by Daryl Banner
What if my birth really does signify the beginning of the end of the world? If I believe that nonsense, then what if my silence about the Dead is securing that end? What if, instead of being a symptom of the end of the world, I’m merely a sign of a change in the world?
What if defying that silence is the key to saving all of humanity? What if it’s my duty to reveal the truth?
“Will I ever remember my life?” she asks me, like I’m the expert. “Or is it gone forever?”
Suddenly, I realize I am the expert. I’ve been to the realm and back. I am the expert of the Beautiful Dead, no matter if I’m allowed to admit their existence or not.
“It’s called a Waking Dream,” I murmur, channeling the book-buried face of the ever-tall Mayor Damnation. Damn you for having such a ridiculous name, Damn it. “You’ll have it quite suddenly, I’m told. You won’t know when, but at some point, all the memories of your First Life will jump right back into that sweet head of yours.” I offer her a tentative smile. “Think of it like a memory pill.”
“Ooh. I hate pills. Ooh!” she realizes with an excited jump. “I never have to take any ever again!”
“Marianne,” I say to her, trying to reel in all the focus and seriousness that I can. “You remember the statement you were made to sign? You remember what it said?” Her big eyes lock onto mine and she nods, her glowing cheeks jiggling. “Alright. It’s very important that we stick to that statement, should the president or any of her people come to talk to us. Not only our wellbeing is at stake, but also that of John’s, and our delivery friend Connor. What you did in the auditorium was an illusion, okay? An act. Fake.”
“Illusion. Act. Fake.” Mari frowns. “Mistake.”
“That’s right,” I encourage her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Stick to that, and everything will be just f—”
The moment I utter the words, the door opens to reveal the stern-faced, eyebrow-free Professor Praun. His presence casts a coldness through the little room I bet even Mari can feel. He takes one step inside, then shuts the door behind him and leans against it. His eyes, the whites of which flash with intensity, observe the pair of us for way too long. I want to crawl out of my skin and surrender myself to the army of savage blood-eaters just to avoid another second of his silent ire.
Then, he says, “Good save, Ms. Steel.”
My face wrinkles in confusion. “W-What?”
“The ‘It was all an act!’ bit.” His face turns pensive as he studies me. “Might’ve saved all of your lives, in fact. Once order was restored in my hall and the students were dismissed to their respective colleges in an organized fashion, it was determined that the majority of them did, in fact, believe your friend’s act to have been just that: an act. One last, desperate little act—done by Jennifer’s best friend and roommate, no less—to get people to believe in your ridiculous claim about the Dead Who Live.” He lifts a brow at me. “Am I made clear, Ms. Steel? It was an act, and nothing more. The last two people we must convince of that is the pair of you.”
I nod quickly. “It was an act. All an act. Right, Mari?”
“Illusion. Act. Fake,” she repeats, as before. “Mistake.”
Praun studies her with a hardened expression, as if weighing the sincerity of her claim. Then he nods once curtly, as if satisfied, and turns his attention back to me. “With your dissertation behind us, the president has granted you a week’s leave from campus, Jennifer Steel, so that you may have time to sort your affairs with the passing of your father … as well as other things.”
The news comes as a shock. “But I have some math exams! And … And I have a reading assignment, as well as an essay due for my Archaic Languages class, and—”
“All of it will be taken care of,” he assures me blithely, though his face never smiles. “You need your time, Ms. Steel, whether you want to take it or not. As Marianne doesn’t have much of a family to speak of, she’ll—”
“I don’t?” Mari looks at me, confused. “I … I don’t?”
“She’ll be going with you,” finishes the professor, “and you will be monitored. Consider your actions and the antics of your ‘well-meaning’ friends, Jennifer. Remember the statements you signed,” he says, his eyes narrowing, which always sits so oddly on his face, what with the eyebrows missing. “It would be a shame for anyone else to disappear much in the same way that your ‘abductor’ Dana did. Am I made perfectly clear?”
