“But, officer, I love it here. If you can make it here…”
“Yeah, yeah. Make it anywhere, Vlade. Anywhere but here. ‘Cause, I’m going to stay on you. Too much drugs, too many bodies. I’m stayin’ on you.”
Vlade answered through a yawn, “Please, stop you are sc----aring me.”
There were more footsteps. Someone came close to me and said, “It’s a shame. He was kinda cute.” The voice was nice, young and female. I couldn’t help myself; I cracked my left eye a little bit. I saw a young blond woman kneeling over me. She put a plastic bag over my right hand.
That was weird, a plastic bag on my hand. Why would they do that?
“You know,” said Marsten, “there’s plenty of live men in the room.”
“You’re not my type,” said the pretty girl as she moved to my left hand. Her name tag dragged across my face. I could see that her name was Amanda.
“Me. What’s wrong with me? Everybody loves me,” said Marsten.
“You’re too old for me.”
“Seasoned dear, say seasoned. Unless you want to hurt my feelings.”
“No, Marsten.”
“Well, fine. I didn’t want to go out with you anyway. You spend too much time with dead people.”
"Me? You're in homicide,” she protested.
"That's what I'm saying. I don't like bringing my work home with me,” said Marsten.
"Not me. I might have to pull this one over for a quick detour before I take him back to the morgue."
Marsten laughed a little. This was great. When I was alive, I couldn’t get a girl like this to look at me. Now I was getting game from a freaky lady coroner. You know what they say, girls only want what they can’t have. And nobody is more unattainable than a dead guy. After death, it just keeps getting weirder.
She lifted my feet up and slipped them into a plastic bag. Oh God, the body bag. Why didn’t I think of that? I almost jumped up right then and there, but somehow I managed to keep it together. If the bottom of the bay hadn’t killed me, what was the worst thing a Glad bag could do?
As Amanda tucked my feet into the bag, I realized that Vlade was looking right at me. It was a look that captured all my attention. I couldn’t stop looking at him. In fact, I opened my eyes to see him better. In that light his face seemed flat and dead, like piece of gray stone, but his eyes and the green of his snake tattoo seemed bright and alive. Somehow I got the idea that he was trying to, to… well I didn’t know what, but I didn’t like it. Maybe he was just trying to scare me. Screw him. As Amanda zipped the bag up over my head, I winked at him.
* * * * *
Chapter 9
Until you wake up in a morgue, you simply have no idea what a bad day is. I shouldn't say wake up, since I didn’t really sleep anymore. I just closed my eyes and felt the dark for a while.
The dark was bumpy. Then the dark was soft. Then the dark was in a van. Then the dark, now on wheels, passed through a small crowd of people. Eventually, the dark, with me in it, was placed into a long metal drawer. When it slid shut with a boom, I was pretty sure I was in the morgue.
But really, how could I know? Why should I trust myself? I had been wrong about pretty much everything the whole way along. This “in the dark” thing wasn’t just a metaphor, it was the truth. Even the cops knew more than I did. First off, they knew that the guy who killed me was named Vlade.
I ripped the plastic bags off my hands. I couldn't stand the feeling of having paws. Then I felt around the inside of the body bag. Not surprisingly, the zipper didn't have a handle on this side.
"Jesus, this sucks," I whispered. My words bounced and echoed strangely in the metal drawer. For a while I clawed at the seam above my face. It was no good. I couldn't even get a fingernail onto it. Finally, I gave up and started gnawing. It took me a while to chew a hole in the heavy plastic.
But even after I had shredded the bag, there was nothing I could do. There was no handle on the inside. It’s like I was destined to never catch a break. Not only was I trapped, but I had no idea what was going on. I was lost in my own life. Or afterlife.
Who was the Russian? Why wouldn't he die? How did he know about the rat? Were they working together? What would really happen if I couldn't kill him? What would happen if he shot me in the face?
