Where the Dead Go to Die

by Aaron Dries

“Probably not,” Emily said, her voice calm and kind. “It’s just me paying my respects, keeping Mr. Mabry’s dignity.”

  She didn’t disclose to him that she’d also been taught in nurses’ school to continue addressing a patient in the same way even after they died. That, Emily suspected, Vick didn’t need to hear. The fat lady still had a few songs left in her repertoire yet.

  Emily lifted his upper torso and untied the gown’s string at the back of his neck.

  Vick stood. “Need a hand?”

  “It’s okay, I’ve got it,” she said. This wasn’t just bravado. While two people were required to bathe an unresponsive patient, Mr. Mabry weighed so little it was like lifting a scarecrow that had fallen off its post. Only this guest wasn’t made from hay clippings and sawdust, just good old-fashioned skin and bone. Nor would it scare those birds away, either. If anything, the smell of its rot would draw them in, their shadows pin-wheeling over the fields as they swooped to feed. Bellies full of carrion. Lunatic squawks.

  Vick came over anyway and started undoing the snaps at the shoulders.

  Emily nodded, accepting his help. Care givers needed to care, it was as simple as that, and she thought it wrong to stand in the way of that. Given time—and from the look of it not much—Death would be the one to sever that relationship, and when it did, Vick would adopt the empty glare of those forced to live without purpose. Emily had witnessed this too many times.

  With the gown removed and tossed in the bin, the two lowered Mr. Mabry back onto the bed, drawing back the covers. She took a moist wipe from the pack, folded it, and began stroking it across his forehead, in the hollows of his eyes.

  Vick held out a hand. “Pass me one of those. I’ll start on his arms.”

  She handed him a pair of disposable gloves, which he declined. “I hate those things.” Emily noticed the delicate way he lifted the right arm, swabbing the pit.

  “You’re good at that,” she said. “Keep that up and we might have to get you on the ward.”

  “Ha-ha, thanks but no thanks. I’ve taken care of enough sick people in my time. This is my last vigil.”

  Emily detected the sadness in his voice and decided not to pursue the subject further. Once she was done with Mr. Mabry’s face, she tossed the wipe, got a fresh one, and started on the left arm, being careful not to dislodge the IV.

  “So there’s no other family in the picture, is that right?” Emily asked.

  “No family that cares.”

  “That’s sad to hear, Vick.”

  “Trust me when I say you’re never too old to be orphaned. We learned that lesson the hard way. There was a group of us. When we were all together we were stronger than steel and that was enough.”

  Emily smiled as they both wiped down Mr. Mabry’s chest and stomach area. “That sounds nice. Are the other people in the group going to come and visit?”

  “They’re all dead.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. That was silly of me to say.”

  “What can you do? It happens to us all. There’s no fighting it. They were all infected except me.”

  Emily cleared her throat and plucked a fresh wipe from the packet. “Excuse me, Mr. Mabry. I’m just going to bathe your downstairs area, okay?” When she had first become a nurse, cleaning genitals embarrassed her. Now she did it with the detached precision the job required.

  “There’s only Eddie and me left,” Vick said, starting on his friend’s right leg. “And soon, there’ll just be me. The last orphan.”

  Emily had no words of comfort so she said nothing at all.

  Vick started washing Mr. Mabry’s feet. It reminded Emily of something from the Bible, scenes she’d half-forgotten from her years in church with her parents, their knees flush against the pews, all of them overlooked by a statue of their tortured cross-maker. Why celebrate religion when you could grieve it, right?

  “He died for our sins,” her mother would say. “Be grateful for what you’ve got.”

  Guilt.

  Guilt so strong and prideful not all the moist wipes in the world could wash it away.

  Emily kept her silence, recognizing the man’s need to unburden. Part of being a nurse wasn’t just caring for the patient’s physical needs but his mental and emotional needs as well. Sure, Vick wasn’t her patient, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t in need of some healing. Everyone, after all, longed to be listened to.

  It reminds us that we’re alive.

  “It was our own fault, really,” Vick said. “We were carnal.” He sighed. “And careless.”

