Expiration Date

by Nancy Kilpatrick

  As she left, she and everybody else crunched over stuff that she hadn’t noticed coming in. Down on the dark earth, she caught glimpses of droplets of glass like frozen tears.

  For a while then, Cara went randomly from one truck to another, wherever she could get through the throng. There was a spaceship with aliens inside anxious to pull her apart and see what made her tick, see if they could make her cry. There was a funhouse with distorted mirrors and when she looked at herself in one she couldn’t see her eyes and the smile on her face was someone else’s— a waitress’s or a librarian’s or that of an old woman wanting nothing more than to die.

  Did Cara want to die?

  No, she was scared of dying.

  But did she want to be dead?

  Thinking about that made her stop still. People bumped into her and went around her, some of them saying sorry and some telling her to move it or worse and some not seeming to notice her at all.

  She couldn’t come up with the answer, so she just walked on to the next truck. Now that she’d been inside some of them, they didn’t necessarily seem like threatening places anymore. She wondered whether the truck that had run her off the road and almost killed her had had somebody’s fantasy world inside it, too.

  The next truck she went into was a church with a stained glass window and incense and organ music and a bloody cross. Other than the performers, if that’s what they were, she was alone. They told her there was nothing to fear, death was just another door and once you opened it you’d be inside God’s own special dream. Cara did not find this especially reassuring.

  Now the priest was tossing holy water on her, drops like God’s own tears that flew and burned and would have dissolved her flesh if she hadn’t shaken them off. They made a loud clatter when they hit the floor in this echoey place.

  “Why don’t you just take me and be done with it?” She didn’t think she really meant that, but that’s what came out of her mouth almost automatically, as if she’d been rehearsing the line for years. The priest just smiled, his eye holes widening and his teeth falling out, skin so thin his head was like a grinning skull. Cara left and no one tried to stop her.

  The crowd had begun to thin out, and it seemed to her there weren’t as many trucks now. She was surprised to realize she didn’t want the Night Market to end before she’d experienced every one of these boxed fantasy worlds. She didn’t see Eli. Her car was still there. The stench of weed was faint, and the aroma of beer was faded and stale in her mouth. From habit she wished for a joint or a brownie, but in a way she was glad to be doing this on her own and not high.

  The disco dance truck, where the ball spun multicolored flecks of light that might look like tears if you really worked at it, didn’t do much for her. The post office truck was just plain boring. A post office? Really? Somebody fantasized about a post office?

  Then, somewhere between the slaughterhouse truck and the Inquisition torture chamber, the conviction came to her that if she didn’t get out of the Night Market right away she would die. Now. Tonight. And if she didn’t stay until it was over, she would die then, too. Maybe not right now, but she would. No matter what she did, she would die.

  Well, of course. Everyone could say that. But most people wouldn’t dream of speaking such a thing out loud.

  Her brand-new shirt and pants were ruined, spattered by drops of blood from the slaughtered animals and the tortured people. Surely the human victims, at least, had been actors, and the blood had been fake. But with her luck it would stain anyway.

  A vague despair over her ruined clothes and not particularly wanting to see Eli again and the general weirdness of the evening made her burst into tears. It had been such a long time since she’d cried it felt as if the tears were etching her skin, dissolving her eyes. Her vision became distorted. Her eyes ached. She didn’t even try to stifle her sobs, didn’t care much that it would ruin her make-up or what people would think if they saw her this way.

  She realized she was leaning against one of the box trucks, one she thought she hadn’t been in but they all looked alike from the outside and it could have moved from one parking space to another. Where were the drivers? Had they just mingled in with the crowd? Were they napping in the cabs? Did they know what they were hauling? Was there a big market for this sort of thing?

  Tears were running down her face and wetting her collar. The force of her sorrow or fear or release or whatever it was bent her over, and her tears fell onto the pavement, tinkling like broken glass when they hit. Her mother used to call this, what? “Crying your eyes out.” Could you really cry your eyes out? Had Mom cried like this when she’d realized she was going to die? Had she known? Did Dad have a premonition that his heart would break at just that instant?