My teeth clatter within my skull. I’m out of options; that much is clear. “Yes,” I say quietly.
He turns then and opens the door, intending to leave.
I rise, swelling with a passion that I can’t ignore any longer. “You knew about it the whole time.” I’m ripe with the curiosity of years of research and yearning that I will soon be made to shelve permanently. “Professor, please. Tell me why you didn’t stop me sooner, why you let me learn so much, only to silence me when I find the answers I’ve been seeking. You owe me that, at the very least.”
He stops in the doorway, his head turned halfway in my direction. He wears a smirk of amusement, the closest thing I’ll ever get to a smile from the cold and stoic Praun.
“Oh, how I’ve always admired your hunger.” He turns a bit more to meet my eyes. “May you always be hungry, and never know the true emptiness of death.”
The door is left open when he departs, leaving Mari and I in a quiet soup of mystery and wonder.
“Today is the first day of the rest of your Second Life,” I tell my friend days later, after she’s all packed for our weeklong trip to my home. I had to help her pick through her things for hours, seeing as she had no idea what she owned. “You ready to go on an adventure?”
The light returns to my roommate’s eyes, which had been somewhat lacking the past few days. Mari, the real Mari, she’s still in there somewhere. I’ll coax her out a little bit each day. But until she’s fully back—and until she’s had that Waking Dream that the fuzzy-haired Mayor Damn went on about—I’ll take the little flicker of light in her eyes to be all the answer I need.
John doesn’t start classes until the next term, which gives him the perfect excuse to come with us too. He has nothing to fill his days with but time and research, so I borrowed six different books from the Skymark Library on Engineering for him. He’s read three pages so far. “I’m more of a hands-on kind of guy,” he explained to me when I teased him about how little he’d read, and that innuendo of his turned into a tease that ended with our clothes on the floor. It was a very nice day.
“I’ll meet you by the shuttle!” exclaims Mari, carrying her bag outside and letting the door shut behind her.
John comes out of our room right then and sets his heavy bag on the couch. Then his deep, rich eyes run up and down my figure, as if seeing me for the first time.
“You look nice,” he tells me in that gruff, barbaric way of his, bringing his stubbly face to mine for a kiss. It feels more like a bite with all the aggression he puts into it.
I pull away with a chuckle, just to get a good look at his face. Our adventure has brought us so much closer together. Something’s built between us that I’m not sure was there before. A bridge of trust, maybe. We depended on one another in that dangerous realm—you know, the one that totally doesn’t have walking dead things in it.
And maybe one day, he’ll say he loves me. And maybe he never will. Maybe he’ll never need to, always showing it in his own rough, brooding, John-like way.
“Your heart’s racing,” he observes, our bodies pressed against one another. “Am I doing that to you?”
“No,” I assure him. “It’s just a strange sort of awful symptom of being alive. I think you’re afflicted with this most troublesome condition, too. See?” I put a hand to his chest, my palm enjoying John’s strong, healthy pulse.
He clasps my hand, a twisty smirk finding his lip—that signature John sort of smile. “I think it’s just a symptom of being near each other.”
“Then we better prepare for ou
r hearts to race a lot.”
“Every day,” he breathes as his lips rush to meet mine.
I want to say this trip is going to heal us. I want to believe that I’m not really a symptom of the end of the world. I want to think that we can truly put the Beautiful Dead behind us, that it’s all over with.
But I fear it’s only just begun.
The Whispers are silent today, and the Winter girl’s totally-not-made-of-steel device flickers in my bony hands, its last breath of life shuddering within it. It must be alive, this strange artifact, because I’m witnessing it die before my eyes.
I’ve been touching its face, learning the ways of its inner workings. I made its face change several times. It’s an odd little thing, this metal creature that belonged to Winter, to Jennifer, to whatever her name is and was. The face became an image of a man in a beige suit. The face became an array of words I couldn’t understand. It turned into many things before my eyes, just with the swipe of my long, bony finger … this odd, chrome chameleon.