  “Though not you?” Emily asked, rolling Mr. Mabry onto his side. Vick held him in place as Emily cleaned the man’s back and buttocks.

  “Believe me, I wasn’t spared because I employed restraint or good judgment. Some days I think I was spared so I could care for them all, which is the kind of thought that helps me sleep. On other days, the really bad ones, I just wonder if it wasn’t plain old bad luck I escaped infection.”

  He didn’t say any more until after Emily had finished the bed bath. He spoke again as he held Mr. Mabry in a sitting position and Emily put a fresh robe on him. “You know, some people actually have the audacity to tell me that I’m the fortunate one.”

  Most wouldn’t understand how cruel such a statement was; only Emily did. Or at least she thought she did. Were someone to ask her that day if there were any more lessons for her to learn about the pain of survival, Emily would have laughed them off.

  And she would have been wrong. She just didn’t know it yet.

  Emily gathered up her supplies and trash, and left the two men together. Mykel was waiting for her in Corridor 3. He walked with her, opening the door to the Sluice room, where she then deposited the waste into a hazardous material bin and placed the bedpan into the washing machine. She thumped its metallic jaws shut and turned to face him.

  “What do you want, Mykel?”

  “I just don’t understand that, New Girl.”

  “Understand what?”

  “That man in there. I couldn’t help overhearing. If I had to watch all my friends die because they couldn’t keep it in their pants, I’d be down on my knees thanking the big fella upstairs every night I was lucky enough to escape safe.”

  Emily pushed by him and re-entered the corridor. They buzzed through the security door and stepped into the adjoining wing. “In my book, alive is always better than dead,” Mykel said, squeezing antiseptic wash over his hands. “No exceptions.”

  “Is there anything else you’d like to say? We’ve got a job to do. Five more sponges, twelve assisted feeds, beds to make, and notes. Time is money, Mykel, and you’re wasting both standing there.”

  “There is, actually. Woods wants to see you.”

  Without acknowledging him, Emily wormed her way back to Woods’ office. As she did so, she fished through the pocket of her pants and slid out her phone to check the time. This Emily did on the sly, as it was against facility policy to have non-approved communication devices on the floor. Emily saw the six missed calls from Saint Mary’s.

  Her phone had been on silent all morning.

  Emily found Woods standing behind her desk. Officious. Waiting.

  “What’s wrong?” Emily asked.

  “There’s someone from your daughter’s school on line one. Seems there’s been some trouble.”

  INTERLUDE THREE

  Open the highest wing, bring it upwards and press the sides of the paper inwards at the same time. Flatten it down, and again, crease well.

  Emily pulled the needle through her husband’s skin and yanked the thread. The jack-o-lantern wound pinched inwards, sealed. Jordan flinched, his teeth gritted together. He was on his side, splayed across the couch, which Emily had covered with the plastic tarp they’d used to paint Lucette’s bedroom. Blood pooled in its crinkles. Debris from her makeshift triage surrounded them, all those matted cotton buds, tweezers, gauze, saline solution.

  An empty bottle of whiskey. They had been saving it for a special o
ccasion.

  Lucette was locked in her room with enough crayons and toys to keep her occupied. She was happy in there, and wouldn’t be able to hear her father’s groans over the television in the living room. Midday cartoons blared violence as cats mangled dogs with hammers. Only these animated beings didn’t bleed. Just stars and birds flying about their heads.

  Now that the bite had been tended to as best Emily could without taking Jordan to the hospital, they sat on the couch, held each other tight, and sobbed. Their misery was pure and undiluted and shameless. Her hands gripped his arms. Jordan gripped her back. They were pieces of the same shattered Humpty Dumpty, and sadly, as was the case in Lucette’s picture books, not even the King’s horses and men would be able to put them back together again.

  “Don’t let me go,” Jordan said. His breath was sour. It smelled of dirt.

  “I won’t, darlin’. I promise.” She rocked him.

  “I’m so fucking scared.”

  “Me too.” Emily kissed his forehead. He was hot to the touch.

