Dead Romantic

by C. J. Skuse

  ‘Coolio,’ I said, still tucking in. She was talking about science; I was eating. We were both happy.

  ‘He wanted to know if a restorative could be developed for a human being. He studied these creatures. Their habitat. Interactions. Reproductive habits. Gestational periods. And he learned something extraordinary about them.’

  ‘Neat,’ I said. There was a flood of spit in my mouth and I just couldn’t get the chips in quick enough to soak it up. I shook some more vinegar on.

  ‘The blue-blooded salamander,’ said Zoe, ‘could replicate its limbs and repair its wounds in much the same way as an axolotl or a starfish or a flatworm can. If it loses a limb to a predator, it will re-grow that limb.’

  ‘Wow, that’s clever,’ I said through my mouthful.

  ‘Lumbriculus variegatus, a species of black worm, can regenerate an entirely new body. So if you cut it in half, each half will regrow. This salamander had a regenerative blood type, extremely rare in the natural world. My father harvested, tested and adapted it, and after six hundred and fifty attempts, he came up with serum 651. It’s a combination of various coagulants, plus the blood and endocrine glands of this salamander, methadrelanol hydraglycerine, hydrocanthium, glycerol, distilled water, aloe vera, powdered metallinium and sulfa, which was a type of medicinal powder used to bind wounds on soldiers on the battlefield.’

  ‘There were quite a lot of words there I didn’t understand. Do I need to?’

  ‘No,’ she continued. ‘You just need to understand the basics, that the serum can completely regenerate damaged tissue.’

  ‘That’s quite impressive, isn’t it?’ I licked salt off my lips and squinted at the sun pouring through our window.

  ‘Quite impressive?’ said Zoe, standing up the menu to shade our table from the sun’s rays. ‘My father discovered the key ingredient necessary for the regeneration of human tissue. And this is it.’ She lightly tapped the drawing in her book. ‘Ambystoma zoexanthe. I’m named after it.’

  ‘Zoexanthe, that’s your name? That’s so cool.’ I made a chip, curry sauce, mayo and batter sandwich. Utterly Yumsville.

  Zoe nodded, brushing her black hair away from her face. ‘So basically, this is the glue that will hold your perfect man together. Now I am no judge of male beauty, so that’s where you come in. What are you looking for in a perfect partner?’

  ‘Well, I want us to make an impression when we walk into the Halloween party together, like Cinderella does at the ball in the Disney film. He has to look like a man version of Cinderella, so he’s got to have the face of, like, a model or something. A square jaw and all that.’

  ‘Right,’ said Zoe, making a note in her book.

  ‘And a really fit body, like, super fit. Fitter than Damian de Jager. Fitter than any boy in college actually. A proper athlete’s body. Like that lifeguard at the pool who’s always doing one-handed press-ups. His body is UN-BE-lievable. He’s got that lumpy stomach thing too. Dashboard.’

  ‘Washboard,’ Zoe corrected. ‘Right, right.’

  ‘And his hair has to be really soft and quite thick. And nice feet, no second-toe-longer-than-the-big-toe business going on. And above all else, he has to love me. Like, proper love me. Couldn’t-live-without-me kind of love me. And a bit intelligent, I s’pose, but not more intelligent than me.’

  ‘I pick the brain,’ said Zoe. ‘I just need you for the aesthetics.’

  ‘I can’t stand athletics,’ I said, remembering my disastrous 800 metres on sports day in the last year of school. ‘I’m quite good at discus though.’

  ‘Aesthetics,’ said Zoe. ‘What he looks like. The parts that really matter – the brain and the internal organs – I’ll need to source myself. The fundamentals have to be correct before we go wrapping them in shiny paper.’

  ‘But do you really think it’ll work on humans, Zo?’ I said. ‘I mean, if surgeons could really stitch people’s arms on or give dead people new heads and bring them back to life, well, wouldn’t they have done it by now?’

  ‘They have done it with limbs,’ she replied, sketching some hair on the faceless boy she’d been drawing. ‘They’ve done quadruple limb transplants, face transplants. Medicine is progressing so quickly in this area. We’re just skipping over a couple of chapters.’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ I squealed. ‘I really can’t wait.’ I chewed my bottom lip. ‘I’m going to buy him a suit too, to wear at the party. A really nice one and we’ll get his hair done so it’s all sweepy and sexy and bang on trend. But what about making him a good person and making him kind and, most important of all, making him love me? Could we really train him to be whatever I wanted him to be?’

