Pretty Dead

by Francesca Lia Block

  Jared and I got takeout food and ate it out of the containers with our fingers by my pool. We made each other CDs and lit hundreds of candles and made love for hours. I dressed up for him in my costumes of various eras and pretended to be Camille Claudel, Coco Chanel, Marilyn Monroe, Edie Sedgwick, Madonna, Gisele, Kate Moss.

  “I like you as you the most,” he said, taking off my platinum-blond wig and slowly unlacing the black leather corset that pushed my breasts up over the top.

  One night he didn’t come. The candles were burning down to nothing, the ice in the champagne bucket had melted and I had listened to the same old Bowie CD over and over again. I called him and texted, but he didn’t respond. Something felt wrong in my bones. That was when I got in my car and drove to the house in Venice. The house William and I had abandoned years before, when we moved to the Northeast.

  I don’t know why I felt I had to go there that night, but I did. It was almost as if the car was driving itself.

  When I walked into the room with the red walls, adrenaline-infused blood engorged my veins. Would I fight or flee? And if I fought, what dark power was I up against? I saw Jared reclining on a black leather couch. He looked like Jesus in a Pietà, draped languidly there. His head, with the small growth of beard, was thrown back, and one arm was draped over the top of the sofa as if it were a woman. His long legs were crossed at the ankle. Candles burned around him. Thick white wax in sconces, dripping rivulets.

  I stood in the doorway like a stunned beast as I watched William approach from the other side of the room. He wore a black suit and a white shirt. His hands and face glowed in the darkness with that preternatural pallor. He turned his head slowly to look at me.

  “Char. You’ve come to our party? I wasn’t expecting you.” So calm. His mouth was curved into an almost-smile. Dark eyes. They feed you with their eyes. Like black milk.

  “Jared,” I said, “I want you to get up now. Come with me.”

  Jared moved his head, but the rest of his body stayed reclined, perfectly motionless, like the statue he resembled. He blinked at me, and I took that as a good sign, that blink. He was still in there.

  “Jared, I want you to come with me.” I tried to make it sound light. “We have a date, remember? It’s going to be all right.”

  On the walls of the room were mounted glass boxes with crumbling vampire bats inside of them. Children might have been afraid. To me, they looked even more pathetic than when William put them there years ago.

  “Charlotte Emerson. This is between me and Jared. He found me. This is what he wants. Please leave.”

  “Jared…” I walked closer to him.

  His eyes were pleading with me. He wanted it so badly. He wanted it more than he wanted me. I could see that. I thought I’d brought back his desire to live, but it wasn’t enough. He wanted to live forever. There was nothing I could do.

  Then we heard footsteps, and we all turned and a girl was standing in the room with us. A girl with brown ringlets and big dark eyes. She was dressed in a tight red dress that showed off her breasts and tiny hips. High red satin shoes on her feet. Her nails were painted red, too, and her lips. I even thought I recognized the shade. M.A.C. Viva Glam. Her skin was bone-china white.

  She went up to William Stone Eliot, and he put his arm around her. He was so much bigger that his hand dangled over her breast. My spine convulsed with chills.

  “So, here she is,” she said.

  “Emily? What…”

  “I was wondering when you’d show up. I should hate you, but I don’t. Because now I get everything you had and you have nothing except guilt.”

  I rushed forward and grabbed Jared’s hand. He had turned almost as white as the girl. He was sobbing.

  I dragged him out of the room before he knew what I was doing. I put him in my Porsche. His eyes rolled up in his head.

  “She is back,” he said, before he passed out cold on the black leather.

  Psychography

  My hands were shaking. Never before, since my human existence, had my hands shaken. They were always still, and steady as marble. I gripped the steering wheel and rounded the curves of the Pacific Coast Highway. When I arrived at my house, Jared was still passed out. I got out of the car and hauled him up the front steps. I was not used to feeling weakness in my limbs; it frightened me.

  I heaved Jared down onto the couch in the front room, almost falling on top of him. My hands were so unsteady I could hardly light the candles or pour the wine. The shaking in my hands seemed to be telling me something. There was something I must do.

  I sat at the table with the red cloth, the white wax from the candles pooling onto it, and picked up the pen. After William changed me, I did not believe I could write any more poetry, anything at all. I was too empty. Writing poetry seemed to be another aspect of the human world lost, like crying, giving birth, producing milk or dying. I remembered how I practiced psychography, a way to communicate with the spirits, to feel less alone after Charles died. Loneliness was one thing William had not taken away. In fact, he had bestowed it upon me to a chilling degree.

