Ricardo resumed polishing cocktail glasses; he studied me over his work. A sly grin danced across his mouth.
“I don’t think so,” I responded. “Not yet.”
“You will be. Soon. But, it’s not a problem. Luckily, for you, you live in a city—a state, really—that houses a significant underclass. The best thing for us, as hunters, is a welfare state. And, you live in a prime example of that concept. The tri-county area spreads out like stockyards of human castoffs.”
“So—let me get this straight—we feed on welfare recipients?”
Gross, right? Where do you procure one, the Dollar Store? Jesus!
“Welfare recipients, criminals, runaways, the homeless, those who, once gone, go unnoticed. If there’s one thing you can count on in this town, it’s people not noticing. There’s a plague of self-absorption, self-help books, yoga studios, on-call psychotherapy and twenty-four-hour massage. For Christ’s sake, we’ll never go hungry.” Ricardo was laughing, hard. A hearty bellowing laugh, the beef stew of laughs. Gil hunched over in silent glee, seizing in fits.
He took a break to say, “Tell her about the fun runs.”
Ricardo spit his drink across the table in a fine spray, his eyes tight with laughter. A bit may have come out his nose. “Once a month, we rent a van—and by we, I mean somebody, whoever—we load up and drive down to the welfare office. Someone, usually a werecreature of some sort, in human form, waits outside with a clipboard and screens applicants for computer training, day labor. The goal is to get them to agree to get in the van. When they do…it’s a feast, and we laugh and laugh. We keep going like that until we’re full or security notices, which is so rare.”
“That’s really nice,” I said. “Way to go with the empathy.”
Ricardo and Gil busted up; there was God’s-honest knee slapping.
It was viral.
I started to laugh, too. Then flinched, from a delay in processing the conversation, “Did I hear that we eat sweetbreads?” Ricardo nodded. I gagged. He giggled, and motioned for me to take my glass. We settled into a cushy banquette. Gil hung from the end and lit a very thin cigarette—did it have to be an Eve?
“These are exciting times,” Gil said. “Parents are so freaked out about their children and so worried about fucking them up, they’ve become hypervigilant. That used to be a symptom of mental illness, you know. Now it’s a value. Kids growing up today expect to be protected. They’re weaker than ever.” A shudder rolled through him, as though someone passed a box of Girl Scout cookies under his nose, or in Gil’s case, a crate of actual Girl Scouts would be more evocative. “By the time this generation are adults, they’ll just line up for dinner.”
“One can dream.” Ricardo swallowed the remaining vodka from his glass.
“Well probably not to that degree, but it’s gotten easier every year. You’ve got to give me that.”
“True. So how did you die, princess?” Ricardo asked, swirling an olive around his martini, but not tasting it, just flavoring the vodka. Lesson two, well learned: food is a nono. Got it.
“First off, you two.” I pointed at both with either index finger. “You two must shove the pet names up your asses. Second, it’s Amanda Feral, and if that’s too difficult for you, then don’t refer to me at all.” I enlightened them about the fall in the garage and then waking up dead and fabulous.
“Nope,” Gil said. “That’s not it.”
“Something before that, maybe you’re forgetting.”
It had only been a few hours. I tried to remember. I fell because I was running. But from whom? It didn’t seem likely that Avery or Pendleton could create enough speed to break a sweat, let alone have reason to chase me. An image of a floating box drifted into my head33. Not the donut box. Was there something about an elevator?
“The memory just isn’t coming.”
“It will,” Ricardo said. “In time.”
“In time,” Gil mocked. But, his was a direct quote from the possessed girl, Regan, in The Exorcist, complete with demonic accent.
I rolled my eyes and swallowed the rest of my martini. It warmed all the way down.
“Well you’re clearly not a mistake.” Ricardo lit a cigarette. He shook another out of the pack and offered me one. I waved it off.
“Thanks, no. I quit years ago. So, was I murdered, then?”
“No, no, nothing like that. You see, there are two types of zombies, those who have received the breath, like you and I.
