by Daryl Banner
My fellow roommate cockroach scuttles up the wall. With a disgusted shudder, I decide it’s time to get out of the house for the first time since my return to Trenton. The porch shudders too, so unused to carrying weight I suppose. Each step down them, a yawning of dead wood.
Walking the dirt-lined street to the heart of the city, I allow myself a smile. I’m determined to like this new life, whether I like it or not.
Maybe someone at the bazaar carries roach spray.
The Town Square turns out to be a decent walk from my neighborhood. A stage sits in the middle of the plaza surrounded by boarded-up storefronts that all look closed but aren’t. Men and women bustle about with their days, shopping, conversing. A kid barters with a bothered old man over the worth of an antique from the twenty-first century.
At the next city block, I encounter a long and narrow schoolyard full of kids. Class must be dismissed because the teenagers are gathered in little clusters outside. I’m struck for a moment by how … normal everything seems. As I watch the teens chat and laugh with each other, zipping up backpacks, sharing notes and gossiping, I forget for a while where I am. It’s nice, being captured by something so simple, so uncomplicated. I forget that I’m dead. I forget that all these kids are dead too.
“I’ve never seen you before.”
A plump, short teenage girl with spiky brown hair and an eyepatch stands before me, a pink backpack hanging from her shoulder and a thick scarf coiled about her neck.
“I’m new here,” I explain.
“You seem a bit old to attend school.”
“I meant to Trenton. I’m not … I’m not in school.”
She studies my face for a second. “I’m seventeen, but I’ve been attending this school for a decade. If I were alive, I’d probably be married and knocked up in my thirties by now.”
I blink, dazed by her bluntness. I have to remind myself that in this world, even age is a lie. And to think, I was just enjoying how normal everything felt. I didn’t realize how fleeting that moment would be, else I might’ve appreciated it a tad more.
“My name’s Winter.”
“Mine’s Summer. Just kidding, it’s Ann.” She smiles, her teeth sparkling with the shimmer of braces. I try to smile back, it probably falls flat. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to fake nothing around me. I wasn’t thrilled when I woke up in this place a decade ago either.”
“It’s that obvious?”
“This place isn’t all that bad. Look at it like a long holiday weekend … There’s no work, and Monday is forever, forever, forever away. The only thing you come to miss is the sun.” She holds a hand up, peers into the sky. “I hope your favorite color is grey.”
Quietly, I ask, “Why can’t we see the sun?” For some reason or another, I’m embarrassed to ask the question. I feel like a child asking her mother about the world. Why’s the sky blue. How are babies made.
“Science wasn’t my thing when I was alive, neither now that I’m dead.” She shrugs, her backpack making jangling noises. “Undead, whatever. Hey, look on the bright side. You’ll never get sick or age. You don’t gotta eat anymore either.”
“But I liked eating … I think.”
She squints at me. “You want in on something fun?”
“Fun?”
“Follow me.”
Assuming there wasn’t anything I planned to do with my day anyway—if I can bother telling where it ends or begins—I follow her across the street and down an alley. After a few turns (and passing several shady-looking faces) we arrive at the back of a building where several other teenagers are gathered. They’re arranged in a big circle and appear to be kicking an oddly-shaped soccer ball back and forth among them.
“Sporty,” I remark. “Are we supposed to join in?”
“Not on your first time,” Ann whispers back.
One of the teenagers, a chubby boy wearing a thick striped scarf of his own, glances back at us. “She cool?” he grunts at Ann, who just shrugs. “Alright.”
It isn’t until I’m closer that I realize the ball isn’t a ball.
“What the hell?” I blurt. “That’s someone’s—”
“Isn’t it genius?” Ann leans into me. “Just because we’re dead doesn’t mean we can’t have fun. Hey, but if you want to be part of the Heads, you can’t tell anyone about what you see here. It’s, well … more or less breaking every Trenton law.”
“We have laws?”