  Now my fingers tapped on the paper before me. There was an ache in my fingertips, all the nerve endings pricking like pins. This also reminded me of something from a distant past, a time when I felt an almost painful desire to write my feelings down on paper. I was changing; I wanted to understand what had happened to Emily and I had no idea where else to begin, so I picked up the pen.

  my darling in the red dress

  you would never have worn red in the past, not even a dress unless i gave it to you, not that one.

  do you know that in the beginning there was a disease that drained all the fluids from the body, made the skin of the face look masklike, made the teeth appear to grow longer from the shrunken gums? did you know that this, my dear, is, as the great bard would say (perhaps he, too, was one of us and lives on somewhere in hiding), our parent, our original? perhaps we are not even real, we are only the demons made up by humans to explain a kind of death they did not understand or a way to frighten their children into being good or just the product of an artist’s capricious mind.

  perhaps we are only a psychosis.

  my darling, was that you standing in william stone eliot’s room in the red dress, looking more beautiful and also more vile than any girl i have ever seen? your jared couldn’t look away.

  your jared, but is he? or is he now mine? at least he was for a moment before your fearsome return.

  the night bows down to you; the fires sweep the hills like torn remnants of your dress; the scent of night-blooming jasmine, pittosporum and chlorine from the pool we swam in is obliterated by the singed smell.

  when i see us swimming in that pool, i see something else. i see william hiding in the bushes, watching us and listening to the words we speak.

  “on nights like this, when everything’s so beautiful, i want to live forever.”

  emily, who did this to you? did he come back all this way for this alone? i thought he came for me at first, but now i see.

  he came for you.

  or did he?

  and where was i? what actions did i take? that night, that night you left this world.

  or did you? did you rise again?

  who did this to you, emily, who who who?

  and if it was not william eliot, then i must understand more than who.

  i must know how and why.

  The Exchange

  I was slumped at the table, with my head in my arms, when Jared shook me awake the next evening. We had both slept straight through.

  His eyes looked red and swollen, and his cheeks were bloated and bloodless. His big hand gripped my shoulder.

  “What did you do?” he shouted.

  “What?” Everything was a blur. I remembered a red room with writing on the walls. Jared lying on a couch, like a statue of Jesus. That infernal candlelight, and a girl in a red dress.

  “I wanted to become like you!” he screamed. “That’s
all I wanted. I finally had my chance. It wouldn’t have been on your head at all. I found him and he agreed, and you ruined it.”

  “Why, Jared? Why did you want to be like me? So that you could be with Emily again? Did you know about her all along?”

  He staggered back as if I had bitten him. “What the hell are you talking about? What about Emily?”

  “She was there. In the red dress. You saw her. She’s one now.”

  “I didn’t…. That was a dream. You saw my dream. That wasn’t…”

  And then, before he could say another word, the Santa Anas blew the window open, the frame slamming the wall. Two figures were in the room. They had brought the night with them.

  Emily had changed out of her red dress. She wore a long, black lace sleeveless gown with a deep neckline. The hemline fell to the ground, and under it, through the sheer fabric, you could see she had on black riding boots. William stood behind her with his hand on her shoulder.

  She looked into my eyes, so deep into the dark, bloody depths of who I was, and I knew that this was not a dream and that none of this would be happening if I had not done something, something as shocking and evil as anything William Stone Eliot had ever done.

  Someone had made Emily into a vampire. Someone had made me into a human. I did not understand it all yet, but I knew I was somehow to blame for what had occurred.

  “Forgive me,” I said.

  “There is nothing to forgive,” said Emily. “I have what I always wanted. Except for one thing.”

  William stepped closer, “Now give us Jared, please.”

  Emily was staring at Jared. She was wrapping her curls around her index fingers, pulling, then letting them bounce back. She had a sly, kittenish expression on her lips. Jared stood behind me. I could feel the fear coming off his body like dry ice.

  “Emily,” he finally whispered, stepping forward.

  “She’s not Emily, Jared.” I turned to face him.

  “Oh, really! And who are you, then?” Emily asked. “What happened to the girl you used to be when Billy changed you?”

  “She’s not herself anymore,” I said to Jared, ignoring her.

  “What am I, then? A monster? That’s funny. A monster calling the monster a monster!” Emily started to laugh.

  Jared looked at me pleadingly. “What happened?” he asked me. There were tears in his eyes. “Tell me what happened! Who did this to her? Was it him? Did he kill her and bring her back? Did I bring her back because I wanted her so much?”

  “I’ll tell you,” William answered, stepping between me and Jared. “Charlotte killed your Emily. Or almost killed her. I came along just in time. I saw that pretty face, those sweet eyes and lips. I knew I couldn’t live without her, and I heard her ask for it. ‘On nights like this, when everything is so beautiful, I want to live forever.’”

  The room seemed to be growing smaller. “What did you say?” I grabbed William’s arm, but he brushed me away like an insect.

  “So I made her,” he said. “But it was almost too late. Too much damage had been done. I had to make a bargain, an exchange.”

  “What are you talking about?” I lunged at him, and he caught me in his arms. “That thing you said! About Emily wanting to live forever. You heard her say that? She said that to me.”

  “Yes, darling. I was watching it all.”

  “You were there? How dare you! You have always tried to control me. Always!”

  William smiled. “Perhaps. But look what you have received now. Look what I have given you.”

  And he touched a finger to my cheek, wet it in my tears, and dabbed the salty substance onto his lips.

  Rage

  That night Emily had brought her boyfriend, Jared Pierce, over to my house. They’d already been drinking when they arrived and stood swaying on my doorstep, giggling, a bottle of red wine in Emily’s hands.

