The Beautiful Dead (6 page)

The settled
remains of her house still lie at the corner of town, somewhere no one any
longer inhabits.

I suppose
that’s the “worst case scenario” of a Waking Dream gone bad. Most aren’t like
that, I’m reassured. Most are quite pleasant, or entirely ineffective.

I’m curious in
my Old Life if I would’ve gone for a man like the one from the tavern … if a
man like that would’ve gone for me. His hand felt so warm on my lips, shutting
me up. I think I could feel his pulse even then, throbbing from the little
veins in his palm. I almost think I can feel it now.

Suddenly I
feel very bad about leaving him there. I want to go back and save him. I should
go back.

“Winter,” says
a raspy voice.

I look up,
finding a familiar face on the porch next to mine. I’m surprised that I’ve
already made it back to my house somehow. “Hey, Grim.” I try to smile. “Couldn’t
make our date?”

“We were told
to keep to our houses, incidentally. That’s why there’s no one out on the
streets. Some sort of town scare, probably a false alarm.” He shrugs. “Speaking
of, what are
you
doing out?”

“Just so
happens, I was part of that so-called town scare.” I smile coyly. “It happened
at the tavern. You never told me the Undead could die, Grim.”

Grimsky’s face
turns very serious.

“What
happened?” he asks me.

So my
pale-faced neighbor joins me on my porch and I tell him everything. By the time
I get to mentioning the militant woman, he’s covering his mouth with a pasty
hand. “She interrogated me like a criminal, asking me if I knew Humans, or if I
was one of the—What
are
the Deathless anyway?”

“I don’t
know,” he admits quietly. “Something awful. The woman you speak of is one of
our only authorities here besides the Mayor. She’s called the Judge, I think.
She protects the city from—from things.”

“We need
protection?” I ask carelessly. “I thought this whole Second Life thing was
happy-go-lucky, caution-to-the-wind and all that. What do we have to fear?”

“Nothing, of
course.” He looks away.

I sigh. I’m so
tired of my questions being evaded. “Just tell me, Grim. Is it true?—Can we die
again?”

His eyes find
mine again and he just stares at me for a very long time. Finally he says,
“No.”

“Then what did
I witness at the tavern tonight?”

“We are
eternal,” he explains, very carefully choosing his words. “We are forever,
but—Well, you remember what I told you about shattering, the day at the cliff?     We
may never die, but we can be broken. Literally.” He’s getting uncomfortable, I
can tell. He does everything but squirm while trying to answer my question. “We
have few weaknesses, but can be pulled apart. We can be … grinded to dust. I’d really
rather not talk—”

“I want to
know.”

He bites his
lip, then appears struck by a thought. Leaning into me, he quietly asks, “You
didn’t seen any Humans, did you?”

I swallow. Okay,
I didn’t tell him
everything
…

“Did you?” he
presses me. “Please say you didn’t.”

“I didn’t.”

“You
didn’t?—That’s the truth?”

“I was under the
impression that the world is dead, Grimsky.”

“It is. And
there’s probably none left, but you
must
tell me if you see one,” he
urges, narrowing his eyes. “Seeing one and not reporting it … That’s the worst
offense, Winter. The Judge would put you back to the earth.”

“Why is it
such a … a crime?”

“It just is,
okay? Please. Promise me.”

Maybe it’s the
panicked look in his eye, but I decide to not argue the point anymore. “Alright.”

How can one recognize
a Human anyway? We’re shoved through the Refinery to look just like one. If
anything, our way of life makes it such a chore to tell us apart. If there’s
such a concern about it …

But then I
already know the answer. That man in the tavern, it was unmistakable what he
was—I was just slow to let myself see it. Slow to let myself feel his warmth
like a space-heater halfway across the room. Slow to let myself hear the
obvious footfalls of his heart.

“I was told
once, the quickest way to die,” Grim murmurs, “is to forget how to live. That
sounds like an awfully stupid thing to say, until you remember how difficult it
is to live.”

“I don’t know
how I lived. Or died.”

“I pity
Humans. The daily responsibility of staying alive. Maybe that’s why we’re not
allowed around them. It reminds us too much of that awful burden.”

Without
meaning to, I put a hand over my chest, right where a hole used to be a short
hour ago. I force a smile and kindly shift the topic to something more
pleasant. “I picked this dress out for our date.”

He peers down
at the swingy red thing I’m wearing, like he’s just now seeing it for the first
time. His face lightens, his mouth spreads, his eyes open. “Yes,” he says, his
teeth shining. “Yes, it really—it really suits you. I regret our date not
happening.”

