Didn’t take a neurosurgeon to figure that one out. His faded and mismatched clothes looked like something from a bad blue-light special. Oh boy.
I reminded myself that I was way outta this guy’s league. I was the kind of girl geeks like him had wet dreams about. He was not the kind of guy I had dreams about. Normally.
“Uh huh. Well, just remember: Real women leave sensible behind when it comes to footwear. It’s all about the hot factor.” I could attest that Jimmy definitely worked in my favor when out at the clubs.
“I see.”
No, he didn’t. A blind person could see that much. Some people got it, some people didn’t. Generally speaking, those that didn’t ended up shopping at places like Goodwill and I avoided them like the plague. They can’t be taught. You could lead a horse to Evian, but you can’t make it drink.
“Well I think I get the next part. You went food searching. Big earthquake. I get crushed. You spirit me off to the Temple somehow managing to drag me up those steep stairs. And now we’re sitting in your… um… living room.”
“There was more to it than just that. I had to pull all that rubble off of you. And then once I got you into the Temple I had to go for my pack with the candles and search out the supplies and…” he said.
I was touched. That was a lot to go through for a stranger. Even for weirdos starting out in some kind of raising the dead club founded by old dead Aztecs. Not everyone could join the in crowd. Others had to work really hard at it.
“All of that for me? Guess you got lucky with that earthquake. Bet you’re glad it ended well.”
“Um, really, I didn’t think it would work. Or at least not do what it did. I don’t know. It’s cool though, I mean it did work! And wow did it work. I know that your neck and back had to be broken. Yet you can walk. You were absolutely dead. There’s no rigor mortis, you can obviously access higher cognitive functions like speech and…”
Oh dear, the gushing returns and brought medical babble with it.
“I suppose,” I interrupted. “Minus one Coach purse and a bad manicure, I guess I’m not the worse for wear.” Really, I wasn’t. Manicures could be fixed if one was somewhere civilized. This place wasn’t civilized.
I held out my hands and my arms. No scratches or bruises to be seen. My clothes were ripped and dirty, probably with no salvation in sight. I felt my face and didn’t notice anything like a crooked nose. Dr. Kricko back home would be happy to know that his pristine work survived death by shopping.
Two eyes, a nose, and a mouth full of teeth. Can I really complain? Maybe not. Besides, the newly improved eyesight seems a good tradeoff. Wonder if I should mention it to Jon.
“I noticed something,” I started. “It is easier to see in the dark. When you left me in that creep-o room, I could see right down the dark hallway. That’s pretty nice. Hey, no broken back and good eyes.”
“Really?” He stood up and leaned down towards me. He looked me right in the eyes, his face very close to mine. I stared right back, glad I didn’t need to blink. After his eyes opened and closed several times, he must have realized that development. “You aren’t blinking?”
I arched an eyebrow at his statement turned question. “I guess not. It’s kind of weird, but I don’t feel the need to blink.”
“Interesting.” He kept his eyes on me while reaching behind him, trying to find a notebook without looking. I cleared my throat and looked away from him to see where his hand was. Like a spell broke, he turned towards his own hand and found just what he obviously wanted. Grasping the notebook, he pulled a pen from a pocket and scrawled something.
Grrr.
Apparently, against my wishes, I really was a lab rat. Something needed to change about that. I might look cute in a bow, but I was no Minnie Mouse. We needed to set some ground rules for this relationship. Did I think relationship? No. That was it. We definitely needed some ground rules. There would be absolutely no relationship with this guy.
“Excuse me. I don’t know what you are thinking or writing there, but I got a big problem with you treating me like some kind of experiment for the tenth-grade science fair.” I crossed my arms and pursed my lips.
He looked away from the paper and at me once more. “What?”
I sighed. As the breath escaped my lips, I worked to ensure an even tone. “I am not your personal lab rat. What are you writing?”
He fumbled with the paper and then pushed it towards me. “Here.”
