Dead Ends

by JT Ellison

  “I thought you’d decided you wouldn’t work with him again,” Paul said, quietly.

  “Well, I did, you’re right, I had. But we had a long talk—a long lunch, it’ll probably be up on the Internet by now, I mean, pictures, there were press taking pictures outside the restaurant and we were on a patio so they probably got some shots—and we put all the bad behind us. I think we can work together well. There’s on-screen chemistry even if I think he’s a jerk in real life.”

  “Do you still think he’s a jerk?”

  “Of course I do. Oh, Paul, hon, you’re not jealous? You can’t be.”

  “Of an impossibly handsome man who has a past with my wife? Of course not. That would be silly.”

  “Yes, it would be.”

  A sudden suspicion flared in his mind. “Are you ever going to let me read this script?”

  “The writers are working on a big rewrite, but maybe soon.”

  “What kind of scenes do you have with him? Love scenes?”

  “This is beyond ridiculous, Paul. I won’t sit in a house you wanted and that I paid for and be grilled by you this way.”

  “You could just answer my question.”

  “It’s unreasonable.”

  “I wouldn’t care if it was any other actor. I care that it’s him.”

  She got up. “Go write your ghost story, you can piggyback on my TV success. Sell it, write it, I want to be done with this house. I’ve got two other projects lined up. I want to move back to California, I want you there with me.”

  “Do you?”

  “Of course I do.” She sounded like she was losing patience.

  “You’re a Manning. You use people. It’s in the blood. Have I reached the end of my usefulness to you? My idea, that show, got you back on the public’s radar, got the scripts coming back to you, and now you don’t need me. I know. You could go renovate a house in L.A. with Brice—there’s season two.” His voice had risen faster than he thought it would, faster than he meant, and he blinked and stepped back from the table.

  “You have lost your mind,” she said. “I did the TV show because yes, it was a good idea, but it helped us get this house you were in love with. A house I’ve not liked my whole life, but you loved it and I love you. So I did it. And I’ve been working my butt off to line up the right kind of projects, so we can keep this house and you can keep writing...”

  “You think I don’t earn my keep?” he said. “Is that right?”

  “Of course not. But it’s been three years since the last book, honey. I have to keep us afloat. I’m sorry if that insults your male ego...” She broke off.

  He realized he’d stood, hands clenched into fists. Trembling. Slowly he sank into the chair. What... what was he doing? “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I think... I think I want to write about the house. Get it out of my system. Sell the book and then join you in California.”

  She stared at him. “Paul, you know I love you. You know that.”

  “I know. I love you, too. And I know I have nothing to worry about with Brice.” But he said that because he felt he must; a small dark seed of awfulness moved in his chest, like it had found fertile soil.

  “You don’t.” She came around the table. He stood and turned to her and as he embraced her he saw, in the window, the hazy image of Adam, the father who had killed nearly all of the last Pallisters.

  He wrote like a madman for the next few weeks. Four thousand words a day, the story pouring out of him, a retelling of two families sundered by hate and resentment. When he thought of Brice and Catherine, he put the emotion he felt into the story, as if it were a purging.

  At night the images came. He would see their smoky figures in the windows, and at last the final chapter played in the glass, Adam Pallister watching him, but not killing his family: Instead it was Adam Pallister walking in on his wife in bed with a man with the thick dark hair of the Mannings. The smoky image faded. He went to his desk and paged through Aunt Josie’s history of the families. Josie’s own father was the lover in the image; the man who had bedded Mrs. Pallister. The stabbings hadn’t been about a business deal gone wrong at all. The house had shown him the truth.

  Like Adam Pallister. This room had been his study as well. Had the house shown him what was happening in his wife’s life? Shown him again and again, so when he killed his family he cut out their eyes because blindness was preferable?

  Paul started to cry and forced his tears away. He couldn’t do this. He was losing his mind. Just write the rest of the book and be done. He drank the rest of the wine; he wanted to sleep, to forget this nightmare.

