Tainted

by A. E. Rought

  Standing, I scoop Emma into my arms. The energy coursing through her skitters over my skin, fresh and alive. Em feels delicate in my arms, and it kills me that this girl has been hurt in the worst possible ways because of me. All I wanted was to bring her back the way she was, for her to open her eyes and say she loves me.

  Maybe this is my punishment.

  Being at the forefront of Michigan’s medical research field, Ascension Labs is equipped with a comprehensive decontamination station, from eye wash, to air vacuum/chemical bath tent, to full glassed-in shower. My father often worked through the night, like Paul does now, and used the shower to warm himself and wake up. Maybe it will help bring Emma around.

  She stands when I place her feet on the floor. The analytical side of my brain examines her stance, looking for signs of balance problems possibly indicating brain or inner ear trauma. Her posture is fine, no listing, no stumbling. Em is curled in on herself, symptomatic of what she went through, even if she can’t recall.

  Steam fills the shower quickly after I turn the water on. I shuck my shoes, and take the blankets from around Emma’s shoulders.

  “Come on,” I encourage, and push open the door. Her gaze darts around the room, hits my face, pulls away again.

  “I don’t…”

  The sight of her, timid and confused, cuts at my devastated heart. We can beat this. My father did it for me. I take her hand and pull her into the billowing steam. She might have cried for Daniel, might still be looking for him now, but I can’t let her go anywhere this unsettled and filthy.

  Sand swirls in the water, runs off my jeans as they soak in the moisture and cling to me. Water spatters us when I step sideways and steer Em closer. She flinches. And then her eyes widen and eyebrows shoot up. A panicky screech breaks free of her.

  “No.” She shakes her head. “No, no, no. The water… Get me out of here!”

  I was a fool to think Emma was ever weak. She swings out and connects her sodden cast with my jaw. Lights dance in my vision, making it impossible to dodge all the strikes she aims at me.

  “Let me out!” Panic sharpens her voice. Another strike connects with my cheek. “I’m going to drown!”

  “No, Em,” I duck in-between her swiping claws. “It’s just a shower.”

  She’s past listening, and it’s killing me. She was the one who held me together, now the roles are reversed. Her expression matches the one she had in the sinking car, mouth in a little “o” of terror as she continues to squirm and try to fight her way free. Finally, I tuck an arm under one of hers, and around her back, cinching her to me.

  “I’m dying.” Gurgling noises come from her when she opens her mouth and gags on water. “The river’s coming in and I can’t get out!”

  “Shhh. I’m here,” I tell her, as she once told me in the catwalk, when memories of Daniel’s death came screaming back at me. “You’re fine. You are not dying.”

  “But I did.”

  Then the sobs break free. She wraps her arm around my back, clings to me like I’m a life vest. Her chest hitches between wails and breaths while I hold her with one arm and shampoo her hair with my free hand. I babble constantly, telling her she’s fine, I’ll never leave her, she’s not going to drown. Unconsciously, I rock side to side, trying to soothe her. I trade the shampoo for bar soap while her cries weaken. The suds wash away the sand, the bits of beach grass, my blood. Nothing can ever wipe away the event scarring her soul now.

  “OK,” I tell her. “The water’s turning off.”

  The tension leaves her arm, and she slumps against me.

  I wring as much water from her clothes as I can with one hand, then guide her onto the mat outside the shower. The lab’s towels are stiff and coarse, great for soaking up water. The only things resembling dry clothes are the scrubs Ascension keeps stockpiled. Em swore after the house fire and visit to the hospital, she would never wear them again.

  “Let’s take you to my grandparents’ and get you some dry clothes.”

  She nods, tugging at snarls in her wet hair, fidgeting in her damp, shredded clothes.

  “Alex?”

  “Yes, Em?” I grab a comb from the mirror hanging beside the shower and start to work out the snarls in her hair.

  “What did you do to me?” Such a simple question, such a dark horrid truth. I made her the victim of my need. I risked ruining her to revive her.

  “I brought you back.”

  “Like your dad did to you.”

