by Lydia Netzer
“Stand down,” she said, and the golem, who was silently standing there, not looking at Belion or anything else, dropped his weapon and dissolved into dust, leaving a full set of mithril armor on the ground.
“Put it on,” she said to Belion. “You’re going to need it.”
“I don’t mind the lamia,” said Belion. “I already killed five.”
“You’re going to kill something else,” she said. “A beholder.”
“Wait a minute, am I in Thalos? Where did you get the code for this area?”
“You’re in Babylon,” she said. “Think about it. Did you ever see a river in Thalos?”
With that she dropped out the window. Belion leaned out after her, aghast, and could see her down below, on the ground, collecting herself and walking away down the street. He rushed down the stairs to catch up to her.
*
The phone beside Belion’s desk rang. He picked it up quickly, discovered it was not his phone, but rather the house phone at Irene’s mother’s house. Mentally staggering through layers of disorientation from coming out of gaming and into this unfamiliar house, he jabbed the wrong button and turned it off. He stared at the phone until it rang again.
“Hello?” He jabbed the right button. “Hello?”
“Belion?” It was Irene. On the screen in front of him, Silvergirl was passing him a smooth ball of quartz.
“Yeah?” Belion did not want to be interrupted.
“Belion, I need to break up with you.”
“Yep, OK.” He examined the ball of quartz in his inventory. A light source. He followed Silvergirl down a wide main street and saw a domed temple before him, rising up out of dried gardens, the desiccated vines and trees still climbing colonnades and statuary.
“I’m breaking up with you now,” Irene was saying.
“Got it,” said Belion. “Thanks.”
He moved his avatar over to the doorway to the temple and angled himself to be able to peer inside, but it was dark. Silvergirl stood at the entrance to the temple, and she put out a hand to stop him from entering. She pulled back her cowl, showing her face to him, and then she leaned over and gave his avatar a kiss on the cheek.
“Belion,” said Irene in his ear, “do you understand what I am saying to you? We are broken up. I had sex with another man. Penis sex. I am not your girlfriend as of now.”
“Sad,” said Belion. “Sorry. Miss you. Gotta go.”
He pulled his broadsword out of its sheath and strode into the temple.
*
George and Irene sat in Irene’s car in the parking lot of the Metropolitan Funeral Home. They’d stopped at Frankie’s to eat breakfast: jalapeño eggs for Irene and coffee for George. Then Irene had said she needed to run an errand.
“I hope you’re not tired. Are you tired?” she asked. “I’m not tired a bit.”
“Not tired,” said George. He was not tired if tired meant she was going home without him. He would stay awake forever.
“Maybe you should go home,” said Irene. “And get some sleep.”
“No,” said George.
George’s head pounded. He palmed a small, flat vial out of his pocket and twisted the cap. Painkillers. The only way to get on with the day, sometimes. He stuck the cap in his nostril, squeezed the vial, and sniffed. Then he stretched his mouth open and gulped a little.
“What was that?”
“I’m fine,” said George.
“I’m sure you are,” said Irene, “But what did you just put in your nose?”
“I take medicine,” said George. “Vitamins, really. For health purposes.”
“Vitamins don’t look like that. And you don’t put them in your nose. What was that thing?”
“Irene, I love you,” said George.
“Wow, that must be some interesting stuff, for you to deflect like that.”
“Yeah, no, it’s just a vitamin. But maybe we should go home. We.” George emphasized the plural. “We should go home to my house together.”
“Aren’t you working today?”
“Not this morning,” said George. “I don’t have a lecture until three.”
“Fine, then,” she said. “We can squeeze in my errand. But we have to hurry.”
“Here?” asked George groggily. He could feel the painkiller invading his skull from the top, like a dripping river of precious ice water numbing his head, making it all so much better.
“Yes, here,” said Irene.
“But they don’t open now,” he said. The sky was barely pink, and it couldn’t have been after seven.
“Now is the right time. They’ve burned her up, but they haven’t opened for the day.”
George put his hand on Irene’s leg. Maybe she would crawl out from under the steering wheel and into his lap, and she would fold herself up under his chin and rest her head on his chest. He would put his arms around her, around all of her, her folded legs and her small back. He would lock her in, and they would fall asleep for a little while, her cheek against his throat, his cheek against her hair, just for an hour or two. It couldn’t hurt.
“George,” said Irene. He popped awake.
“Yes,” he said.
“I told you my mother died three days ago, right?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Well, I have to go get her, and I’m not filling out any forms or organizing any sort of meeting with any sort of undertaker. I’ve sat in that lobby once, and looked at that damn parade of mouth-breathing dead people on that monitor, I’m not doing it again.”
“They’re not open,” George repeated. “And dead people—”
“George, if I go in there, and pick her up, and sign a form, then before I know it I’ll be picking out an urn. And if I pick out an urn, then I’m arranging a service, and if I’m arranging a service, then I’m buying a dress, and making a list of people, and composing an ad to go in the paper, and opening the house for a condolence party with cream cheese and olive sandwiches and ginger ale and lilies. Don’t you see I can’t do that? Condolences? It’s not even viable.”