  He had nothing to read on his bedside table, so he went to Catherine’s side of the bed to look through her stack of books. And there it was, at the bottom. The script for her new film. He read it, his grip tightening on the pages. Then, finished, he tossed it on the floor.

  He heard a noise—or so he thought—and turned to the window and saw, like watching through a rain-streaked glass, Catherine and Brice together in bed, writhing. Her face clear in the haze for a moment, contorted in ecstasy. The image faded. He stared at the glass. Only the night stared back.

  I’m imagining this, he thought. I am. It’s one thing to see images from the past that are part of my book, it’s something else for the house to show me people who are alive. No. This isn’t happening.

  He slept, fitfully. The next morning, he roamed the house for hours, thinking, and then called Catherine. And as wonderful an actress as she was, he could tell in her voice something had changed. She was trying too hard for cheer. She was with Brice now, he could feel it in his heart, his chest. The realization was like a lit match dragged across his skin. She talked of the filming and minor problems with the director and mentoring the young costar whom she liked so well, a young actress from Australia. No mention of Brice.

  “I found the script,” he said. “You left a copy on your bedside table. I read it. It’s very good. Except for the part where you cheat on your husband.”

  “It’s just a story,” she said. “Please stop doing this.”

  Two sleepless days later he finished writing the book and sat back from the keyboard just as he heard the distant click of the door. Catherine, calling up to him, “Sweetheart? Are you here?”

  He got up from the chair, remembering to bring something he wanted to show her, putting it behind his back. He stood at the top of the stairs, watching her in the foyer, setting down her suitcase. “I... I rented a car. I thought you were going to pick me up.” She didn’t sound angry, just puzzled. “I left you messages. Texts.”

  “I had to finish the book,” he said, quietly. “I’m sorry. I turned off all the distractions.”

  “All right,” she said. “I understand that’s important to you. Congratulations. Shall we collect Aunt Josie, take her to lunch to celebrate?”

  “You slept with Brice,” he said. “The house showed me. In the window. I saw it. The two of you in bed.”

  She seemed to struggle to understand his words. “The house... showed me doing something I haven’t done?”

  He started down the stairs. “In the windows. It shows me every bad thing the Pallisters suffered at the hands of the Mannings.”

  “You’re not well, Paul.” She kept her voice steady.

  “It’s like an echo of a movie, stuck in the house itself.” He told her about seeing the duel, the kidnapping, the childbirth gone wrong, the adultery.

  “I am not with Brice. I haven’t been. Paul, this house has affected you…”

  “Show, don’t tell,” he said. “Isn’t that the writer’s rule? Show the scene, don’t tell the reader about it.”

  “Paul. We’re leaving this place right now. Come with me, come back to L.A. with me right now...”

  As he reached the bottom of the stairs, he pulled the kitchen knife from behind his back and plunged it into her chest. Her face distorted in shock, but he’d struck her heart and she fell to the floor, dying, saying, “
No, no, no, not true...”

  True. The last word from a liar. From a Manning.

  He watched Catherine die and then he walked to his phone, resting on the table. “Aunt Josie?” His voice sounded normal. “Catherine’s here, she’d love to visit with you. Can you have your great-grandson drive you over? Sure. I’ll have the bourbon ready for you.”

  He disconnected the call and waited, the knife in his hand, for the old woman to arrive.

  He was the house, and the house was him.

  Women and Zombies

  Helen Ellis

  The first thing you have to accept is we’re all going gray. Just look at my roots: I’ve got a skunk stripe. In three months, if I live that long, I’ll look like somebody whacked a blackboard eraser over my head. So leave your beauty ideals at the gate, and make friends with us women who wear our roots like crowns. We’ve survived the longest. Vanity is for the weak. There’s no time for hair dye in the zombie apocalypse.

  As you know, by what you brought to get in, this here’s a women’s compound. We call it The Frizz. It used to be a high school, Hillary High, home of America’s number-one text team. Their captain, a kid with a face paler than a forty-watt light bulb, could text two hundred characters a minute, including punctuation and caps. The team’s motto was “We’re all thumbs.” But those boys were snots. Never looking up from their iPhones. Privileged. Always cutting in line and expecting extra tater tots.