I hadn't really thought of that. Or what would happen to me if my body was vaporized in an explosion. Or drawn and quartered. I might still be alive or undead or whatever. But what kind of afterlife would that be? Arm crawling one way, head gnashing at passersby – I'm sure I had enough anger to keep all my body parts going if they were separated, but how could they be put back together again?
As I thought about it, I realized I had been playing it wrong. I decided to be careful in the future. If I had a future.
What if Vlade was on his way here right now to get me? Here I was. Trapped. Ignorant. Unable even to help myself. And he was out there. He knew who I was. He was probably talking to the rat. Again, the recurring question came: How screwed was I? All the way screwed.
I decided right then and there that I was all the way screwed. And I wasn't going to expect anything less from life anymore. It wasn’t unfair. It wasn't the exception to the rule. It's just the way things were. No use worrying about it, or expecting it to be different. Water was wet, the sky was blue, and I was screwed.
That's when I started pounding on the door and crying for help. I guess I kinda snapped. I didn't know how I would explain my state to the cops, and I didn't care. I hadn't done anything wrong, except killing three or four people. Well, I hadn't done anything wrong to wind up like this. I had been wronged.
I realized that I didn't like death. I didn't like being dead. And I especially didn't like causing people's deaths. I guess that meant that my feelings were still there. The best way to explain it is that the volume knob on them had been turned way down. But whatever, I felt bad about killing that girl.
I pounded harder and yelled louder, but it was the middle of the night. The middle of the night in the morgue and there was no one around. No one to hear you scream.
It was just me and a bunch of corpses, but I wasn't like them. Yeah, that's a hell of a thing to feel good about. I was slightly better than corpses.
I pounded one time as hard as I could on the wall. BOOM. The sound reverberated throughout the large metal structure. I pounded again. BOOM. BOOM. It sounded like the end of the world. I gave a little smile at the thought that I was the awful thing that was going bump in the night.
I laughed. The laughter grew from a wry little cackle into a storm of hysteria. What if there was somebody outside? What would they think? That was the thought that pushed me over the edge. I laughed harder and harder and harder.
What would that person on the other side of this door be doing? Calling for help? Pissing themselves? Hiding under a table? Each of these thoughts fueled my frenzy. In the middle of it, I stopped wondering if I was going mad. Suddenly I knew. And that was the funniest thought of all.
If I had still been alive, I’m sure I would have hyperventilated and passed out. But I didn't need to breathe to keep living. All my breath rasped out of me in a sound that might have been laughter when it started. Now it was just the sound I made.
I have no idea how long I went on like this, but eventually I stopped. Everything was quiet once again. And then I heard a voice in the darkness. The voice was very small, below even a whisper. I realized that the voice was my own. I realized I was singing.
When you're sad and when you're lonely and you haven't got a friend
Just remember that death is not the end
And all that you've held sacred, falls down and does not mend
Just remember that death is not the end
Not the end, not the end
Just remember that death is not the end
Then I heard sobbing, and realized it was also mine. How strange to cry, without tears. I don’t know why it should be that I would cry. I didn’t seem to feel anything pa
rticularly sad. The waves of emotion, mostly anger and bitterness, that I had known when I was alive had disappeared completely. Or so it had seemed. But there, in the dark, all alone with the quiet -- something happened. Something changed. And I heard, as if one can hear a feeling, an impossibly soft note of relief.
I say “heard” because, while the emotion was familiar, I was experiencing it in a way I had never experienced emotion before. And the more I heard, the clearer and louder it became, until the relief was deafening. And it was all I could hear or taste or see or feel. Even the blackness of my prison fell away.
And then, my mind was clear. I lay still for many hours.
Later the door slid open. I heard a voice say “Good morning.” What the hell, I thought, what’s the worst thing that could happen? I opened my eyes and said, “Good morning.” For a brief moment, I saw the pretty coroner from the night before. I smiled. She screamed. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she passed out.
I sighed. Yeah, that’s how it was going to be. Might as well accept it.