  “Cara.”

  From that blurry border between the night market’s bright lights and what passed in the city for total darkness, Eli was coming toward her. She thought this might be the first time he’d actually said her name. He had a dog on a leash.

  Cara crouched and held out her arms to the dog, crooning, weeping. She couldn’t tell its breed or its color— mixed breed, probably; dark-colored. She couldn’t tell if it was male or female, and she didn’t want to think of it as “it.”

  He was old and sick. His slack, toothless mouth hung almost to the pavement. Both his eyes were capped by milky cataracts. He snuffled loudly, turning in her direction, her smell in his nose.

  Crying now for the dog in addition to everything else, Cara murmured “Come here, pretty boy” and “Poor baby,” and the dog followed her smell and the sound of her voice and made his painful way toward her, pulling Eli with surprising strength so that the leash was taut between them. Cara didn’t especially want Eli to come to her, just the old dog, which paused to lick at the pavement. There was a brittle clatter as hard things struck together. My tears, she thought, all my tears from my whole life, and squinted to see the glistening glass piled like jewels in the lights of the parking lot. Eli bent and scooped them up.

  The dog was determined to get to her. Some animals could sense when a person was sick. She’d seen dogs at work who could sense a seizure before it happened, and she’d read about some who could smell or in some other way detect cancer earlier than doctors could. This dog’s big runny nostrils were flaring as he made his way toward her, tugging Eli along.

  Eli slung the tears at her. Her own tears, sharp and hard. Cara twisted but they struck her on her back, arms, chest, belly, and everywhere they hit they drew blood.

  “Stop it!” She stood up, swaying, and tried to move out of range, but he was rapidly closing the gap between them, or maybe she was inadvertently gliding closer— she wasn’t sure which direction she was moving. Her intentions kept leading her the wrong way.

  The three of them stepped around the parking lot, circling, dancing, a clumsy ballet. Blood and tears made her eyes sting. The dog moaned and squealed, almost a song, then in slow motion jumped up against her softly and slid down her body to collapse at her feet.

  Just before Eli’s arms closed around her and their open mouths joined in their only kiss, she saw the tear-shaped buttons on his shirt flowing in an endless stream.

  * * *

  Melanie Tem’s work has received the Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy Awards, as well as a nomination for the Shirley Jackson Award. She is also a published poet, an oral storyteller, and several of her plays have been produced. Stories have recently appeared in Interzone and Crimewave.

  * * *

  2013 saw three new short story collections from Steve Rasnic Tem: Onion Songs (Chomu); Celestial Inventories (ChiZine); and Twember (NewCon Press). This spring PS Publishing is bringing out his stand-alone novella In the Lovecraft Museum.

  Sooner

  by Morgan Dambergs

  Laurel could tell the staff on the psych ward were not pleased to see her agai
n. She couldn’t blame them. Three failed suicide attempts in eight months— who wouldn’t be sick of her by now? God knew she was beyond sick of herself.

  She’d done everything right this time: waited for her mother to leave on a business trip, washed down her two hidden bottles of benzos with half a bottle of wine, lay down on her bed and braced herself for the awful feeling of her heart and lungs slowing to a stop. But she hadn’t counted on her mother lying about the business trip. According to the nurses, her mother had been testing to see if it was safe to leave Laurel home alone for a night— and obviously, she had not passed the test. Knowing that made something twist in Laurel’s stomach, but at least it explained why her mother hadn’t visited once during the past week. After all, no one wanted a failure for her only child— especially a university dropout who was so pathetic she couldn’t even kill herself properly.

