Deceased Dora

by Claire Chilton

I should have stuck with Terrance. At least he just wanted to woo me, not kill me.

  She peered up towards the surface of the lake, which was about eight-feet above her. She could make out the blurry shapes of a mob of people standing around the edges, looking down. She had hoped that if she looked dead enough, they would go away, but it seemed they were waiting for something to happen.

  Well, I can’t sit here forever, she thought, although it was a tempting idea.

  She waved to the people above.

  Hello idiots, I’m still here.

  Several figures jumped into the lake and began swimming towards her. Rough hands grabbed her, and she felt the chains loosen as the police chief and his subordinates unlocked her and dragged her up from the depths of the lake.

  Her head broke the surface of the water, and she inhaled deeply, out of habit.

  She glanced sideways to see the chief bobbing next to her in the lake.

  He pulled her arms behind her back and tightly bound them in handcuffs.

  “It didn’t work. Any other ideas?” He shouted to her father.

  She glanced at her father. His white hair was in disarray, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept for a week.

  Mom would never let him leave the house looking like that.

  She searched the crowd for her mother’s face, but couldn’t find it.

  Where is mom?

  “There’s only one other option,” her father said with a sigh. “We need to call PISS.”

  Who the fuck are PISS?

  Dora scanned the interrogation room. She was sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair, facing a desk and a two-way mirror.

  She stared into the mirror and scowled. She knew there were people behind it, but all she saw was her own reflection, and it wasn’t pretty.

  Her hair was hanging over her shoulders in messy wet strands, her black eye-makeup had gathered under her eyes in big black streaks and her skin was even paler than normal.

  “Can I at least get a towel?” she asked the two-way mirror while her hair dripped lake-water onto the desk.

  “Silence, demon.” A metallic voice commanded through the intercom.

  “I’m not a fucking demon,” she muttered.

  Loud footsteps echoed down the hallway outside the room.

  She turned her head to hear what was happening outside. There were some hushed whispers, and then a sharp voice clearly ordered for the door to be opened.

  She reclined back in the chair and studied the door.

  I guess PISS have arrived.

  The door swung open, and two men wearing black suits entered the room. Both wore dark glasses and carried matching briefcases.

  “Agent Smith, I presume,” she said.

  “Do not speak. We shall not answer to you,” one of the men said.

  “Er, you just did, and we’re in an interrogation room, which is usually intended for talking in.” She shook her head at them.

  “What are you then? What is PISS? Is it like that British phrase—taking of the piss?”

  “Isn’t it, ‘taking the piss’?” The second man corrected, but he stopped talking when the first agent glared at him.

  “Since you won’t benefit by knowing any of this information, I will introduce us. Although bear in mind that you have no rights because you are a heretic and you have no right to live because you are a woman,” the first agent said.

  “Er Jeff, that’s the wrong way round,” the second agent said.

  “Speak again, Agent Orange, and I will report you to the Black Bishop.” The first agent snapped at his partner.

  Agent Orange bowed his head and nodded in silence.

  “Good,” the first agent said as he took a seat opposite her.

  She examined her interrogator. He was a small, thin man with a grey pallor to his skin. His lips were a narrow line that had a purple tint to them. There were grey streaks in his dark hair and deep lines beneath his eyes.

  “You don’t like women very much, do you?” she asked.

  “My name is Agent Ochre—”

  “Wait.” She interrupted. “Isn’t that a diarrhoea yellow colour? How come he gets orange and you get diarrhoea?”

  Agent Orange covered his mouth with his hand as a smile broke out across his face.

  Agent Ochre’s frown deepened so much it disappeared behind his dark glasses “In our division of the P.I.S.S—”

  “The higher the rank, the more shitty the codename?” She butted in again.

  Agent Ochre growled. “Silence, woman!”

  “Or what, you’ll kill me again? Good luck with that.”

  Agent Ochre angrily exhaled, and his nostrils flared. “The Pope’s Intelligence Service Subdivision is often referred to as P.I.S.S. It is a subdivision of the—”

  “Jeezebit Order.” Doug interrupted as he walked into the room carrying two cups of coffee.

  “For fucksake! Can you rednecks stop fucking interrupting me!” Agent Ochre exploded.

  Doug visibly blanched and placed the drinks on the table in front of the agents. Then he gave Dora a sympathetic smile before he turned and left the room.

  “So you work for the Pope?” Dora raised an eyebrow.

  This guy was so much fun to fuck with. “Do you polish the Pope’s pallium?”

  Agent Ochre scowled at her. “Amongst other things, PISS has been responsible for erecting monoliths in every major city on Earth in honour of the—”

  “Well I suppose you have to find some way to display your massive erections.” She interrupted again. “It’s not like you can use them in any other way since you hate women and gay people.”

  “We don’t hate women,” Agent Orange said. “We’re just not allowed to be near them.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “They can seduce us from our holy mission,” Agent Orange replied.

  “Ah, so you fear women.”

  “What? No, we don’t fear anything!” Agent Ochre snapped.

  “Except women and gay people, who have you cowering in your chastity belts. I get it.” She nodded with understanding.

