I got out of bed and pulled open the drapes, looked out of the window. The sky was graying in the east.
I thought about moving south, about continuing to run, continuing to pretend I was alive. But it was, I knew now, much too late for that. There are doors, after all, between the living and the dead, and they swing in both directions.
I had come as far as I could.
There was a faint tap-tapping on the hotel-room door. I pulled on my pants and the T-shirt I had set out in, and barefoot, I pulled the door open.
The coffee girl was waiting for me.
Everything beyond the door was touched with light, an open, wonderful predawn light, and I heard the sound of birds calling on the morning air. The street was on a hill, and the houses facing me were little more than shanties. There was mist in the air, low to the ground, curling like something from an old black-and-white film, but it would be gone by noon.
The girl was thin and small; she did not appear to be more than six years old. Her eyes were cobwebbed with what might have been cataracts; her skin was as gray as it had once been brown. She was holding a white hotel cup out to me, holding it carefully, with one small hand on the handle, one hand beneath the saucer. It was half filled with a steaming mud-colored liquid.
I bent to take it from her, and I sipped it. It was a very bitter drink, and it was hot, and it woke me the rest of the way.
I said, “Thank you.”
Someone, somewhere, was calling my name. The girl waited, patiently, while I finished the coffee. I put the cup down on the carpet; then I put out my hand and touched her shoulder. She reached up her hand, spread her small gray fingers, and took hold of mine. She knew I was with her. Wherever we were headed now, we were going there together.
I remembered something somebody had once said to me. “It’s okay. Every day is freshly ground,” I told her.
The coffee girl’s expression did not change, but she nodded, as if she had heard me, and gave my arm an impatient tug. She held my hand tight with her cold, cold fingers, and we walked, finally, side by side into the misty dawn.
SHE’S TAKING HER TITS TO THE GRAVE
by Catherine Cheek
Catherine Cheek has sold fiction to magazines such as Ideomancer, Susurrus, and Cat Tales. She also has stories forthcoming in anthologies such as The Leonardo Variations—an anthology to benefit the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, of which Cheek is a graduate—and Last Drink Bird Head, a charity anthology whose proceeds will go toward promoting literacy. When not writing, Cheek plays with molten glass and takes care of her two children (and nine pets).
The idea for this story came from the theme of the 2007 World Fantasy Convention which was “ghosts and revenants.” Cheek didn’t know what a revenant was, so she looked it up and discovered it was a person who came back from the dead and caused great trouble for the living. “It’s that last part that intrigued me,” she says. “What kind of trouble could they cause?”
Cheek could relate to the character in the story—a trophy wife who returns from the dead to find her body is not what it used to be. “My body is getting older every day, and I suspect that it will one day actually stop working,” she says. “Life is a fatal epidemic.”
Melanie hitchhiked for the first time ever after she climbed out of her grave. A week later, and she wouldn’t have been able to flirt her way into the trunk of a late model sedan, much less shotgun with full access to the radio. But she had had a stellar figure, a southern California tan, and bleach-blonde hair that could pass for natural. Maintaining a beautiful body had landed her a rich husband, and she’d kept the position of wife long past the time when a less successful trophy would have been replaced.
That nice face and body still served her, for the embalmers had done a great job preserving her not-inconsequential looks. The middle-aged chiropractor who drove her from the cemetery would happily have driven her all the way across town to the house she shared with Brandon, her husband, but she decided to go to Larry’s condo first.
More than anything else, she needed to find the man who had raised her from the dead.
A few people noticed as she walked from the parking lot to Larry’s door, and she got some second looks, but she paid them no mind. People often mistook her for an actress or a model here in Los Angeles, the land of the Barbie.
The steps up to Larry’s condo seemed endless when you were wearing four-inch heels. She smoothed her hair, cleared her throat before knocking on Larry’s door, and felt a thrill of anticipation. Wasn’t he going to be happy to see she was alive again!
But Larry’s mouth gaped, closed partially, then reopened. His eyes bugged out, like a fish flopping on a shore gasping for air.
“What are you doing here?” Larry finally said. “I thought you were dead.”
“I am.” She pushed her way into the condo, irritated. For that, she didn’t slip her pumps off and line them up next to his five pairs of shoes on the tile, but tracked grave dirt across his white carpet. “And I don’t appreciate you raising me from the grave if this is the kind of welcome I’m going to get.”
Larry had slipped on his loafers to walk two feet from the carpet to the door, and now he took them off. His linen pants were cuffed, but not wrinkled, and he smoothed the fabric out as he settled at the far edge of the couch. “Why are you here?”
“Because you raised me.” Melanie looked at her fingers. The grave had not yet been filled in with dirt, a small blessing, but her manicure looked terrible. “Why are you being such a prick? Come on, it’s me, baby.”
“Did someone murder you?” Larry asked. He perched on the edge of the cushion, hands resting on knees, leaning away from her. “Is that why you’re haunting the living?”
“No one killed me, Larry, I just went in for a routine tummy tuck. Must have been some kind of complication.”
“So if no one murdered you, why are you haunting me?”