  At noon, an orderly came by to dump a lunch tray on her bedside table. He tugged open her drawer to check for anything illicit — unnecessarily, Laurel thought, since she’d had no visitors and wasn’t allowed to leave her room unescorted — and on his way out, ordered her to eat. He never once made eye contact. When he was gone, she rolled onto her side, pulled the blankets up over her head and closed her eyes. She wasn’t sleepy, but the smell of the egg sandwich was making her sick, and she couldn’t bear the thought of her chatty roommate coming back and trying to coax her into eating, like she’d done at supper the night before.

  Breathing soft and slow, Laurel focussed on her heartbeat, trying to slow it to a stop with her mind. She didn’t really expect that to work, but at least it was a way to pass the endless daytime hours. When she finally felt herself drifting off to sleep, she said a silent prayer that she would never have to open her eyes again.

  * * *

  She woke facing the window. Beyond the laminated glass, the gibbous moon hung low in the sky, illuminating the hospital room in pale silver and reflecting off the hair of the man who sat on a chair next to her bed. His face was cast in shadow. Telling herself there was no reason to be nervous, Laurel propped herself up on an elbow and flipped the switch for the light above her bed. She was relieved to see the man wearing the purple scrubs favoured by most of the psych ward nurses. She didn’t think she recognized him from the ward’s regular staff, but he was so nondescript it was hard to be sure— gray hair, gray eyes, neither old nor young, neither ugly nor attractive. Not someone who would turn many heads.

  He held a small notebook, flipping slowly through the pages. Laurel cleared her throat softly, but he either didn’t hear or ignored her. She glanced over at her roommate’s bed, but the girl was fast asleep; beyond her, through the open door to their room, the hallway was dark and empty.

  She turned back to the nurse, just as he pressed his fingertip against one of the pages and said, “Here. This is you.”

  He leaned forward, holding the notebook out towards her. Laurel instinctively pulled away, suddenly uncertain if he really was a nurse, or if one of her fellow patients had gotten hold of a pair of scrubs and wandered into her room. But she saw that her name was indeed scrawled across a line on the lower half of the notebook page: Laurel Jane Cameron, 1990—2076. She tried to skim the rest of the page, to see if he’d written anything else about her, but he snapped the book shut and tucked it into the breast pocket of his scrubs before she could make out another word.

  He rested his elbows on his knees and looked directly into her eyes. “So why, Laurel, do you persist in trying to kill yourself when you’re meant to live for decades yet?”

  Laurel blinked at him for a moment, then glanced at his chest, where his nametag should have been. There was nothing there, and she realized that his scrubs had turned the same soft gray color as his eyes and hair.

  She shoved her blanket aside and pushed herself up to sit cross-legged on her mattress. “But you can’t… are you really…?” She glanced back at the eerily silent hallway beyond her room. “Am I dreaming?”

  Death shrugged. “This is real enough to inconvenience me. You understand I’ve put my work on hold to come speak with you tonight? If you’ll agree to stop meddling with my system, I can get back to more important matters.”

  Laurel bit her lip. “If you’re trying to make me feel better, you’re off to a great start.”

  “I’m not here to soothe your feelings, only to keep you from further complicating an already difficult job.” Death sat back and crossed his legs. “You people seem to think it’s the ones who want eternal life that get in my way. But they so rarely succeed. No, it’s the suicides that cause me problems.”

  He gazed steadily at Laurel, and she pulled her pajama top closer against her body, trying not to shiver.

  “Do you know what happens when someone ends their life before their time?” Death continued. “If I’m not there to reap your soul as you die, you disappear into nothingness— oblivion. No heaven, no reincarnation, no afterlife of any kind. You’re gone forever.” He steepled his fingers. “To me, it amounts to little more than frustration. I have to change my list to reflect the lost soul, shuffle dates around to fill the hole created— it’s a hassle. But that is, ultimately, all it is.

  “You, however… you have every reason to be frightened. Oblivion is a bleak and lonesome way to spend eternity.”