* * * * *
Chapter 10
I looked down at the pretty girl passed out on the floor. It was clear that she would be no help. I don’t know what I expected. I pushed the drawer all the way open and rolled out onto the floor. I thought about putting the girl in the drawer, but since I had just given her the scare of her life young life, I decided that it wasn’t the thing to do. I had hurt and killed a lot of people since I’d died – and maybe I’d have to kill more – but I had a lot of time to think about things in the meat locker. Just because I was dead, didn’t mean it was the right thing for everybody.
For a moment, I considered trying to chart a less violent course through the world. I had to chuckle at that. The world hadn’t been nice to me, so why should I be nice to it? I took the girl’s cellphone from her belt and made a call.
“Bruce?”
“Who is this?” said Bruce.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Do you know what time it is man?” Bruce sounded stoned. But how could you tell? Bruce always sounded stoned.
“Bruce, it’s Dan.”
“Ohhhhhhhhh. Holy Shit man! You’re still alive?”
“No, Bruce. I’m still dead.”
“But, all the shit at the club. I mean, Jesus, man. It was like a bomb went off or something. It’s all over the news. They called it a gang attack.”
“Gang attack. Figures. Even in the afterlife I don’t get any credit.”
“Wow, man. Where are you?”
“I’m at the morgue.”
“You mean like the city morgue? Like, the cop morgue?”
“Yeah, Bruce, the cop morgue.”
“Well, well, how’d you get there? Never mind, man, you gotta get outta there. Did anybody see you?” Sometimes Bruce’s mind worked so slow, I could hear the gears mesh. I looked down at the pretty coroner and gave Bruce a minute to think it through.
“Yeah, Bruce, somebody saw me, but I don’t think anybody’s gonna believe her story.” Would you? Bodies don’t just spring back to life. Everybody knows that, except you and me. But all the regular people, you know, the common clay – morons – they haven’t got a clue. And even if somebody gave them a clue, they wouldn’t take it. Who wants to know that things really go bump in the night? I had been transformed into one of those things and I didn’t even want to know about it.
“Well, what are you going to do?” Bruce asked.
“I’m going to walk out.”
“What! Man, you can’t just walk out of THE POLICE STATION!”
“What do you mean? What’s the worst thing they can do? It’s not like they can kill me.”
“Experiments,” said Bruce, in a deadly earnest tone. “Experiments. Seriously, how many of those black-ops guys would love get their hands on you?”
Bruce had always been full of conspiracy theories. When I was alive I thought he was an idiot, but I had kept my mouth shut. ‘Cause Bruce had money and when I was short, he would buy me a beer. But now? Bruce was making just enough sense to scare me.
“Well, whatever. If I make it out of here, I’m gonna need a ride.”
“Oh, sure thing. I’m there all the time. Meet me at the loading dock. Oh, and whatever you do, don’t use --”
I never got to hear the end of that sentence, because just then I heard the heavy clomp of men’s dress shoes in an industrial hallway accompanied by enthusiastic, if somewhat tuneless, whistling. It was pretty clear that whoever it was, he wasn’t trying sneak up on anybody. The guy was loud enough to spook the dead. Or at least, me.
No matter how jolly or musically incompetent he might be, I decided I didn’t want to be caught standing over an unconscious girl. I looked around for a place to hide. Sure, there was the drawer, but I wasn’t sure I could get out of there again. I checked the scratch the rat had left on my arm. More than a third of it was black. I didn’t understand the deadline, but if I lost anymore time lying around club morgue, it would become a factor.
I hobbled around my leg brace in a little circle, swearing. Then I hid beneath a table that was covered by a long white sheet.
The door opened and Detective Marsten poked his head and a bouquet of flowers through. “Hello. I’ve got flowers for the warm-blooded,” he said. What a jackass. But when he saw the open drawer and the girl sprawled out on the cold tile, his demeanor changed completely.
The flowers disappeared. In their place, a gun filled his hand. He moved through the door quickly and with surprising grace for a big man, he scanned the room. Only after he had cleared the room did he walk to the girl and check for a pulse. Then he slid the ugly weight back into its holster and cradled the girl in his arms.
