Her joints were getting stiffer and stiffer, and it was growing harder and harder to run. But she had to get home. Eleanor was the only one who could help her.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, she reached her house. Somehow she managed to work the key in the door. She clinked and clanked through the living room and down the hall calling, “Eleanor! Eleanor!” Her voice was a terrible metallic scraping.
Eleanor was not in her usual corner of Sarah’s room. Sarah searched the closet, looked under the bed, opened the chest at the foot of the bed. No Eleanor.
Sarah clomped through the house, searching her mom’s room, the bathroom, the kitchen, all the time calling Eleanor’s name with her new horrible voice.
The garage was the only place she hadn’t looked. She used the kitchen entrance, but doorknobs were getting difficult to manage. Finally, after a few desperate minutes of fiddling, she was in the darkened garage.
“Eleanor!” she called again. Her jaw was stiff, and it was getting harder and harder to form words. Eleanor’s name came out as “Eh-nah.”
Maybe the robot girl was hiding from her on purpose. Maybe it was some kind of joke or game. She looked at the ceiling-high storage cabinet against the back wall of the garage. It seemed like a good hiding place. With some difficulty, she grabbed the handle of the cabinet door and pulled.
It was an avalanche. Clear plastic bags holding different objects with different weights and sizes toppled out of the cabinet and fell to the floor with a dull, sickening thud.
Sarah looked at the floor. At first her brain couldn’t even process what she saw. One bag contained a human leg, another a human arm. They were not the body parts of an adult, and they didn’t appear to be the result of an accident. Blood pooled in the bottoms of the bags, but the limbs had been severed neatly, as if in a surgical amputation. Another bag, stuffed with bloody, snakelike entrails and what appeared to be a liver, slid from the cabinet’s shelf and landed on the floor with a wet splat.
Why were there body parts in her garage? Sarah didn’t fully understand until she saw the small bag that held a familiar-looking, potato-shaped nose. She screamed, but the sound that came out of her was like the squealing of a car’s brakes.
Behind her came a metallic, tinkling laugh.
Sarah’s lower body was almost immobile, but she dragged herself around to face Eleanor.
“I made your wish come true, Sarah,” the pretty robot said with another metallic giggle. “And in return …”
Sarah noticed something she’d never seen on Eleanor before, a heart-shaped button just below Eleanor’s throat that was a double of Sarah’s heart-shaped pendant.
Eleanor laughed again, then pushed the heart-shaped button. She jerked and shook, but she also visibly softened, her silver finish turning the pinkish shade of Caucasian skin. In a matter of moments, she was a dead ringer for Sarah. The old Sarah. The real Sarah. The Sarah who, looking back on it, hadn’t been so bad-looking after all. The Sarah who had spent way, way too much time worrying about her appearance.
Abby had been right. She had been right about a lot of things.
Eleanor pulled on an old pair of Sarah’s jeans, one of her sweaters, and her tennis shoes. “Well, you certainly made my wishes come true,” Eleanor said, smiling with Sarah’s old smile. She pushed the button that opened the garage door. Sunlight flooded the room, and Eleanor-Sarah gave a little wave, then skipped out into the sunshine and down the sidewalk.
Sarah’s ears filled with a deafening clinking and clanking. She couldn’t control her movements. Different rusted metal parts disconnected from her and fell clattering to the floor. She was falling apart, collapsing into an ugly trash heap, a hideous, useless collection of garbage to be thrown away and forgotten. In an old mirror propped up against the garage wall, she saw herself. She was no longer a pretty girl, or a girl at all. She didn’t resemble a human of any kind. She was nothing but a rusty, dirty pile of junk.
She felt sad; then she felt scared. And then she felt nothing at all.
Why if it isn’t Millie Fitzsimmons!” a deep, booming voice said. In the darkness, it was hard to tell exactly where it was coming from, but it felt like it was all around her. “Silly Millie, Chilly Millie, the ice-cold Goth girl who’s always dreaming of Death. Am I right?”
“Who are you?” Millie demanded. “Where are you?”