“We still have
the rest of the night,” I point out, then glance up into the silvery sky. “Or
whatever it is.”

“It’s whenever
we want it to be.” He smiles, extends his hand to me. “Come over to my house.
I’ll show you my wine glasses.”

I laugh, or
maybe it’s Winter that laughs and takes his hand, and with a sheepish giggle
she follows him into his creaky habitat.

Tonight, I
learn that even after an unnecessarily eventful day, I can still have a good
time. Even after being impaled by a sword. And being repaired at that vile pink
building—again. And half-witnessing whatever it was that I half-witnessed at
the tavern, I can still have a good time. I can smile and laugh and almost mean
it. Or at least Winter can, and maybe she’s having a good time and that’s all
that matters.

My impromptu
date with Grimsky, sharing half a bottle of wine I can’t taste, looking into a
pair of fake eyes from a pair of my own, our reconstructed hands touching,
smooth and cold and numb, it’s real enough to fool me for the time being,
casting away my worries and leaving me in a state of almost-bliss. And
almost-bliss is okay.

“Was the
chardonnay sweet enough for you?” he asks on my way out, leaning into me at the
doorway.

I take one
playful step back. “I don’t kiss on first dates. Winter likes making her men
wait.”

“Winter?”

“I … I like
making my men wait.” I dance off his porch, step onto mine. “Anyhow, we have
all the time in the world, don’t we? You said it yourself. We’re only here
until we’re not.”

He grins. “I
still owe you a kiss for saving your life.”

I reach my
door, wink at him. “Good night, Grim.”

He waves a
little wave as I swing into my house, softly close the door behind me, and shut
my eyes. A smile stretches the length of my face, a smile I can’t possibly contain.
Oh, how such a day can turn around so fast in this funny little place. How
horrors can find themselves drowned in a pair of old wine glasses, seated at
Grimsky’s wobbly dining room table. Just a couple drinks and words with my
dashing neighbor can heal the world. My maybe-past-life-poet Grimsky.

I turn from
the door still smiling—only to stop short at the sight of something in the
center of my living room.

Someone.

“Don’t eat
me,” he says.

C H A P T E R – F O U R

I back up
against the door at once, eyeing him warily. I can’t believe what I’m seeing.
He’s here. He’s alive. He’s—begging me not to eat him.

Again.

“I’m sorry,”
he whispers, so quiet I can barely make out the words. “Please don’t eat me.
I’m just—I’m—”

“Do we eat
people?” I ask plainly.

Crouched on
the floor, his eyes seem to have trouble locating mine. He’s looking at the
wall next to my head, squinting. “You aren’t—You aren’t hungry, you mean?”

“I don’t eat.
We don’t need to.” His eyebrows narrow, clearly skeptical of my answer. “Seriously,”
I reassure him. “I have no interest, like, at all. To be blunt, the idea
repulses me. No offense.”

“None taken.”

The two of us
remain silent and still for what feels like an eternity. I’m afraid to move,
like it might inspire him to yell or do something stupid. And a Human screaming
in my home after what Grimsky just told me, that would not do either of us
well.

I ask, “Can we
have a seat and—I don’t know—talk?”

“You can.”

I’ll forgive
the attitude; he’s scared. Still watching him, I slowly make my way to the
table. His eyes seem to search for me as I move across the room, which I find
curious. I pull out a chair and lower myself into it.

“Are you
okay?” I ask. “You seem disoriented.”

“It’s dark in
here,” he whispers. “I can’t see anything.” Oh, I forgot. My Undead eyes, I can
see perfectly in this probably-very-dark room. “And,” he adds, even quieter, “I
haven’t eaten in days.”

“Well. Can’t help
you much in that department, seeing as we don’t eat.”

His shirt
clings to his thickset body and there’s a sheen of sweat on his forehead,
indicating he’s either hot, ill, or terrified. Perhaps all three. His tattered
pants tell me he hasn’t washed in days, maybe longer. Thankfully I can’t smell
anything, but I imagine he’s no cologne model at the moment.

Still just as
handsome as he was at the tavern.

“Can’t you get
creative?” he snaps, a little irritable. “There is bound to be
something
to eat in this forsaken place.”

I’m about to
come back at him with some snarky remark, but I hold my tongue. I think I see
something in his watery, real eyes—something that cries desperation. This is a
real person, a real person in need of my help.

“Why me?” I
ask quietly. He practically snarls for an answer, his nose wrinkled like he
smells something awful. Maybe he does. “Wow. Sorry I asked.”

