“Yeah, so you say. I still think you do this with all the girls,” I smiled at Jon. Harmless flirting, didn’t mean a thing…except helping me get what I wanted.
His face flushed. “I guess we just have to figure out what’s changed. Do you feel any different?”
“Not really. Didn't I already tell you that? Just the lack of the many things that should be wrong with me after that kind of accident. Like you know, broken bones or lack of breathing or whatever.”
Then again, did I really need to breathe? Seriously, some things you didn’t think about. You just did them because you’d done them your entire life. Breathing happened to be one of those things. No one tried to go without it since then you got the rather predictable end of death. However, I’d already met that particular end. Was I breathing? If so, did I need to?
For that matter, what about my heart? You didn’t normally feel things like your blood flowing, your heart beating, your stomach digesting, your spleen doing whatever it was spleens did, and so on. You just went through life taking for granted that your body was behaving and doing its thing. What was mine doing? Wouldn’t we really need a hospital to truly determine most of that? Well some things, no. How hard was it to purposefully try to hold one’s breath? Take a pulse? We could do stuff without the wonders of civilized science. And I supposed since I didn’t know what a spleen did normally, it wouldn’t bother me to know if it was or wasn’t working now. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t know what to look for and what’s the worse that would happen? It’d kill me? Ha! I laughed in the face of possible death by malfunctioning spleen! Do your worst, it couldn’t match an earthquake!
“You were kinda messed up,” Jon said into my stream of inner dialogue.
“Kinda messed up?” A giant calendar fell on me. I’ll took his word since I was, you know, dead, but really? I’d say dead was more than kinda messed up. “You think?”
He just looked at me. He seemed to expect me to have a better sense of humor about the fact that I died like, two days ago, but that was just not gonna happen. Death had a way of doing that to a girl.
I stared back at him and said, “So what do you suggest first? I can tell you I looked at myself, scary as that was. Egads. But I’ve got a reflection, right? I figure that’s a good start."
“What does a reflection have to do with anything?”
“Hello?! It means that, first of all, I can keep myself looking good. I just need to find some good product and make up and clothes and whatnot. Probably scarce her in the back end of nowhere. But more importantly it means that maybe I won’t go on a drinking binge, if you get my drift.”
“Huh? Drinking?”
Slow on the uptake again? You betcha. Nice.
“Uh, duh much? You need to read more. Something besides that dusty pile of slice my wrists boring there. Or at least take in a movie.” I motioned towards that one book I’d made the mistake of picking up.
Yech, don’t want to contemplate how many minutes of my life (or death) that I'll never get back thanks to those books.
Hope my death was kinda long and eternal like vampires or whatever. That would rock. Guess if that were the case, I could totally not mind losing time reading to that piece of junk. Not minding is not the same as raring to do it again.
“Why?”
“You aren’t near up to date enough on lore, man. Did you grow up under a rock before coming here? It didn’t sound like I could be going in that direction, but hey, I watched Buffy. I read Stoker. I know what happens to one sect of people in my situation. It’s not pretty. Not the sort of lifestyle I wanna live, you know? Sure, they’re all sexy smoking hot in the movies, but that diet leaves a lot to be desired.”
And there it was. The giant light bulb went off over his head. “Oh.”
“Yeah. I got a reflection going on so I can keep myself looking good and hopefully not on an all liquid diet. Since none of those sorts were involved, probably cuz they don’t exist, figured it wasn’t the case, but who knows. Of course, who knows what exists anymore.”
“True. Reality has changed in the last two days, hasn’t it?”
I’d say so.
I went from a nice world where there was a definite line between fantasy and fact. Things in the movies and books you knew couldn’t happen, just didn’t. Now, who knew; I shouldn’t have been there. What else was out there? I really didn’t want to contemplate that. I was monster enough to deal with, thank you very much.