  I didn’t think she could hurt me any worse than wanting the guy my father murdered to resurrect me, but I was wrong. Those six words shine a light on the fear and guilt choking me. I was so unwilling to let go of the one I love that I acted just like my father. I broke the laws of nature and more to bring her back to life.

  “Yes,” I agree, “just like my dad.”

  She paces, reminding me of a caged animal, swinging her ruined cast. She pauses at the door to the animal experimentation wing, and stares through the window at the cages. Her head tips to the side, her fingers leave damp shiny trails down the locked door. As I walk past, Em stands in the middle of the space and spins. I hate to leave her to stow the towels in the laundry bin, there’s no telling what she’ll get into or disturb.

  “Let’s go,” I say, and point toward the doors out of the lab. Emma strides ahead, her damp hair swishing with her movements. On the way through the main laboratory, she lurches away from the table where I revived her, and bumps into the cabinets. Her cast, softened, wedges between two handles.

  Trapped, fidgety, Emma looks down at her hand.

  “Get it off me,” she pleads, voice scaling higher with each syllable. “Get it off! I have to move. Got to get warm.”

  It’s been six weeks since she had the plaster cast on, plenty of time for her bones to heal properly. Emma looks like a coyote about to gnaw her paw off in a trap.

  “I’m still here,” Paul says through the intercom. Emma’s head pops up, her eyes blinking and wild. Her hair whips around her face in wet strands when she looks for the source of his voice. And she tugs at the cast, only wedging it tighter. “I would suggest,” he continues, “using the saw in the right-hand cabinet to cut it off.”

  “Please,” she says. I can’t deny her. Em’s gaze tracks my movements as I step to the cupboard and pull out the small circular disc saw Paul suggested.

  “You’ll need to hold still,” I tell Emma, and plug the tool in. She nods, squeezes her eyes shut, and forces the twitching to stop.

  One quick line cut down the length frees her. She flexes her right hand. The white broken heart she reverse-tanned into her skin after Daniel died is nearly gone.

  “Your father broke it,” she says. Emma runs the freed fingertips down my cheek, her expression suddenly soft. “You set me free.”

  After a midnight visit to my grandparents’ house – which they thankfully slept through – Emma sits in the front seat, dressed in two pairs of socks, jeans, one of my mother’s old softball T-shirts, a turtleneck and a sweatshirt. And she’s still cold.

  “Don’t take me back to Bree’s,” she says. “Nothing makes sense, my body is burning with energy. I can’t be there right now.”

  Nodding, I turn down a familiar street. Emma seems to finally still when I drive under the gate of the only place that makes sense for us. Snow clings to the chain link, muffles the headstones, blinds the angels. Memorial Gardens, in the winter, is a fairyland of death and loss. Where better to put the scattered pieces of Emma back together?

  A strangled little noise escapes her. Her cool fingers thread through mine for a moment, and then the touch is gone. Is it out of sympathy? A way to apologize for not wanting me?

  “He’s not here,” she says, the words thick, a little strained like they came around a big lump in her throat.

  “No,” I slow the Acura, and park it by a familiar willow tree. “I’m sorry, Em.”

  I know then that Emma isn’t fully back to herself. She doesn’t argue with me abou
t my responsibility in Daniel’s death. She’s hated people apologizing for it since the day it happened. The worst part is, I should apologize – if it wasn’t for me, Daniel wouldn’t be dead.

  “I know it’s cold,” I say cracking open the door, “but this is the only place I could think of.”

  “It’s fine,” she says, her gaze drifting over the graveyard to the mausoleum where she used to sit with Daniel. “It’s good, actually.”

  When I open her door, Emma slips out of the car. She accepts my coat without nagging me about getting cold. Shoulders hunched, hands stuffed into my pockets, I walk to the headstone nearly as white as the snow, and engraved with:

  Close your sweet eyes

  Because life is a lie

  Find happiness in dreams

  The powdery white swishes away from my hand when I clear the name and date.

  “Hi, Mom,” I whisper. “I miss you.”

  “I feel funny being at your mom’s grave.” Em says.

  “We can leave,” I offer. We can hike up and down every row, if it helps her.