  Emily pulled the needle through Natalia, her daughter’s doll, and yanked the thread. The black button eye drew back into place. “There you go,” Emily said, handing the toy over. It was seven-thirty in the evening, Jordan was already passed out in their bedroom, and it was time for Lucette to turn in. The little girl took the doll in her arms and held it to her chest.

  “Sweetheart,” Emily began, steeling herself. “I need to talk to you. A big girl talk, okay?”

  “Okay, Mom. I’m a big girl.”

  “You sure are. And I’m so proud of you, too. You know that, right?”

  “Yep! Just like I’m proud of Natalia,” Lucette said. “She keeps me safe at night.”

  “Does she? She’s a good dolly.” Emily ruffled the old toy’s plaits. “But let’s be serious now.”

  “We’re listening, aren’t we?” Lucette gestured to the dusty old toy, squeezed its neck, and made it nod. Emily half smiled.

  “That’s good, sweetheart.”

  Her last word fissured in two, shattering the dignity Emily had been fighting to maintain. She fumbled through the pockets of her jeans for a tissue. There were none left. Emily let the briny tears free-flow, a greasy layer on her skin.

  She studied her daughter in the star shaped illumination of the slowly turning night-light. The blue glow crept across Lucette’s face, followed by shadow, though Lucette’s eyes shimmered throughout, like the evening sky reflected in the bottom of twin wells.

  And every bit as deep.

  “Don’t be sad, Mom,” she whispered. Her chubby fingers reached across the duvet to curl about Emily’s wrist. “There, there. There, there.”

  Lucette propped herself up on one elbow and offered the toy to her mother. “I’ll share with you. It’s good to share, isn’t it? Maybe Natalia can keep us all safe.”

  With a finger, Emily traced the stitching she’d threaded. The black button eyes, unlike those belonging to her daughter, held no vivacity. They were stoic, like those of the bone eater that had dug under their fence and attacked her husband.

  The stars continued to fall around them.

  “Lucette. Your father and I always taught you that it was bad to lie.”

  “Ah-huh. It’s naughty. And naughty girls don’t get presents from Santa. He’s always watching.”

  Emily, chewing on her lower lip, couldn’t help guffawing at the depths she, as an adult, had gone to swindle her child into virtue. It went beyond hypocrisy. Fat Saint Nick with his bag of bribes was yet another deception that kept the New Developed World spinning on its axis. Such trickeries, they all thought, kept the infection away. In the slums. Where it belonged.

  Sweetheart, we’re in here. The monsters are out there.

  It won’t happen to us.

  “Natalia can’t keep us safe.” Emily’s voice was stern, maybe too stern, but it had to be. It was time to be what her own mother always said: harsh, but fair. “If we want to be safe we have to look after one another. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  The three-year-old nodded. Those wet eyes of hers continued to glimmer, but now it seemed that something was shifting within them, right there at the bottom of the wells. A serpentine creature, ugly and adult.

  This was its birth.

  Emily took another breath before continuing. “There’s no such thing as Santa. He’s made up. I’m so sorry, sweetheart. But sometimes it’s okay to lie. Sometimes it’s the only way we get by. And I need you to listen to me now. You need to understand that this is the most important talk we’ll ever have.”

  “Okay, Mommy.”

  “Lucette, your Daddy and I need you to lie.”

  Emily pulled the needle through the tarpaulin and yanked the thread, sealing the makeshift body bag that held the bone eater’s remains. The stars above were not those from Lucette’s night-light, these were real constellations. Emily wanted to assimilate herself amongst those distant balls of gas, burning for generations on end, shedding little in the way of light, and unsympathetic to the wishes cast upon them.

  How sweet it would be right now to feel nothing.

  This didn’t happen, though. There was no clemency. She was, and always would be, anchored to this delusional planet. To this hurt.

  Somebody up there, please help us.

  We’re dying down here. Can’t you see that?

  Our land is honeycombed with tombs, and it’ll crumble under our feet one day. Soon.

  I’ll build a bridge from me to you out of corpses. Just promise me you’ll be there when I arrive. You need to pinkie-swear I won’t be alone.

