Revival House

by S. S. Michaels

  “Hey,” she says, cigarette hanging off her lip.

  I don’t say anything.

  What is there to say?

  I don’t know what she’s doing in my house. I’m not angry, just shocked. Her heavy thighs rub together as she crosses the room to sit across from me at the table. I want to pull her hair out by the roots, scream in her face. She has bruises around her neck already.

  “I’m staying,” she says, blowing smoke in my face.

  Avery. Of course she’s staying... with Avery.

  Damn it.

  “Listen,” I say, putting my hand over hers. “I would really like that.” Or would I? “I am so happy that you have come to this decision, but can you give me a few weeks to wrap up some loose ends with the business?”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, this new guy I’ve got working for me isn’t working out, you know?”

  She looks at me like I’m nuts and then kind of snorts. “No, seriously, I need to get him out of the house, and then you are more than welcome to come back.” I think. I look at my coffee mug, Avery’s shirt, Scarlet’s eyebrow ring. “I’d stay away from him if I were you.”

  She looks at me as if I’d just spit in her face.

  He’s a serial killer waiting to happen.

  She gets ready for school and I hear her upstairs stomp out the door while I’m prepping the Harley guy for his post-mortem pictures. As I shove the straps from the new body lifter underneath his large torso, Avery walks in, dressed in a suit which I am certain belongs to me.

  “Hey, give me a hand, would you?” Sweat rolls down my forehead and the back of my neck.

  Avery applauds, the cigarette in his mouth— same brand as Scarlet’s— bobs up and down. I didn’t know he smoked.

  “Funny,” I say. This portly gentleman is heavy. Avery takes a long drag off his cigarette, holds it in the V formed between his index and middle fingers, and grabs hold of the corpse’s meaty side. The tip of his cigarette touches the inside of the man’s upper arm and makes a hissing sound. The unmistakable stink of burning flesh tickles my nose.

  “Hey,” I say, batting away his hand, “you’re burning him, dickhead.”

  “Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry.” Avery flicks his cigarette onto the cracked tile floor and steps on it with his scuffed old wing-tip, still grasping Harley’s fat-covered rib cage.

  We finally get all the straps in place and haul Harley up on the body lifter. He is dressed only in a leather vest and assless chaps. We wheel him down the hallway to the front foyer, where his shined-up bike is waiting. Of course, there is no risk of anyone walking in on us as it is after normal business hours. I had drawn all the drapes, just to make sure no one walking past the building would see anything untoward.

  “You didn’t tell me you met Scarlet,” I say, unbuckling one of the body lifter’s straps, unleashing a fat shoulder.

  “Was I supposed to?” Avery flashes his mischievous smile my way. “You’re not my keeper.”

  Avery and his lean, muscular frame, chiseled jawline. I really want to kick him in the neck.

  I don’t say anything, I just concentrate on trying to get the fat leathered man onto the gleaming cycle.

  Avery lets out a low whistle. “She is pretty fantastic, you know...”

  “Stop,” I say, wanting to press my palms against my ears, wanting to kick Avery in the perfect teeth, wanting to vomit all that I’d not eaten for dinner all over the marble floor.

  Hydrogen, helium, lithium... (That trick is becoming less and less effective.)

  “She might not be much to look at, but, Caleb, oh, my God, she does this thing where she...”

  Snap. I pilot my fist into Avery’s orbital bone, compressing the grape of his eyeball beneath the bend of the interphalangeal joint of my right index finger. He steps back and claps a hand over his eye.

  “Ow! What did you do that for?” He looks at me for a minute, clapping his hands over his eye, then his long, lean face softens. Tears shine in his good eye and roll down his clean-shaven cheek. Realization kicks in. He may have a doctoral degree, but he is thicker than your granny’s oatmeal. “You have a thing for her, don’t you?”

  I don’t say anything.

  I’m sorry for your loss.

  Chapter 23 – Caleb

  “Just go over there and start talking, man.” Four and I stare at the girl on the bench across the fountain. She’s thin and blonde and gorgeous and reading a book. She’s dressed as though she came to the park for a run, but she’s not stretching or anything. “Talk about anything— the weather, her hair, how big your dick is.”