  “No. It’s OK,” she says. “I’m OK.” I don’t think she is. I don’t know if she ever will be again. The revival process amps up everything in her, like it does me. Will her senses be heightened? Will she suffer the same rollercoaster highs and lows the formula and charge give me?

  Em comes closer, wraps her hand around mine. Such a simple gesture, so complicated now. “Elle is a pretty name,” she says. “But, that epitaph…”

  A knot tightens in my chest. Memories, some fractured, some whole, rush up; Mom reading me lullabies when I got sick in junior high, many in foreign languages. I took her collection to the hospital, and read those lullabies to her every night as she lay dying.

  “It’s part of a Romanian lullaby,” I say. “One of her favorites.”

  “It’s so sad.”

  And that’s all the patience Emma seems to have. She doesn’t know how to channel the energy yet. She turns and drifts toward the newer section of the cemetery, the grand sculptures, large tombs, and a familiar family mausoleum.

  “Daniel’s not here,” she says. “He never was.”

  “I know–” I start, but she breaks in with, “No, you don’t. I saw him, Alex. I. Saw. Him.” She stops at the large tomb with the porch, and paces along the side. “Daniel was there when I was…” she won’t say “dead”, and neither will I. “He wasn’t fully there. He was wispy, pieces missing, but it was him.

  “It wasn’t my time, he told me. We waded through this graveyard, but it was half-flooded.” She stops, stoops down and digs in the snow beside a pillar. When she stands again, she has a black screwtop bottle cap in her hand. “It was weird how insubstantial he was, like there and not there. He kept telling me I was there by accident, and that he wanted to lead me home.” Em stops and tosses the bottle top to me. “I think he knew you were bringing me back here.

  “Then, suddenly Daniel was gone. I was terrified I would get lost on my way back to you.”

  Back to me? Why is it so hard to believe? “I just couldn’t imagine life without you.” Such a pathetic purpose and the only one I had.

  “You don’t have to.” She starts pacing again, snow wafting from her pale hair as she walks. “But I don’t think I can hide what’s happened. God, I’m all zingy inside, and I can’t focus. Mom will go ballistic if I start failing. She’ll drag me to the doctor’s and want to put me on hyper meds.”

  “You’ll adjust,” I promise. “We’ll figure out a way. And if we can’t, you can be homeschooled. There’re online courses.”

  Off in the black night of the neighborhood, a church bell rings, and then farther off another.

  “1 o’clock,” Emma says. She comes closer, shifting from fidgety and pacing to striding to me. She runs her hands up my arms, fingers across my cheeks and into my hair. I can still hardly believe she wants me as the monster I’ve become, but when our lips touch, it’s electric. “Merry Christmas, Alex.”

  Both of our lives have been shoved forever off normal courses and are woven even tighter together now. I’m not alone anymore.

  “Happy Christmas, Emergizer.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Jason’s lie is brilliant. A text shortly after midnight told me he reported the accident, saying I rescued Emma and she was too upset to leave me. The police and insurance companies will need a formal report, of course. Paul, like my father wanting things swept under the rug, offered to help expedite things with a little of Ascension Lab’s influence. Emma’s mom wouldn’t have bought a minute of it, if Bree wasn’t such a brilliant actress. Maybe Bree and Jason’s years in theater taught them how to spin the truth into something else, something acceptable.

  And they managed to give Emma some time to begin the insane process of learning to live after death. After the formula and electrical charge, everything runs at full tilt, too awake, too hyper, too hungry. Em paced my room all night, carrying Renfield like he was a talisman to bring her back to a normal life. The cat never complained. I think he sensed something’s changed in her and she needs him.

  Despite what she said in the cemetery, I can’t quite believe she wants me the way she wanted Daniel. That cry was instinctual, brimming with heartache. I haven’t mentioned it since. Neither has she. But it echoes behind my eyes, gouged in my memory.

  Gran and Grandpa acted as though Em was supposed to be with us on Christmas morning. Not even a raised eyebrow from Grandpa. One big charade to cover up what I did, even if they don’t know. How would they feel if they knew their grandson had truly become the son of the man they hated?

