“Bummer, eh?” His lips pulled back into a mocking smile. “Spend six months in a loony bin and you’re not out three days before you’re lying in the gutter with your guts for garters. Yeah, I’d say you’re knackered, alright. But don’t worry about being alone on the Other Side, duck. Me and Joe Lent—you do remember Joe, don’t you? —are waiting for you. We want to show you as good a time as you’ve showed us. Joe’s been waiting longer’n me, so he’s got seniority, like a shop steward. But I can wait. I got time, right?” He reached out with insubstantial fingers to caress her, and Sonja felt something like moth wings brush against her bloodied cheek.
“Get away from her, hyena!” It was Ghilardi’s voice. “Vile, idiot thing! Wasted in life, useless in death!” Chaz’s body dispersed like a cloud caught in a high wind as Ghilardi’s spirit returned. “Sonja? I’ve brought you some help. Can you still hear me?”
Her eyesight had dwindled to monochrome tunnel vision, as if she was peering at the screen on a iPhone through a cardboard tube. But she still recognized the smiling bag lady bent over her.
I’m hallucinating. None of this is real, she told herself upon seeing the appearance of the golden-eyed crone.
As if in response, the seraph trilled crystalline bird song and thrust a gleaming hand into her guts, and there was no more contemplating the nature of reality and illusion.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The maitre d’s scorn was palpable. The very idea that she would set foot in his restaurant outfitted in jeans and a leather jacket filled him with cold contempt.
“Mademoiselle has been waiting for you,” he said stiffly. “Please follow me.” He then turned his back on her with military precision and marched into the main dining room.
Sonja followed, staring at the pristine tablecloths and untouched place settings of fine china and expensive crystal. Although the room seemed to be deserted, she could hear the low murmur of polite conversation going on around her.
The maitre d’ led her to a table located directly under a large crystal chandelier, which swayed and jingled like a wind chime. Denise Thorne sat at the table, dressed in a paisley miniskirt, white mid-calf go-go boots, a fringed buckskin vest, and a shapeless, wide-brimmed hat. Clearly the maitre d’ did not seem to think her wardrobe inappropriate.
“Thank you, Andre.” Denise smiled, and the waiter retired with a formal bow. She then turned her attention to her guest. “Please, won’t you sit down?”
“Am I dead?”
“What makes you think I could answer that question?”
“Because you’re dead.”
“So you keep insisting. But you wear my flesh and have my memories.”
“But I’m not you. I’m not Denise Thorne.”
“So who are you, then? A ghost? A reincarnated soul? A demon?”
“ I don’t really know.”
“But you do know you aren’t me. How can you be so sure?”
“Because you’re there and I’m here.”
“That’s very scientific of you,” she chuckled.
“Okay! So I don’t know who, or even what I am. Does it really matter anymore? Your father denies me and your mother now believes you’re dead.”
“They’re your parents, too.”
Sonja shook her head. “My father was a rapist vampire. My mother was a London gutter.”
“And The Other? Is it your Siamese twin or an unwelcome lodger? Or is it only just you in there?”
“Look, I’ve been through this already. Maybe things aren’t as clear-cut as Ghilardi made them out to be. I’ve known that since Pangloss tried to bribe me into joining forces with him. I might not know everything, but I know I’m not The Other and I know I’m not Denise Thorne.”
“You saw on the DVD what The Other was like when it was fully ascendant, when your personality refused to function. Was that The Other you’re familiar with? The one you hear in your head?”
“What are you trying to get me to admit to? That I’m a figment of Denise Thorne’s imagination? That The Other is my id and not a separate entity from Hell? Okay, I’ll admit those are possibilities, but I don’t know if they’re true. Maybe I’m a synthesis of Denise and some trace of Morgan’s ego he left behind. Hell, I don’t even know if you’re Denise.”
“That’s right. You don’t.” As the missing heiress lifted a wineglass to her lips, a drop of wine fell from its rim, staining the tablecloth bright red.