I stared at the page before me and felt my brows furrow. He really needed to go back for some penmanship lessons. Geez, I’d seen children that wrote better than that in preschool. I made out the word ‘eyes’ and ‘tear ducts’ and everything else lost me. At least there was nothing that resembled ‘subject’ or ‘patient.’ I would need to rethink the whole not eating his brains thing if I saw that changed.
“What is this?” I asked, looking at him again.
“I told you, I just want to make sure we understand what’s going on with you. To know what you can expect. You were dead, you know.”
“Like I’m gonna forget something like that? Do you think I’m retarded?” This guy really pushed my buttons.
“No, no, no.” His quick apology quieted my anger. “Really, no. I just, well, you see…”
I watched as he raked his hand through his hair again. I wondered if I should move that one lock of hair so it would go behind his ear. It seemed that one lock obscured his eyes and… wait… wasn’t I supposed to be angry about something?
“Stop. It’s okay.” Not really. But I felt bad for him. If I wasn’t careful, I’d end up adopting myself a puppy dog named Jon.
“I just want to understand what’s happening to you. Don’t you want to know?”
Hell, yeah I wanted to know. But I didn’t want him to know that. What if there were some negative side effects to this deal? Okay, some might see eating brains and drinking blood and stuff as negative. I was thinking more along the lines of body part falling off and stuff. No one wants to hang out with a girl if she was going to be losing pieces of herself at random. I needed warning about things like that.
I was a live-in-the-moment kind of girl, but sometimes life came along and made you think about the future. Like giant things falling from the sky. Then, it was like you realized all the things you didn't do in life. See the last 007 movie, kiss the cute guy across the dinner table on the cruise even though he was obviously digging you, saying good-bye to your grandma before leaving on a trip. Those sorts of things.
For one brief second I even considered the children I’d never have before things went black. Yeah, kids! Never would have guessed that one. I'm allergic to children!
I really detested feeling like I was visiting a doctor’s office. No needles, or poking, or prodding. Blah. There’s a reason I avoided doctors like the plague they are. Did I have questions about my newly found situation? Yeah. Should I chill out and work with Jon on finding the answers? Probably. Did I want to give in that easily? No, I was a stubborn girl.
“Maybe.” That was as close as I would allow for him. He needed to work harder if he wanted to hang out with me more. Really.
“See. We can just talk about this some more. You already told me about your eyes. If we start with things you’ve already noticed, that might help us out. This isn’t the sort of thing I really know how to do.”
“You mean to tell me you don’t do this with all the girls you resurrect?” I cooed. Okay, a little shameless flirting might not be too bad. His ears turned red.
“I told you, I’ve never done this before.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that one before,” I continued. I added a wink, and twisted until I faced him a little more.
He visibly relaxed, obviously cluing in that I was not serious. “Oh.”
I shifted my weight again, trying to get more comfortable. Unfortunately for me, there didn’t seem to be much room for me to move around for fear of knocking something over and causing an avalanche of junk.
> I thought about his request, trying to remember if I noticed anything out of the ordinary. Other than my sight, that was about it. It wasn’t like we’d done much of anything. Got up off the table, walk down a zillion stairs, tromped through the dark, rode in the truck, arrived here. No marathons or leaping tall buildings in a single bound or deflecting bullets to make me suddenly go ‘hey, that’s not normal’.
Something nagged in the back of my head. I woke up… what was it?
“Oh!” That’s right. I remembered those first few minutes. “When I first… came to… I was really stiff. It was hard to do anything like talk or move.”
Oh yeah, the way sexy gurgling probably turned him on. Or maybe it was the cupping of my breast. Dr. GrabbyHands didn’t seem phased by my bringing up those first few minutes.
“Stiff… hard to talk and move…” he muttered as he wrote.
“Feeling good now, though.” I stretched. Some bones popped, relieving pressure in my back.
