Dead Inside

by Chandler Morrison

  Thus began a four-year-long habit of sneaking into funeral homes and having my way with the newly dead, lasting until I landed the job here at the hospital; it’s a lot easier—and safer—to engage in my behavior when the corpses are just a keycard-swipe away.

  “We’re not hurting anyone,” I say, making an effort to refocus my attention on Helen. I light another cigarette. “The girls I fuck, the babies you eat—they’re already dead.”

  She brushes a lock of hair from her face and looks out at the parking lot. I hand her the cigarette, and she takes it. “It’s the principle of it,” she says. “What I do is . . . it’s sick. You don’t know how terribly I wish I could be like other people. While everyone else is getting all gaga over a newborn, all I can think about is how good it would taste. Other people have favorite foods, like pizza or apple pie or something, and mine is fucking aborted fetuses, for Christ’s sake.”

  I shrug. “Other people watch porn, but I jack off to Night of the Living Dead.”

  She looks at me blankly for a few seconds, blinking her big dead-ish eyes, and then bursts into laughter. “Thank you,” she says in between giggles. “I needed that.”

  I hadn’t been trying to be funny, but hey, whatever works.

  “Seriously, though,” she goes on once she’s gotten ahold of herself. “I would kill for normalcy. To be able to live life like a regular human being, instead of suffering this constant, plaguing hunger of dead infant flesh.”

  I’m suddenly annoyed. “Normalcy?” I ask, louder than is probably necessary, surprising myself with the unusual amount of animated expression in my voice. “A regular human being? Jesus, what the fuck is there in that? What does that even mean? Credit card debt, a mortgage, a nagging spouse and bratty kids and a minivan and a fucking family pet? A nine-to-five job that you hate, and that’ll kill you before you ever see your fabled 401k? Cocktail parties and parent-teacher conferences and suburban cul-de-sacs? Monogamous sex, and the obligatory midlife crisis? Potpourri? Wall fixtures? Christmas cards? A welcome mat and a mailbox with your name stenciled on it in fancy lettering? Shitty diapers and foreign nannies and Goodnight Moon? Cramming your face with potato chips while watching primetime television? Antidepressants and crash diets, Coach purses and Italian sunglasses? Boxed wine and light beer and mentholated cigarettes? Pediatrician visits and orthodontist bills and college funds? Book clubs, PTA meetings, labor unions, special interest groups, yoga class, the fucking neighborhood watch? Dinner table gossip and conspiracy theories? How about old age, menopause, saggy tits, and rocking chairs on the porch? Or better yet, leukemia, dementia, emphysema, adult Depends, feeding tubes, oxygen tanks, false teeth, cirrhosis, kidney failure, heart disease, osteoporosis, and dying days spent having your ass wiped by STNAs in a stuffy nursing home reeking of death and disinfectant? Is that the kind of normalcy you lust for so much? All of that—is that worth the title of regular human being? Is it, Helen? Is it?”

  I’m out of breath, my chest heaving, my jaw aching from its strenuous spurt of exercise, to which it is quite unaccustomed. I wipe sweat from my brow with the back of my hand and spark up yet another smoke. The one in Helen’s hand has gone out.

  Her glossy eyes are wide, her mouth slightly agape. My hands are shaking, and my cigarette slips from between my fingers, onto the pavement. I stare at it for a few moments before picking it back up and tremblingly placing it in my mouth.

  “My God,” Helen says, eyes still bewildered and saucer-shaped, magnified all the more by the thick lenses of her glasses. “You know, you haven’t spoken more than a few short sentences at a time since I met you. That was unusually . . . eloquent. You’re so mellow and monotone, all the time. You’re never expressive about anything.”

  Shrugging, I say, “Sometimes I can be. Around the dead. When I’m talking to dead girls, I’m . . . different. You struck a sensitive chord in me, I guess. I hate normalcy. My parents were normal. I hated my parents.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Dead. My father died in a car accident when I was eight, and my mother had a heart attack at a budget meeting in Tokyo just before I turned eighteen.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “No, it’s not. They were burdensome. And they left me a lot of money.” I finish my cigarette and then polish the lenses of my glasses with my sleeve.