  “Agents of PISS fear nothing.” Agent Ochre stood up and slammed his fists into the desk.

  “Get that idiot redneck back in here, and tell him to bring my knife.” He turned and shouted at the two-way mirror.

  “What do you need a knife for?” she asked. “You can’t kill me.”

  Agent Ochre said nothing and turned towards the door as Doug opened it and came into the room carrying a knife in a sheath.

  Agent Ochre took the knife from him and showed it to Dora.

  “This is a very special knife.” He told her as he pulled the intricately carved shiv out of its sleeve. It was gold with silver swirls and copper lines running down the blade. Red gems were incrusted into the hilt. The blade glinted as he waved it near her face.

  “Why is it self-sharpening?” she asked, trying to appear as bored as she possibly could.

  “It was blessed by the Pope himself, and cursed by the Black Bishop.” Agent Ochre flashed an evil grin.

  “I’ve seen bigger. What exactly are you planning on doing with it?” she asked.

  She tried to ignore the feeling, but an instinctive shudder of fear ran through her.

  “Eventually, I’m going to run it through your black heart.” Agent Ochre smiled at her again. “But first, Agent Orange is going to cut off your fingers. The crease between them looks too much like a vagina.”

  “Eww!” she cried.

  Meanwhile, Doug examined his own hands and began opening and closing his fingers with a confused expression on his face.

  “Agent Orange, come here and—” Agent Ochre began.

  “Wait.” Doug interrupted. “I think you need to do me first. These look just like Daisey Mae’s—”

  “Doug! Please don’t finish that sentence.” Dora jumped up from her seat.

  Doug was dumb as shit, but she didn’t want to see him get his fingers cut off.

  “And you two.” S
he pointed to Agent Orange and Agent Ochre. “You both need to give up the forty-year old virgin lifestyle and get laid.”

  “Sacrilege!” Agent Ochre cried, but Agent Orange appeared to be considering her suggestion.

  “What’s Daisey Mae like?” Agent Orange asked Doug.

  “She’s got a great personality,” Doug replied. “And a wonderful pair of—”

  “Doug! Too much info.” Dora quickly interrupted.

  “Monster!” Agent Ochre clearly wasn’t happy with Agent Orange’s defection over curiosity about Daisey Mae. He ran at Dora holding the knife high above him.

  She jumped back towards the wall and looked for an escape route, but there wasn’t one.

  I guess I’m about to find out if that thing will pierce my heart or not.

  Fortunately for her, the blade never reached her. The two-way mirror smashed behind them all, sending glass flying in all directions and causing everyone in the room except Dora to cower.

  Agent Ochre let out a high-pitched yelp of fear before scurrying under the desk.

  Terrance leapt through the broken window and calmly strolled into the room. Behind him, several other people, who were possibly Goths or vampires, also climbed through the broken window to enter the room.

  “Have no fear, fair Dora. I have come to rescue you.” Terrance declared.

  She contemplated her answer and her options. Agent Ochre was cowering under the desk and rocking back and forth while chanting some kind of prayer. Doug and Agent Orange were huddled near the door, hugging each other.

  She turned back to Terrance and smiled. “My hero.”

  What the hell, it beats being killed again.

  As Kieron stared at the gravestone, a numb feeling engulfed his whole body. He could no longer feel the breeze, see the trees or hear the birds. An ongoing scream roared through his head, and his eyes were glued to the name carved into the marble headstone:

  Dora Carridine

  1997-2013

  Rest in Peace

  Dora was dead. Nothing else seemed to matter.

  He clenched his hands in to fists. “No!”

  He’d bring her back. He’d go back to Hell and find her.

  Electricity tingled through his limbs, and he felt his wings burst out of his back, flashing with anger.

  “Portelus!” he cried, trying to open a portal to Hell. When nothing happened, he sank to his knees and began drawing a circle around him in the Earth.

  If basic magic didn’t work, he would carve a hole through the ether to get into Hell and bring her back.

  He began chanting Latin, and then started to bite his own hand to make it bleed.

  “Kieron, stop! What are you doing?” Carissa knelt beside him and pulled his hand away from his mouth.

  “You can’t use blood magic here, of all places.”

  “Why not? I’m going to bring back Dora, and damn the consequences!”

  “Even if the consequences are these bodies all rising from their graves? Stop, this is not the answer.”

  “I won’t leave her there!” He ripped his hand from Carissa’s grip. He was consumed with anger. All he could think about was saving Dora.

  Damn this world and the consequences of his spells. He couldn’t lose her.

  “You don’t even know where she is.” Carissa snapped as she tried to stop him completing his spell.

  He let his hands drop to his sides, staring at the headstone while he shook his head. “There’s only one place she can be. They’d never let her into Heaven.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Carissa said. “Look at her grave.”

  He frowned and examined the grave, gasping when he realised the earth had been dug up, and only the remnants of a shattered coffin remained inside it. “Someone desecrated her grave and stole her body!”

  “No, I don’t think so.” Carissa stood up and scanned the hole in the ground.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at the scratch marks. Someone or something dug its way out of that grave.”

  He stared at the splintered lid. She was right. Dora must have clawed her way out of her own grave.