Above her, a large pair of terrifying blue eyes rolled backward, looking down into the chamber.
“I’m right here, Silly Millie. Or maybe I should say you’re right here. You’re right inside my belly. In the belly of the beast, I guess you could say.”
“So … you’re the bear?” Millie wondered if she had fallen asleep after she climbed inside the old robot, if she was dreaming. This was all too weird.
“You can just think of me as a friend. Your friend till the end. We just have to decide if the end is going to be slow or quick.”
“I—I don’t understand.” The space was starting to feel claustrophobic. She tried the door. It wouldn’t budge.
“You’ll understand very soon, Chilly Millie. You Goth girls crack me up … all dressed like professional mourners, so serious all the time. Daydreaming about Death like he’s the lead singer of some boy band and that when you meet him it’ll be love at first sight. Well, Merry Christmas, Millie! I’m going to make your dreams come true. It’s not a question of ‘if’ but ‘how.’ ”
What was happening? She was definitely awake. Had she lost her mind, descended into madness like a character in an Edgar Allan Poe story? “I—I’d like to get out now,” she said. Her voice sounded small and shaky.
“Nonsense!” the voice said. “You’re going to stay in here, all nice and cozy, while we work out how you’re going to have your dream date with Death. The choice is all yours, but it will be my pleasure to present you with some options.”
“Options of how to die?” Millie felt the cold, metallic taste of fear in the back of her throat. Fantasies about death were one thing, but this felt like reality.
* * *
Millie. What a stupid name. She was named after her great-grandmother Millicent Fitzsimmons. But Millie wasn’t the kind of name you saddled a person with. A cat or a dog, maybe, but not an actual human.
Millie’s black cat was named Annabel Lee after the beautiful dead girl in the Edgar Allan Poe poem, which meant that Millie’s cat officially had a better name than she did.
But, Millie thought, it made sense that her parents would come up with such a ridiculous name. She loved them, but they were ridiculous people in a lot of ways, flighty and impractical, the kind of people who would never think how hard elementary school would be for a little girl whose name rhymed with silly. Her parents flitted from job to job, from hobby to hobby, and now, it seemed, from country to country.
Over the summer, Millie’s dad had been offered a one-year teaching job in Saudi Arabia. Her mom and dad had given her a choice: She could go with them (“It’ll be an adventure!” her mom kept saying) and be homeschooled. Or she could move in with her kooky grandpa for the year and start at the local high school.
Talk about a lose-lose situation.
After lots of crying and raging and sulking, Millie had finally chosen the Kooky Grandpa Option over being stranded in a foreign country with her well-meaning but unreliable parents.
And so now Millie was here in her strange little room in Grandpa’s big, strange Victorian house. She had to admit, the idea of living in an old, sprawling 150-year-old house, where surely someone had to have died at some point, suited her well enough. The only problem was that it was filled to the brim with her grandparents’ junk.
Millie’s grandpa was a collector. Lots of people have collections, of course—comic books or gaming cards or action figures. But Grandpa didn’t collect a specific type of thing so much as accumulate a lot of different things. He was definitely a collector, but a collector of what, Millie wasn’t sure. It all seemed very random. Looking around the living r
oom, she could see old license plates and hubcaps hanging on one wall, old baseball bats and tennis rackets on another. A life-size suit of armor stood guard at one side of the front door, and a mangy-looking taxidermy bobcat stood at the other side, its mouth open and fangs bared in a menacing fashion. One glass case in the living room contained nothing but old porcelain baby dolls with tiny teeth and staring glass eyes. They were creepy, and Millie tried to stay away from them, though they still showed up sometimes in her nightmares with those little teeth chomping at her.
Her new bedroom had been her grandma’s sewing room, and it still contained the old sewing machine even though her grandma had died before Millie was born. Grandpa had moved in a narrow bed and a dresser to accommodate Millie and her belongings, and she had tried to make the room her own. She draped the bedside lamp with a sheer black lacy scarf so it gave off a muted glow. She covered the dresser with dripping candles, and she hung posters of Curt Carrion, her favorite singer, on the walls.