  Zoe sipped her water like the answer to this was at the bottom of her glass. ‘Research has shown that monkeys and dogs that have undergone partial body transplants can be completely retrained. In essence, their memories have been wiped. Wild dogs became controllable. Good dogs became wild, etcetera.’

  ‘So he might really love me?’ I said.

  ‘Anything is possible, Camille. My father was making inroads in all of these areas and applying the electromagnetic principles when he was so cruelly snatched away from his research. So now it’s up to me. With your help of course.’

  ‘Cool beanies,’ I said, ‘my very own boyfriend. My sexy dead boyfriend.’ I stuffed another chip into my already full mouth – a curry sauce-flavoured one – and it was heaven.

  Some boys came in and sat at a table opposite, making such a noise I could barely hear what Zoe was saying. They ordered bacon sandwiches and Cokes. Two of the boys with spotty skin and greasy spiky hair were sitting with their legs wide open and their feet flat on the floor, leaning back in their seats and leering at us.

  ‘But how are you going to do it?’ I said, trying to ignore them. ‘I just don’t understand how it’s poss—’ I started to say, as Zoe swept aside my condiments and lay her notebook down before my plate.

  ‘So, what do we have on our shopping list? A genius brain, a model face, a superlative body with organs in peak physical fitness,’ she said, pointing to the little pictures on her boy diagram. ‘We find the body, we find the head,’ she said, circling the body and head sections, ‘we stitch the head to the body. I source the brain,’ she drew an arrow where the brain was going to go, inside the head, ‘then we inject the serum here, here, here, here and here,’ more arrows, ‘into the peroneal, femoral, carotid, radial and vertebral arteries, which should regenerate the structural tissue and begin to repair blood vessels and musculature. Once the serum is injected, then we can think about galvanism.’

  ‘Galvanism?’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’ She turned the notebook back to face her. ‘We will need to apply pulses of electrical current to his body in order to cause muscle contraction. Once we apply the charge and get the heart beating, it’ll just be a matter of waiting for his eyes to open.’ She stared at the boys at the opposite table who were sharing pictures of something on their phones and laughing. Hur hur hur. ‘And you won’t have to kiss any more frogs.’

  ‘I shall go to the ball,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Zoe, slamming her book shut, ‘I’m certain you shall.’

  We Want Your Body

  Ididn’t hear anything from Zoe for days and college sucked without her. There were no body part news flashes, no How about this for a square jaw? updates, nothing. So I tried to keep myself busy in the meantime and not think about what was probably going to be the most wondrous thing ever: my brand-new sexy dead boyfriend.

  Pee Wee was still Secret Pee Wee at home as I still hadn’t worked out quite how to break the news to my mum and dad. Luckily, our house was three storeys and my bedroom was on the third floor, and Mum only ever went up there for washing and Dad only went up there if something needed mending, so it wasn’t too difficult.

  On Thursday I had to explain to my tutor, Jill Price, why I had to bring Pee Wee into classes with me. I told her I was like the weird girl, Amanda Stones In Her Hair who’d been i
n my Sociology class. She was one of the ‘special cases’ who was allowed a canine companion to stop her having tantrums. I said Pee Wee had been given to me by a children’s charity. Amazingly, she bought my lies, and even brought in a biscuit for Peeps next time I saw her.

  But on Thursday night, there was a knock on our front door and it was Zoe. I was so excited to see her I wanted to hug her, but I stopped myself.

  ‘Your mother used to do nail art,’ were her first words to me.

  ‘Uh, yeah,’ I said, biting back my smile as best I could. ‘Where have you been? You haven’t phoned . . .’

  ‘You said she had a van; a van for her nail art,’ said Zoe. ‘I presume to transport her table and assortment of polishes.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I couldn’t remember telling Zoe about it but clearly I had and she’d remembered.

  ‘Does she still have the van?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s in the garage.’

  ‘We need to borrow it. Go and get the keys. I can drive.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘There are six garages around the corner. I’m surmising one of them belongs to your family?’