“Probably you should though,” he said. She seemed so determined, and her adorable face was being very serious and fierce. He wanted to help her, even if it meant eating a dead person’s breathing mouth on cream cheese.
“I’m asking you one more time what was in that little bottle,” said Irene.
“Opiate,” said George, too medicated not to be honest. “It’s opiate. It’s totally legal and a prescription. A prescrip-tion,” he said slowly. “For me. Mine. My water buffalo. Mine.”
“Oh my god,” said Irene. She opened her mouth and shut it again. She started to laugh but then rolled her eyes instead. “At least you’ll have plausible deniability,” she said. “I’m sorry, officer, I was just helping my friend here steal her mother’s ashes. No, that’s not opium. That’s prescription embalming fluid!”
George frowned. He really wanted to lie down. The tentacles of his headache were being peeled away from his skull one by one by the medicine, and it was so helpful. If he could lie down, and sleep, perhaps with his face nestled in the crease between Irene’s breast and her upper arm, that would be even better. It actually was all perfectly legal. There had been doctors involved at all levels of the operation. Doctor, I have a terrible headache. What, again? Yes, and nothing seems to help. Here, let me get you this nasal spray. Take it if you need it, but by all means don’t take it and then break into a crematorium.
“Come on, George,” said Irene. “You have to boost me.”
“OK,” said George. He unfolded himself from her bitty little car and stood up and stretched. Immediately he felt better. He felt he could boost her, and steal these ashes. “Come on,” she said. “This is the part of the building with the crematorium. See the chimneys? Plus, you can’t get into this wing from inside, so you know. They must be doing something in there.”
George nodded and followed her. There were no other cars in the lot on this side of the building. There was one car
in the lot on the other side, possibly a security guard or another early mourner or someone who had just cheated and parked here while headed to a restaurant, a theater, a bar, and then they had too many drinks, and they were like I can drive, and their friend was like no you can’t, and they were like where did I even park?
“George!” Irene was saying. He tried to listen to her very carefully, but she had walked all the way across the parking lot and was standing under one of the windows. It was high on the wall, possibly to prevent onlookers from viewing the furnaces being stoked, viewing the corpses being loaded into them, viewing the whole morbid spectacle. When George made it all the way across the parking lot and found he was standing next to her again he felt like crying with relief. Just to be near her, this familiar person, who felt like a warm, satisfying piece in his puzzle, shaped just right. His only disappointment was that he wasn’t kissing her.
“Boost me,” she said. She was holding a long piece of metal and another small device that looked like a battery.
“What are you going to do?”
“Apparently scale this brick wall by myself or go get a ladder,” said Irene impatiently.
He boosted her onto his shoulders. She sat there, fiddling with the piece of metal and the battery. Her thighs pressed against his ears. The back of his head was pressed into her lady bits through the black jeans. He could not resist bouncing her up and down a little bit. No one could have.
“Quit it,” she said, and dug her heel into his ribs. But then she put her hand on the top of his head and ran her fingers down through his hair, curling around his ear in the most pleasing, soothing, maddening way. He knew that if nothing else happened, and he just felt the magic sensation of that hand running its way down through his hair, he would have lived for a reason. He looked up at her, and she was threading the long piece of metal through the bottom of the window frame. It was like a yardstick. Once she’d got it through, she applied the little battery to one end and flipped a switch.
“It’s a shape-memory alloy,” she said. “Nickel titanium, to be exact.”
“You mean Terminator metal?”
“Yeah.”
“Where did you get that?” he asked.
“I got it,” she said. “It’s commercially available.”
“For this particular application?”
She didn’t answer, but used the device on the end of the metal stick. When she applied the current to the metal, the part inside the window began to twist and shape itself into the form it had previously known. There was a reason for making metal like this, George knew, and it had to do with heart surgery and engine diagnostics. It did not have to do with robbing crematoriums. When she was satisfied with the shape of the memory metal, she gave a few quick jerks and the latch of the window swung free.
“I’m guessing it’s not armed,” she said. “The ones in the front weren’t, and that was where the money was kept. Back here is just dead people.”
“Great,” said George.
Irene lifted the window and flung herself up and through. For a minute her feet were dangling, and then she was inside. George stood on the green grass around the building, looking at morning bursting onto Toledo, hoping not to be too conspicuous against the brick wall.
“Come in,” he heard her call. “I’ll throw you out something.”
George leaned against the cool bricks. In a few seconds, she said, “Stand clear of the window.” But before his addled brain could figure out what that meant, there was a stool hurtling over the ledge and onto the grass. George picked it up and set it against the wall, using it to climb up on the ledge and through. Then they were both inside.
The crematorium was like an operating room, all brushed metal and shining tile, and in the dim light it had a bluish and sparkling tinge to it, as if it had all been recently wet. There were gurneys draped in white cloth, and there were instruments in racks, overhead lights in trapezoid shades, and two desks near the door. The minute he swept the room with his eyes, he knew that something here was very bad. There was a lurking presence, a gap in the air, a shadow in his vision. This was not a good time for his gods and goddesses to show up. Or, it was a very good time for them to show up, but not this one. This felt terrible. He was afraid. Apart from that fear, he found the crematorium was very much like a lab. It had the same look, but not the same feel.