  Rumor has it: It was the tots that got them. Poisoned tots. Their captain was patient zero. He popped a tot, and two hours later his face turned green. Then he was dead. And then he was undead. And then the text team was undead, too. Their coach locked them in the walk-in freezer to protect the other students. Then the principal let them out to avoid a lawsuit from their parents.

  The tots came as a bulk order from Iraq. A buck for a twenty-pound bag of tots is irresistible to school budgets. The principal didn’t ask questions. He just high-fived the Amazon Prime delivery guy. It was chemical warfare, if you ask me. I always told him mashed potatoes were worth the extra trouble and money, but he never listened.

  You should listen to me.

  I used to be a lunch lady, now I make the rules.

  You’ll be rooming with Purell. Her real name’s Ann or Jennifer or something a lot of other girls were named at this high school, so that when we talked about them, we were forced to call them by their last initial. Like Ann P was valedictorian, and Ann G was the cheerleader who bit her tongue off in a car accident. Ann G thought that was the worst thing that would ever happened to her, but surprise, Ann G: Your fate was to find a boy who loved you for you, only to have him turn zombie on spring break and eat you, along with the housekeeper who folded your towel into a swan. The point is: Girls didn’t like being called by their last initials before the zombie apocalypse, and they don’t like it now. So call your roommate—Ann A, B, or C, or whoever she was in high school—Purell.

  Everybody in The Frizz goes by what she steals from the outside to stay in. And you will, too. The reason I’m giving you a chance to join us is: You knew just what to steal and just where to bring it. Purell steals Purell. Banana Boat steals sunscreen. Pony, the nurse, steals ponytail holders. Cigs and Dildos are dead so, I’m sorry to say, we’ve had to forget about those extracurricular activities. I’m Cats. We eat cats. There’s no such thing as pets anymore. And just so you know, cats don’t taste like chicken.

  Purell keeps travel-size hand sanitizers clipped to her belt like ears. She also keeps ears clipped to her belt. Men’s ears, not zombie ears. Zombies are easy to kill, men even easier. Unlike zombies, men have to sleep. The ears are gross, and she’s gross, but count the ears. Compliment the ears. Purell is a girl you want on your side. Otherwise, you’ll never see her coming. She knows how to hide. Case in point: Purell is the only student survivor of Hillary High.

  Five days after lockdown, all the kids were zombies. One bit another, who bit another, and then they all had it like herpes. They wished they had herpes. The school nurse laughed at the thought.

  Pony is a laugher. She laughs when she’s happy, and she laughs when she’s scared. She laughs when she’s angry, and that’s the laugh you have to watch out for. One minute she’s laughing, the next she’s screaming, “What’s so funny?” and threatening to quit. You have to put up with her laughing because if there’s one thing you need in a zombie apocalypse, it’s a nurse.

  What we don’t need anymore is a librarian, and the librarian is pissed.

  The staff killed the zombie students in what used to be her library. Her library was the crown jewel of this school, freestanding on the quad like a pot on a stove. Books burn quickly, and burning a bunch of zombie brains in a contained spot is efficient, so I gave the order to herd the zombie students into the library like they were eggs for hard-boiling. I barred the door, lit a match, and burnt it all to the ground.

  No more library, no more zombies inside The Frizz.

  Now, I’ll admit it: Burning all the books along with the zombies was not my best idea. But who knew we’d have so much downtime in the zombie apocalypse? You can only stand guard and mourn the dead for so long. You’ve heard of ghost limbs? We get ghost books. My hands itch for Jodi Picoult.

  Do me a favor, don’t tell the librarian I told you that. And when you do meet her, tell her she’s pretty. She’s not pretty—she has bug eyes and an underbite—but the librarian is the kind of woman who eats compliments like zombies eat flesh. You’re new here, so compliments mean more coming from you. So you tell her you like her hair bun and eyeglasses chain. And you say it like you mean it. Once she’s happy, you remind her that she’s hearing what she’s hearing from you because I let you in.