  On the way back to the Ransoms’ before dinner, Emma wears layers of clothes, and sits under a blanket that Gran sent back with her. Her gifts litter the back seat, the teddy bear and bath products cover her lap.

  “I love your Gran,” she says. “I wish my mom would take some lessons from her.”

  “And what kind of lessons are those?” The list is long, and I can bet what Em’s top picks will be – before her reanimation, at least. All bets should be off now.

  “I don’t know.” Em weaves her fingers through the holes in the yarn blanket on her lap, “How to knit, how to make jam. How to treat someone like they have half a brain and know how to use it.”

  “Your mom will come around, you’ll see.”

  “Yeah. Maybe even this century.”

  Her fingers unwind from the blanket, and she scoops up the bath stuff. Sharply floral perfume wafts through the car when she uncaps the body spray and inhales the scent. “This is really pretty,” Em says, screwing the cap back on. “I never pictured you in that store.”

  “Might not see it again, either. All those scents and shiny things gave me a headache.”

  She snorts a laugh, a stunted sound, lacking any humor. I get the feeling she’s going through the motions, trying to be the girl she thinks she should. Em won’t meet my eyes. Instead she opens the lotion, squirts some into her hand, then slathers her hands, her cheeks and throat. Her eyes close, and she breathes in the scent. One, two, three deep breaths.

  “Are you ever mad at your dad,” she asks suddenly, tone grating and unkind, “for bringing you back?”

  Where is this coming from? I know the adjustment after waking up was difficult for me, but this mood swing is completely out of the blue.

  “No,” I answer honestly. “I’m mad as hell at how he did it, but not that he did.”

  “It’s not natural,” Em’s tone has a hard edge, her eyes narrowed and mean. “Death is the end. Taking a serum every week? Getting shocks to stay alive? How can you not be angry at him for doing that to you?”

  My father deserves every bit of hatred I can throw at him, but hating him for resurrecting me isn’t one of them. Yes, it is a constant struggle but I would never have seen my grandparents again, or thought of my mom and her foreign lullabies. Jason wouldn’t be my friend. I would never have loved Emma.

  “Do you hate me?” I ask. “Do you hate me for revivi
ng you?”

  She doesn’t respond. Em pins me with a conflicted gaze. Anger and sadness and frustration cover her face, twisting her lips, dragging her eyebrows closer together.

  I could never hate you, I think. Say it, Em. Please.

  “It’s wrong,” she insists. “And I didn’t ask for it. What about the animals? They didn’t ask. They have no idea what’s going on. Can you imagine how they feel? They’re stuck like that. Never changing, never healing, never escaping.”

  “Em,” I reach across the center console and touch her hand. She jerks away. “Come on. Life isn’t something to escape.”

  “No.” Her voice falls to tones of acid and regret. “They’re not even living. They just exist in a state of constant decay.”

  “Can we not have an argument,” I shift the car a few feet forward, “in the middle of a traffic jam?”

  “It’s going to happen either way.” Such a dark, resolute tone.

  Fine. She wants to have it out? Let’s go. I’ll have to defend my actions eventually.

  “Is that what you think is happening to you?” I ask, “Do you think you’re decaying?”

  “I might not be a zombie deer,” she snaps, and spritzes herself with the new body spray. “But I didn’t have any more choice than the animals.”

  “That’s what this is about? I brought you back but you didn’t ask me to? I already know I’m going to hell for it, Em, you don’t need to pack my bags for the trip.”

  Em twists in her seat, peers up the line of cars between us and an exit. Then she turns to me and opens her arms, gesturing to herself. “And this isn’t hell? Can’t sleep, can’t get full, can’t think straight. How do those animals feel? They can’t even tell you! If this is life on the other side, I don’t think I want it.”

  Swifter than her anger, an odd stillness engulfs Emma. Her hands droop, her shoulders relax. Before it reaches her eyes, she looks at me and says, “Alex, something’s wrong.”

  “Yeah.” Something that hasn’t happened before. “We’re fighting.”

  I see it the moment it happens – a quick, hard shift in Emma’s demeanor and expression. Confusion and sadness snuff out, and only her anger remains.