Thicker than Blood (54 page)

Oh, and yes, there are children here. A short
girl, maybe twelve or thirteen, lives somewhere among my circle of
houses with another lady who pretends to be her mother. This is all
very normal and accepted. The girl has long black braided hair and
Helena tells me I’ll be happy to meet her someday. I would never
wish this on a child, but I guess I didn’t have a choice
either.

Trying for some levity, I ask where all the
stray city cats are. Helena replies, “What’s a cat?” I ask her,
where are all the birds in the sky. She’s like, “What’s a
bird?”

I think maybe she’s joking, but it occurs to
me that every tree I’ve seen is dead. Every blade of grass, a
browned, yellowed, or otherwise lifeless fleck of paper it may as
well be. Litter is all it is, the remnants of a world that once
thrived, now so very unalive.

To my surprise, she tells me there is
electricity, but nothing seems to work very well. Especially when
we draw near anything electrical. She wouldn’t elaborate further.
Oh, and she says there’s running water more or less, but it isn’t
good for our kind. I ask what she means and she says, “Think, like
magnets of opposing poles. Whatever you might call natural, we are
its opposite.”

What a comfort she is, this Helena
person.

Breathing and eating and dieting and
exercising and taking vitamins and rubbing age-defying creams all
over ourselves ... that’s all so obsolete now. It’s unnecessary to
maintain our dead selves. So last-season, says Helena, the idea of
dieticians and trainers and doctors.

“But if you absolutely need one,” she says,
pointing down the street, “there’s a clever pair of men who run a
gym. One of them had their Waking not too long ago, discovered he
was a bodybuilder in his Old Life. The other was a surgeon—his name
is Collin. So depressed he became, when he realized all his
knowledge of health is for naught in this dark new world … Darling,
please pretend to have a heart attack at some point, or perhaps a
little summer cold. Indigestion. A rash. He would so very much
appreciate the attention, even if it’s not real.”

Life was so unnecessarily difficult. Only
here in death, she explains, is anyone truly at peace.

Sorry Helena, I feel anything but peaceful.
It must show on my face because she looks particularly annoyed as
she presents me to a cluster of houses at the west edge of town.
“This one,” she says with a little nod, “is yours.”

And then we’re standing on its creaky little
porch. I peer around, afraid to touch anything. It all looks so
old.

“You can try to smile,” Helena suggests
stiffly. She puts a calming hand on my shoulder. I shrug it off.
“You should rest,” she tells me, peeved a bit by my rudeness. “When
you wake, you’ll see how happy we are. You have no Earthly burdens
anymore. Like a job, or a husband, or a family, or—”

“How’s that mean anything to me,” I argue,
“if I don’t even remember the family or husband or job I might’ve
had? What if—What if I was happy with my life?”

“Oh, please,” she snaps, her whole tone going
sour. “Who in their right mind would turn down an eternity where
you own a house, no responsibility, no bills to pay, and enjoy
endless time to do whatever it is you desire? Seriously, girl, open
your cold dead eyes.”

I return her tirade with a blank stare. I’m
silent as the so-called heart housed in my chest somewhere ... the
one that doesn’t pump blood, cold as a stone, no purpose being
there at all as far as I’m concerned.

Seeing my forlorn expression, she huffs
irritably and says, “Have it your way. Enjoy the scenery of
Trenton, your new hometown, or don’t. Meet some people or keep
entirely to yourself. Return to your grave and rot, I haven’t a
care. My task here is done.” She turns away and descends the porch
steps in her clicking jet-black heels.

“Your task?”

Without missing a step or turning back,
strutting away she calls out, “You may someday be chosen, miss
Winter, and you’ll be made to do your first Raising whether you
like it or not. Then you’ll know the pain of bringing a sniveling
ungrateful girl into this wonderful world. It’s like childbirth,
but infinitely more regrettable.”

Her black locks of hair swinging, she
disappears into the misty city.

I drop into a rocking chair, thankful it’s
there to catch me. Had it not been, I would’ve fallen clean to the
ground. Not that it matters. At this rate, I might as well drop
dead into a hole. Words don’t fool me … Undead is still dead. There
is no convincing me otherwise. I’ve kissed Life goodbye without a
flinch of my cold dead lips.

