The Dead Never Die

by Bajaña, Edgar

  At the end, the doctors ran their tests and found nothing. Finally, they allowed her to take the body.

  "What do you mean you found nothing?" She pointed at her dead husband, "He is not nothing." The doctors had nothing else to say to her. They acted indifferent to her and left her alone in the hospital hallway, sobbing.

  After Joe was buried, Mary heard a faint sound in her head that resembled her husband's voice. She spoke to her sister's about. But they told her that it's just a delusion from all the drink that she has had done.

  They warned her, "Mary. This is no way to deal with Joe's death. You have to think of yourself. Stop it, before you can't. You have to think of the twins."

  After her sisters talked to her, she kept going. She said fuck it. But one night, she did stop. It was the night she heard Joe's voice. She couldn't quite understand what he was saying though. It was as if he spoke to her with a mouthful of dry soil. After a couple more months, she was placed under medication. It's a delusion, the doctors kept telling her. It's a delusion, she kept telling herself. She needed to keep strong for Cindy and Lisa, for the twins.

  After the ceremony this evening. Mary hoped that she could finally be more at peace.

  It had been a year since Joe died. But, she felt the need to bury him again. It took a little bit of money to dig him back up. But, that was what she needed to find a peace of mind. She needed to stop hearing his voice that the wind carried so easily.

  Twelve

  What She Thought was Love

  When Mary first met the man of her life, he looked decent and unsuspecting. But, it was all a vail of deceit. Even the way he appeared was a ruse. Everything about him was the kind of trap that a girl like her fell into more than enough times and not even notice the blood. Oh god, the blood.

  But, how could she not see? How could she not fall for him?

  He looked so harmless, at first. He had these pair of crystal blue eyes and wore brown rimmed glasses. He carried the saddest smile, you've ever seen.

  In a way, she pitied him.

  But, this man had a hate in him from the moment he was first born, that could never be extinguished. Throughout his life, he was so good at showing one hand, while keeping the other behind his back and away from prying eyes. It stayed in the shadows, where he kept his cold black heart wrapped in a lie that she thought was love.

  "Mom."

  Mary heard the boy's voice again, the voice that she did not want to hear, the voice that was week and feeble.

  "Mom."

  When she thought about the boy, she felt nothing now. He was no more than a weightless twig doing whatever the wind wanted.

  The boy tried again. "Don't say his name, mom. Please."

  Of course, the boy continued to nag her, along the way. Somehow, he kept on. But, she no longer felt responsible for him. In fact, she didn't feel like his mother. To her, the boy felt like a useless appendage that held on to her for no good reason.

  The boy was no good for sure. He wasn't even strong enough to place a seed of doubt in her heart.

  Without her realizing it, the night had dug deep into her flesh and had torn her from the very thing she loved the most.

  "Why doesn't he just give up?" It slipped out of her mouth. "Just let him go. There are more than enough things to worry about in this world, than the boy, more important things. The boy is nothing to me." She giggled to herself.

  "Mom."

  Then again, why should the boy give up, just because she has.

  "No. mom. don't say his name. Please don't say anything."

  As walked along the outside of the wall of the cemetery, she heard something faint. She heard it, not from her son, but from somewhere else. The sound came from a place just beyond her. It was a tingling sensation that felt like something she expected and didn't expect at the same time. The sound she heard was something that moved easily with the cool wind and circled close to her right ear.

  In a way, she began to yearn for him, without realizing it.

  Again, the sound came alive right by her ear. It was him. It had to be him. He spoke in a lazy dry tone, like some one whose been lurching in front of a computer for years, a bureaucrat living a sedentary life, where confusion was his only friend. However, Mary couldn't really make out the words, not yet.

  Then she thought, she heard him again.

  "It would be better if you left the boy. He'll give up, the young always do. It would probably be the safest thing for him, anyways." Losing him was an idea that she didn't want to think about, but it lingered in her head.

  "Mom."

  Now, Mary no longer listened to a word the boy said. At first, she heard him whine and cry along the way. However, his little spurts of effort were futile. After a while, there wasn't anything else that the boy could do to distract her from where she was headed.

  "mom."

  By this time, nothing was going to keep Mary from going forward into the night. Of course, she wasn't oblivious to the boy's struggle. She knew very well what her son was going through. She didn't have to turn around to know that her boy was scared. She knew the night coming and it frightened him, as it did her.

  She knew because she could hear the uncertainty in his voice. She smelled the fear ooze out of his little body, in waves. However, she felt no empathy for the boy, none at all. And there were times when even she felt an unearthly sense of malice toward him. When she circled the cemetery, she was not a mother, not no more.

  In fact, there were times when she wanted to laugh at the boy. It was easy enough to sense the fear kindling inside him. But she did not want to break out of character. There was no real reason to do so, not yet. Instead, she bit her lip and tasted the bit of silvery blood that dripped inside her mouth, the taste that reminded her...of him, of the man that she once loved more than anything.

