Unkillable

by Patrick E. McLean

  I turned around and looked at the Sergeant. I walked right up to him, brandishing my papers like a talisman.

  “I’m dropping these off and then I’m going to go home to sleep like the dead.”

  I saw him soften, but there was still a skeptical look in his eye.

  “Don’t ever work undercover buddy, that’s all I can tell you.” And then I turned and limped out the front door.

  Across the street, Bruce was waiting in a large black hearse. As I got in I asked him, “What did you do with the Bluesmobile?”

  “What?” said Bruce.

  “The Caddy? What happened to the Caddy?”

  “We’ve never had a Cadillac hearse,” said Bruce, obviously not catching my movie line reference.

  “You traded it for a microphone,” I said, attempting to prompt him with the next line.

  “A microphone?” asked Bruce as he failed his straight man audition.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Just drive.” The hearse rolled.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 11

  We drove through the dark canyons between the buildings that were the long shadows cast by the early morning sun. One moment, we were in darkness. The next we were transfixed by light. And then, like a gasoline-powered cockroach, we scurried back into the shadows once again.

  The extremes made it impossible for me to focus on the world as it slid by outside my window. It was all too fast, too pointless. The ordinary people of the world going about their ordinary business, but none of it mattered. None of it seemed to touch me. I was out of phase.

  What they cared about was foreign to me. Their urgencies seemed so petty. I looked at Bruce. Blissfully, he was silent. He was driving with that hyper focus he had when he was stoned. At least I think he was stoned. Who knows what cocktail of stuff was running through his system? What do you call it when you huff embalming fluid?

  But I didn’t care what he was on. And really, how bad can it be if you crash a hearse? This thing was a tank anyway. Even if we ran somebody over, we could scoop ‘em right up and be on our way. A hearse may be the only vehicle that comes with a built in murder alibi.

  “Whaddya doing with this body in the car?”

  “What do you mean, officer? It’s a hearse.”

  “What’s that funny smell?”

  “It’s embalming fluid.”

  “Oh, right. I guess I knew that. In that case, I’m gonna let you off with a warning. But slow it down a little bit, hotshot.”

  Bruce lit up a cigarette. I asked, “Can I have one of those?”

  He handed them to me. It was a crumpled softpack, Lucky Strikes. I tucked one into the corner of my mouth. I was feeling anything but Lucky, but what the hell, it’s not like they were going to kill me. As I thought about it, I had spent so much time while I was alive, being afraid of things that were supposed to be bad for me, I had never stopped to enjoy… well, anything.

  Bruce’s lighter made a pleasant metallic sound when I opened it. I lit the cigarette and sucked it into whatever was left of my lungs. It wasn’t like food. It didn’t sit inside me uncomfortably and uselessly. The smoke spread in my chest and made me feel warmer, lighter -- just a little bit better. It felt good. And it was the first thing that had really felt really good since I had died.

  “We’re gonna need more cigarettes,” I said.

  Bruce kept driving. Every time I looked outside the car, the sun was impossibly bright. It hurt my eyes to look at the world, but at the same time, it was important. Everything was indescribably beautiful. I noticed a tree, some kind of a tree, with bright red leaves that were just starting to fall. With the light behind it, it seemed as if bits of fire were dripping off the tree. The wind whirled the leaves in wild, pyrotechnic arcs.

  We plunged into the shadows again. The vision was gone and I was left with the cold truth of Autumn. Right now, everything in the world was dying. With every moment, the darkness grew and grew, all part of the carefully orchestrated dance of the seasons. But what was I doing? I was neither waxing nor waning. I was not becoming or undoing? At best I was static, and at worst, I was just falling apart. There was nothing organic about it at all.

  I flipped down the vanity mirror. Yeah, the hearse had a vanity mirror. If any vehicle should be a caution against vanity…

  I looked at myself in the tiny, silver square. What I saw was not pretty. The left side of my head had road rash, and it seemed like one of my cheek bones was out of place. I sucked smoke and compared the sides of my battered face. Then I realized that there was smoke leaking out of a couple of the holes in my chest. It was the old cliché, though somehow it didn’t strike me as funny. And my clothes, what were left of them, were just shredded. No better than rags.

  “Ugh,” I said.

  “Yeah, you look like hell,” said Bruce. What a cheerleader. I didn’t care. I pulled hard on the cigarette until the flame hit the filter. Then I flicked it out the window. Maybe it would light a pile of leaves. Maybe it would catch the whole world on fire.

  “You know what my Grandfather used to call those?” asked Bruce.

  I just looked at him. Not knowing. Not caring.

  “Coffin nails,” said Bruce. “I think it was an undertaker joke.”

  I thought about it for a minute and then said, “Yeah, but am I pounding them in, or pulling them out?”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 12

  “You’ve got to be shitting me.” I’ve said those words so many times since I died they’re starting to wear thin in the middle. But what else do you say when your buddy drives up to a storefront that reads, “Momma Oya’s Authentic New Orleans Voodoo Store and Emporium,” complete with neon skeletons?