My sister took off with the rest of the Dead that she gathered. So heartbroken at the Jenny-Winter woman’s departure, she didn’t even have the heart to face me. Poor sister. She will hunt for the blood until the end of time.
I push my finger at the chrome chameleon, and then it plays its worst trick of all. Its face turns into hers. Upon its flickering, dying face, it shows Jennifer and her beautiful white hair. Completely unmoving, the image of Jennifer stares at me, her eyes sharp as icicles. I bring the face closer to mine, mesmerized by it. All around her, the shimmer of colors that play in most candles kisses my eyes. What a wonderful and terrible thing to do to me, this evil chrome chameleon … to torture me with its last breath.
Then, it turns to darkness. The little metal creature dies. No life left. It didn’t even bleed. Does it have any? I bite at the thing, chewing its corner. I gnaw and I chomp, unsuccessful in puncturing its hard, metal skin.
No life left.
Nothing.
Until the end of time.
I walk the Whispers for as long as my legs will take me. The mists never again greet me, and I’m certain they never will. The Whispers care so little for us Dead. They bring us here, the mists and the hisses and the screams, but they abandon us too. Humans are so foolish at times, feeling they’ve nothing to live for. What I wouldn’t give for a taste of that life again … that life I can’t remember.
How cruel, to have had my Waking Dream so long ago that I can’t even remember what I’d … remembered.
It’s then that I see the blemish in the endless waste of the Whispers. A mysterious thing that catches my eye. I move quicker now, rushing to meet the strange anomaly that I have found in the Whispers.
I drop to my knees, hearing the cracking of my bones. I pluck the curious treasure off the ground, examining it in my gritty, grey palm.
It is a shining, emerald-green stone that now rests in my hand. A gift from the Whispers, I suppose. A message to the Dead. A challenge, perhaps …
And to that pretty green stone, I offer a faint smile and one little word—whispered, of course: “Anima.”
The end.
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The Beautiful Dead
An excerpt from the first book in the original Beautiful Dead Trilogy by Daryl Banner
Prologue
It’s so cold. It’s so, so cold.
What you should know is, the first time a dead man opened his eyes, the twenty-seven doctors in the room screamed. The dead man did not bite them or foam at the mouth. He didn’t claw at them with his dirty nails nor did he grunt and moan like the dead were expected to do.
The dead man just opened his tiny mouth and asked, “Where am I?”
I’m so cold, but let me assure you, it was a quiet end. That’s what you should know above all else. Even with bombs all over the news. Mushroom clouds and calmly-reporting reporters. Debris snowing from the heavens, like winter. Bombs here, bombs there, bombs in your backyard and your neighbor’s living room. Smoke and liquid fire ate up the cities, the forests, the children.
No one knew exactly what was happening, and by the time they did, it was over.
And they were dead. All of them. Fire and smoke still covered the land like a blanket long after they were gone, the last of leaves and tree trunks burning on. The final blink of mother nature’s eye before she retired for a long, long sleep. Sweet dreams.
I’m not sure where I was when all this happened. I may have died already, but it doesn’t matter. None of us were going to survive.
At least, not completely.
If time were an endless plain, this event is the chasm cut deep in the earth, its yawn spanning far beyond what light can reach. This awesome rift, we will never know for sure how wide it is. But on the other side, as sure as we are that there is another side, that’s where my story begins. Not when the world ended, but long after.
After the trees have all but expired.
After oceans burn and mountains fall.
After the sky.
It’s so, so cold, but before my life is gone … before I forget my mother’s face or my favorite flower or my name, I need to explain something, and it’s crucial that you pay attention. I’m so cold, but just let me say this one last thing to you before I’m dead, before I’m
before I’m
before I’m
Are you paying attention?