  By late afternoon, she didn't even bother to look back at the boy to make sure that he was still following. By now, her mind was somewhere else. Her almond eyes that were once the most comforting thing to the boy's heart was gone.

  Even though Mary's eyes bounced around from here to there, like a lost soul searching for something and nothing at the same time. Her eyes felt vacant, almost empty.

  "mom."

  Every time her son spoke, his voice quickly faded away and silence returned. Every attempt that the boy made to get his mother's attention felt like a Polaroid picture developing in reverse. Every word that he spoke faded back to black and back to nothing.

  At that moment, Mary loved the boy no less. But, she needed to go forward, with or without him. For some reason, she was being drawn toward something other than her son's heart. It was an indescribable feeling that festered in her stomach. It felt strange and warm and it drew her closer to Calvary Cemetery.

  Harmless, she thought.

  Every part of her belonged to the man that she loved and she held nothing back from him. In the end, he was closer than she realized. She knew it. The whole day, she felt it and she could not deny the memories of him stirring in her head. She was being drawn toward a field of the dead, without her really knowing who was really behind the vail of night.

  Harmless.

  When she thought about him, he looked so innocent, almost comical.

  The whole time she knew that he was out there. He had to be in the cemetery, somewhere.

  She wouldn't be here now, if it wasn't for him. He was the kind of man that made her into the mad woman, that she was. Only he was talented enough to make her lose the very thing that she loved the most.

  "mom. don't say his name."

  Why not. Why would that matter? It's just a name, just a single word.

  Mary had no clue where he was buried. And she didn't even know, if he was buried at all. He could have been turned into ashes, for all that she knew. Throughout the early afternoon, she tried to not think of him. However, nothing could stop the night from coming. In a way, it was already too late to fight the feeling growing inside her.

  Harmless.


  The memory of a man without a name called to her heart. And she had one of those kind of hearts that he knew so well, like the one in the back of his hand. So he called to her like he used to, in a way, only he knew.

  With every step she took, she felt something pulling her closer to the place of forgotten souls and she wondered if it was really him. It had to be him who she felt was pulling her by the hair. It had to be.

  He's harmless.

  He was the man that she photographed countless of times. With every photograph, his face became clearer. With every shot, she remembered. This man's face was always on the tip of her tongue whereas her son's name was no where near.

  "please mom. don't. don't say his name. Please."

  "But, he's harmless."

  Thirteen

  So Close To Night

  Mary didn't mean to bring her boy into Calvary cemetery that evening, especially as the sun was starting to fall toward the horizon. It was cold for God sakes. And the boy's jacket was barely thick enough to keep him warm.

  It was late October and the leaves tasted like rust and the air felt cool to the lips.

  It was exactly one year from today, when she last saw the man that she could not get out of her head. The man whose name was always on the tip of her tongue.

  "no mom. don't."

  Even though she knew better, she did not listen. But it didn't matter. She kept making all the wrong choices and all the same mistakes. She did it because she thought his love was real. When it came to him, she was prone to doing the wrong things and it typically happened without her realizing it. When she did, it was usually too late.

  She knew that she should have stayed at the clinic in Manhattan, where the streets were busy and the sidewalks were over-flowing with people. The crowds were safe. She knew that.

  She worked on the upper part of the island during the day at a drug intervention clinic. She worked as a secretary, the most loveliest secretary that you have ever seen.

  With the kind of people she dealt with everyday, she should have known how to deal with addiction. However, like her, they were all easily swayed by simple things that promised so much. That's why she knew that she should have left the boy in school.

  Instead, she took the train to PS 1 and took the boy out of class after lunch. She made up a story and administrators of the school believed her. A personal family matter is what she called it.

  Mary always knew that she couldn't have gone to the cemetery alone. Even from the beginning, she knew she needed the boy, at least for a little while, to get things started in the right direction.

  Together, they wandered through the streets of Sunnyside for most of the afternoon. At first, it was fun for the boy, who was happy to be outside and in the fresh air. Anything was better than being in school with the other kids that he hated so much.

  So, they walked.

  For the boy, it felt like how it used to be, before the man she loved walked into the picture and slipped in between their lives.

  Along the way, Mary handed the boy her cellphone and he walked around taking pictures of everything and everyone in the street. He photographed Arabs arguing on the corner. He took a picture of a hooker walking through a small park in the shape of a triangle. He saw many things that day, that he never really understood.

  A little later, the boy and his mother ate and laughed together at a Greek diner by the Sunnyside arch on 46th street. She ordered the boy a banana split. Then, they continued on, walking under the concrete viaduct of the 7 train. As the train roared overhead, they yelled absurdities into the air and listened to the echo of their voices fall back down.

  Throughout the neighborhood, they kicked a small rock up and down the block. Their time together filled the canyons of three story row houses with laughter. And they had fun, at least for a little while.