We are made zombies, we sometimes call ourselves ghouls or abovegrounders, but the term is inconsequential. The other kind of zombies are total mistakes, either the victims of a bite or a scratch from another zombie. You or I could go out right this minute and create one. They’re highly dangerous to both humans and the rest of the supernatural world, as they are not at all discreet and can easily expose us to the living.”
Gil piped up, “They’re sloppy and don’t give a damn about appearances. Most of them have visible injuries that make it obvious that they are dead. You see, despite a large population of supernatural beings, we have been able to go unnoticed. We work very hard at blending into our landscape, creating an atmosphere of trust with certain humans. It ensures that as a group, we’ll go overlooked. That’s what enables us to inhabit dwellings next door to our human cousins, and have places like this.” He gestured around the club. “The mistakes fuck with that balance.”
“And, you’ll have to watch out for them, as well,” Ricardo said. “They are incredibly violent and have a tendency to claw. As long as you consume human flesh, your own decomposition process will be stalled, but you can’t afford any damage or accidents on your person. Nothing that happens to you from now on is reversible. You will not heal. Do you see where a confrontation with a mistake can become a serious issue?”
“Absolutely.” I skimmed my fingers across the pale skin on my arm. “So, is anything being done about the mistakes?”
“Oh, there’s a group that takes care of them,” Gil said, flippantly, discarding the topic, as if to say, we don’t discuss the help.
I looked to Ricardo for elaboration, but none followed.
Gil palmed a business card into mine that simply read Gilbert on one side and his phone number on the other, an old-fashioned calling card. How old was he? Ancient was my guess. He excused himself and sauntered up through the amphitheater of booths.
Ricardo and I discussed some basic principles of the living dead34, while prowling the nearby waterfront. It was quiet, despite the cars rumbling on the viaduct above. An anorexic drizzle flitted through the air like the mist at the bottom of a falls.
We settled into stride, one hundred feet behind two street kids that Ricardo suggested were likely runaways or hustlers. He listed several identifying characteristics, for which I found immediate rebuttals.
“Jeans shredded at the ankle and knee,” he said, gesturing.
“You can’t use that. That’s totally in fashion, right now.”
“Dirty, unevenly shorn hair?” he suggested. Throwing it out there to see if it would stick.
“Well, they are boys, Ricardo.”
“Alright, point taken.” He tilted his head in the air, breathing in a familiar scent, indicating for me to do the same. “How do you explain the pungent aroma of patchouli oil, and underneath that, unwashed filth, old sweat, and dried semen?”
“Whatever. There is no way you can smell—” I stopped talking. There was a smell in the air. I closed my eyes to focus. A combination of odors—the sharpness of dirty, crusty human creases; the slight chemical smell of ejaculate—it wafted from the boys like a rest-stop washroom; and the topper aroma—that ’80s pot smoke cover-up—patchouli. “Jesus. How can we smell all this?”
“Some very well-known sommeliers are part of the family,” he said.
“Seriously.”
“You are a hunter, now. It is very important for you to sniff out appropriate victims, to determine both accessibility, and the potential for violent struggle.”<
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“Uh—No,” I said, pointing at the boys. “Filth plus sweat plus semen equals an unscathed survivor. The only way those boys are going into this mouth is after a thorough scrubbing. I’m talking rubber gloves, bleach, and steel wool.”
“That can be arranged.” He wiped what could have been drool from the corners of his mouth. “But I think, if you’ll just smell again. Inhale, deeper this time.”
We gained on the boys, who ducked into a covered bus shelter. We stopped in the shadows of a boarded-up chowder house, still a good twenty yards away from our proposed quarry. I closed my eyes and sniffed the misty air, this time with more detail. First was the fallen rain, but beyond its freshness, patchouli, thick, seemingly impenetrable, faintly moldy, like the icky proximity of a rock concert queue. The scent hid the sweaty perfume of unwashed armpit and ass, and another, what Ricardo must have picked up as distinctly hustler—semen. These two boys, neither older than sixteen, survived the streets by way of their mouths. How does it come to this? I thought, but I knew—intolerance, alcohol, rage, neglect, the kid becomes fed up, tired, and runs. Everyone knows. Disney and Simba don’t tell you, but moments like these are points on the circle of life; on your knees, taking some old man’s cock-spit on your cheek and dirty clothes.