“Who else
could I go to? I had nowhere to go.” He hugs his own body, his arms bulging in
the effort, either to keep warm or just to comfort himself. “You’re the first
zombie who hasn’t tried to eat or kill me.”

Zombie. The
Z-word. For the first time, used at me in this way, I appreciate now why the
women at the Refinery found it so offensive. Just the sound of it cuts deep,
hurts in a way a sword-through-the-chest couldn’t.

“So you gonna
help me or not,” he mumbles.

Okay, it’s
clear he doesn’t want a thing more to do with me than necessary. I disgust him.
He deeply resents asking something like me for help. But how is any of this my
fault? How can I be blamed for his awful situation?

Lucky for him,
I have an idea. “We fake everything in this world,” I say, thinking aloud.
“Surely someone’s bound to fake having a family to cook for. Or a husband to
impress. Or a favorite snack to recreate late at night.”

“What do you
mean?”

“I mean I
think I can help you. Wait here.”

Really, in a
pitch-dark house, what else can he do.

I step out
onto the porch, though I realize the town is probably still on lockdown from
the “town scare” earlier. But when have I ever followed a rule since my
Raising? I make my way to a neighbor’s house—not Grimsky’s. Somewhere across
the something-of-a-cul-de-sac I live on, I find the lady I’m looking for
sitting on her porch, the one who was kind enough to answer so many of my
dead-world noob questions during my first few weeks.

“Winter,” she
says, smiling as I approach. “You look a little sickly in the eyes. Haven’t
been getting much sleep?”

“Not much,
Jasmine. Pretend-sleep is hard to come by these days. Maybe you can show me
some techniques.”

“Books,” she
explains to me, like that’s all that need be said. “You may not be used to the
ways of this world, my pet, but books are my secret. They give you somewhere to
go while keeping you just where you are.” She smiles, shakes the book in her
hand. “You should pick one up from Franken’s scriber, rabbit. It’ll pick
you
right up!”

“Actually …” I
figure, why not get to the point. “I know something else that would pick me up.
I think—I think I had a talent for cooking when I was alive. I’m not sure, but
I’d like to try. Do you happen to have any—”

“Speak no
further.” She rises from her rocking chair, invites me into her home with a
wave of her hand. I really didn’t want this to be a drawn-out thing,
considering there’s a sorta-starving person waiting not-so-patiently in my
house, but I follow her inside.

Her house is
like a little cozy cottage, warmed with the atmosphere of an herbalist living
in the woods. I smile the moment I step inside … I think I smell something
homely, like vanilla, but of course that’s just some kind of illusion because
we’re incapable of smell.

“Well,
technically,” she tells me when I point out the muted aroma, “no one can say
for sure. I’d like to insist we ‘smell with our minds’ if you think on it a certain
way. Same with foods. Once you’ve the first bite of your favorite meal, my
little pet, you’ll come to agree.”

She fetches a
pair of gloves, demonstratively pulling each one on. “You’ll need these every
time you handle living fruit. Don’t ask questions, just go along.”

I nod, going
along.

“Now every
once in a while,” she explains, “I like to sneak out of Trenton. A little ways
beyond the Harvesting Grounds is a lake—if you can believe it—around which the
most curious of things still grow. Like these,” she says, revealing a basket of
assorted roots, leaves, flowers, vegetables and stalks I can’t quite identify.
“Maybe there’s something here that can aid you in your recreations.”

“Yes,” I
agree, peering curiously into her collection. “I suppose I could, ah, toss a
salad …?”

“You’ll need
more, of course,” she adds, pulling a bowl from underneath her sink, “and maybe
a few of these,” she also adds, producing—to my surprise—a pair of plump
tomatoes from another cupboard.

“These are
amazing,” I whisper, genuinely surprised. The tomatoes, admittedly so, are not
the best a person’s ever seen, but in a world devoid of such color, these two
plump red things seem as beacons of sunlight in a very dark sky. “For a while I
was convinced there was nothing left in this world that isn’t dead or dying.”

“Rest
assured,” she murmurs, a sad tinge in her tone, “where these treasures came
from, far and few between. This isn’t the world you once knew in a breathier
state.”

After placing
the tomatoes and bowl into the vegie basket, she hands the entire thing to me.
I try to protest, but she insists. “No, no, take it all, my sweet rabbit. The
collecting of these is more a product of boredom. I’ve had my hand, it’s about
time someone else have theirs.”

“You’re
generous.”

Jasmine shrugs,
pulls off her gloves and pats my face. “Take these gloves, and invite me over
sometime. You can fix us dinner and we’ll talk the night away!”

Wondering for
a moment where in my house I might stash a Human before inviting
anyone
over, I thank her and head out the door, reminding myself that there’s a dying
living person on my living room floor, dying.