  ‘Uh, yeah . . .’

  ‘I’ll meet you there in three minutes.’

  ‘But . . . it won’t have any petrol in it. And what about Pee Wee? I can’t leave him here; if Mum finds him she’ll chuck him out . . .’

  ‘We can get petrol first and then we’ll drop the dog off at my house on the way. Bring your purse. Come along,’ she said and disappeared around the corner like a puff of smoke.

  Zoe had found the perfect body, that’s what all the mystery was about. So by half past nine that night, we were sitting in my mum’s nail art van, in the archway opposite the funeral parlour, waiting for a good moment to break in. Our local paper, The Herald, lay on Zoe’s lap, folded open at the obituaries page. In the middle, dead centre, there was an advert for Burnett & Sons and it showed four men – one old and fat, one black-haired and fat, one black-haired and moustached, and one young, shaggy-haired and square-jawed (Louis Burnett) – and they were standing in front of a black hearse, wearing black suits. The ad read: ‘BURNETT & SONS: Hoydon’s Bracht’s most professional budget funeral service.’

  I switched on the overhead light so I could read it over her shoulder. She turned over the page to a news story with the heading ‘LIFEGUARD KILLED IN FREAK POOL ACCIDENT’. There was a large picture of a half-naked young man with floppy brown hair wearing dark glasses. He was smiling and flexing his bicep.

  ‘That’s our body,’ she announced.

  ‘Well-respected Hoydon’s Bracht lifeguard Luke Truss died last Saturday evening following a fall at the town pool,’ I read. ‘Oh my God, I knew him!’

  ‘You did?’ said Zoe.

  ‘Yeah! He was one of the lifeguards at the pool.’

  ‘Evidently . . .’

  ‘Me and Lynx and Poppy used to go down there during the summer and full-on flirt with him chronically.’ I carried on reading. The nineteen-year-old is thought to have slipped on a novelty Snot Monster called Big Greeny in the children’s changing area at around 9.00 p.m. last Saturday night. It is thought he banged the back of his head on the floor. A cleaner discovered him later that evening and an ambulance was called. He was declared dead on arrival at Bracht General Hospital. There have been calls to ban the sale of Snot Monsters as well as all other slime-based toys. His funeral will be held on Friday 10 October. ‘That’s tomorrow. He looks smarmy in that photo though, doesn’t he? Bit like a paedo.’

  ‘Hmm. A paedo in Speedos,’ Zoe mumbled, setting the paper to one side.

  ‘Do we really want a paedo’s body for our project?’ I asked, gently touching the end of my nose. It was still really painful to touch and a bit crunchy too but I kind of liked the sound.

  ‘He’s not really a paedophile, is he?’ said Zoe. ‘And anyway, his personality is immaterial. We just want his body. We won’t be using his head or brain.’

  ‘Why not?’ I said. ‘He was good-looking.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ said Zoe. ‘His brain isn’t good enough. And his face is local. People know him around here. The head will have to come from much further afield. Like a wise man once said, the main function of the body is to carry around the brain. That’s the most important part. And that’s all we will need Luke Truss to be. The carrying tool. The body to carry around our perfect brain. Don’t worry, I have everything in hand.’

  ‘The body that I will walk into the Halloween party with, looking all gorge and making everyone hella jelly belly,’ I said.

  ‘Quite,’ said Zoe, looking at me oddly. She rubbed a patch of steam on the windscreen and peered through.

  ‘Do you think the coast is clear yet?’ I said, wiping my side of the windscreen.

  ‘There they go,’ she said suddenly, pointing to some figures coming out of the side door of the funeral directors.

  ‘That’s Louis,’ I said, wiping away the steam again. He was wearing a suit and tie. Another figure came out behind him: an older man with a black moustache. ‘That must be his dad,’ I said as the rain pitter-pattered on the van roof.

  Zoe flicked on the air conditioning to clear our steam. Neither of us made a sound. After about twenty seconds I whispered, ‘I think they’ve gone.’

  ‘Right,’ said Zoe, pocketing the van keys.

  ‘Are we going in then?’ I said.