Secondary smells came, deeper than those first, obvious fragrances: mustard crusted at the corner of a mouth, the ashy stink of smoke on a breath, the yellow of bile in a stomach. My head swam in the combination of scents; a drunken feeling passed through me; I was spinning, floating. I was no longer connected to my body.
Swirling. Swirling. I thought of tidal pools and eddies and swirling.
It seemed like minutes passed, not real time, but the cloudy minutes of a dream. It could have been as long as an hour, or a few seconds, or days.
Then, as soon as the spell came on, it dissipated. The aroma of freshly butchered meat filled my nose. It was the only scent. I noticed my teeth grinding, a fullness in my stomach. Calm.
I was sated.
I opened my eyes to a scene of horror. At my feet lay a pile of shredded fabric, bloody bones and assorted body parts35. The glass of the bus shelter was sprayed with blood. It dripped around me. Ricardo was chewing on an ear, like a potato chip, and winking.
“Full?” he asked.
“What?” I was groggy, like I had a hangover.
“Are you full, no longer hungry?”
“What happened?” I nudged the heap of remains with a gore-stained high heel; a jawbone slid out and skittered a few inches. It registered. The boys’ scent had drawn me. I hadn’t even noticed my own body’s movement. I was in a trance. At some point, I was on them, biting in, tearing at flesh and muscle, slurping at sinew and entrails.
“You fed.” He brushed some loose hairs from his wool coat. “You caught the scent and you let it take you. It’s how it works. It’s lesson three.”
“But, I didn’t have any control over it,” I said, pacing back and forth in the confines of the shelter. “I always have control. Always.”
“Calm down. It’s a totally normal part of the process. You become more sentient as you grow into the new life. On some kills, you will be completely aware of your actions.”
“That’s comforting,” I said, absently massaging my jaw. It was tired and sore, like I had given it a serious workout. Which, of course, I had. I continued to rub, until a sharp pain bit into my cheek. Reaching in, I withdrew a minute shiny metal chunk: a filling.
“Jesus Christ!” I yelled, swooning, dropping the small piece of metal.
Ricardo bent over and picked up the shiny ball from the concrete. “That’s not a problem, fillings are replaceable. Even for us. I know a very discreet dentist.”
“That’s not it,” I said, looking back to the pile.
“What is it, then?”
“All my fillings are porcelain.”
Lesson four was something I would have to deal with on my own. As it turns out, it wouldn’t pose a problem. You see, Ricardo told me that I would need to break ties with my friends and family, and likely, in time, my job. He told me this on the way back to the Well, after a quick spray of Scrubbing Bubbles, and a brisk wipe of the bus shelter. He even stopped mid-stride to comfort me, should the moment necessitate. It didn’t.
Oh, where to begin?
Right here…
Ethel Ellen Frazier was a mother—mine—in the loosest, most perfunctory sense of that word. I was the product of her first marriage to my father, John Shutter, a carpet salesman who worked the hours of a long-haul trucker, with the same truck stop cravings (greasy prostitutes). He worked so often, I became Ethel’s confidante—as so many only children do—leaving the growing-up part to the other kids, orphaned to rec room cocktail mixology, doilied social etiquette, the proper delivery of humorous anecdotes, and the moderately interesting discussion of current events. These were Ethel’s primary pursuits and she accomplished them with a style—she called it panache—often mimicked by her acquaintances, but rarely up-to-par.
I refer to the people that hung around our house as “glommers.” They seemed to have no other purpose than to reinforce my mother’s ridiculous ideas or negate her stream of brutal self-critique (the brunt of which transferred to me, with more frequency than I’d like to admit). One particular glommer, Mary-Beth Winters, had it in for me. A jealous bitch and cold—I often mourned the shriveling of Mr. Winters’ dick, as surely the weather called for snow flurries with each creaky spreading of Mary-Beth’s thighs—she’d often whisper to me, “You certainly like your food, don’t you Mandy?” or “Scared away your daddy, didn’t you?”