“That’s good. What about when you moved that stone altar?”
“When I did what?”
“Uh… you got up. You came towards me…”
Oh yes. When I first debated decking the guy for his many crimes of shoe stealing and boob grabbing. I remembered it too well. It only happened like five seconds ago.
“What about it?” Maybe I should remember my anger at his copping a feel. With Choos intact and safely on my feet once more, I could deal with forgiving him of that particular felony.
“Do you know how you moved it?”
“What?”
“The altar. Were you trying to move it or was it just an accident?” he persisted removing his glasses and rubbing them with his shirttail. Considering the shirt looked just as dusty as everything else, I wasn’t sure his efforts would pay off.
I thought about what he said. At the time, my only thought was him. And figuring out what was going on. Did I move the altar? As I reflected, I remembered it shifting, but what was the big deal? He stuck me on a table, doesn’t seem like a person leaping from it might be great on the sturdy staying in one place plan.
“I really wasn’t thinking about it. I had other ideas on my mind.”
Yeah, remember? SHOES!
How did he expect a girl to remember anything when shoes were on the line, anyway? And really, so what if I mucked up someone’s feng shui in the process of locating my shoes? Totally expected and understandable, right? It was shoes, after all. I could lift a car off the adrenaline alone, as could any other woman.
“You probably moved it a good couple of feet. It was solid stone. Probably weighed a ton.”
“Huh.”
Really? Well that was kinda cool. Maybe my obsessed adrenaline pumped body turned me into Super-Bea. That wasn’t just kinda cool, that rocked. I felt a smile creep onto my face.
“Maybe we should test that one. It really didn’t seem like something… normal.”
Was he trying to say I was a freak? No one calls me a freak and gets away with it!
“What?!” My screech probably hurt the ears of dogs for three miles. “Are you trying to say I’m not normal?”
I’d take above average, sure. His tone just didn’t seem like that was his intent.
“Well, you are dead and walking,” Jon pointed out.
Good point.
“Uh. Maybe.” I wasn’t ready to admit that I might actually be a freak of nature. Cruise ticket up De Nile for one, please.
He asked me a few more questions that I had no clue how to answer. Like I knew that much about biology. Frankly, I was surprised Jon did. He dug in the ground for a living, why would he know anything about biology? I didn’t pay much attention to course requirements in college. I took whatever Mickey Mouse course required to get me through distasteful things like science, math, and English. Mostly, I just hung out with my sisters in the sorority house and partied. That’s what you went to college for, right? Forget the education garbage.
My answers satisfied him for the moment, but I got a nasty suspicion we’d be having a “lab” part of his science experiment gone psycho. Blah on that. Shouldn’t we have focused on something more important? Like how to get me back to civilization?
The second time he yawned trying to ask the same question I put a stop to his game of Twenty Questions.
“Hey, you okay?” I asked. It wasn’t that I cared, so much as I’d like to survive without third degree burns from his inquisition.
“I’ll be okay. Just a bit tired,” he yawned again. I could see the weariness in his eyes. I felt fine. Maybe death was the kind of power nap you got loads of energy from. What did I know? First time being resurrected from the dead and all.
“Why don’t you go and get some rest. When was the last time you slept?”
“I dunno. Been a long day,” he muttered.
You don’t say. Try dying. That definitely makes for a long day. Night. Uh… whatever. “Maybe you should rest.”
“What about you?”
That better not be some sort of invitation. “I’ll be fine.”
Okay, maybe not fine, how could anyone be fine after the craziness my life dished up on a silver platter this week? But, really, his looking half asleep wasn’t gonna help things. He was my ticket outta this Godforsaken hellhole of a country. I needed him fresh and ready to go. Surely, I could find something to entertain myself with. I looked around the shambles of a room.
Or maybe not.
c
chapter seven
The fact that Jon was snoring in under two minutes without moving from his spot was sign enough for anyone to know he was tired. Who knew that a simple resurrection could drain you? The guy was beyond wasted.