Facing a world that might have all sorts of crazy things like werewolves and vampires and witches and whatnot really freaked me out. Thankfully I had new and improved night vision. Hopefully that meant I could see whatever went bump in the night. I suppose you could say I was what went bump in the night.
I wasn’t really a monster, but then again, I was. I liked to consider myself cute and cuddly like the monsters on Sesame Street. Hey, I’ve got a soft spot for Cookie Monster, what could I say. He’s blue, he’s got googly eyes, and he liked cookies. That was cool, and we forgave him being a monster, right?
Why not me?
c
chapter nine
Those first few days I spent a lot of time attempting to convince myself life could be normal. That I could be normal. Things didn’t have to change, did they? I could only dream, except it didn’t take me long to realize I no longer needed sleep. So much for dreams.
My voice was quiet when I spoke. “Yeah, things have changed.”
I wondered if he could hear the melancholy in my voice. It was more than just the loss of my Amex, my ID, my appearance. Somewhere deep inside I knew there was a loss of a life I’d expected to have. A loss of a life I currently enjoyed. That was a lot of change to deal with.
There’s supposed to be these stages of grief people go through. I probably didn’t experience them in the right order, but I definitely went through each one. I never paid attention to all that psychology stuff. I just knew I wasn’t really ready to accept all the changes even though they kept smacking me in the face.
“Are you okay?” he asked. He sounded really concerned about me. Maybe he was. I took a deep breath, trying to calm my nerves. I felt like letting myself unravel. Crying sounded like a good idea. I fought back a sniffle. I survived death; surely, I could survive the ramifications of surviving not-death. I took another breath.
“For now,” I nodded.
“I’m sorry. Maybe I did the wrong thing…” Now it was his voice that was soft. Wait, no, if he did the wrong thing, then that meant he should have left me for dead. I didn’t know about anyone else, but that seemed like a bad idea to me. This way I got another shot at the world.
“No, no, no. It wasn’t wrong. I just gotta figure things out. People go through major life changing events all the time. They survive. I’ll be good,” I assured him.
People found their life in shambles all the time, and they made do. I thought this whole thing proved I was a survivor. Bring it on. I could totally buck myself up. Sometimes it paid off when I was having a bad hair day or something. But this was way past bad hair day. No way was I melting down over this. I banned flipping out and going psycho while there were witnesses.
Maybe now would be a good point in time to bring up the lack of the sleepiness, hunger, and thirst. Seemed as good a time as any. He beat me to the punch, though.
“If you are sure you don't need to rest, what about food?”
“Nope, feeling chipper as anything. Not hungry, or thirsty either. You’d think I’d be feeling something like that, though.”
He steepled his hands. “Yeah. I’m starving.”
He eyed the basket at his feet. On top of the clothes rested a towel wrapped item that smelled quite tasty. Not tasty enough to make my stomach grumble, though. I’d never been a huge Mexican food fan, just a good taco now and again.
“Why don’t you eat?” I motioned towards the basket. “Shame for Leahonia’s hard work to go to waste.”
He took the towel and unwrapped it. Something in a tortill
a shell greeted him. The flour tortilla was the greatest thing the Mexican people gave us. I would take a wrap for lunch any day. At least, I would before I died. Anything put inside a flour tortilla shell was a winner. Mmmmm.
Jon didn’t even sniff it, just bit into it. And bit into it again. If I blinked, I probably would’ve missed him finishing the thing, he ate it so fast. Guess he was hungry. Rescuing a girl from earthquake rubble and reviving her must work up quite the appetite. While he ate, I tried to take my pulse without looking too obvious about it. I never was good at that sort of thing. I remembered in gym the teacher would make us try after we ran. I was either dead then, too, or I couldn’t find my pulse.
Finding nothing, I figured it could be a sign of no more heartbeat or a sign that in the fifteen odd years since leaving high school, I still didn’t know how to take my pulse. I gave up and paid attention to my breathing instead. Was I breathing?