Melanie frowned. She’d been excited to see him, flattered that he loved her enough to raise her from the dead, but now it was apparent that he didn’t. All those times he swore he couldn’t get enough of her, and now he was tapping nicotine-stained fingers (and she had always hated how his condo stank like cigarettes), his gaze flicking towards the door. Why had she ever slept with this man?
Back when she was alive, a strong chest and blue eyes must have outweighed his other faults. “Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?”
“You want a drink?” he spluttered, as though pouring a glass of wine for the woman he’d been carrying on an affair with for four months was the last thing on his mind. “You want a drink?”
“I want something.”
“I, uh, I’ve got some orange juice.”
He got the drink from the fridge, still sidling around her as though she were a crazy bag lady instead of a rich, young (young-looking, anyway) and beautiful woman who, now that she was thinking about it, was probably too good for him. After he handed her the glass, he watched her drink it, not sitting, but standing expectantly, as though she were an auditor, or an in-law: someone distasteful he couldn’t wait to get rid of. After she drank the orange juice, she realized the discomfort was mutual.
Funny, when she’d first met him, she had thought he might be the kind of lover who’d keep her amused for years, a secret pleasure for when Brandon was working late again, a not-so-secret one for when Brandon went out of town. And yet by the time she finished the orange juice, she realized that what had started as a very promising affair was over.
As suddenly as, well, as death.
“Gotta go,” she said, setting the half-finished glass of orange juice on the coffee table, next to the coaster. “I’m late.”
Larry didn’t laugh or offer her a ride home, and she had already walked down all the stairs when she remembered she didn’t have her car.
It was easier to go without a soul than a car in this town. She felt her skirt for keys which weren’t there, since they don’t bury you with car keys, and muttered some unl
adylike words. They don’t bury you with a purse, either, no matter if it was Prada and went very well with the shoes. And they don’t bury you with money, or even a bus pass, that mythology about the river Styx notwithstanding.
Nor had she ever walked so far in her life. No one had ever told her how awkward it would be to find her way home when she was used to having a car, and now she had to navigate around freeway overpasses and alley walls behind shopping complexes, which would have been no fun to traverse even if she were alive and wearing sensible footwear.
She thought about hitchhiking again, but decided she didn’t really want to talk. She’d just ended an affair, after all. She needed some alone time.
But it was warm for May, and the horizon held a brown layer of smog. No one left their cars, no one walked the streets if they could help it, and the air had a grimy feel to it that would have burned her lungs if she were still breathing. She walked for several hours, until she wanted someone to give her a ride, her husband maybe, or a girlfriend. Then she wanted someone to talk to. And maybe a glass of merlot.
By the time she staggered up the pavement in front of their house, the lacquered layer of hairspray on her professionally dyed hair was starting to flake off, she was getting a little squishy around the eyes, and the flies kept landing on her, especially her eyes and mouth. She tried to wave them off, but her coordination wasn’t what it should have been, so she kept smacking her boobs. Those were still as plump as ever, which was only fitting seeing as how she had paid more for them than she had for her first car. Her sister Jessica had mocked her for the waste of money, but Jessica had the same flat chest Melanie had been cursed with and hadn’t even managed to get married.
She undid another button, displaying more of the cleavage she had bought. Men loved her breasts. Someone had raised her from the dead just so they could see them again.
Probably Brandon. Her husband was the kind of guy who could make anything happen with enough money. She’d have to thank him when she saw him again, but right now she was tired, she was irritable, and she needed a drink.
Melanie pounded at the door, even though Brandon wouldn’t be home. Maybe the housekeeper would let her in.
A woman screamed.
Melanie turned. The petite blonde wore a camel-colored suit that might have been Chanel until someone let out the seams beyond what its lines were ever meant to bear. She kept screaming, her hands in the air (holding a set of car keys that looked suspiciously familiar), and screaming, and screaming, until it became obvious to the both of them that no Dudley Do-Right was going to sweep out of the bushes and save her.
Brandon’s secretary, Cindy. She better be there just to drop something off, Melanie thought. Just because she was dead didn’t mean Brandon could cheat. Melanie waited until the buxom waif grew hoarse.
Cindy tapered off to fluttering hands near her throat, and finally, when nothing else seemed to work, the girl spoke.
“You… you’re dead!”
“Is Brandon home?”
“You’re dead!”
Cindy began to scream again, which was really irritating, because one, Melanie still wanted a decent drink, and two, she needed to see Brandon to figure out what to do about this whole “rising from the grave” nuisance. Cindy kept screaming, so Melanie finally plucked the keychain directly from her fingers. Sure enough, there was a house key. Melanie unwound it from the ring.
“You can’t do that!” Cindy had regained some spunk, even if it was just the pique of a woman whose sorority sister had just puked on her new blouse. “Those are mine.”
She tried to take them back, and might have succeeded (death does terrible things to your muscle tone) except at that point, the orange juice that Melanie had drunk poured down her leg, embarrassing them both. It wasn’t pee, she wanted to explain, it was just orange juice and maybe a little embalming fluid, but there was no way to gracefully recover from such an event, no matter what finishing school you had attended, so neither tried. They just stared at each other for a long uncomfortable moment. Melanie dropped the key ring.