Sonja pounced, slashing at Denise’s face. The skin came away with a thick, syrupy sound, leaving her staring at the face underneath.
“Time to unmask,” said the woman with mirrored eyes. “No more pretending.”
“Hey, Brock! I gotta fresh’un for ya!”
Brock looked up from his egg-salad sandwich as the attendant trundled another gurney into the morgue.
“Great. Just great. Can’t a guy finish his break without being interrupted by a corpse?”
“Hey, you knew th’ job was dangerous when you took it,” chided the attendant. He thrust a clipboard at him. “You wanna sign for this mama?”
Brock quickly scribbled his initials and the corresponding time of arrival on the paperwork while simultaneously trying to juggle a cup of coffee and the uneaten portion of his sandwich. “A woman, huh?”
“Yeah. Real looker, too, if you like ‘em ventilated. The ME said he’d be in to conduct the post-mortem within an hour. Catch ya later.”
Brock took a quick swallow from his thermos and scanned the ME’s street report: unidentified Caucasian female, age approximately twenty-five, killed by multiple gunshots. Great, another shooting.
“C’mon, honey,” he sighed. “Let’s get you situated. It’s not your fault you screwed up my break, right?”
The morgue Brock worked in dated back to the Depression and was showing its age. The walls were covered in white porcelain tiles, save for the patches where squares had been pried away by bored municipal employees, exposing the fossilized epoxy. What wasn’t tile in the room was stainless steel, so the place echoed like Mammoth Cave, amplifying the squeaking of the gurney’s wheels to an unnerving degree.
Brock maneuvered this charge into the small, well-lit autopsy room located off the storage facilities. A large stainless-steel table, complete with drains and a microphone dangling from an overhead boom, dominated the available space. He swiftly transferred his charge to the autopsy table and began the morbidly intimate act of undressing a dead stranger.
Every article of clothing had to be tagged, bagged and recorded in case further examination was required by CSI. Once that was taken care of, it was up to the Medical Examiner would crack her skull open and lay bare the folds and creases of her brain, open her ribcage like a Venetian blind, juggle her liver and lights, and explore the cold cradle of her womb for signs of violation or stillborn offspring. Then, and only then, after all her innermost secrets had been revealed, would she be handed back to Brock, who deftly mended the wounds made by murderer and coroner alike, so her loved ones would be able to identify her.
His co-workers called him the Tailor. Never to his face, of course, but he knew it anyway. He didn’t mind. He’d inherited his dexterity with needle and thread from his maternal grandfather, who’d spent his life working in the Garment District. Let them call him whatever they liked. He was good at his job. The last guy in charge of it left the poor bastards looking like escapees from a Frankenstein movie.
He glanced at the corpse’s face. Yeah, she was a looker, all right. Funny thing though, she still had her sunglasses on.
At least she’d missed getting a slug in the skull. God, he hated those. She had taken three bullets at point-blank range. Whoever shot her ruined a perfectly good leather jacket, not to mention the woman inside it. He hoped he could finish undressing her before the rigor mortis set in.
The jacket slid off easily enough, but as he removed it he saw the puncture marks that covered her inner arms. Junkie. That explained it. Dope deal gone wrong. He folded the jacket careful
ly. He’d had one just like it, back in college, and it’d taken him years to break it in just right. He reached for the mirrored sunglasses that covered the dead woman’s eyes. One of the lenses was cracked but still intact. He wondered what color her eyes used to be.
The body abruptly twitched, but Brock was used to such things. In the ten years he’d spent prepping and stitching up the dead, he’d seen plenty of twitching cadavers. He’d even seen one sit up, like a sleeper waking up from a nap. It was just the delayed response of the muscles, like the dead frogs and dry- cell batteries back in high-school biology class.
Suddenly the dead woman’s cold hand clamped his wrist. Brock watched in dumb horror as the cadaver’s abdomen hitched sharply once, twice, three times. For some reason he saw himself sitting behind the wheel of his old Chevy, cursing the motor as it refused to turn over on a cold winter morning. The dead woman coughed and a lungful of black blood gushed forth from her mouth. Brock felt his egg-salad sandwich struggling its way to freedom.