The soccer ball—I mean, the head—calls out “I’m done! I’m done!” and one of the teens kicks the head into the air, catches it, then helps return it to the person to whom it belonged—a girl I hadn’t noticed who was standing there without a head the whole time. Two kids holding the body up, another friend helps snap her back together. I see she’s a sweet thing with freckles and two blonde ponytails. Yes, that really did just happen. I’m watching this happen.
“You know we don’t feel pain,” Ann reminds me, probably noting the shocked expression on my face. “So it’s just a little way for us to blow off steam. Not everyone in this town is overjoyed at being—whatever we are.”
Another kid, tall and gangly, excitedly volunteers to be next, unwrapping the black scarf around his neck, revealing a less-than-sightly fracture—where he’d clearly removed his head for a past game, I presume—and proceeds to decapitate himself.
I look away. “So … that’s what’s with the scarves …”
“Every town needs its misguided youth, I reckon.” Ann grins. “The law’s trying to kill us over and over. Pretending we’re still alive, like we still eat and bleed and have pulses. We know better.” She prods me with a bony elbow. “Still angry about the whole being-dead thing?”
“I wasn’t angry,” I murmur, finding myself helplessly distracted by the boy’s head as it gets footed and bumped around by the circle of teens. It’s like I can’t not watch.
The joy in their eyes … This is what we’ve come to.
And then I can’t watch. I turn without remark and backtrack my way out of the alleys to the main street. I make it to the curb, breathing and attempting to regain my composure. It isn’t until after five or six breaths that I remind myself how very unnecessary it is for me to breathe at all. How capable I am of just standing here, doing nothing to sustain my consciousness. How capable I am of just twisting off my own head.
Why did I bother letting Grimsky pull me from that cliff? I’d be better off in a million pieces at its foot. Why bother with any of this at all?—Wasn’t one death enough?
“Not your thing, I get it.” Ann has caught up to me, speaking to my back. “I misjudged you. Thought you were bored and needed a little fun.”
“I need a pulse.” I clench my eyes and chew on my teeth. “I need to blush when I’m embarrassed. I need … I need to remember who I was!” I crouch down, unable to stand anymore. “I want to know my name!”
“It’s Winter.”
“My real name!”
Ann sits down on the curb next to me. “I went through this too. Before I had my Life Dream, I was furious about what I’d lost … Whatever memories, whatever friends and family, I was furious it was gone. But I don’t think you’d miss it as much if you knew what it was. No one ever misses their Old Life.”
“I miss seeing the sky. I miss feeling my heart race, I know that much.” My lips purse together. I can’t control how angry this is making me and for some reason I don’t care to hide it. “A fall from a cliff should kill us … It just isn’t natural that it can’t.”
“It’s really too bad. I was hoping you’d play with us. Such a shame, you have a nice neck too.” Ann sighs. “Maybe they’ll let me graduate this year. I have eight high school diplomas at home, wanna see?”
“Another time.” I put my head between my knees. It’s the strangest sensation, knowing I can’t actually feel anything like nausea or weakness or whatever, but my mind is telling me I should.
“Another time,” Ann agrees. “See me when you have a free day. I live in
the fourth quarter, west end.”
“Wherever that is,” I remark sulkily.
She stands, adjusts the backpack on her shoulder. “I should get home before my mom starts to worry.”
“Your real mom?” I ask acidly, without caring how insensitive that might sound.
She just shrugs, unoffended. “What’s a real mom, anyway?” Then, with half a smile, she’s on her way down the road.
I watch her for a while, not sure how to feel. I want to cry, but know full-well that isn’t possible. On the bright side, I guess that makes one friend I’ve successfully found. Ann, a teenager who’s been seventeen for at least the last ten years and who, for fun, pulls off her head and plays soccer with a group of law-breaking teens. My Second Life is so purposeful and fulfilling now.
I take a short glance at the sky, noting it’s still silver-o’clock. I could get used to grey.
I spend a lot more time on the curb just watching people go by … Groups of suited men, pairs of teenagers dismissed from school, young couples in love, a lady with a cart full of candlesticks, three tall men laughing about something that happened at the factory … After a while, things start to feel a little normal again. I’m almost convinced that I’m alive, just sitting on the curb of some town I’m visiting, people-watching, some nice afternoon.