With an exaggerated shudder, Cindy scooped up the keys and drove off. In Melanie’s Mercedes. In her Mercedes!
“You bitch!” Melanie screamed at the car as it squealed away. Only dead a few days and Brandon was letting his secretary drive her Mercedes? He’d better offer her several karats of apology for that.
Melanie let herself in the house and went straight to the bar. She poured herself a drink, and then another. She accidentally spilled some vermouth on her blouse, so she decided to change out of her grave outfit and have a shower. She had a really beautiful shower, she decided. The whole house was beautiful, really, and her clothing had been tastefully selected. She’d taken it for granted while she was alive, but now that she was dead, the luxury of organic cotton towels and travertine underfoot actually meant something to her. Maybe it wasn’t a living-dead thing, maybe it was just relief that she was finally home, where she was supposed to be.
She did her Pilates video workout and her nightly skin care regimen, then went to bed, only to find that she couldn’t sleep.
She turned on the television.
The next day, she skipped the Pilates workout.
Melanie found the remote and sat on the leather couch, putting her feet on a stack of magazines that she’d finally have time to read. The TiVo had four solid days’ worth of programming on it, which for once sounded encouraging rather than daunting. She’d hardly had time for it before—she’d had too many hair and manicure and personal trainer appointments—but now that she was dead, there seemed little point.
Besides, after all she’d been through, she deserved a little “me” time.
The calendar on the fridge said her husband would be home in three days, but it was closer to five. By that time, she’d grown decidedly squishy, and not just around the eyes. Her fingers shrank at the tips, giving her a claw-like appearance that begged for an acrylic fill. The flesh on her thighs sagged, detaching from the bones. She thought about the liposuction she’d gotten, and tsked silently.
Melanie watched QVC, drank everything in the liquor cabinet, and felt her body decompose. Really, Brandon was being insensitive; he could have at least called. She emailed him, then emailed her mom and her sister, just to say hi, back from the dead, what’s up with you?
She was lonely. She wanted comfort and companionship so desperately that she’d already decided not to be bitchy, to let the appearance of the blonde bimbo (who looked like a younger version of herself, she decided) just pass over. She could always argue about it later, and anyway, she’d always suspected that Brandon led a double life. She had had her lovers; why should he be any different?
The key rattled, and Brandon opened the kitchen door.
“Dear God,” Brandon said, garment bag dangling off his shoulder and laptop case in his hand. “What’s that horrible smell?”
“That’s not very nice,” said Melanie, feeling hurt. She had endured a lot in the past few days, and while she considered herself thick-skinned, Brandon’s complete lack of empathy pissed her off. “Here I am, risen from the grave, even if not exactly fresh any more, and all you can do is complain that I’m a corpse? What did you expect?”
“Melanie?” Brandon said, his voice half wonderment and half horror. The garment bag slipped from his hands. He turned and vomited in the sink.
If Melanie’s tear ducts had been still functional, she probably would have cried. Really, why did he have to be so dramatic?
She stood, leaving a puddle of formaldehyde-tainted liquor and various body fluids on the couch. (She didn’t feel guilty; it was only from IKEA.) She meant to seductively slink into the kitchen, one hand coquettishly outlining her cleavage, but she couldn’t manage more than a shuffle. It was a wonder her tongue still worked, when you came to think about it.
“What were you doing, planning a business trip right after you raised me from the dead? Didn’t you think you might need to be here for me?”
It was an awkward pose, Melanie decided. Actually this whole situation was awkward. “Brandon…”
“God, no, please no…”
She gave him her best pout. That pout had gotten her emeralds before, but now it seemed broken. She sighed. “So, what now? Why did you raise me from the dead?”
“No, no, no…” he moaned.
She snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Hello!” She was the one who had died, what right did he have to act like his life was turned upside down? He had always been a firm, take-charge kind of guy. An alpha male, he called himself. He dominated in tennis, took no prisoners when he negotiated a deal, and drove like an asshole on the freeway. And yet here he was, bawling like a scared little boy.
“Brandon!” she tried again, and when that didn’t work, she slapped him.
It wasn’t much of a slap, but as soon as her flesh touched his face, Brandon’s eyes rolled up in his head and he passed out, smacking his head against the counter and then the floor, his hands squeaking uselessly down the front of the dishwasher.
She sighed, and put her hands on her hips. Useless. Completely useless. And he obviously wasn’t the person who had raised her. She nudged him with her foot, but he wasn’t faking.
Melanie found her purse and her cell phone. She took his keys out of his pocket. She was going to take the z4, but she felt a little bad about slapping him, so she took the Audi instead. And even though he’d never liked the upholstery color, she put a plastic bag over the driver’s seat, because the half case of Rémy she’d drunk wasn’t preserving her as alcohol was supposed to. It seemed to be turning her insides into a slurry of decay.
At this rate, she’d be nothing but a skeleton before the month was out.
The Living Dead Page 48