  “Now just calm down, man,” said Bruce, “This is the woman I was telling you about. She’s beautiful. She can help you. You know what I’m saying?”

  “No, Bruce, I don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “C’mon man, you got to feel me on this one. Use your heart. Lead with your heart.”

  “Bruce, my heart is dead as a stone.”

  “Okay, man,” Bruce said, really frustrated now, “You don’t want to go see her, fine. You just tell me where else we can go. You got any better ideas?”

  I didn’t. Against my better judgment, I followed Bruce inside. What the hell, it wasn’t like my better judgment was getting me anywhere I wanted to go.

  Inside, the shop was steeped in the smoky smell of new-agey bullshit. Let’s call it asscense. There are people who think asscense smells good. They are wrong. They are also the people who don’t shower often, and refuse to use soap unless it is made by some horribly backward people living in the middle of an impenetrable jungle. You know, the same kind of people who refuse to eat anything that has a face? But I digress.

  The front of the store was small. But that didn’t keep it from being packed, floor to ceiling, with shit. There was shit everywhere. In the brightest, gaudiest colors you could imagine were plant roots, little voodoo dolls, wax candles in the shape of skulls, and let’s not forget a variety of essential oils and other asscense producing paraphernalia. As the door closed behind me, I heard the rattle of something against the glass. A small skeleton made out of wood was hung on the top of the door as a shop bell.

  It was like they had gone to the same bastard who did the interior design for chain restaurants and asked, “Can you do that Voodoo that you do? But seriously, with a Voodoo theme?”

  “You have got to be shitting me,” I said, again.

  Bruce held up a hand that meant ‘just wait a second.’ He was trying to peer through the beaded curtain into the back of the shop, but when he heard footsteps he quickly retreated. A young woman entered through the curtain. She looked too young to be Momma anything. But girl she was -- and then some. She walked in a way that seemed to reduce other women to a collection of lumps of flesh riding on levers and pulleys. I could tell that she felt every inch of her caramel skin as it rolled beneath the white fabric of her dress.


  From somewhere the lyrics to a song came unbidden to my mind, “I took her to a funeral. The dead jumped up and run.”

  This was worse than smelling bacon. I mean, I loved bacon, but for the first time in my life I felt I understood the meaning of the word erotic, and my life was over. I couldn’t do anything about my desire. I felt an urge to slam my fists into something. My teeth hurt.

  Bruce just stood there with his mouth open. We were both just kind of stunned. She reached towards me and gently touched a rip on my cheek. When she felt that my flesh was cold, her eyes grew wide. She sucked in air, and then screamed. In terror, she stumbled backwards until she hit a wall. Cheap trinkets and smelly bits fell to the floor around her. She collapsed, hugging her knees and sobbing.

  “Great,” I said, “this is very helpful.”

  “Stop,” said Bruce, “Can’t you see that she’s terrified. She could have a heart attack or something”

  “No, it’s fine,” I said, “I have this effect on all women.”

  Bruce ignored me and went to her aid. Big chivalry. But when he touched her she freaked out more. She kicked and slapped at him as she crab-walked into a corner. More bits of smelly merchandise fell to the floor.

  “C’mon, asshole, leave her alone,” I said.

  Bruce looked down at her. After a minute he said, “Sorry.”

  After another minute she replied, “She told me you were coming.”

  “Who told you we were coming?” I asked. Sure she was distressed, but I didn’t care. I was sick of not knowing what was going on. If she had answers, I wanted ‘em.

  “Momma Oya told me that a pale man would come for me. A cold man. She saw it in her dream.”

  “Where is she? I need to talk to her.”

  “She saw it in her dream and then she died.”

  Bruce wore a look of pity on his face. It made me sick. I said, “Well your Mom’s not going to be very much use to me now is she?”

  “Hey,” Bruce said, “Have some respect for the dead!”

  “I am the dead, asshole, and I’m sick of this.” I walked over and jerked the girl up by the front of her dress. “Tell me about Momma Oya. Tell me what you know.”

  Her head lolled over to one side in a rag doll kind of way. She gave a laugh from low in her abdomen. Her tongue flicked out between her lips very briefly and then she said. “Are you gonna hit me? It might be more fun if you hit me.”

  “What do you know?” I screamed. Or as close as I could get to a scream. My lungs weren’t pushing air very well with bullet holes in them.

  “I know my Momma Oya was evil.” And with that she went limp again. I dropped her on the floor and she sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. She sucked in air as if the only reason for her to breathe was to expel pain. Bruce felt sorry for her, but he still checked out her legs. Her skirt had ridden up as she slid down the wall into her private oblivion.

  Only after Bruce got his libido under control did he say, “You’re an asshole.”

  “I told you I didn’t want to come here.”

  “Man, why do you have to be like this. Just ‘cause you’re, you’re whatever you are doesn’t mean that you have to be like this.”

  “I didn’t want to be like this. I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Yes you did,” said Bruce, “that rat gave you a choice. You could have stayed dead and everybody would be happier. Even you!” shouted Bruce.