  “How is this possible? How could she survive? No human could survive being buried alive.”

  Carissa nodded in agreement. “No human could.”

  She turned on her heel and slowly scanned the graveyard.

  “What do you mean? Dora didn’t come back as Dora?” He got to his feet and glanced in the direction Carissa was staring. There was a second grave that had been dug up.

  “I don’t know, but you didn’t come back the same did you?” She glanced at him.

  He made his wings retract. He was embarrassed of what he was. He really didn’t want to tell her that he’d been just as messed up in Hell.

  “Me? No, I was a scary demon lord, one of the worst.” He lied.

  “Well then, it stands to reason that Dora may have been changed too when she was rejected from Hell.”

  He wondered what had happened to Dora as he followed Carissa to the second unearthed grave.

  This one was older, much older. The headstone was dull grey stone, and the words carved into it had been worn by time. Moss grew in the cracks and pieces of the stone had chipped away.

  “Terrance,” Carissa whispered the name that was barely legible on the headstone.

  “This one’s been dug up too, but it looks like someone used a spade,” Kieron said.

  “Yes, it does.” She wasn’t saying much. She was just staring at the headstone.

  “Did you know him?” he asked.

  “It’s not important at the moment.” She flashed him a sad smile and shook her head.

  “But—”

  “We need to find Dora, right?” She interrupted.

  “Yes.” He had the feeling she was hiding something, but Dora was his priority, so he ignored the nagging feeling in his gut.

  “Let’s go to her house. Maybe she went there after she got out of her grave.”

  He didn’t entirely trust Carissa. She was acting very strange right now, but he desperately wanted to find Dora, so he nodded and followed Carissa towards the gates of the graveyard.

  It took a few moments for him to realise they were being followed. He heard footsteps crunching behind them first and glanced back to see a group of squirrels, who appeared to be rushing to keep up with them.

  When the squirrels noticed him watching, they stopped abruptly and began sniffing the grass or innocently looking around.

  He shook his head.

  I must be going crazy. They’re just squirrels.

  He continued walking and caught up with Carissa.

  A few seconds later, he heard the crunching of leaves behind them again. He frowned and quickly spun around to see what was following them.

  The group of squirrels froze mid-run, and then quickly scattered before taking on woodland poses. One perched on top of a headstone sniffing it, and another climbed halfway up a tree and froze in position. A big grey one picked up an acorn and studied it with interest.

  “What?” Carissa asked as she turned around to see what he was looking it.

  He scowled at the sunlit graveyard. It seemed like a tranquil, natural scene. There were birds flying from tree to tree, and vibrant green grass spread across landscape beneath clear blue skies.

  The squirrels appeared perfectly harmless in the scene.

  “What?” she repeated.

  “You’ll think I’m crazy,” he said. “It’s nothing. I must be imagining it. Come on let’s keep going.”

  She scanned the graveyard before shrugging at him and nodding. “Okay.”

  They turned and began walking towards the exit again. A few seconds later, he heard the crunching steps behind them again.

  “What the fuck?” he cried as he spun around, finding the big grey squirrel only a couple of feet behind him.

  It froze and stared up at him with big, soulful black eyes. The other squirrels also froze. They were following in a larg
e group several feet behind them.

  Carissa spun around too and glanced down. “What is it this time?”

  “The same fucking thing,” he said as he watched the big grey squirrel pluck an acorn out of the grass and hold it in its hands.

  “The squirrels are following us.” He had to force the words out because they were insane.

  She stared at the squirrel for a moment, and then looked at him with worry on her face. “Did I damage your head when I attacked you?”

  “No.” He sighed. “I swear I’m not imagining it.”

  Disbelief crossed her face, followed by an expression of sympathy.

  “I’m not crazy! The fucking squirrels are following us.”

  “It’s just a hungry squirrel,” she said. “Look at it.”

  He stared at the big grey squirrel. A wicked grin appeared on its face, and its eyes glowed yellow.

  He blinked and shook his head. When he looked again, the big grey squirrel looked cute and innocent again.

  Maybe I am nuts?

  “Did you see that?” she asked. Her eyes had widened, and she was staring at the squirrel in pure horror.

  “You mean its eyes?” he asked.

  “Yeah, what the fuck?” She began warily backing away from it.

  He yelped and jumped backwards when the squirrel grinned, and its little fangs glinted in the sunlight.

  “Oh no, they wouldn’t …” She held her hand to her mouth in shock.

  “Who wouldn’t what?” he asked.

  “I think they’re hybrids, I think …” She paused with a look of pure horror growing on her face. “I think they’re were-squirrels!”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard o—” He didn’t finish the sentence as the squirrels stopped acting innocent and grouped together into a large pack.

  They stalked towards them, and he could hear a high-pitched growl coming from them.

  “Eeeeeeeeee.” The squirrels growled as they drew closer.

  “What exactly can were-squirrels do to us?” he asked.

  A shiver of fear shot up his spine as one of the rodents extended its sharp claws and grinned at him.

  “Let’s not find out.”

  One squirrel launched itself at his face. He tried to smack it away from him, but it clung to his arm and tried to bite him.