  The whole time, she smiled, covering the very thing that was building up inside her. For most of the afternoon, she was conflicted about heading toward the cemetery. She flipped and flopped with every step, wondering if she should go or not go. The more she resisted, the more she found herself being drawn away from her very own house.

  For some time, she tried to fight the feeling growing inside her which felt like branches tightening around her heart. The changes happening inside her body felt strange, but warm and inviting. It felt like that time when her son was growing in her belly and she had no control over her own body. Everything felt automatic. And she felt helpless, which was just how he liked her.

  And then, they walked into Woodside, the neighborhood where the cemetery was located. By now, the sun was closer to the horizon. In a short amount of time, the cold hand of fall gripped the boy's shoulders and did not let go.

  At first, the boy stayed quiet for a long periods of time. Then, the energy in his muscles seeped out, like a flat tire. By late afternoon, the boy was in a daze and he dropped the cellphone somewhere in the street in the middle of a thick crowd. The broken glass face of the phone was the last thing he saw. It was broken and his face was cracked in two.

  Mary noticed, but she did not bother to pick it up the phone. It laid on the ground and she just let it go. The phone slipped out of her mind like everything else. She couldn't believe that she once waited a whole day in Midtown to get her hands on that stupid phone. And now that sort of thing didn't mean much to her.

  "Damn the whole thing."

  That was one of the things that he used to say. She said it and didn't even realize that he was speaking through her.

  He's Harmless.

  When Mary and her son made their way closer to the cemetery, she probably should have been scared just as her son was. She knew that they should have not been out on the streets so close to dark, so close to the night.

  But, Mary could not get that man's face out of her mind. And her feelings for him could no longer stay bottled up. So, she ended up saying his name, only once.

  She was a mad woman for wanting to bring him back. And with every step she took, she was breaking apart.

  She glanced back at her son for the first time in hours and he didn't even look up at her as he walked. She whispered his name ever so slightly, but only once.

  "Joe."

  It wasn't even her son's name that she recited.

  It was His.

  And Joe bit into her...once again.

  Fourteen

  By Her Right Ear

  Mary walked by the wall of the cemetery, looking back at her son. But, she no longer saw him. Instead, she heard Joe's voice like a whisper passing by her right ear. For a second time, she thought she saw a black garbage bag filled with wooden frames and clothes by her feet.

  When she looked down, the black bag was gone and there was only crusted dirt.

  With the slight sound of Joe's voice, her mind became flooded with memories of the past. She thought about her overpriced two bedroom apartment with a small garden in the back. It was a garden filled with vegetables that she faithfully tended to everyday. That was a time before she met Joe; before she lived with him for more than a year.

  "You remember, Mary. You remember it, as if it were just yesterday, as if I never left."

  The first floor of her apartment was covered with maple wood panels and decorated with a collection of black framed photographs. When she moved to Queens, she lived in Sunnyside first, then Astoria. She took thousands of pictures in both neighborhoods.

  Mary loved the style and spontaneity of street photography and she collected a lot of it and displayed her favorite photographs on the wall of her apartment for inspiration. She hung some of her own work, as well.

  "Mary, how can you think about those damn pictures and that damn camera, especially now?"

  "I'm sorry." She said to herself. "I promise, this is the last time."

  Before she met Joe, she used to take photographs of people in the neighborhood of Astoria without them ever noticing her. She photographed everyone, the hipsters, the yuppies, the Greeks, the Albanians. She h
id behind cars and around the corner of buildings to get the shot. The infamous shot, the one that only she could get.

  "Why hide from them, Joe used to ask her." There's nothing to be afraid of, Mary. Joe never understood a thing about photography and Mary didn't care.

  She tried once. She told him that the photographs felt more natural that way, when the subject didn't know anything. When they didn't know that she was watching. She told him that the more natural the subject behaved, the more chances there were for good surprises. She spoke about her hobby with such passion that Joe had no choice but to pretend to be interested.

  But he didn't ask her what kind of surprises she was looking for in her subjects and he really didn't care. Joe never understood why Mary made such a big deal of photography.

  Anyone can do it. Anyone can press a button.

  As a friend, Joe kept those thoughts to himself, though. He thought better of it. And he bided his time, thinking about what to do next. He fantasied about it. For him, there was plenty of time to think of the right thing to do.

  So, he carefully thought about it, as they got to know each other. From time to time, he stared into her beautiful soft face looking for the right answer.

  By staring into her eyes, he found out that he was jealous most of all of that camera. He hated the times that she spent away from him, taking those gritty pictures, at only God knows what.

  He detested the sense of freedom and happiness that it filled her. With every click of that damn camera, he became less. He felt it and it made him feel uneasy. It made him feel like nothing special. He knew right then and there that there was something in him that was missing. Fe felt it every time he saw her with a camera.