Actually, I was. Vaguely, I remembered a science lesson regarding air over vocal cords equals talking. At least, that’s how I remembered the lesson ending. Surely there was some sort of scientific principle I was missing out on, but it really wasn’t necessary for me to know. If it ain’t broke, why fix it.
It begged the question though: did I need to breathe to talk or did I need to breathe to function? I didn’t want to make a big show of sucking in a breath and just holding it, so I decided to let it go unless Jon pushed it. Really, I spoke enough that I’d probably never go without breathing.
While he ate, I learned nothing. Wasn’t that just nice? I remembered now why I got a C in my science classes. Too much work and I never got the hang of experimenting. I could do all of that or I could flirt with cute lab partners. He watched me while eating. I shrugged to let him know that my pulse-reading attempt failed. He wiped his hands on the towel after taking the last bite and reached towards my wrist.
“Let me try.”
I held out my hand. He expertly placed his fingers on my wrist, and I knew instantly he’d hit his mark. Talk about making it look easy. A thrill went up my arm at his touch. That’d get my heart beating in my chest. Yowzas. Watching his lips move as he counted might do it, too. I tried to distract myself from thinking about those lips moving in other ways.
Something nagged at me, but I was too distracted to consider it. My thoughts carried me away to places I’d rather not mention. Instead, I forced myself back to the present when he released my wrist, fingers lingering on my hand. I reminded myself that he wasn’t my type and tried to ignore the losing battle my mind was fighting with my body. Maybe I could treat Mexico like Vegas. What happened in Mexico stayed in Mexico! Sounded good. Sure, would like to leave my untimely demise behind. Hey, it could work. Settle down the whatever hormones raging through me and then leave that and my death behind. Sure, I could totally do that!
“Twenty.”
What was he saying?
“Huh?”
Get a grip, girl. Pay attention again.
“Your heart rate. It’s twenty beats per minute.”
Okay, now, I avoided doctors like the plague. I wanted nothing to do with a snot nosed, brat filled doctor’s office. They were the breeding ground for various creepy diseases that I wanted nothing to do with. And we’d already seen my stellar ability to take my own pulse. Twenty sounded odd, but heck if I knew why.
“Is that good?” Hey, maybe it could be like looking your age: lower the better. No woman wanted to look her age. Obviously, you didn’t want to go too low, but 20 was a nice number. Could it work for heart rates like that?
“Uh, well, it’s good in that you have a heartbeat. Bad in that it’s seriously below normal. I’m guessing you don’t know your normal heart rate?”
“As if.”
Now I knew that the gym has those swanky machines you hold onto while you are working out and it will tell you your heart rate. But since I wasn’t currently on the stair-master, that wouldn’t help much. Plus, I never touched those things. People sweat on them. Gross!
“Well, normal should be more like around one-hundred probably. Really depends on your health and your weight and your age, but yeah. You’re at like a fifth of that.”
Hmmm, well, uh... “So that means?”
“I don’t know. It means your heart is beating really slow. That could be good or bad. But it is a difference”’
“Okay then. I have a mysterious and weird heartbeat. Now what?”
“I think we need to go back to your strength. I don’t think you should have been able to move that altar. I don’t think I could move that altar. Yet you did and didn’t even notice it. What else do you think you can do?”
Like I sat around checking what I could and could not bench press? I dated a guy obsessed with weightlifting once. What a meathead. As long as I could lift my purse, what more did I need? Then again, if there was a giant stone thing and I moved it, that was kind of crazy on the strength level. Maybe I could pick up a car single handedly. I could be like Supergirl. Maybe I could even fly!
I figured I couldn’t fly and picking up a car with one hand seemed a bit of a useless talent. I’d be happy with getting the lid off the pickle jar. I hated those things.
“It sucks being a girl sometimes,” I shrugged. “Well, not when there’s a cute guy around or anything. Guys like to rescue girls from the greater evils of the world like spaghetti sauce bottles that won’t open. But, when you’re home alone and want a sandwich and can’t get the jam open, you’re cursing life. Some extra strength is something I could get behind.”