“Amanda. Amanda. Wake up,” he said shaking her gently. She came to slowly.
“Whu--”
“Amanda, who did this to you?”
“AHHH!” She screamed, thinking back on what had happened to her.
“I’m really starting to think you don’t like me,” said Marsten. She buried her head in his chest and made a muffled noise. Then she pushed away and struggled to get to her feet. Marsten tried to help her get up, but she pushed his arms away.
“I’m okay. I’m okay. I just got a little spooked. No really, just–.” Marsten stopped trying to help her and she landed on the ground, sitting Indian style. “Have it your way,” he said. He stood and leaned against the meat locker. He smiled down at her. Some of the color came back into Amanda’s face, and she recovered herself enough to get angry.
“Fine,” she said, “Gimmie your hand.”
Marsten helped her up. If I had squinted, I might have confused him with a gentleman.
“Hey, everybody needs a little…” It was another sentence that I would never hear the end of, because when Amanda got to her feet, she turned and looked in the drawer. When she saw it was empty, the screaming started. It wasn’t the funny kind of scared. Not the kind of scared that someone gets when you jump out and say “BOO!” to them. No, she was scared shitless. Her knees buckled, her torso folded in on itself and she kept looking around as if she expected me to jump out and try and eat her brains or something.
Marsten got a hold of her. This time she didn’t push him away. Theoretically, it was touching, but I didn’t have time for this. They were distracted, so I just walked out.
If I had been alive, simply walking out wouldn’t have worked. But I’ve learned a couple of things about being dead. And one of them is that it makes you very, very sneaky. You don’t have to breathe. You’re not nervous or jumpy. Even when you stare at people, they never seem to feel it. So yeah, I just walked out.
Besides, when she told that detective that a corpse had woken up and spoken to her, he wouldn’t have believed her. But he would have looked around anyway, just because it might increase his chance of getting her into bed. It’s what I would have done.
On the other side of the door was a hallway. It was painted a particularly industrial shade of light green
that was made worse by the lightly buzzing fluorescents. The kind of lights that when moths die and go to hell, they spend eternity slamming against. From the other room, I could hear the detective repeating, “Look at me. Look at me. I’m right here. I’m right here,” over and over again.
By walking on the ball of my foot and the thick rubber stopper on the edge of the leg brace, I was able to move down the hallway silently. At the end of the hallway was a T-intersection. To my right was a set of stairs, to the left, more hallway. More lights. I tried to listen for sounds of people. But as I paused, I heard Marsten’s voice from the morgue. It sounded strong and angry.
“Oh, no, honey, there’s not a corpse walking around. Somebody played a trick on you, and I’m going to catch them. I’m going to catch them and when I do, I’m going to play a trick or two on them.”
The end of the hallway was no place to hide I turned to the right and started climbing. At the top of the stairs was a door, so I opened it. On the other side was every cop in the city, or at least that’s what it looked like to me. Y’know those big rooms they have in 70’s cop TV shows where there’s a whole bunch of desks and phones and cops and bad guys being processed? Yeah, it was that room.
One thing was certain, there was no going back. So I stepped through the door and closed it behind me. I started across as if it was a minefield. In life, I’d never been a very confident person, and if I was trying to pull this kind of stunt off while I was alive, I’m sure I would have pissed myself three steps in. I also would have tripped over something or started sweating profusely or gotten a case of the hiccups, or screwed it up in any one of a thousand other ways. But I wasn’t nervous.
Don’t get me wrong, I was scared – intellectually terrified – but my gut felt cool and solid. I walked across the room, like I owned the place. Like I had a reason for being there. On the far side of the room, I saw the duty Sergeant take notice of me. Not good. I stumbled over to the nearest desk and picked up a stack of papers, then I made right for him. A nervous-looking woman came up to the rail and distracted him with a request. I pushed through the wooden railing and thought I was home free until I heard, “Hey! Where do you think you’re going?”
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