He tried to pull away, but the corpse wouldn’t let go. So he screamed. It echoed and re-echoed in his ears. The dead woman relinquished her hold, allowing him to flee through the swinging doors of the morgue, never to return.
Sonja sat up on the autopsy table, her hands laced gingerly over her stomach. She wasn’t sure what the seraph had done to her, but it apparently worked. And not a moment too soon, either. She hated waking up on autopsy tables. At least she hadn’t regained consciousness as the coroner’s electric bone-saw was making its way into her skull.
Miraculous resurrection or not, she felt like shit. Her head was full of burning water the color of midnight. Another coughing spasm shook her as she slid off the table, causing the room to tilt under her feet. She picked up her folded jacket, groaning at the sight of the fresh bullet holes. Maybe is she used some electrician’s tape, no one would notice.
. Luckily she’d woken up in that particular morgue before and was familiar with the layout, so there wasn’t any problem escaping. She staggered out a side door and headed down the corridor leading to the loading dock, where the mortuaries came to pick up the dearly departed
She was vaguely aware of a terrible pain in her gut, but that no longer mattered. What mattered was the anger. The anger fed on the pain, creating a rage that was crystalline in its purity. As it grew, the rage unfurled like an exotic, night- blooming orchid. And with it came power.
She felt its siren call, beckoning her to relinquish control and surrender to its acid embrace. In the past she’d always panicked, disturbed by the visions it conjured, and refuted its source. She’d allowed it to run riot, and when it was sated, she’d blamed The Other for its excesses. Now, for the first time since she’d been remade in Morgan’s image, she did not deny herself the pleasure of exulting in her fury.
She embraced it as part of her, as natural as breathing or pissing. She felt the power as it coursed through her, teasing her with serpent tongues and electric sparks. She looked down at her hands and saw they were sheathed in roiling, red-black plasma.
She moved through the night streets, unseen but not unfelt; her passage marked by a shock wave that affected those around her like skiffs caught in the wake of a battle cruiser.
A mother slapped her child, only to slap it harder when it began to cry.
A small boy pinched his infant sister hard enough to raise a bruise on her defenseless flesh.
A bored housewife glanced at the cutlery rack, then back at her husband, sprawled before the blaring television set.
A thin young man with horn-rims and hair cut so close his scalp gleamed through the stubble pulled down the shade in his bedroom before opening the dresser drawer where the two deer rifles, five handguns and five hundred rounds of ammo were stashed.
Wrapped in each other’s arms, amid tangled sheets and sweaty afterglow, two lovers began to quarrel.
The family dog growled, ears laid flat against its skull, before drawing blood from its master’s hand.
And Sonja was with each of them, in some fashion, as they reacted to her goad, feeding on their hate and anger.
A dozen outbursts occurred with every step she took. Some reacted with petty tirades, while others were far more brutal in their response. She did not create the resentment and frustration locked inside these incidental strangers; she merely permitted its expression. Pangloss had been right: the seeds of self-destruction lurked within every human mind she touched. Humans hungered for extinction, be it their own or their enemies’. She felt herself growing stronger with every incident, as she incorporated their rage into her own.
A part of her was repulsed by the careless sowing of discord and struggled to make itself heard over the bloodlust singing in her veins, but to no avail. She moved through the city, touching off a thousand domestic quarrels, bar room brawls, backroom altercations, and back alley rapes. She heard the wails of police sirens and the screaming of ambulances as they responded to the sudden epidemic of shootings and stabbings. Good. That would give her the cover she needed.
She nimbly dodged a police car, its lights flashing and siren cranked to full volume, as it rounded the corner. She laughed, and the sky trembled.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Claude?”
Although distorted by echo, the name sounded familiar. Maybe it was his. He tried to open his eyes and see who was calling, but his lids were felt as if they were epoxied shut. Who’d want to do a dumb thing like that? He moved to rub the glue from his eyes, but his arms refused to respond properly. It was as if he were moving underwater.