I weighed the chances that standing might cause a landslide of garbage that would bury me versus staying put. I survived (with help) an earthquake and a falling ceramic monstrosity, but did I stand a chance fighting death by paper cut? Taking my chances, I stood. Carefully, I picked my way over scattered debris on the floor to look at the artifacts from Jon’s dig. I marveled at the detailed work still evident on a broken cup that I picked up. These people took pride in their work, I’ll give you that. Setting it back down, I continued my investigation.
I only hoped I wouldn’t find more dead girls under all this stuff. Hey, he could claim “first time” all he wanted, but who knew. I bet Dahmer seemed like a great guy when you first met him, too. Then it was wham, bam, slash you ma’am. Except, everywhere I looked I saw books, papers, notebooks, half-chewed pencils, and broken items I assumed came from the dig. I returned to the seat Jon so kindly cleared for me and decided to look through the things he tried to show me. Maybe I could make sense of it. I gingerly took several papers from the pile between Jon and myself and began leafing through them. Silly me, thinking that I might be able to translate this gobbledegook into English. I shook my head. I hated studying. Why crack a book when I could be partying or shopping or anything infinitely more interesting?
Things had a nasty habit of changing.
I realized that with my newfound status in life or death, I might need to take the time to at least become familiar with the world at large. I wanted to fight against it with every fiber of my being, but what was a dead girl to do?
If I had my way, life would go back to the way it was. First, I would change my life status back to ‘alive’. Then I'd be on my cruise ship. No more massacred manicure problem, and there’d be a nice cool beverage with copious amounts of alcohol. In a week, I’d be home at my job shopping on someone else’s dime. I’d go out on many dates, and just be, well, normal.
For now, there was no way for that to happen, and I wanted to wallow. I wanted to throw myself on the ground in a fit. I needed to cry, kick, and scream. Times like this called for an indulgence of Double Brownie Fudge Chocolate ice cream. Smothered in chocolate sauce no less. But no. I was stuck in the back end of nowhere, armpit of Mexico. I had no way of getting home. There was a chance I would never see Double Brownie Fudge Chocolate ice
cream again. Worse, there was a chance I would never see my shoe collection or designer clothes again.
It sucked. Not only because I liked my designer stuff, but you know what, just because I was the walking dead didn’t mean I couldn’t look good.
When I looked back, I realized how selfish I was at that moment. How vain and petty and shallow. Okay, like I grew that much? No, I’m still vain and petty and shallow. Maybe not as bad, but still.
It took me a few minutes to compose myself. I told myself I could not cry. I would not cry. My life was not over. It couldn’t be over. I wouldn’t let it be over. I had a second chance, and what was I going to do with it? I was going to get back to civilization, that’s what I was going to do!
I made up my mind that, come hell or high water, I would find a way to get home. I’d return to my closet overstuffed with beautiful clothes and gorgeous shoes. I would not be stuck in a third world country for the rest of my… death.
Stubborn and determined when I wanted to be, yup, that's me!
What I needed was a plan. Jon could only take me so far. He could help me figure out the bigger part of this mess – understanding just what my newfound state of being entailed. After that? I needed to know.
I made a game plan. First up, I would actually start reading. Yuck, researching. I could feel the hives begging to come out. Gross. Which was worse? Researching or hives? I shuddered. Neither was desirable.
After that, we could run whatever those "tests" were that Jon wanted. After that? Well if it meant setting off in my Jimmy Choos, so be it. I could walk back to America. Didn’t know what I’d tell the border patrol, but I could do it. Where there was a will, there was a way. Even without Amex. Right?
It was a light at the end of a miserable Mexican tunnel, and I set about working. First up was trying to make sense of Jon’s so-called organizational system. There was no way this was organized. Chaos looked in this pit and took off running, screaming in fear.
Juan of the Dead Page 5