In one poster, the cover design for his album Rigor Mortis, Curt’s lips were peeled back to reveal a set of metal fangs. A perfect red bead of blood glistened on his chin.
The trouble was, though, that no matter how much Millie tried to match the room’s decor to her personality, it never quite worked. The sewing machine was there, and the wallpaper was cream-colored and decorated with tiny pink rosebuds. Even with Curt Carrion’s fanged face glowering on the wall, there was something about the room that seemed sweet and old ladyish.
“Soup’s on!” Grandpa called from the bottom of the stairs. This was how he always announced dinner, and yet he had never once served soup.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” Millie yelled back. Not really caring whether she ate dinner or not, she dragged herself off the bed and made her way downstairs slowly, trying not to bump into or trip over any of the clutter that seemed to fill every square inch of space in the house.
Millie met Grandpa in the dining room, where the walls were decorated with souvenir plates printed with the names and landmarks of different states he had visited with Grandma when she was alive. The opposite wall displayed replicas of antique swords. Millie wasn’t sure what those were about.
Grandpa was every bit as weird as his collections. His wispy gray hair was always messy and wild, and he always wore the same ratty tan cardigan. He looked like he could play a wacky inventor in an old movie.
“Dinner is served, madame,” Grandpa said, setting a bowl of mashed potatoes on the table.
Millie sat at her place at the table and surveyed the visually disgusting meal: mushy-looking meat loaf, instant mashed potatoes, and creamed spinach that she knew had been packaged and frozen in a solid block until he zapped it in the microwave. It was a meal you could eat even if you didn’t have teeth, which, Millie supposed, went with the territory of having an old person cook for you.
Millie loaded her plate with mashed potatoes since they were the only edible thing on the table.
“Now make sure you get some meat loaf and spinach, too,” Grandpa said, passing her the bowl of greens. “You need the iron. You always look so pale.”
“I like being pale.” Millie wore a sheer light powder to make her face look even paler in contrast to the black eyeliner and black clothing she favored.
“Well,” Grandpa said, helping himself to meat loaf, “I’m glad you don’t bake yourself in the sun like your mother did when she was your age. Still, you could use a little color in your cheeks.” He held out the platter of meat loaf to her.
“You know I don’t eat meat, Grandpa.” Meat was gross. And also murder.
“Eat some spinach, then,” Grandpa said, spooning some out on her plate. “Plenty of iron in it. You know, back when I learned to do the little bit of cooking I can manage, it was all about meat: meat loaf, steaks, roast beef, pork chops. But if you’ll help me find some vegetarian recipes, I’ll sure try to cook ’em. It would probably be better for my health to eat less meat anyway.”
Millie sighed and pushed the spinach around on her plate. “Don’t bother. It doesn’t really matter whether I eat or not.”
Grandpa set down his fork. “Of course it matters. Everybody’s got to eat.” He shook his head. “There’s no pleasing you, is there, girlie? I’m trying to be nice and figure out what you like. I want you to be happy here.”
Millie pushed her plate away. “It’s a waste of energy to try to make me happy. I’m not a happy person. And you know what? I’m glad I’m not happy. Happy people are just lying to themselves.”
“Well, if there’s nothing in store for you but misery, I guess you might as well go get started on your homework,” Grandpa said and ate his last bite of mashed potatoes.
Millie rolled her eyes and flounced out of the room. Homework was a misery. School was a misery. Her whole life was a misery.
In her miserable room, Millie opened her laptop and searched for “famous poems about death.” She reread her old favorites, “Annabel Lee” (the cat with the same name was curled up on her bed) and “The Raven” by Poe, then tried one she’d never seen before by Emily Dickinson. The poem talked about Death as a guy picking up a girl for a date. A date with Death. The thought made Millie light-headed. She thought of Death as a handsome, black-cloaked stranger choosing her as the one he would take away from the boredom and misery of everyday life. She imagined he looked just like Curt Carrion.
Inspired, she grabbed her black leather journal and began to write:
Oh, Death, show me now your ravaged face,
Oh, Death, how I long for your chilly embrace.