  I shoot him a frown.

  “Hey, you’d be surprised at how many chicks dig an opening like that.” He grins at me, winks. “Then,” he sighs, “there are the ones who have a mean right hook, too. You never can tell. ‘Life is like a box of choc-o-lits,’ right?” He laughs.

  A palmetto bug crawls out of Four’s mouth and skitters across his cheek, cramming itself into the sanctuary of his ear. I feel like screaming.

  I ran out of my pills a couple of days ago, didn’t think I needed them anymore since I was starting to feel a little more ‘real.’ But, right now, I’m sitting next to that big purple McDonald’s character, The Grimace. I’m losing my grip on reality. If I ever had one.

  “Why are you so hung up on her anyway?”

  I pop open a can of Coke and take a swallow. I consider his question. I’m not sure I even know the answer.

  “Listen, if it’s how she looks, dude, you can do a lot better. Seriously. That hare-lip thing she’s got, topped by that little mustache.” He shivers. “You’ve known her for two years, man, why now?”

  I’m not sure I know the answer to that, either.

  She’s graduating. Wants to leave, start a new life. Somewhere else. Without me. I don’t tell him that it’s become a control issue. Now I want her here mostly because she wants to be somewhere else.

  “Hey, man, life goes on, you know? The beauty of living in this art school town is that in about six months, there’s going to be a whole new crop of lovely new neurotic messes to choose from.”

  “I want her. I’m not letting her go.” I get up and walk away.

  I stick my nose into an azalea and take a deep breath. I’ll never get tired of that beautiful scent. I straighten my tie and start walking home.

  I look back over my shoulder and The Grimace is getting slapped across the face by the blonde reader.

  Chapter 24 – Caleb

  “Some of them, we quickly twisted their heads and broke their necks. Some, we whacked over the head with a heavy hammer. Some, we just used saline.” Avery studies his manicured nails as he so nonchalantly recounts his days at the Safar Center. “When we pushed the cold saline into their circulatory systems, they went into cardiac arrest, no matter what their initial injury. Saline was about forty-five or fifty degrees, which might not sound that cold, but when your body temperature normally runs above ninety-eight degrees, that’s comparatively freezing, right?” When does he have his nails done?

  I seal the Harley man’s eyes shut. But, first, I hold open his right eye and slide in this very large white contact lens object with bumps on the flat side to hold it in place. I do the same to the left. The purpose? To make it look like he’s still got eyeballs beneath his eyelids. After you die, your eyeballs dry out and sink back into your skull and your eyelids cave in. If you don’t put something underneath them, people at the viewing will be disturbed by their loved one’s hollow eye sockets. So, I insert the plastic hemispheres and apply a bead of transparent adhesive right along the lash lines. Presto. Eyes look normal. Just like he’s sleeping. Don’t want his eyelids popping open during the service and revealing the eggshells underneath so I use a good amount of adhesive, but not quite enough to be noticed. “So, this cold saline shuts down their circulatory system, rendering their hearts absolutely still. That’s when they’re dead. We kept them like that for three hours. Three whole hours, Caleb, thos
e dogs were dead. Of course, we didn’t call it ‘dead’; we called it ‘suspended animation.’” He looks at me as though he’s expecting applause.

  I grab Harley’s generous bottom lip in my latex-gloved hand. I wiggle my fingers in over his bottom teeth and yank his jaw down. Yes, when you die, someone will stuff wads of cotton or gauze pads into your oral cavity so your cheeks don’t have that deflated basketball look. You may be noticing a pattern here. When you die, lots of things on your body just cave in— eyeballs, cheeks, even your abdomen. We’ve got filler for that, too. It’s like kitty litter, minus the clumps, of course. Anyway, after filling Harley’s mouth, I pull up his lower lip, insert a mouth form, pull down his upper lip, and seal them together. The undertaker’s equivalent of Krazy Glue, called Aron Alpha, works like magic.

  “You know what we did then?” Avery asks, leaning on the edge of the sink, extracting another cigarette from his pack. “We drained the saline and pumped their own blood back through their bodies, warming them back up.”