  The sky held no answers.

  So Emily shoved the bulging bag into the pit she’d dug in the backyard instead. It thumped against the soil, exhaustion threatening to drag her in with it. Emily pushed through. With her sweaty clothes sticking to her flesh like a second skin, with the mosquitos swarming about her face, she heaved dirt. Over and over again.

  There was no breeze. No moon.

  She was done.

  Emily showered inside while bulb-happy moths beat themselves to a powdery death against the bathroom window. Emily toweled off, wrapped herself in the dressing gown she’d left by the clothes basket that morning and walked to her bedroom door.

  Stopped.

  Emily could hear Jordan’s breathing. She began to shake; terrified of the darkness that would come when she switched off the hallway sconces, and the darkness waiting inside her room. Emily stepped away from the door, and in doing so, learned to hate herself.

  She tiptoed into the study. Flipped the lock. Folded in on herself. The floor was cool against her cheek. Kevin’s birthday card and present were still on the desk.

  The lies she’d rooted in her daughter’s head echoed through her ears.

  If anyone asks, your Daddy has gone away for work. He’ll be gone a while. Don’t tell anyone anything. This will be our secret. Just you, me, and Natalia. And you’re not going to be going to daycare for a while because you’re ‘sick’. That’s what we’ll say.

  Everything’s going to be okay.

  SWEARWORDS AND PEANUT BUTTER CUPS

  Lucette sat on the edge of the bed with her hands in her lap, dressed for the day. There had been a time—and not so long ago it seemed—when she did this and her feet didn’t touch the floor. Now they did. This made her sad. Not sad in the way some cartoons did, or like the time the only real friend she’d had, Imogen, moved to New York with her parents. This sadness was new, different from those difficult-to-define barbs she thought of as memories of her father. Lucette missed the way her legs used to swing back and forth, and being unable to do so made her feel older than she wanted to be. She was sad because nobody had asked if she wanted to grow up in the first place.

  If Mom is anything to go by, being an adult doesn’t look like fun. Getting old means you have to yell a lot and be angry over every little thing.

  Every fucking thing.

  Lucette glanced about the room, half e
xpecting the walls of their apartment to split apart, revealing a network of ears and eyes in the crawlspace instead of the insulation that failed to keep them warm at night. These would be her mother’s spies—the secret ones trained in the ancient art of overhearing naughty thoughts, every single swear word. Teachers, on the other hand, didn’t require such allies. And why would they when the world was full of tattletales?

  No. I’m being stupid. There are no spies. I think another part of getting older is learning how to read little girls’ minds. But if that’s the case, then why can’t Mom tell I didn’t mean to be bad?

  I don’t even know why I did what I did.

  Her hands gripped the backpack sitting beside her on the mattress. She lowered her head. Yes, perhaps it was best not to swear, even if it was only a thought, until her mother had cooled down.

  And she hasn’t. Nope. I can tell because of the way she’s banging things. She does that when she’s angry. Slamming cupboards. Clunking dishes. Thumping about.

  Those thumping footsteps drew closer to Lucette’s door, a dread-inducing moment she knew would come. Her heart pattered; wild butterflies she knew could never be netted danced in her stomach.

  The walls of Lucette’s bedroom were lined with boyband and baseball posters. Those handsome faces stared now, beckoning invitations into their respective worlds.

  Hurry, they seemed to say, before your mother has a chance to open the door! Escape with us.

  Lucette imagined diving into the crowd of cheering girls as the band played on the stage. There would be flashing lights and cavity-sweet melodies. Or maybe running out onto the diamond pitch would be safer? She had a pretty good right-hand swing on her, even if she hadn’t practiced since summer. The baseball bat would feel great in her hands, yet not half as good as connecting it with the ball. Thonk! Here, the crowd cheered for her, not the other way round—

  The bedroom door opened. Her mother stood there, handbag tucked under one arm. Keys in hand. “It’s time to go,” the grownup said.

  Still angry.

  Lucette didn’t dare a thought, stood.