Oh, Death, my life is such a misery
That only you can set me free.
She knew poems didn’t have to rhyme, but Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson rhymed, so she rhymed her poem, too. Not bad, she decided.
Sighing with dread of what lay before her, she closed her journal and took out her homework. Algebra. What use was algebra in the face of human beings’ inevitable mortality? None. Well, none except that if she didn’t pass all her classes, her parents would cut off the allowance that her grandpa doled out to her every week. And she was saving up for more jet mourning jewelry. She opened her algebra book, picked up her pencil, and began.
A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door.
“What?” Millie snapped and slammed her book shut, as if she’d been interrupted doing something she actually enjoyed.
Grandpa nudged the door open with his foot. He was carrying a glass of milk and a plate of fragrant chocolate chip cookies. “I thought you might need a little study fuel,” he said. “I know chocolate always did the trick for me.”
“Grandpa, I’m not a little kid anymore,” Millie said. “You can’t buy my happiness with a few cookies.”
“Okay,” Grandpa said, still holding the plate. “You want me to take them away, then?”
“No,” Millie said quickly. “Leave them.”
Grandpa shook his head, smiled a little, and set the plate and the glass on Millie’s bedside table. “I’m going to putter around in my workshop for an hour or so, girlie,” he said. “Call me if you need anything.”
“I won’t need anything,” Millie said, turning back to her algebra homework.
She waited until she was sure he was gone and then devoured the cookies.
* * *
“Options of how to die. Exactly!” the voice in the darkness said. “You’re catching on now, bright girl that you are. Now I’d call the first couple of options the lazy choices. They don’t require me to do anything but keep you here and let nature take its course. The advantage to these is that they’re easy-peasy for me but not so easy for you. Slow, with lots of suffering, but who knows? That might appeal to your morbid sensibilities. Lots of opportunities for languishing. You like languishing.”
“What do you mean?” Millie asked. Whatever the answer was, she knew she wasn’t going to like it.
“Dehydration is one option,” the voice said. “No water at all, and you co
uld start dying in as few as three days or as many as seven. You’re young and healthy, so I’d put my money on it taking you a while. Depriving the body of water has fascinating effects. With no fluids coming in to filter and flush, the kidneys shut down and your body starts poisoning itself, making you sicker and sicker. Once those poisons have time to build up, you can suffer total organ failure or a heart attack or stroke. But that’s death for you. So glamorous. So romantic.”
“Are you making fun of me?” The voice that came out of Millie was tiny and soft, the voice of a scared little girl.
“Not at all, my dear. I like you, Millie, and that’s why I’m here to make your wishes come true. Like a genie, except you’re the one who’s trapped in a bottle.” The voice stopped to chuckle. “Starvation is another classic, too, but that’s really a slow-moving train. It takes weeks for the body to use up its stores of nutrition and break down all its proteins and turn on itself. It can take weeks. Some people have even lasted a couple of months.”
Millie knew her grandpa would rescue her before she could starve to death. “That’ll never work. Grandpa comes in here to putter around after dinner every night. He’ll find me.”
“How?” the voice asked.
“He’ll hear me in here. I’ll scream.”
“Scream all you want, lamb chop. It’s soundproof. No one will hear you. And anyway, after a few days, you’ll be too weak to scream.”
* * *
Winter break was just one week away, and the whole school was decorated with wreaths, Christmas trees, and the occasional menorah.
Millie didn’t know why people got so excited over holidays. They were just a desperate attempt to invent some happiness in the face of life’s utter meaninglessness. Well, they couldn’t fool her. People could wish her merry Christmas and happy holidays until they turned Santa Claus–red in the face, but she wouldn’t say it back.
Not that people were going out of their way to wish Millie well. As she walked down the hall to the lunchroom, one blonde cheerleader—Millie didn’t even know her name—said, “I’m surprised to see you out in the daylight, Dracula’s Daughter.” The cheerleader looked over at her equally blonde friends, whom she’d been talking to more than she’d actually been talking to Millie, and they all laughed.
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