  “I envy the ease with which you can dismiss things.”

  “Envy is wasteful and purposeless.”

  She smiles, and it is a cold smile, made colder still by the icy, pale-blue lifelessness in her stoned eyes. “Isn’t everything?”

  This gives me brief pause, and I’m impressed by the shrewdness of her response. It reminds me of why I can tolerate her, why I might even, dare I say it, like her. “Yes,” I say, “I guess it is.”

  ***

  The death smell isn’t particularly strong, but it’s there, and it leads me to a room occupied by a sleeping girl. It’s hard to say how old she is, because her face is so fucked up. Both eyes have been beaten to blue-tinged black, her nose is a trifle askew, and her cheeks, forehead, and mouth are decorated with small-to-medium-sized cuts. There’s dried blood in her dishwater-blonde hair. She is beautiful.

  I sit in the chair next to her and look at the chart hanging from her bed. Tamara R. Jericho, twenty-one years old, of Villa Vida, OH. As I’m skimming through the description of her injuries—rape by at least four separate assailants, multiple stab wounds in the torso and abdominal areas, vaginal lesions, broken nose, second-degree burns on thighs; the list goes on—she awakens and looks at me. She blinks sleep out of her eyes, squints at me, and asks, “Are you another doctor?”

  I think about bolting from the room to avoid conversation, but she’s heavily sedated, so I relax a little and tell her no, I’m not a doctor.

  She smiles a little and lets out a small sigh that I guess signifies relief. “Good,” she says. “I’m so sick of doctors. I don’t know why they won’t just leave me alone and let me die.”

  I try to think of something to say and can’t, so we sit there in awkward silence for a few moments before I finally blurt out, “Sorry you got raped.”

  She giggles, which surprises me. I may not be an expert on human emotion, but I know that laughter isn’t the appropriate response to my statement. Women don’t like to be raped. Not while they’re alive, at least.

  “Don’t be sorry,” she says, reaching out and putting her hand over mine. “It was wonderful.”

  I simply look at her with my head to the side and say, “Um . . . what.”

  “There’s just something about being raped. I love it.”

  I definitely don’t know what to say in response to that.

  “There were four of them,” she goes on. “They took turns with me for hours. They beat me and stabbed me and burned me.”

  “Yeah. I read your chart.”

  “I was completely powerless. They bound me with ropes and zip ties. I mean, I couldn’t have moved anyway, I was so beat up. They had total control. And for me, it’s all . . . about . . . control.”

  “What is,” I ask.

  “Everything. I like to just let go. But with sex . . . that’s when powerlessness feels the best. And . . . I love sex.” She sighs, and it looks like the action pains her.

  “Why are you telling me all of this.”

  She smiles again, and this seems to pain her, too. One of the cuts on her cheek starts to bleed. “I’m going to die,” she says, “and you’re the only one there is to tell. Besides, you’re fucked up, too. Not fucked up in the way that I am, but there’s something wrong with you. I can tell. I can see it in you.”

  My heartbeat quickens. “What do you see,” I ask her. My voice is trembling and uneasy, and I wonder if she notices it. I suspect she does.

  No, I know she does.

  “I’m not sure, exactly. It’s more what I can’t see, I guess. Something’s missing inside of you. Something that should be there . . . but isn’t.”

  I look
down at the sparkling white tile, running a hand through my hair. “Life,” I say. “That’s what you’re not seeing. I don’t have any life inside of me.”

  Her smile widens, making two more cuts begin to bleed. “Yes,” she says. “That’s exactly what it is.”

  “I’m going to fuck you, you know. Once you’re dead. I’m going to fuck your corpse after you die.”

  She’s not at all taken aback by this. Instead, she says, “Good. I’m looking forward to it. I’m sure I’ll enjoy it very much.”

  Nothing this girl says surprises me at this point. “You’ll be dead,” I tell her. “How could you enjoy it if you’re dead.”