Until I remind myself I can pull off my arm.
“Dear!” cries an old lady, clutching her face. “You’ve had an accident!”
I glance to my left, as though noticing a fly on my shoulder, only to realize I’ve indeed just pulled off my left arm with my right.
“To the Refinery, you must!” the old lady urges me, throwing a shawl over my back as though attempting to hide me from the onlookers. “We must fix that at once!”
Yes, I pulled off my own arm. No, I don’t care. The old lady hurriedly leading me back to the Refinery, I’m not even upset about this stupid Second Life anymore. I’m not angry about my stupid pulse that isn’t there, or the unfunctioning pointless parts inside me. The fact that I barely felt my arm come off, that something that grotesque has no more an effect than a fly landing on my skin … That’s what kills me.
Back on the work table with the large woman who created me not so long ago, she’s sewing my arm back on when she whispers, “Death is such a blameless chore!”
The. Only. One. Left. To. Blame. Is. You.
When I’m ushered out of the squatty pink building, rubbing my arm with the stupid illusion that it’s sore after a tiring surgery, I honestly debate pulling it right back off. Here, you can give this to someone else—I don’t need it. That’s what I’d tell the large refinery lady. I’d mean it too. I’d give everything back, my legs, my empty lungs, my icy eyes, every useless piece. Maybe I was an organ donor when I was alive. Maybe I’ll be one in death too.
“You look lost.”
I look up. I can’t believe it. My eyes are met by the one and only Grimsky, the man who saved me from the cliff. He leans on a dead tree that hangs over a long stone bench. Of course I’d run into him, of all the hundreds of people to encounter in this city. Just seeing his sweet smile warms me instantly, makes me forget about all those stupid things, makes me forget how I just tore off my own arm. “Lost as ever,” I admit in many ways.
He steps away from the tree. I see his thick brooding eyebrows, his porcelain skin. A few steps closer, he smiles again and says, “Need help getting home? I realized the other day that you live really close to me.”
I find in staring at his smile that I rather like it, the way the corners of his long lips create dimples in his smooth pale skin. I almost reflect his smile, unable to help myself. “I think I already miss eating,” I confess quietly.
“Hey, we can still drink,” he points out, cocking his head to the side. “Sometime we could have one together. There’s a lovely tavern in the strip, just up the road.”
Looking into his soft, forever-welcoming eyes, I wonder if I’ve been looking at all of this wrong. If I have no memory, then there’s nothing to mourn. Nothing to miss … No family, husband, lover, like Helena said.
I put on a smile. “When I’m ready, I’ll be happy to take you up on that drink offer.”
“We have all the days of the world for you to get ready, Winter.” He grins. “Welcome to the End of Time.”
His voice is like ... coffee creamer. I don’t know what that means. It’s raspy, but flows like silk off his tongue. Maybe he was an actor when he lived, or an orator. Perhaps a poet. That feels the best, calling him a poet.
“Do you like poetry?” I ask him.
His face narrows for one perplexed moment. “I do.”
And with that, I agree to let him escort me to my quarter, which I learn is the first, west end. We carry on with small talk where I make quite sure not to ask too many questions regarding my New Life. I don’t want to talk about those things … Worrisome thoughts about what’s different, what’s lost, what’s never to be again. Instead, I want to feel normal for a while. I want to forget where I am, and assume that I’m on a very long vacation and have run into a nice, attractive man with which I’m enjoying a simple conversation.
It helps.
When we walk past a restaurant, I have to stop and laugh. A restaurant, when we don’t eat and have no need for food. I ask to go inside, curiosity taking the better of me, and we seat ourselves at a table in the back. Idly wondering why anyone eats or drinks, I come to the conclusion that everything in this world is indulgent. People drink not from thirst or necessity—they do it just because they can. Same with eating. They pretend, like they’re replaying their lives. I wonder if they miss the people they used to be … If they even remember them.