Chapter One: Winter
I came into this world like most people do: screaming.
“Don’t worry,” a kind voice tells me. “You’re just dying.”
Everything hurts. My skin is all icy and bitter. My heart’s a heavy stone the earth is trying to wrench from my chest and my vision is an angry haze—I am blind.
“Your eyes are adjusting, girl. Just relax.”
Dying?—Did she just saying I’m dying?
“Undying,” she amends. “You’re undying. But really it’s sort of the same.”
I’m reaching out for my mom. I want to find my dad’s hands and pull them toward me, they should be there somewhere. I’m furious that no one seems to be helping me, that no one’s there.
“No use in screaming on, you’ll just break your voice. You might need it.”
Why would I need a voice if I’m dead? And for that matter, how’d I die? When did that happen? Shouldn’t I know?
“No use trying to remember,” she murmurs sadly, her voice strangely accented. “That was your Old Life … a nothing life.”
I can’t picture my mom’s face. Or dad’s. There’s a strange vacuum in my mind now, like I can’t even remember having parents. The idea of anything existing before this moment, that simple idea seems so difficult to understand suddenly.
“You’re the worst I’ve ever heard! This awful screaming! Really, you should quiet down. You’ll wake the dead.”
I don’t remember the last word I uttered. I don’t remember the last meal I had. I don’t remember the last hour I saw on a clock. I don’t remember …
I don’t remember my name.
“That was a little joke of mine,” she says with a squeaky snicker. “Wake the dead. You’re not laughing.”
I’m panicked by the silence in my body where a heart should be racing. I’m gasping for air that isn’t there, with lungs that stubbornly refuse to fill. I’m in agony, I think.
“Let go of my hair!—You’ll pull it straight off!”
Her soft hair clenched in my fist, it’s the first sensation I have that isn’t horrible. It grounds me like an anchor. Suddenly gravity makes sense. My position of lying on cold hard ground makes sense. I’m aware of my ears for the first time and the information they helpfully lend … the ambiance of howling winds and whis
pers … the distant rumbling of thunder … the precise location of the strange accented voice that’s been speaking to me …
“You’re coming to, at last. I feared there was no hope for you, screaming as you were. Now please, a finger at a time, let go of my hair.”
My eyes have been open, but they only just now discover how to work. The furious haze of earlier releases me to my new world. Hovering over me is the face of a twenty-something-year-old with wide-set beady eyes and curls of black hair that gather atop two sharp shoulders.
“Really, I’d hoped for a prettier Raise, but you’ll have to do. Oh, your skin is so tragic.”
Who is this person?
“My name is Helena Trim,” she tells me, “and yours will be—Oh, I hadn’t noticed your hair! It’s so … white. A snowdrift in a dream. Almost makes up for your face. I’ll call you Winter.” She smiles for the first time. It sits oddly on her stiff, pointy face. “There, that was easy. Now are we ready to try standing?”
I push myself off the damp ground. Curiously, I find all the pain and torment I’d only a moment ago felt is gone, leaving an empty ringing in my ears that echoes down my body like a bell. I feel hollow. I feel weak. I feel like a vacuous shell holding nothing, not even air.
“Where,” I say, startled for a moment by the sound of my own voice, “am I?”
“The Harvesting Grounds,” this person called Helena informs me. “This is where the dead are Raised, girl. This is where everyone’s Final Life begins … if this can be called a life.”
“I’m—I’m dead?”
“Undead.” She delicately moves a strand of hair out of my eyes, wrinkles her face in pity. “We should get you to the Refinery straight away. Death hasn’t been kind to your—ah, never mind.”
I don’t remember leaving the murky field. I don’t remember being guided down a winding road that cut through an endless array of dead trees and into a city. I don’t remember walking crowded streets or being steered into a squatty pink building, but now I’m leaning back on some kind of doctor’s table and there’s a large flush-faced woman with green eye shadow looming over me.