  I remember thinking, You are so lucky, Emily. You are both so lucky.

  She didn’t need to bother with makeup or pretty clothes. He loved her in a baggy sweatshirt, cutoffs and sneakers. She barely came up to his armpit. He was so tall that even I felt small next to him, almost petite. I loved that feeling.

  “Can we go swimming in your pool, Char?” Emily cooed. “Please?”

  I let them in and we drank the wine and ate some caviar.

  “Ooh, salty fish eggs, yum,” Emily said. At that moment she sounded childish to me in an affected way, not like her lovely, innocent self. Jared didn’t say much at all, but I could feel him watching me, and I could tell Emily noticed. Her eyes flicked back and forth between us like black butterflies.

  “You’re so dressed up!” she said in a hard little voice full of italics. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without makeup and jewelry. It’s so grown-up of you.”

  Jared looked nervous, picking up on the female tension. It was hard to miss, more obvious than the huge antique-jade necklace I wore.

  “Put on Interpol!” Emily squealed. She was taking off her baggy sweatshirt. Under it she had a boy’s white undershirt and no bra—the usual. She ran outside. “It’s cold! But the water’s warm. Oh my God! Jared, come on!”

  He followed her out there. He’d hardly said a word to me the whole time. I watched them strip. His body looked huge next to hers. He got in the pool and held her, and I knew that under the water she was wrapping her legs around his waist.

  I came and stood by the pool. The garden lights streaked the water with pale, shaking light. I undressed slowly, expecting them to watch me, but Emily pulled Jared around so his back was to me, and she started kissing him. Neither of them saw my perfect white body, naked and glowing in the night like a rare flower that, if plucked and consumed, could bring eternal life. They have no idea what they are missing, I thought.

  But the truth was, I was the one missing out. And I knew it.

  I remembered that day by the lake so long ago, older than human memory. Monster memory, it was. But I was not a monster yet. I was a girl as beautiful as a flowering tree, undressing for a boy as beautiful as a lake. And as much as I was a part of the trees and he was a part of the lake, we were even more a part of each other. I was a girl diving into the blue water, splashing and swimming and happy and never imagining that the boy would be taken from me and that I would have to grieve for eternity.

  Then rage surged up in me. Rage at any god that would take my brother from me. Rage at the devil for using my grief as a trap to make me his. Rage at time, at history, at memory, at all humanity with its cruelty in the face of endless loss. And rage at this happy mortal boy and girl playing in the water, in my pool, with no fear, no loss, no sense that someday they would be without their beloved and that the someday would last for an eternity.

  I don’t remember what happened next, but I know that William Eliot was telling the truth when he revealed the terrible thing that I had done.

  Suddenly, like a nightmare remembered hours later, one so brutal as to be only worse in the bright of day, it all came back to me.

  i follow you home and wait outside your window.

  i watch, seething and bucking with my rage while you and jared make love on your little-girl bed.

  i wait until he leaves, and then i go inside and bend over your small, beckoning body.

  “Charlotte,” you say. Your voice is thick with alcohol and dreaming. “What are you doing here?”

  I am so ashamed of what I am, in contrast to your innocence.

  “I know what you are,” you say.

  I feel as if I’ve been struck in the chest with something sharp. Suddenly I wonder why I came here. What led me to your door as if under some spell. I pull away, full of remorse.

  You go on. “I want to be what you are.”

  I have never made a human into what I am. I have never felt the desire, nor did I believe I would have the restraint not to go all the way and take a life in the process.

  i am choked with a thirst i have never felt.

  i lose all restraint, all sens
e of humanity.

  i beome the beast, and i pierce the beauty, pierce your shallow wrists with your own pocket knife, and then i feed until you are dry.

  or almost dry.

  because that is when william, who has been watching me for days, who has followed me through the night, who has masterminded it all, swoops in and changes you while i stagger home alone and without a memory of what i have done.

  you will be buried so no one will suspect, and then you will rise out of the crypt and walk with him.

  and in those moments when william bargained for your soul, i had no idea that both our greatest wishes were being fulfilled, or at what great cost.

  Meet the Monster

  “Is it true, Char?” Jared was staring at Emily. “Tell me! Is it true? You did this?”

  At first I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t look at him. I turned to William.

  “Why did you come back again?” I asked. “You said you wanted to release me. Why did you come to my house the other night?”

  “I came to see if the bargain really worked.”

  “Emily!” Jared rushed at her and tried to grab her dress, but she moved back imperceptibly, and he fell to his knees on the carpet like the man in Rodin’s sculpture Eternal Idol.

  “Who did this to you? Tell me! Is it true?”

  I had to answer him. I had to look at him. My face was burning. “Yes, Jared. It was me. I am a monster. That is what monsters do,” I said. There were so many tears pouring from my eyes that I couldn’t see him. I tried to touch him, but he pushed my hand away.

  “You never said that. You never said you killed anyone.”

  “I didn’t remember until now.” Now it was I who wanted to fall to my knees.

  “You lied to me.”