle faced Brooke. “What about you? Want to spend your birthday in an open coffin?” She eyed the liver spots on Brooke’s forehead. “Or a closed coffin, for your sake.”

  Brooke closed her eyes. “I guess not.”

  “Then you’re in?”

  Brooke sighed. “If you’re sure, I guess. That he’ll be happy.”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  She swallowed. “I don’t know. I’ve never had a boyfriend. Dead or alive.” She began to cry.

  “Trust me,” said Danielle. “You’d be doing him a favor. He and Charity can have sex and discuss War and Peace for eternity.”

  Brooke wiped her eyes and nodded. The three stared at each other, sealing the scheme.

  Tiffany leaned closer to the others. “Where do we do it?”

  “At the park,” said Danielle. “Where we met Charity. He should die exactly where she did. Just like in Honeymoon in Hades.”

  “When?” asked Tiffany. She hoped it was soon. If her cream didn’t work, her wrinkles would reach past her sunglasses and she’d have no choice but to drop out of school and hide in her room.

  “Two days?” said Danielle.

  “Tomorrow,” urged Tiffany.

  “All right,” she agreed. “Friday night.”

  Brooke exhaled. “What about Helga?”

  “She’ll be there. We want to make sure she sees the favor we’re doing for her.”

  Tiffany nervously chewed her thumbnail. “And then there’s, like, the question of how.”

  Danielle nodded. “Just leave that to me.”

  That night after dinner Danielle heard the Serenity Cove environmental tape rising up from the living room. She tiptoed down the stairs and saw her mother, eyes closed, reclining in a chair. Her father was stretched out on the floor. From the room’s giant speakers came the soft slap of waves and the distant squawk of seagulls. Simultaneously, from a boombox, came some New Age piano music. Danielle wondered if this potent mixture was safe or whether a doctor’s okay was needed. Could you die of a tranquility overdose? It must have been a gruesome day at work.

  She climbed the stairs and shut her door gently. She wouldn’t have to worry about her parents overhearing. Her sister was conveniently out on a date. She picked up the telephone and dialed.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi, Jonathan. It’s Danielle.”

  “Oh, hi.”

  “Are you someplace where you can talk?”

  “Yeah. I’m standing next to a phone.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I do?”

  “Would you shut up and get serious.”

  “You called me just to tell me to shut up?”

  Danielle sighed. “Actually, I called to ask if you wanted to make some money.”

  “I just got serious. How much?”

  “It depends on what you charge.”

  “For what?”

  Danielle lowered her voice. “You know how you drive out to Wilmington Heights and other places? To buy your Playboys and condoms and all that stuff in your special locker?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And how you’ve got fake I.D.’s to buy ’em with?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And how people pay you extra for all the trouble you go to?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I’m willing to pay extra. I got some birthday money from my grandmother last month. Like four hundred dollars.”

  “What do you need? I’m having a special on condoms. Starting Tuesday, officially.”

  “That’s not exactly what I had in mind.”

  “Don’t tell me. An abortion. Sorry, I don’t do ’em. I could sell you a coat hanger. Fifty-nine cents. Ten for five bucks.” He chuckled. “Just kidding.”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  “So what is it then?”

  Danielle licked her lips. “I need … a gun.”

  There was a long silence from Jonathan’s end.

  “For protection, right?”

  “Exactly. Protection.”

  Another pause followed.

  “I think I know where I can pick one up.”

  Danielle’s face lit. “Yeah?”

  “But I’ll have to tack on a twenty percent surcharge for high stress. Four hundred bucks should cover it.”

  “I need it tomorrow.”

  Jonathan considered. “The stores are closed already. I guess I could make a detour with the Meals on Wheels van in the morning. I’ll tell the gun dealer I’m carrying a shipment of caviar and need armed protection.”

  “I don’t care what you say,” snapped Da
nielle. “Just have it for me after school.”

  “As long as you have the money for me before school. In cash.”

  “I’ll have it. I’ll be waiting by the gym.”

  Jonathan paused. “I can almost see your note to your grandmother now. ‘Thank you so much for the birthday money. You’ll be pleased to know that—’”

  Danielle hung up.

  CHAPTER 14

  ………. At 8:15 on Friday evening three figures emerged slowly from a car parked beside Clifftop Park. Feeling their way through the dark, they reached the narrow asphalt path bordering the cliff and headed south. The fog had come in an hour before, heavy and wringing wet as laundry. The night air was chill, the park all but empty. The foghorn at Pelican Point called forlornly. Lit by the infrequent, fog-dimmed streetlights, the group would have passed for a trio of widows. One was short and slightly humpbacked, one paused often to catch her breath, one used a cane and constantly shifted the conversation toward her arthritis.

  “Damn this fog!” muttered Tiffany. “My stupid hip bones are killing me!”

  “Be glad it rolled in,” said Danielle. “Without it the park would be crawling with witnesses.”

  “If I get any gladder I’ll scream.” Tiffany stumbled and nearly made good her threat. She was having some difficulty seeing, due to the inadequate lighting and her huge sunglasses—the sort more often found on octogenarians. Although, when combined with her cane, they gave the impression that she was blind, they at least hid the lengthening river systems of wrinkles emptying into her eyes. The cream she’d applied with great faith had failed. She’d tried three others, with similar results. Her hopes were now pinned solely on murder.