  ‘I’m going in first,’ she said, pulling the door handle and stepping out. She reached across and held out her hand for one of the sacks of potatoes at my feet. She heaved it out and placed it on the ground. ‘You count to a hundred, grab the other sack and follow me in. I’ve got the torch.’

  ‘What? We’re not going in together?’

  Zoe shut the driver’s door. I could feel my heart beating then, when it was just me alone in the van, and I could see Zoe walking across the road with the massive bag of potatoes weighing her down. I didn’t even know why we’d had to bring two sacks of potatoes; she’d just said it was dead important that we did. The rain fell harder on the windscreen, and I couldn’t see her any more.

  ‘One, two, three, four, five . . .’

  At one hundred, I clicked open the door and stepped out.

  I could see Zoe’s torchlight flickering inside as I approached the side door. My hand was on the handle. It wouldn’t move. How on earth had Zoe got in, I wondered? A top-opening window was ajar. I set down the potatoes and tiptoed over to where the bins were, moving one underneath and climbing on top. I was just hooking my leg up over the top of the window when a voice stopped me in my tracks.

  ‘OI! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?’

  ‘Aaaaarrrggghhh!’ I cried, banging my head on the open window. I turned to the voice, one leg in and one leg out.

  Louis Burnett was standing below me, his hair soaking in the rain.

  ‘Camille?’ he said and sort of laughed. ‘I thought someone was breaking in.’

  And out of nowhere, I started proper bawling. Like when I was little and Dad caught me in my Cook ‘n’ Learn Kitchen making soup with his seventy-year-old Scotch. It was a complete reflex, designed to stop Dad from going ballistic. And amazingly, it also worked on Louis.

  ‘Aaaaargh haaaa haaa haaaaa,’ I went, full on proper tears and everything.

  Louis looked completely shocked. ‘Oh God. Are you okay?’

  I shook my head. ‘Aaaaargh aaaargh!’ I wailed, on and on.

  ‘It’s okay, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I . . . I . . . I’m . . .’ I said, between huffs. ‘I just . . .’ I didn’t really know what to say. He’d caught me cocked-leg, trying to get into his family’s funeral parlour and I had no excuse. Luckily, I didn’t need one.

  ‘The office is closed now. Did you want to view someone?’

  I still didn’t know what to say, so I nodded. Of course, yes, there was a dead person inside who I was upset about. That would do it.

  ‘I just . . . came into town . . . to p-pick up some potatoes
for . . . tea.’ He took my hand as I stepped down off the bin and I showed him the massive bag of potatoes. He nodded. ‘And I thought . . . I’d come and see . . . him.’

  He smiled but looked totally what-the-hell at the same time. ‘Oh. I’m sorry. Who was it you wanted to see?’

  I sniffled a bit, and dabbed my eye at the corner, like my mascara was going to run. I wasn’t even wearing mascara. ‘L-L-L-Luke,’ I stammered.

  ‘Oh, Luke Truss, yeah? Was he your relative? Your boyfriend or . . . ?’

  I nodded. ‘Boyfriend.’

  This was quick thinking. I could get away with saying he was my boyfriend, because there’d be no record of this anywhere, whereas if I’d said brother or cousin or something, this could be traced. Boyfriend definitely seemed the way to go.

  ‘I loved him so mu-huh-huch!’ I started crying again and going all shivery like in films when the woman’s crying in the rain and the man wipes the hair from her face. I was quite a brilliant actress when I put my mind to it.

  Louis didn’t wipe the hair from my face. I’d hoped he might hug me, but he didn’t do that either. He just stood there, fiddling with his friendship bracelets up his jacket sleeve. He didn’t look right in a suit. A bit like a homeless person who’d won a night at the opera.

  ‘God, I had no idea. I can’t really let you in though,’ he said. ‘I’ve only come back to get my phone. I left it in the office. I’m supposed to be at Fat Pang’s. He gestured towards the restaurant almost dead opposite and its smiling fat Chinese man welcome sign. ‘It’s my mum’s birthday. I don’t even eat fish but she really likes it there. Dame’s there too. He fancies my cousin Madison . . .’

  Louis didn’t seem too thrilled at the prospect of going back to his family, but I nodded again, and tried to smile and look like it didn’t matter. ‘What are you going to eat if you don’t eat fish?’ I asked.