Suddenly he was aware of a sense of well-being coming over him. When he tried to remember why he was happy, his head began to swell and his eyeballs throbbed in their sockets.
“Why think? Just accept it.”
The words felt good in his head, even if they weren’t his own. After all, it seemed like excellent advice. Why fight feeling good? He settled back in the comfortable leather armchair, determined to follow the voice’s suggestion. He turned his attention to his surroundings and saw he was in a sumptuously appointed apartment and dressed in a quilted smoking jacket. He tried to bring the room and its furnishings into sharper focus, only to be rewarded by a jab of pain into the frontal lobes, warning him to not question what he saw.
Suddenly a woman’s voice was speaking to him. “I’m so glad everything’s been taken care of, aren’t you? Now we can be alone together.”
Denise was sitting on the bed. Claude couldn’t remember seeing her there before, but she must have been there all along. She looked just like she did in his dream. She was smiling at him, her cheeks flushed with excitement.
“My parents are so happy you found me. My father will repay you handsomely.” As she stood up, the room seemed to flicker and suddenly she was dressed in a long, flowing gown with a golden diadem perched atop her head. “Half a kingdom is a just reward for the return of a lost princess.” The diadem quickly disappeared, although the gown stayed. It was virgin white, displaying cleavage frothy with lace and satin ribbons. Claude ached to touch it.
Denise crossed the room and came to rest in his lap, nestling against him like a tiny bird. The dress mutated a third time, transforming itself into a bridal gown, complete with veil. Claude brushed his fingers against lace and mother-of-pearl buttons. Real. It was all real.
“Of course it’s real, silly,” Denise laughed. “All you have to do is accept it.”
“But what about Sonja Blue? What happened to her?”
Denise shuddered at the mention of her name. “I’m so glad you got rid of that horrible Blue woman! I can’t believe she was going around claiming to be me. As if that wasn’t the silliest thing you ever heard ! Why, she didn’t even look like me!” She leaned forward and kissed Claude, causing him to forget who was, and wasn’t, Sonja Blue altogether.
It had been a very long time since the last time Claude had sex, and he was uncomfortably aware of how hard his cock was getting. He was afraid of insulting Denise by p
rodding her. But she was so close, so warm. He inhaled, savoring her scent. He was surprised to find she smelled of White Diamonds. It was hardly the perfume he associated with a blushing nymphet princess.
Without warning, Denise’s flesh became transparent, revealing the skull underneath the skin, and the wedding gown became mottled with fungus, as if it’d been buried underground for a long time. The lidless eyes goggled at him from their bared orbits. Claude tried to scream, but it wouldn’t come out and just sat in his chest like a dead weight.
“What’s wrong, darling?” the skeleton bride asked. “You weren’t thinking about that horrible Blue woman gain, were you?”
His vision shimmered and Denise was once again wrapped in flesh and unsoiled satin. “You know how it upsets you when you do that. And when you’re upset, I’m upset. You don’t want to see me that way, do you?”
Claude shook his head.
“I’m glad we understand each other,” Denise smiled. “I don’t want you to think about that horrible woman anymore.”
Claude nodded, the skull face with its peeled-grape eyes already fading from his memory. The bridal gown was gone. In its place was a sheer white negligee. Although the details of her body were obscured by the layers of chiffon, Claude knew she was nude underneath it. His breathing grew deeper and his brow became slick with sweat. His fingers trembled as he stroked her hair.
He had given up wanting things a long time ago, after Life cheated him of everything he ever hoped for. What was the point of wishing for things he could never have, like a decent job and a house? All it led to was frustration and disappointment. Still, he had wanted Denise from the moment he first saw her in his dream. But he knew that was impossible. Denise was a shadow. Desiring her made as much sense as that old movie he watched one night, where the cop fell in love with a portrait of a murdered woman. How could Denise Thorne be sitting on his lap, breathing into his ear, if she no longer existed? And even if she was still alive, she would be old enough to be his mother.
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