  Magic.

  “Then, we gave them a quick shock, and guess what?” he said.

  “They came back to life.” The needle injector shoots pins into either side of Harley’s bottom jaw, immobilizing it forever.

  “Resuscitation.” He grins and exhales a cloud of smoke.

  I pull off my latex gloves and throw them in the garbage. Harley’s almost done. He just needs a shave and some make-up.

  Scarlet should be doing this.

  Avery shouldn’t be here.

  I should be thinking up ways to save my business.

  Maybe I am.

  Prodromal symptoms call out through my left eye. I’ll have to lie down soon.

  “Do you get it, Caleb?” Avery says. “This is the gimmick you’ve been waiting for. Forget about taking stupid pictures and that silly Weekend at Bernie’s stuff you had planned with that idiot friend of yours. Four. That’s a number, Caleb, not a name.” He snorts.

  I had come to the realization that dragging bodies around town was not going to work. The bodies were too heavy and setting them up in public locations was too conspicuous and risky, even in the dead of night. Technically, according to Georgia Code, Title 31, Chapter 21, Article 1, as a funeral director, there wasn’t much I couldn’t do with or to a dead body to constitute felony abuse or anything as terrible as that. Plus, the coroner and his deputy were friends of the family. Four wasn’t an employee, though, so he could be charged with a felony. But, the coroners didn’t care, they knew he was my friend. Besides, what would they do, tell on me? Arrest my friend? I didn’t think so. But I kind of didn’t want to do what I knew Avery had in mind.

  Reanimation.

  The thought had crossed my mind, that day I sat at my desk with Four, looking at the Forever Hollywood website. And several times since. I did not think it could be done, but with Avery’s educational background, perhaps it could.

  No.

  The logistics of obtaining appropriate subjects are near impossible.

  It cannot be done. Well, it can be, but I am not going to harm anyone that badly. I like to fight, but I don’t want to critically injure anyone just so we can kill them and bring them back to life. I must have some small shred of morality.

  “Just try it,” Avery says an inch from my ear. “Start small.”

  I think of the bothersome squirrels running wild in the streets, always getting hit by cars and left in the middle of the road to rot or be eaten by turkey vultures.

  Avery, I know, is thinking a little bigger.

  Chapter 25 – Caleb

  “What in hell are you doing?” I slam down a file on my lab table and pull Avery up by the collar. He stands up straight and pushes his perfect Roman nose right into mine.

  “I am just trying to save your business,” he says, a frown pulling at the corners of his mouth. “You’re not mad, are you?”

  Three of my guinea pigs are stretched out on the table in front of him, each secured to the black table top with electrical tape. Thin plastic tubing, no thicker than angel hair pasta, penetrates their soft fur in strategic locations— legs, abdomens, necks— flooding ceramic-wrapped jars with their blood. Their beady eyes shine in the fluorescent light looking almost teary. My favorite little auburn one’s eyes begin to close, fighting to remain open, looking for a future. Frantic mewling sounds issue from their buck-toothed mouths. They call to mind little furry Jesuses, bleeding so that we might find a way to prolong our own somehow more valuable human lives.

  Of course, I am interested in seeing the outcome, as I do value science. I recognize that some sacrifices are necessary in the advancement of medicine. The guinea pigs wind up being too small. The saline infusion doesn’t work. Their tiny vascular systems explode with the flooding of the saline. The clear solution soaks the fur surrounding the tubing’s points of insertion and continues to puddle on the table around their lifeless bodies.

  A couple of hours later, after dark, I lean over the sink, eating a Pop Tart and pondering how those guinea pigs could help save my livelihood.

  Avery comes slinking through the kitchen, dressed all in black— black jeans, black turtleneck, black gloves, black ski mask rolled up on his head. I wonder where he got a ski mask in Savannah in the month of May.

  “Um, where are you going?”

  “Out.”

  “No Scarlet tonight?”

  “I don’t know, maybe later. Who cares? There’s important work to be done.”

  “I thought maybe you would care. What if she comes by while you’re out?”