  “He’s not a rat,” said Marie. Bruce and I turned to face her. She raked the mess of her thick, black hair back with one hand and wiped the tears off her face with the other. She looked back and forth between the two of us. Then she came to some kind of decision. She said, “C’mon,” and disappeared into the back. We followed her through the beaded curtain.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 13

  Through the curtain was a set of stairs leading to the upstairs apartment. It too, was crowded with Voodoo-esque crap, but didn’t smell like asscense.

  We sat down at Marie’s kitchen table, one of those 50’s formica-topped things with the ring of chrome around the bottom, and she told us her story. It was the same sad story of any immigrant family business, I guess. Her mom worked her fingers to the bone to give her daughter a better life. She wanted her daughter to take over the family business, and continue the tradition. Marie hated the business, hated it with a passion. The twist was that the business was Voodoo.

  Marie said she never thought it was real. Her mother had taught her all her ways, but none of the spells had ever worked for her, least of all the spell for snaring man’s heart like a bird on the wing. But if the spells were fake, how come Marie’s mother always had such handsome, young men around her, even though she was old and withered? When Marie realized that her only way out was a college scholarship, she became very interested in school. Science and mathematics most of all. Of course, her mother would never allow her to go to college, so Marie waited until after she turned eighteen to tell her mother about the scholarship she had won. She would be leaving her mother and her sad little shop and the poor, ignorant Haitian immigrants that she thought her mother preyed upon.

  She had meant to tell her simply, politely, but when the dam of pent up emotion broke, it all came pouring out of her. All the years of frustration. All the years of holding her mother in contempt, but having no way to rebel. A mother who wouldn’t tell her who her father was or where he might be. Who dressed her in homemade clothes that smelled funny. A mother who she was ashamed of because she couldn’t bring the few friends she had over to the house.

  Most of all, a mother who wouldn’t let her call her Mom -- who demanded that Marie call her Momma Oya, just like everybody else in the neighborhood. And worst of all, a mother who was there for everyone else in the neighborhood -- interceding with the spirits of the dead, blessing a business, interfering in matters of the heart and exorcising demons. She had shrieked at her mother, “Spirits? Christ, Mom. Spirits possessing people? There’s no such thing as spirits!”

  And when her rant was done, as she stood before her mother, proud and scared and shaking from the adrenaline that was coursing through her body. Her mother had said nothing. Marie wasn’t prepared for that. She was prepared for wailing and screaming and curses and a thousand other kinds of protest, but her mother just looked sad. “I’m leaving, Momma Oya, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

  Marie stormed upstairs and slammed the door to her room. If she had waited, she would have seen her mother cry.

  The next day Marie got a pain in her stomach, one that wouldn’t go away. When she told her mother about it, her mother didn’t even look up. She just said, “You g’wan, you go that hospital. Let them scienstific fix you up.”

  Marie went back to her room and tried to sleep. But the pain wouldn’t let her. The pain grew worse and worse. Eventually she took herself to the emergency room. An MRI showed that her stomach was filled with tumors.

  That’s when she came to believe. When she realized that there was more to the world than could be measured or imagined. That’s when she realized that her mother would rather kill her than lose control.

  I would have thought that this story was complete and utter bullshit -- that this pretty girl was batshit crazy, except for one thing. At the table, there were four of us. Me, Bruce, Marie and squeezed in between Bruce and I, a large Haitian man, blacker than the underside of the dark side of the moon, who didn’t say much. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said, “but who is this guy?” I asked, jerking a mangled thumb at the comatose guy sitting next to me.

  “He doesn’t have a name. The Rat took it.”

  “The Rat took his name?”

  “That’s what made him like that. That’s what you gonna be like,” said Marie, deadly serious.”

  “You mean taller? And black?”

  “You joke.”

  Bruce jumped in, trying to impress the pretty girl, “C’mon, Dan, take this seriously.” The living
, they’ll do anything to get laid.

  “I don’t have to take this seriously. If I take this seriously, it just sucks too much. Besides, you really think The Rat took somebody’s name?”

  “If Marie says so,” said Bruce.

  “Yeah, hard-on? What’d that rat grab the name by when he carried it away? This is bullshit, I’m calling him Bob.”

  Marie reached across the table and touched the man’s hand tenderly. “He saved my life.” She continued her story.

  After all the doctors had told Marie there was nothing that could be done -- that she had weeks to live and all that modern medicine could do was make her comfortable, Momma Oya came to visit. She brought The Nameless Man with her to carry her purse.

  As Marie lay back on the pillow, clutching the button that dispensed the morphine, and watching the world swim a little more with each hit, she saw the way things were for the first time. How all the men in Momma Oya’s life came and withered.

  With the clarity of vision reserved for those who have resigned themselves to death, she realized why her father had never come around. Why she never saw any of the many pretty young men who had been Momma Oya’s boyfriends. They were dead, all of them. Somehow Momma Oya sucked the power out of them and moved onto the next one. And if she would give her own daughter cancer to keep control, really, what was the death of a stranger compared to that?

  Momma Oya asked her daughter if she wanted to come home. Asked her daughter if she was willing to give up all this foolishness and become what she was destined to be. If she was, then Momma Oya would make the pain go away.