I make haste
across the courtyard with the basket hanging on my arm. Reentering my house, I
quickly shut and lock the door. He still waits there right where I’d left him.
Only his head lifts a bit at the sound of my entry, his eyes focusing somewhere
around my knees.

“Back,” I
murmur, like it’s necessary, “and I couldn’t get you much, but this’ll have to
do.”

As I approach
him, he presses up against the wall as though I were a giant insect. I
hesitate, sigh to myself, then toss the basket in front of him dejectedly.
“Feast on,” I tell him, annoyed, then plant myself at the table. He tries
reaching out, can’t seem to find the basket, then in an irritated grunt he
calls out, “Can I have a little light? Please? I could be eating clumps of soil
for all I know.”

“You’re such
a—!” And then I stop myself. After all, the Human is sort of my guest—or
permitted trespasser, whichever works—so I opt to be more tolerant and revise
my statement: “Of course. Light. You need light to see.”

I rummage
through a bag of things I forgot I collected during my first few weeks as an
Undead. From it I produce a box of matches and one gnarled candle. I stick it
on the table, flick the match against my thigh to inspire a flame, and then …
then …

Then I stare
at the flame.

This must be
the first time I’ve ever seen fire with my new eyes, because I’m instantly
entranced. I realize now that I have never seen fire. I have never truly, wholly,
completely seen the essence of a spark, an ignition, a breath of life, the
dance of particle and power at the end of a little match, at the seat of a
candle wick. The twisting of light, reds and whites and greens and purples.

“What?”

I look over at
the man, startled. “What?” I bark back.

“You gonna
light the candle sometime tonight or let it burn to your elbow?”

“What’s it to
you?” I move the match over the wick, kindling a bit of vision for my guest,
then with a puff, extinguish the beautiful thing at my fingertips.

“What is
this?” he asks the basket I set before him, not caring to hide the distaste in
his voice.

“Dinner,” I
snap back.

“Half of it’s
wilted. The tomatoes look soggy. How am I supposed to eat this?”

“I could feed
you frog carcasses if I want. If there’s even frogs left in this dumb world. Or
bird feathers or dirt. I didn’t ask to be hostess to a
human
tonight.”

He squints at
me. “Human.”

When I let the
word slip from my mouth, I hadn’t realized what it would do. It placed the two
occupants of the room into separate categories. He, the Human. Me, the not. The
moment I say it, it’s like learning I’ve died all over again.

Finally, he looks
down at the basket, frowning as he picks through it. He peers up at me with a
pouty glare and mumbles, “Dinner it is,” then slowly brings one of the soggy
tomatoes up to his face to smell it, whether out of suspicion or curiosity I
can’t tell, and decides it’s safe enough to take a bite.

I hear the
penetration of teeth through tomato skin.

The crisp cut
of water and membrane and juice.

His lips,
tongue, teeth, inviting the produce into his mouth, the slurp of salivation,
taste.

Chewing,
chewing, chewing, teeth rearrange, fumble, tumble the tomato within the cheeks,
crunch.

And he
swallows.

Down the
throat, carefully, slowly, succulent of moment to moment, the sustenance of
Human life in the simple art of a bite, the dance of fingers clutching food
clutching mouth clutching food again, then descending the smooth inviting
vessel of throat, to the belly, to the muscles, to the core.

Reinviting
strength. Reinviting awareness. Reinviting focus and hope and life.

He flits his
eyes open, connects with my longing gaze, the symphony of eating taking one
small rest for the Human to say: “What?”

I catch my
breath—my unnecessary breath I hadn’t really taken, the illusion of life once
again having fooled me—I catch my whatever and say: “Nothing.”

And he takes
another bite.

The symphony
resumes.

By the fourth
or fifth bite, he looks at me again, narrows his eyes. “Something wrong? You’re
… staring.”

“Sorry,” I
murmur, looking away. “I just—I just miss eating.” I laugh, put my hands
together. “I know that sounds stupid. But there’s a lot of things I miss.”

Chewing, he
studies my face for a while before asking, “So how’d you turn into that?”

That.

“I don’t
know,” I admit, deciding not to be offended with his brashness. “All I know is,
I was alive once. Like you. Apparently I died. Lucky me. Then for whatever
reason, I was Risen from a field, brought to a building to be fixed up, and
here I am.”

“Fixed up?”

I sigh and
look in another direction—any direction but him and his food, for some reason.
“Detail isn’t necessary. It should suffice to say, I didn’t look so pretty
coming out of the earth. I mean, what does, really?”