He grinned at me. “Girls like to play they can’t open bottles? Or they really can’t? You’re letting me in on all the deep dark secrets of womankind here.”
Oh my gosh. That bordered on flirting. I winked at him. “I’ll never tell. You gotta keep guessing.”
He groaned. Oh, how I liked the sound of that.
“You’re gonna kill me!”
“Too bad I can’t read your scrawl there or I would know the secrets to eternal torment! I could bring you back and you could suffer more!”
Maybe joking about my situation wasn’t such a great thing. Especially with someone else around. I’d actually forgotten about Leahonia while we’d been talking. Pretty much after he’d touched my wrist, I’d forgotten about everyone else in the world. Something clattered in her direction and Jon and I snapped our heads that way. Leahonia stood, staring at us, a cast iron skillet at her feet wobbling to a standstill.
She looked at me and at Jon with eyes opened wide. What was her problem, I wondered? We were kidding around, but I didn’t think we’d actually said anything someone could take seriously. Especially someone that spoke in broken English. But she had been listening. And she understood far more than we could have guessed. I never wanted to frighten her, but in that moment, she looked like she’d seen her own ghost.
c
chapter ten
“Lea? Are you okay?” Jon asked the simple question. I merely sat there, not knowing what to do or think.
Leahonia took a moment to regain her composure. “I sorry, Señor Juan. I so sorry, I no mean to cause problem. I no mean to listen you two talk.”
It didn't matter if she meant to eavesdrop, she had. Anyone caught listening in on a conversation quickly learned they got more than they bargained for. Without knowing the full context of what people were talking about lead to a lot of misunderstanding. Maybe we could brush this off as a misunderstanding.
“It’s okay.”
No, it wasn’t. How could Jon say that? People should mind their own business.
“Are you okay?” he asked again.
“No. Yes. No.” She couldn’t make up her mind.
“Lea?”
She stooped to pick up the skillet, and I noticed her hand trembled. Was she upset from causing a ruckus, upset for being caught listening to us, or was it the topic of conversation? Her hand grasped the handle of the skillet and she held it before her as though it were a club she wanted to keep between her and us.
“You no making sense. You no joke about those kinds of things. Bad stuff happens when you go against nature!” Her voice sounded a few octaves higher than before.
“Calm down. We were just talking.” Jon kept his voice soothing. Probably a good thing since she sounded fairly superstitious. Normally, I’d question someone so concerned about obvious fictional poppycock, but things had changed in that regard. Could be this woman’s superstitions were founded in reality? Like my reality?
If her superstitions had any bearing on my new status, how on earth were we to bring it up? You couldn’t just walk up to someone and say, “Hey so you know, I died. You got any legends on that? Like am I going to become a homicidal maniac bent on destroying the world?”
There was simply no way to tactfully bring it up to a woman who was little more than a stranger. At least Jon had some sort of working relationship with her.
“You don't know what you joke about, Señor Juan. There are stories of things people do. Wrong things. Evil things. It no funny stuff.”
I tried not to roll my eyes. You want to talk not funny? Not funny was my current sitch: Lost in Mexico with no ID, and a bit of a health crisis. Not many could find the humor in that. Me being one of the ‘not many’.
I could have seen Jon perk up a mile away. “Stories about what?”
“I no want to say. They told to scare children. No good come from the things happen in the stories.”
Her broken English through a thick Spanish accent didn't deter Jon's interest. Or mine, I just happened to play cool better. I looked at her, hoping my best poker face was up to par. Jon all but lapped at her feet.
“Leahonia, you know how I love hearing the stories about the people here. Will you tell us?” Okay, I had to give him credit. He played to his strengths. What better way to get someone to tell you legends than to express an interest? Fessing up to nefarious acts typically came off a little mad-scientisty.
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