Finally we make it back to the cul-de-sac. There’s my little squeaky house, just as I’d left it. I have no idea how long I was out and it doesn’t matter. Time has no relevance anymore.
I wonder if it ever did, even when I was alive.
Grimsky has a curious reaction. “This is your house?” When I nod, he bursts out laughing, then says, “So you’re my new neighbor??”
I blink. “New neighbor?”
“That’s my house,” he says, pointing. “Right there.”
I stare at the house right next to mine. I’ve not been very observant, clearly. Until now, I hadn’t a moment to notice that, of all people, it was my cliff-savior friend who lived just next door.
“What are the chances,” I say, genuinely surprised. “On that first day when you brought me back, we parted ways before reaching my house. Otherwise we would’ve learned we were neighbors sooner.”
“Better now than never. I wouldn’t have made a good neighbor if I let you sit in that house for all eternity.”
I smirk at him. “Either this is a pretty remarkable coincidence, or you’re a not-so-subtle stalker.”
“Yeah, that’s it. I moved in next door so I could make sure you don’t run off to the cliff again.” He laughs. I try not to, hiding my face. “So tell me, did you enjoy your tour of Trenton today? I would’ve taken you earlier, but you seemed a little ... ah ...”
“I’m still adjusting,” I explain, excusing him from having to describe my clearly sulky and despondent nature. “The people are … interesting. Though I haven’t much else to compare it to, come to think of it.”
“There’s plenty to compare it to,” he says. “There’s a lot more out there you haven’t yet seen, Winter. Places left behind by humankind. I can’t wait to show it to you someday. The world’s changed since we were alive—whenever that was.”
I sit in the rocking chair on my porch, which creaks under my weight. “So what happened …? Did the zombie apocalypse come and go and the zombies won?”
“There are nice things out there, and some not-so-nice.” He grimaces. “I’ve only heard about a few things myself, the Deathless for one, but don’t know much about anything. As far as I understand, we’re safe here to live long and happy lives.”
“Seems like a big waste of time, doesn’t it?
”
“Wasn’t Life?” He leans on the porch railing. “Not that either of us know yet. I still haven’t had my Waking Dream. I don’t know what my life was like at all ...”
“Me neither.” I pick at something on my hand. An entire fingernail comes off. “Oh, crap.”
“It’s okay. That’s what we have the Refinery for. Upkeep. This guy down the street, his toes keep falling off. He makes a trip to the Refinery once a week, not that I’m keeping track.”
“That’s ... awful.”
“Be thankful you were Raised with all your body intact. I hear some needed arms and legs when they were Raised … Can you imagine??”
“I’d rather not.”
Grimsky smiles, looks away. “I guess I’m going a bit fast for you, aren’t I ...”
I shrug. “What’s it matter? We only have all eternity. To do what, I have no earthly idea. I guess I’ll figure it out. Welcome to the End of Time, you said so yourself.”
I do realize I’m being a little short with him. Maybe my patience has been exhausted for the day.
“I’ve been Undead for five months and twenty-eight days,” he tells me in a quiet voice, like a secret. “There, I announced my age. How’s that for criminal?”
Despite the anger, I break a smile.
But no matter the kind words we share, I can’t lighten the heavy stone in my chest. Later in the evening when the sun has apparently fallen, according to Grimsky’s keen eye, I walk the inside of my house one hundred times. Staring miserably into the bathroom mirror, I find that smooth porcelain face that isn’t mine. The curl of my eyelashes, it’s fake. The striking blue crystals I have for eyes, they’re fake. Icecap Blue or Cerulean or Moonglow Azure, I don’t really care. I never did. Call me Winter. Call me Summer. Call me the Devil’s Doornail, I’m still a dead girl underneath. Even the subtle pink blush in my cheeks is a lie, pressed onto me, injected into me, just to hide the fact that I’m dead. That we’re all dead. That underneath all this prettiness, there lies corpses. Underneath our flawless complexions, fettering flesh that belongs in the earth.
I clench shut my eyes and try to remember my life.