  “Tell her I shall return at dawn.” He waggles his eyebrows and pulls the door shut behind him.

  I have no idea what chicanery that boy is up to.

  Or maybe I do, but I choose not to think about it.

  Not five minutes later, as I finish my Pop Tart, Scarlet comes bumping through the door in a flurry of paper and fake black roses. “Hey,” she says when she sees me.

  I’m busy chewing.

  “Look, I have to go to work in about half an hour...”

  I stare at the academic paper Avery left on the kitchen counter, from his trials at the Safar Center, trying to decode it, reconcile it to the meaning of death.

  I hate Scarlet.

  But, I love her.

  A tug-of-war rages somewhere inside me.

  I have a headache. “I’m going upstairs to lie down.”

  “Do you want...”

  “I have an extremely bad headache, so would you mind keeping it down?” I ascend the back stairs, heading to my room just above Serenity.

  “Great,” I hear her say.

  I’m tired. And trying to decide whether or not it would be against my own moral code to try Avery’s resuscitation project on a human, should I ever get the opportunity. Do I even have a moral code, a moral compass?

  My nose bleeds onto my pillowcase.

  I don’t notice until morning.

  Chapter 26 – Caleb

  An insistent scratching on my bedroom door wakes me a few hours later. I think it may be Scarlet. Then, I hear the whimpering of animals. I get out of bed, cross my room and crack the door.

  Three dogs wander the hallway, whining and sniffing. They come to me, tails wagging, tongues lolling.

  They’re cute. I love dogs.

  Across the hall, Avery’s door stands open just a crack. Another dog, an ugly bulldog, pushes its way out of the room, widening the gap. I can see Avery and Scarlet doing something unspeakable (explaining Scarlet’s whimpering which has now grown into a sort of guttural moaning). My stomach twists as a yellow lab that I recognize from down the street licks my fingers. I snatch my hand away from the dog and slam my door.

  No, that’s not why the dogs are here. I don’t want them to be here.

  I feel physically ill. I feel unreal, like I’m not here. I’m a ghost. My headache has returned with a vengeance, and I vomit all over the expensive Oriental rug that covers my polished red maple floor. It smells like blueberry Pop Tart and
sour bile, of course, because that’s what it is. I knew she was falling for him, with his jet black hair and smoky steel eyes. The minute I saw him at Sterling’s funeral I just knew she’d want him. He is everything I am not: good looking, smooth, brilliant. I hate him. I can’t believe he’d do any of this right in my own house. I don’t know what to do.

  The dogs. What are all those dogs doing here? I know that lab— he belongs to the McSorleys’, down the street. His name is... Pluto? Plato? Cato? Something like that. I see the kids outside playing with him all the time. I don’t know why he is in my house. I don’t know why any of them are in my house. (I hope I don’t know why.)

  I want to confront Avery, but he seems otherwise occupied at the moment. Also, I’ve got vomit all over my hands and the front of my shirt. I step over the mess that flew from my esophagus and slip out into the hallway. I glance toward Avery’s room, which is now dark and quiet. I do not know if they’re in there, sleeping, or if they’re downstairs, or maybe they’ve even left the house. I don’t care.

  The dogs follow me down the hall. I close myself in the bathroom and look in the mirror. I look like some kind of disaster casualty. My hair sticks up at odd angles, my eyes are wet and red, my nose and upper lip are crusty with dried blood, I still have a bruise on my cheek from the last fight I was in, my clothes are stained with purple fragrant puke.

  I look for a clean hand towel on the towel bar but there isn’t one. I look around and see the room’s usual supply of clean towels piled on the floor between the toilet and the bathtub. Educated gentleman or no, Avery is a slob. I take off my soiled shirt and throw it on the heap of dirty laundry.

  God, I hate Scarlet. And Avery. And what are all these dogs doing here?

  What is happening?

  I need to regain control of the situation. My livelihood is at stake and there’s no one to watch out for me anymore. I must be my own savior.

  I swallow a Seroquel and an Imitrex. I will deal with Avery and the dogs in the morning.

  Unreal.