Sniveling ungrateful girl, she called me.

I look out from the porch of my forever-home,
only to witness two people break into dance in the middle of the
street for no reason. Maybe I should smile, but the sight of them
annoys the hell out of me. I look away and see three middle-aged
women taking a calm stroll together. If I take for granted that all
of this may actually be happening to me, that I may truly be
Undead, that this world is really the world I’m to live in for the
rest of time, maybe longer, then I must realize that all these
crazy people are my new forever-neighbors, in my new
forever-neighborhood. Trenton, she called it. My new
forever-home.

The place I now live. Forever.

I don’t remember entering the little house I
was told is mine, but I’m relieved to find it in better condition
on the inside than it appeared on the out. The front den opens to a
small kitchen area that I’ll supposedly never use. Why it’s there,
I’ll never know. A cockroach scuttles across the floor, disappears
into a crack in the wall. That must be my roommate, a fellow
survivor of the end of the world. Further in, a short hallway opens
into a quaint bathroom on one side and a bedroom on the other. And
there you have it. In less than thirty seconds, I’ve given myself a
tour of the place I’ll spend the rest of forever.

Welcome to your new, roomier coffin. Comes
with a kitchen.

I suppose that’s what inspires me to run.
From the house I bolt, not knowing where I’m headed. This dress I
was put in, it snags on the door as I flee, the sleeve torn
straight off. This hair of mine that was cured from the earth,
white as winter, it bustles behind me like a cape. My reconstructed
legs thrust forward, to where, who cares. From the house I would
live in forever, the town I would live in forever. From this
strange new life, from my Icecap eyes, my death I can’t remember,
my beautiful life, I just run, run, run.

I run until there’s no town around me
anymore, until there’s no person or soul or breath in sight, until
even the dead trees have fallen scarce, and before me only a
cliff’s edge grows closer.

That’s when I stop running.

At the edge of the cliff.

I peer down into the misty valley below which
looks nothing like a valley at all. It’s as though this place, the
deadwood forest, the town, as though it were aloft in the clouds
somewhere. The mist down below, perhaps that’s the planet from
which I’d died.

YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF.

I’m going to jump. That sounds like a
brilliant idea. I lean over the precipice. All I see is a world of
mist below, a world below the mist where maybe I lived a life.

The. Only. One. Left. To. Blame. Is. You.

I’m going to do this. I close my eyes.

“It’s a beautiful sight, isn’t it?”

I spin, startled by the voice, but my foot
has already slipped and I fall—then catch the edge of the cliff
with my hands, clinging on for life, hanging on for death.

The person emerges over the brink of the
cliff. His pale face peers down at me as I hang from the edge, my
legs dangling, far below me the mists of unknown, far below me
where my second death waits patiently.

“Can I help you?” he offers kindly.

His face is handsome and gentle. Of course
I’d notice something like that at a time like this.

“I don’t want to be helped,” I cry out,
breathless.

“Then why are you hanging on at all? Let
go.”

He’s my age—I assume—with short black hair
cutting partway down his forehead. I must’ve had the fashion eye
when I was alive, or else the Refinery girls already rubbed off on
me, because I notice he’s garbed in a fitted black button-down and
slim jeans, clean, well-dressed and sleek. He smiles when our eyes
meet, lighting up his whole tortured, dark demeanor. I even see
blush in his cheeks, as though blood actually flows through his
veins, just as it totally doesn’t in mine, such a liar even a cheek
can be.

“This is the first day of my life,” I
explain.

“Careful,” he warns me very seriously. “It’s
a crime here to count days.”

“Are you serious?” I ask, then realize at the
sight of his chuckling eyes that he’s teasing me. Or maybe not, I
can’t tell. Dead people aren’t the easiest to read. “What’s it
matter, anyway? What’s the point of all this …?”

“Many people have come to this cliff,” he
admits, looking off into the mist, pensive. “Many have also, like
you, considered throwing away this opportunity.”

“Opportunity??” I blurt out, while
simultaneously marveling at how light my body is … how easy it is
to just hang here from this precipice, just as easily as I could
let go. Is strength another quality that accompanies this new body?
Or is it that I now weigh less than a person?

What does that say?