  “Oh, I always enjoy sex. I’ve enjoyed it all my life, ever since I was seven. Why shouldn’t I enjoy it when I’m dead? Be rough with me, though, would you? I love rough sex. Probably because I’ve been raped so many times.”

  Not being a conversationalist, most discussions I’ve had with people, that lasted more than a few minutes, usually ended up getting weird. I always say something that freaks the other person out. Typically, it’s by accident.

  This is how those people must feel.

  I know I should probably get up and go and leave this girl to die, but I’m somehow magnetized to her, in a similar way that I’m magnetized to Helen. I suppose there’s just something about meeting someone who’s even more fucked up than you are.

  “You’ve been having sex since you were seven,” I ask her.

  She nods, grinning, blood running down her cheeks in narrow rivulets. “It started with my uncle. I know that’s a cliché, but that’s just the way it was. He’d give me brandy and get me drunk, then he’d rape the shit out of me. I loved every minute of it, right from the very first time. It went on for years, and once I got a little older, I started fucking him in this consensual sort of way, and I guess we kind of became lovers, but it wasn’t as good. It’s always better when it’s forceful, violent . . . out of my control.”

  I notice her face is paler than it had been when I’d first come in. I can see goosebumps on her flesh. She’s shivering and she retracts her arm, burying it under the blanket. The death smell is getting stronger, radiating off her. She doesn’t have long.

  “It’s close,” she says. “I know. Don’t feel bad for me. This is the way I’ve always wanted to die. I’m very lucky. How many people get to die exactly the way they want to?”

  “Not many people want to be stabbed and gang raped to death,” I say. “Not many people want to die at all. I think they try not to think about it.”

  “I’m not afraid. I’ve always thought about death a lot.”

  “I have, too.”

  “I know.”

  My mouth twitches, and I drum my fingers on my thighs. I don’t want to sit here and watch her die. I stand and say, “I have to go. I have to check the monitors.”

  She nods and says, “I can’t wait for you to fuck me. I like you. I like that you’re so fucked up.”

  I nod, put my hands in my pockets, look around, nod again, and then leave.

  ***

  I set one of the monitors to that room and watch as the doctors come in and fail to resuscitate her, then wheel her down to the morgue. I wait a whole five minutes after they leave the morgue and return upstairs before I go down and fuck her.

  I can’t wait until tomorrow.

  I’m rough with her.

  Really rough.

  Rough enough that I tear the piercings from her nipples and shove them down her throat, just for the hell of it.

  Rough enough that I pretend to strangle her, and then punch the soft pillows of her breasts, and dig my fingers into the gashes in her flesh from the knives of her attackers.

  Rough enough that, instead of coming in her cunt, I pull out and stab my dick into a particularly large wound in her thigh, squeezing my semen into her leg.

  I don’t look at her face, because I’m afraid she’ll be smiling up at me.

  ***

  “My car wouldn’t start tonight. I had to take the RTA.” Helen has let herself into my office again. If it were anyone else, I’d start locking the door.

  “That’s tragic,” I say. My lack of tone could be interpreted as sarcasm, but it’s not; public transportation is one of my greatest fears. I think school buses have that effect on square peg children. Or maybe I’m just special like that.

  And maybe Jesus is my fucking sunbeam.

  “I live in a nice area,” Helen says, “so, where all the vagrants on that bus came from, I don’t know.”

  “Where do you live.”

  “Villa Vida. There’s only one bus stop in the whole town, and it’s a mile from my house. I would have taken a cab, but I never carry cash.”

  “Attractive women shouldn’t be walking around by themselves in the middle of the night.” I think of Tamara Jericho. Tamara Jericho from Villa Vida, who got raped to death and enjoyed it.

  Her mouth smiles. Her ghost eyes don’t. “You think I’m attractive. I think that’s the first nice thing you’ve said to me.”

  “Let’s not make a big thing out of it.”

  She shrugs. “I wasn’t in any real danger. Villa Vida is a nice little suburban community. Nothing ever happens there.”

  “Things happen everywhere,” I say, thinking of how tight Tamara’s dead cunt had been, in spite of all the past rapes. “Villa Vida isn’t special. It just thinks it is.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Millhaven,” I say. “In a studio apartment above the Bad Seed.”