Ethel dumped my father in a whirlwind of china shards and chilly barbs about scabrous floozies and infantile earnings. I braced myself in a doorjamb and waited for the earthquake of foot stomping. My mother wore a crisp housedress patterned with black roses, the perfect choice. It said so much, her demeanor, her thorns, and that heady perfume she wore: Evil by Satan.
Mr. Shutter was replaced. Ethel took up with a horse-faced financier named Asher Fable, who lived up to his name on both counts. Ash, as Ethel renamed him, turned out to be a low-level con man with ties to the old Vegas mob. So the money, too, was a fairy tale. The ashy part was too, too true. I found this out after a cocktail party, which left Ethel passed out on the davenport, her arm draped unapologetically over the squared-off pillows. An extinguished cigarette held its burnt cargo for the full two and half inches, ready to drop and gray the shag, but had stamina. At least that wasn’t true of Ash. He crawled into my bed that night and fondled me with hands that had never seen moisturizer.
I was twelve.
The therapists that my mother gathered to deal with the situation were the first positive men in my life. It’s probably why I’m drawn to them, now. If anything the whole experience made me resilient, and, only a smidge bitter. I didn’t need to be around people.
I became a loner. I carried this into my adult years. Don’t get me wrong; I was social, when it suited me. I accumulated very few friends, but plenty of glommers. So cutting people out of my life would be a quick process.
Martin.
He would be the only real loss. My family was better left in the dark about my present condition. I hadn’t spoken to Ethel since high school graduation, anyway. That exchange had gone like this (I’m paraphrasing):
“Why couldn’t you wear the pearls I left out for you?” Ethel’s lips pursed in perpetual disappointment.
“Why couldn’t you use your big-girl words and ask?”
“Look.” Mother pointed across the courtyard to Stickgirl, the only anorexic in our class that had managed to avoid inpatient treatment. “Your friend Andrea looks so nice in that silk dress.”
“Yeah. Like a praying mantis. What are you trying to say?”
“Oh, nothing.” Ethel turned to snatch a glass of champagne off a passing tray.
“C’mon. Spill it,” I demanded.
“Just that you could look nice, if you tried.”
Right about then she grabbed me, spun me around and embraced me for a photo op. Rocky Kornblatt, her latest bunk-buddy had a thing for 35mm cameras—collected them, or something. The result: an expression on my face somewhere between startled from sleep and saying “alfalfa” rather than “cheese”. My mother looked adorable, straight from a Disney movie—only this Mary Poppins came with shark teeth, standard.
This was totally representative of our interaction. Her: flippant and denigrating. Me: angry and defensive. I couldn’t take it anymore; I was packed and gone before Ethel made it home from one of my own friend’s graduation parties.
As you can see, severing ties with Mother wasn’t going to be a problem. We didn’t have a relationship, anyway. Certainly, nothing any normal person would call loving. Dad was outtie, who knew where he’d settled. Ash was long gone, which was too bad, really. I’d like to think I could sort him out, in my present condition.
Which brings me back to Martin.
What to do with Martin?
I walked alone through the city streets, taking notice of the dark places and individuals and creatures that were never visible before the change. A romantic couple in the sloppy throes of passion became a vampire sucking his struggling victim dry. A stray dog reared up on its hind legs, stretched to the height of a burly lumberjack, and howled at a moon hidden by heavy clouds. A zombie roamed the streets, with sluggish tired feet, but sexy-ass heels.
I needed to get home.
Chapter 7
The Great Cosmetics Heist
Most clubs have no formal dress code; however, the Seattle scene is haute-haute-haute. You know what that means girls, glamour hair and face, designer clothes and pricey stilettos. Without? Don’t even bother to come…
—Undead Times
A half an hour later, I was in the shower, exfoliating like a rape victim. The steaming water hit from three angles, a sunflower blossom in the ceiling of the marble stall provided a typhoon of warm rain, while two sheets of water emerged from thin slits on either side of the wall. I leached comfort from the undulating warmth.
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