“I’ll make you a deal,” he says. “Let me help
you up and I’ll give you a kiss.”

“That’s your offer?”

“Yes.”

I fully realize I can pull myself up.
Somehow, hanging effortlessly as I am, I know I can do it without
his help.

Or his kiss. “You need to offer more than
that,” I tell him, my eyes narrowing. “I didn’t ask for this. I
didn’t ask for any of this. Why am I here? Wasn’t I—Wasn’t I
peaceful enough, happy enough being left dead and in the ground
where I belong?”

“You tell me,” he says teasingly, that snarky
smile curling his cheeks into dimples again.

I hate that cute, snarky smile. “What will
happen if I let go? Will I die? Can the dead die again?”

“No,” he admits with a hint of sadness in his
voice. “If you must know, you’ll likely have a hard landing on the
rock lands below, and your body will break into pieces. Shatter.
Like a statue. Or a mannequin. A very pretty mannequin,” he adds. I
look away, annoyed. “And you will remain alive, mostly in your
head. The rest of you won’t be animated anymore, as I understand
it.”

I regret asking. I sorely, sorely regret
asking.

“Or you could let me help you,” he goes on,
“and I could show you the town. Show you what you have in your
Final Life. If still you’re not convinced, feel free to jump into
the sky.” And he extends his hand.

Helena’s last words resonate with me, that I
was a “task” for her, and someday I may be chosen to Raise my own
poor soul into this world. Not to mention that some unassuming
moment, I may recover all my lost memory at once. Snap, it’ll all
come back, shocking me like an “unwelcome enemy” ... and I wonder
if the anger and unhappiness I’m harboring is just my Old Life
locked away in my skeleton somewhere—a prisoner. Maybe it’s
something that, if I remembered it, I would be glad I was freed
from. Maybe this new life is something I’d secretly begged for,
wished for. Maybe I really am ungrateful.

Or maybe I’ll never remember the person I
was.

Maybe she’s gone forever.

“Okay,” I agree emptily, taking his hand.

In one short little effort, I’m standing on
the edge of the cliff again, no longer hanging on for dear death. I
look into the eyes of the person who saved me from a certain
shattering—or postponed a certain shattering.

“You look better on your feet,” he tells
me.

He doesn’t kiss me. I don’t ask his name and
he doesn’t ask mine, not now. We just cross the sandy plains
together and on through a range of dead trees, making our way back
to my new hometown Trenton.

I’m not sure what to talk about. What do you
say to the person who just saved you from kinda-not-really dying?
“Is it always so overcast?” I ask, deciding to point out the eerie
silver wash that is the sky.

“Has to do with our eyes,” he explains,
stepping over a tree branch. “Undead don’t regard darkness the same
way the Living do. Something about being stuck in the End of Time,
I guess. But hey, listen, if you squint real good, you can make out
a sharp spot in the sky, slightly more silver than the rest ...
That’s the sun.”

“Oh.” I look up. All I see is grey and grey
and grey.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you’re
keeping track of days.” He smiles again, warm, welcoming. “I’m not
the police or the Deathless King, so help me.”

“We have police in this world?—and a
King?”

“No. Not exactly.”

“How are we alive?” I can’t stop the
questions … They just pour out. “How are we carrying on without
heartbeats or blood or—or anything?”

“How did we carry on with them?”

I sigh. “Please, is there a single concrete
thing you can tell me about this world? Something useful?
Anything?”

“Yes. My name’s Grimsky.”

I roll my eyes. “I’m Winter, I guess.”

His expression breaks at the obvious
dejection in my voice. “Winter … The name they gave you. I
understand. Someday you’ll remember your original name, though by
then I’m certain you’ll not identify with it in the least. You have
beautiful hair.”

The compliment comes so suddenly, I have to
cover my face with a hand, like I’m blushing. Reminding myself that
nothing runs in my veins, I drop the hand and say, “Thanks.”

“We’ve arrived.”

The tall iron gates of Trenton loom ahead,
awaiting my timely arrival from the cliff for which it surely knew
I’d be headed, at which it surely knew I’d meet this fetching
person called Grimsky, by whom it surely knew I would be somewhat
saved, and with whom it surely knew I’d once again return.