  She thinks for a second, then wrinkles her nose and says, “That shitty little dive bar on Jubilee Street? Why would you live there if you’ve got all that money your parents left you?”

  “Money and possessions don’t mean anything to me. I don’t care about where I live, or what I own. I get satisfaction through one thing, and that’s it. The money is nice only because it keeps me from having to worry about money.”

  She nods slowly. “I see. I guess that makes sense.”

  “Why are we talking about this. Why does it matter where I live.”

  “I wanted to know if you live close by. I was hoping you could maybe give me a ride home, if it’s not too far out of the way. I really don’t want to have to suffer through the bus thing again.”

  You have to pass Villa Vida going to Millhaven from here, and she knows that. If I decline, she’ll know I’m just being a dick. Normally that wouldn’t bother me, but for whatever reason, I am somewhat invested in her opinion of me.

  Yuck.

  “Okay,” I say.

  She smiles, and this time her eyes sort of do, too.

  Yuck.

  “What time do you get off?” she asks.

  I make a show of looking at the cheap drugstore Timex on my wrist. “Fifteen minutes,” I say.

  “I really appreciate this. Can I, like, buy you breakfast or something?”

  “No.”

  Her expression turns crestfallen at my answer. She’s showing too much emotion on her face; it must have been awhile since her last painkiller dose. I wonder if it would be rude of me to suggest she take some more. Emotions gross me out, especially when they’re visible.

  People gross me out.

  Especially when they’re visible.

  I suppose Helen, though, is exempt from that rule, for the time being.

  She just needs to take some more pills.

  ***

  She looks questioningly at my car and says, “This is what you drive?”

  It’s a beat up old black Toyota, rust on the fenders, a dent in the rear driver’s side door. It’s got something, like, 150,000 miles on it. It treats me well, and I’ve only had to take it to the shop a few times, for minor repairs.

  “I get that you don’t need a big fancy apartment or anything, but if you’ve got money, wouldn’t you at least want to buy a decent car?”

  “It is decent,” I say, getting in and starting the ignition. Helen gives the car a subtle look of disapproval as she
walks around to get in on the other side. She has to yank on the handle a couple times to get the door open. Sometimes it gets jammed.

  She turns on the cassette player as I start driving. I’ve thought about having a CD player installed, but can never be bothered enough to do it. There’s a Ministry tape playing, and she says appreciatively, “The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste. This is their best album, I think, next to With Sympathy.”

  “With Sympathy sucks,” I tell her, pulling out of the parking lot and onto the road. “I’ve never even been able to listen to the whole thing.” As I get on the on ramp for the freeway, she skips the tape to track four and grins slyly at me.

  “This is my favorite song on the album,” she says. “As a matter of fact, it’s probably my favorite song of all their songs.”

  I glance at her sideways and say, “I didn’t figure you to be one for cliché.”

  “There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me,” she says in a tone I think is supposed to be seductive, but I can’t be sure.

  “There’s a lot of things I do know about you.”

  After a brief, uncomfortable silence, she asks, “Can we smoke in here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I have a cigarette?”

  “Yeah.” I hand her the pack and my lighter from my breast pocket. She lights it, exhales, and cracks the window with the manual hand crank.

  The sun is starting to come up. The color of the sky makes me think of her naked in the basement, and I’m annoyed by the tingling sensation in my groin. I look over at her profile, holding the cigarette elegantly in her hand, like an English noblewoman, her hair lit a vibrant yellow by the rising sun. She catches me looking at her and I look away, hoping she doesn’t notice my flushed cheeks.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she says, staring dreamily out the windshield and turning the music down. Al Jourgensen’s shrieking voice fades to a muted murmur, emitting from the fuzzy stereo system. “The sky. It’s almost like it’s . . . blushing.”

  Goddammit.

  “I guess,” I say. “I’m not really impressed by things like that. Sunrises. Sunsets. Rainbows, eclipses, whatever.”

  “What does impress you, then?”