  If she says anything against me, you say: “Shhh.”

  It’s kind of creepy, but she’ll do it. It’s a reflexive response. Like how I roll my eyes when someone says sneeze guard.

  The librarian steals super glue, which fixes everything, and I mean everything, except bonfires and a broken heart. She blames me for both. Super Glue was not-so-secretly in love with the principal, but when the proverbial brains hit the fan, she found out what kind of man he really is. Was.

  He was a know-it-all. He went against the text team coach and let those zombies out of the fridge, and before that he went against me and ordered tots from a country our own president says wants to kill us. But, before any of that, when our greatest threat was cyberbullying, he took the tampon machine out of the girls’ room.

  It was the first of many budget cuts under the heading: Not His Problem. Menstruation was not his problem. Menstruation blood on skinny jeans was not his problem. Midol in the nurse’s office was not his problem. He said bloat was just fat. He said there was no such thing as PMS.

  He said this last bit for the umpteenth time to a cafeteria full of women whose periods had synced up without sanitary protection in the zombie apocalypse.

  When I said, “Kill him,” no woman hesitated.

  We beat him with lunch trays, Purell cut off his ear, and then he was dead. And then he was undead. And the rest of the men ran away cupping their hands over their ears like Beats by Dre. Except for two: a nice man—the text team coach—and a bad man, who taught U.S. history and sexually assaulted Banana Boat.

  It was a tit grab, but in The Frizz, there are no shades of rape.

  Banana Boat used to be the school secretary. She has a pencil cup of Magic Markers that will make you see colors. She smells like a fruit bowl. The tip of her nose is always orange for the reason it was always orange before the zombie apocalypse: Some people sniff markers. Don’t mention the orange on Banana Boat’s nose. She’s not proud of it, like Purell and her ears.

  When Banana Boat’s not foraging for sunscreen, she sits guard over her old office, which I’ve converted into a prison. The zombie principal is chained to a radiator and acts as a kind of watchdog between the nice man and the bad man. The nice man lives in the principal’s office and is not chained to anything because h
e is not a threat. He tried to save us by locking his text team in the freezer, and then he physically restrained Super Glue when we lit her library on fire and later murdered her crush. The bad man is chained to Banana Boat’s desk. He’s still here because he’s married to Pony. When we talked about kicking him out, she laughed and we compromised.

  Pony visits the bad man, and we all visit the text team coach. There’s no sex in The Frizz because there’s nobody nicknamed Sheepskin or Rubbers. Getting pregnant in the zombie apocalypse is worse than going gray. If you don’t die in childbirth, your baby cries, and crying draws zombies like a lunch bell on pizza day.

  That’s why no more men are allowed in The Frizz.

  Until now.

  Normally men sneak their way in. And they always sneak. No man has ever read our “No Men Allowed” sign and knocked.

  Until you.

  In the past, men have sometimes gotten in, but we get them. And sometimes they get one of us, but we eventually get them. And, for reasons that are entirely her own, Purell gets their ears.

  Don’t give her a reason to add your ear to her belt.

  My advice: Keep stealing what you’ve stolen. What’d you do, rob a bunch of dead ladies’ powder rooms on your way here? OB, Tampax, Playtex. No generic. Nice. Congratulations, you’re a feminist in the zombie apocalypse. For your foreseeable future, you’ll be known as White Bullets.

  No Truth to Tell

  Patti Callahan Henry

  There are bedtime stories to soothe and bedtime stories to forget. Alice’s mother had told her the forgetting kind, but there was no real forgetting.

  The woman driving the minivan, Alice Lister, was as annoyed by this trip as any she’d ever made. Why she had to drive four hours on a sweltering summer day to look at an old house was beyond her comprehension. At forty years old, she had bigger and better things to do with her life. With two preteen kids at home, and a husband who wanted to know what was for dinner and her own house that needed more from her than she could ever give, what was she doing driving south from Atlanta?