  Death fell silent and rested his steepled fingers under his chin, looking haughty as a king. Laurel stared at him for a moment, then let out a bark of laughter so loud she made herself jump.

  “You think threatening me with oblivion is going to change my mind about killing myself? It’s a long, long time since I believed there was anything good waiting for me after I die. But I know nothing could be worse than having to live like this for— God, what, six more decades?” She shook her head. “No. I’m ready to go now. I’ve been ready for years.”

  She pushed herself to the edge of the bed and dropped her feet to the floor, motioning towards his pocket. “There must be millions of people in there who’re dying too young, who’d do anything for a little more time. I’m sure there are people like that right in this very hospital. If you don’t want to rearrange your list after I’m gone, can’t you just… switch me with someone now?”

  He tilted his head to one side. “You’re asking me to make a deal with you?”

  Laurel shrugged. “It’d be better for everyone, wouldn’t it? Whoever I trade with gets to stick around and hopefully do some good in the world. I finally get to die. You don’t have your system screwed with. Seems perfect.”

  Death’s expression hardened, and the look that came into his eyes made Laurel want to crawl back under her covers and hide. She told herself she was being silly, that the worst he could do was kill her and not reap her soul— and hadn’t she just said that wouldn’t be so bad? But her heart was beating too fast, each thud a reminder of what a weak, irrational, useless person she was. No wonder she couldn’t even get suicide right.

  “I’m not in the habit of giving in to the demands of mortals,” said Death, his voice low, his words clipped. “Not even one who’s idiotic enough to bargain in the wrong direction.”

  Laurel felt her face flush and realized with a shock that she wasn’t afraid— she was angry. It felt almost foreign. It had been so long since she’d succumbed to loneliness and weariness and despair that getting angry again, getting genuinely upset… felt… good.

  “It’s not the wrong direction,” she said, her voice just as low and clipped as Death’s. “You’re right. I am stupid. But I also know how much the world sucks, and that I fuck it up even worse by ruining everything I touch. That makes suicide the right choice. If I want, just once, to do something good with my life, it’s the only choice.”

  Death snorted softly. “As you’ve pointed out, you have more than sixty years left to live— and yes, there are people who would quite literally kill for that. Yet you’re certain there’s nothing you can do with that time to he
lp the world ‘suck’ less, besides removing yourself from it?” He shook his head. “If that’s the case, Laurel, I can’t believe you’ve tried very hard to find an alternative.”

  Laurel could feel wetness pooling at the corners of her eyes, and tried to blink it away. So many months had passed since she’d last been able to cry, she’d sincerely believed there were no tears left inside her, and part of her wanted to give in and let them fall. But she held on, unable to stand the thought of letting Death see how much he was getting to her. He watched her closely, his face once again unreadable. She couldn’t tell if he didn’t know she was almost crying, or simply didn’t care.

  “I’ve tried it all,” she said. Her voice came out raspy, and she swallowed to relieve the tightness in her throat. “I’ve talked to therapists, taken their pills, tried to reframe my thoughts and accept myself as I am. I’ve been stuck with jobs and classes I hated, and forced myself to join university clubs I had no interest in to try to make friends. I’ve done everything people tell me I should do. But nothing ever changes!” She felt tears slipping down her cheeks, but didn’t have the strength left to fight them. “I don’t change, my life doesn’t change. All I can think about is how much I want to die, and how I’d stop being a burden to my mother if I did. Nothing in this world would be worse if I died. Some things might even get a little better.”

  Death’s eyebrows drew together. “You truly believe that?”

  “I know it. And please don’t bother It’s a Wonderful Lifeing me. There’s nothing you can show me that would change my mind.” Laurel smiled weakly. “Besides, I’m already working on a better plan for next time— something outside the house, so Mom can’t fake me out again. With luck, I’ll be dead for a while before anyone finds me. And if that includes you…” She shrugged. “I’ll take oblivion over this. It cannot possibly be worse.”