“Come on,” said Irene.
The only door in the room was operated by one of those “panic bar” pressure handles, and George assumed the door was locked. There was no way out but the window, and he’d fallen six feet down to the floor. In a blaze of forethought that he paused to notice with pride, he grabbed another stool and set it by the window.
“Escape stool,” he said to Irene. “This is very important.”
She nodded. She was walking through the room quietly, her hands touching lightly on the gurneys as she passed each one. There was a clipboard with a few papers clipped to it hanging off the front of each gurney, but none were occupied. Irene examined the clipboards. She did not lift the cloths that were left on top. There were no toe tags lying around, discarded. Maybe the morgue had upgraded to wristbands, or forehead tattoos, or earrings. Left is right, right is dead. George examined a list on the wall, and Irene read over his shoulder.
Things to check for before using the retort:
1. Pacemaker
2. Liquor bottles placed in the coffin by friends of the deceased
Either can cause an EXPLOSION. Please mind the clients are properly prepared for the retort.
“This must be the retort,” she said.
George looked at her, hoping to make a joke. About the word “retort.” And how, in death, there is no retort, or something. However, behind Irene, he saw a dark shape move between a filing cabinet and one of the desks. It was not blurry, but flat and black, in the shape of a human, but possibly made of coal. The worst problem about it was that it had no face. He knew, without knowing quite how he knew, that this thing was disease and death. It was the god of death: Hades, or Satan, or Ereshkigal, or whatever you wanted to say: this was the modern American version of that. The stripped-down version. No horns, no blue skin, no pagoda on its head. No romance. No fire. The thing walked on tiptoe. He couldn’t tell where it was looking. He closed his eyes and opened them again. Irene was looking at a row of machines that looked like front-loading washers. On top of them, in a metal tray, were a number of shining metal balls. George had to watch as this crusty, blank Osiris put its elbows on a gurney and jutted its chin toward Irene. Its face elongated, and it brayed. George jumped, bumping into a tray of instruments and sending a pair of forceps clattering to the ground.
“What’s wrong with you,” Irene barked.
She had found the ovens. Each had a metal clasp and was the height of one of the gurneys. There were three in all. Irene moved from one to the next, touching her hand to each one as if checking the temperature. The dry black thing came behind her, touching each one, too, mimicking her movements. George frowned. “Stop that,” he said.
“I want to know which one she was in,” said Irene.
“There’s no way to know that,” said George. “It was cool, or they wouldn’t have taken her out.”
Irene opened one of the doors. It opened with a hiss, and they saw inside the oven. It was very clean, a brick tube with a trench in the far end to collect the ashes. There were no bits of tooth and bone, no piles of dust in the corner. It all looked very sanitary. She shut the door again. Outside the door, there was a small peephole. She looked through it.
“Of course,” she said. “They wouldn’t want to mix up the people.”
Her voice sounded strangled. He thought he should get her out of there, but she was moving again, around the wall. She had found a wire shelving unit that had small black boxes lined up on it in rows.
“Here,” said Irene. “See here?”
George went to stand next to her and face the boxes on the shelves, shuddering to be so close to the d
eath thing that kept walking around after her, but wanting to keep it away. He saw it go so close to her, but he didn’t know what to do.
“Haven’t you ever sat on a garden hose and said, hey, this is what it’s like to get fucked by Poseidon?” it hissed into Irene’s ear. George heard it clearly, but Irene seemed not to notice.
George put his arm around her. The dead thing put its arm around her on the other side. George couldn’t feel where their arms brushed together but he could feel Irene being pulled away, being pulled toward that black dryness. “She’s got to be here,” said Irene. “Look at the names. The dates.”
Each black box had a plain white rectangle on the end and the name of a person printed there. Irene ran her finger down over the names.
“Haven’t you ever sat on a vacuum cleaner and said, hey, this is what it’s like to get eaten out by Aeolus?” it hissed again.
“We have to go,” said George.
“I know,” said Irene. “I know.”
George pulled her sharply toward him. She looked up at him and smiled, so bravely, so sweetly, and behind her head he could see the black shape of the dead thing’s head, trying to tilt at the same angle.
“I’m sorry,” said Irene. “We’ll go. Here she is.”
Irene reached out both hands, hesitated, and then pulled one of the boxes off the shelf. “Heavy,” she said. “I didn’t expect that.”
The death thing was climbing on the shelf now, rattling it, shaking it like an agitated monkey.
“Popped her cherry, did you George?” it said. There was no mouth to move, no ears to hear an answer.
“Come on,” said George. “Climb through the window. I’ll hand the box out to you.”
“You can’t drop it, though.” She laughed nervously. “That would be too horrific.”
“Naturally,” said George, trying very hard to pretend to be amused. “I’m allergic to dusty clouds of dead mothers-in-law.”