The Beautiful Dead (2 page)

What a comfort
she is, this Helena person.

Breathing and
eating and dieting and exercising and taking vitamins and rubbing age-defying
creams all over ourselves ... that’s all so obsolete now. It’s unnecessary to
maintain our dead selves. So last-season, says Helena, the idea of dieticians and
trainers and doctors.

"But if
you absolutely need one," she says, pointing down the street,
"there's a clever pair of men who run a gym. One of them had their Waking
not too long ago, discovered he was a bodybuilder in his Old Life. The other was
a surgeon—his name is Collin. So depressed he became, when he realized all his
knowledge of health is for naught in this dark new world … Darling, please
pretend to have a heart attack at some point, or perhaps a little summer cold. Indigestion.
A rash. He would so very much appreciate the attention, even if it’s not real.”

Life was so
unnecessarily difficult. Only here in death, she explains, is anyone truly at
peace.

Sorry Helena, I
feel anything but peaceful. It must show on my face because she looks
particularly annoyed as she presents me to a cluster of houses at the west edge
of town. “This one,” she says with a little nod, “is yours.”

And then we’re
standing on its creaky little porch. I peer around, afraid to touch anything.
It all looks so old.

“You can try
to smile,” Helena suggests stiffly. She puts a calming hand on my shoulder. I
shrug it off. “You should rest,” she tells me, peeved a bit by my rudeness.
“When you wake, you’ll see how happy we are. You have no Earthly burdens
anymore. Like a job, or a husband, or a family, or—”

“How’s that
mean anything to me,” I argue, “if I don’t even remember the family or husband
or job I might’ve had? What if—What if I was happy with my life?”

“Oh, please,”
she snaps, her whole tone going sour. “Who in their right mind would turn down
an eternity where you own a house, no responsibility, no bills to pay, and
enjoy endless time to do whatever it is you desire? Seriously, girl, open your
cold dead eyes.”

I return her
tirade with a blank stare. I’m silent as the so-called heart housed in my chest
somewhere ... the one that doesn’t pump blood, cold as a stone, no purpose
being there at all as far as I’m concerned.

Seeing my forlorn
expression, she huffs irritably and says, “Have it your way. Enjoy the scenery
of Trenton, your new hometown, or don’t. Meet some people or keep entirely to
yourself. Return to your grave and rot, I haven’t a care. My task here is
done.” She turns away and descends the porch steps in her clicking jet-black
heels.

“Your task?”

Without
missing a step or turning back, strutting away she calls out, “You may someday
be chosen, miss Winter, and you’ll be made to do your first Raising whether you
like it or not. Then you’ll know the pain of bringing a sniveling ungrateful
girl into this wonderful world. It’s like childbirth, but infinitely more
regrettable.”

Her black
locks of hair swinging, she disappears into the misty city.

I drop into a
rocking chair, thankful it’s there to catch me. Had it not been, I would’ve
fallen clean to the ground. Not that it matters. At this rate, I might as well
drop dead into a hole. Words don’t fool me … Undead is still dead. There is no
convincing me otherwise. I’ve kissed Life goodbye without a flinch of my cold
dead lips.

Sniveling
ungrateful girl, she called me.

I look out
from the porch of my forever-home, only to witness two people break into dance
in the middle of the street for no reason. Maybe I should smile, but the sight
of them annoys the hell out of me. I look away and see three middle-aged women
taking a calm stroll together. If I take for granted that all of this may
actually be happening to me, that I may truly be Undead, that this world is
really the world I’m to live in for the rest of time, maybe longer, then I must
realize that all these crazy people are my new forever-neighbors, in my new
forever-neighborhood. Trenton, she called it. My new forever-home.

The place I
now live. Forever.

I don’t
remember entering the little house I was told is mine, but I’m relieved to find
it in better condition on the inside than it appeared on the out. The front den
opens to a small kitchen area that I’ll supposedly never use. Why it’s there,
I’ll never know. A cockroach scuttles across the floor, disappears into a crack
in the wall. That must be my roommate, a fellow survivor of the end of the
world. Further in, a short hallway opens into a quaint bathroom on one side and
a bedroom on the other. And there you have it. In less than thirty seconds,
I’ve given myself a tour of the place I’ll spend the rest of forever.

Welcome to
your new, roomier coffin. Comes with a kitchen.

I suppose
that’s what inspires me to run. From the house I bolt, not knowing where I’m
headed. This dress I was put in, it snags on the door as I flee, the sleeve
torn straight off. This hair of mine that was cured from the earth, white as
winter, it bustles behind me like a cape. My reconstructed legs thrust forward,
to where, who cares. From the house I would live in forever, the town I would
live in forever. From this strange new life, from my Icecap eyes, my death I
can’t remember, my beautiful life, I just run, run, run.

I run until
there’s no town around me anymore, until there’s no person or soul or breath in
sight, until even the dead trees have fallen scarce, and before me only a
cliff’s edge grows closer.

That’s when I
stop running.

At the edge of
the cliff.

I peer down
into the misty valley below which looks nothing like a valley at all. It’s as
though this place, the deadwood forest, the town, as though it were aloft in
the clouds somewhere. The mist down below, perhaps that’s the planet from which
I’d died.

YOU DID THIS
TO YOURSELF.

I’m going to
jump. That sounds like a brilliant idea. I lean over the precipice. All I see
is a world of mist below, a world below the mist where maybe I lived a life.

The. Only.
One. Left. To. Blame. Is. You.

I’m going to
do this. I close my eyes.

“It’s a
beautiful sight, isn’t it?”

I spin,
startled by the voice, but my foot has already slipped and I fall—then catch
the edge of the cliff with my hands, clinging on for life, hanging on for
death.

The person
emerges over the brink of the cliff. His pale face peers down at me as I hang
from the edge, my legs dangling, far below me the mists of unknown, far below
me where my second death waits patiently.

“Can I help
you?” he offers kindly.

His face is
handsome and gentle. Of course I’d notice something like that at a time like
this.

“I don’t want
to be helped,” I cry out, breathless.

“Then why are
you hanging on at all? Let go.”

He’s my age—I
assume—with short black hair cutting partway down his forehead. I must’ve had
the fashion eye when I was alive, or else the Refinery girls already rubbed off
on me, because I notice he’s garbed in a fitted black button-down and slim
jeans, clean, well-dressed and sleek. He smiles when our eyes meet, lighting up
his whole tortured, dark demeanor. I even see blush in his cheeks, as though
blood actually flows through his veins, just as it totally doesn’t in mine,
such a liar even a cheek can be.

“This is the
first day of my life,” I explain.

“Careful,” he
warns me very seriously. “It’s a crime here to count days.”

“Are you
serious?” I ask, then realize at the sight of his chuckling eyes that he’s
teasing me. Or maybe not, I can’t tell. Dead people aren’t the easiest to read.
“What’s it matter, anyway? What’s the point of all this …?”

“Many people
have come to this cliff,” he admits, looking off into the mist, pensive. “Many
have also, like you, considered throwing away this opportunity.”

“Opportunity??”
I blurt out, while simultaneously marveling at how light my body is … how easy
it is to just hang here from this precipice, just as easily as I could let go. Is
strength another quality that accompanies this new body? Or is it that I now
weigh less than a person?

What does that
say?

“I’ll make you
a deal,” he says. “Let me help you up and I’ll give you a kiss.”

“
That’s
your offer?”

“Yes.”

I fully
realize I can pull myself up. Somehow, hanging effortlessly as I am, I know I
can do it without his help.

Or his kiss.
“You need to offer more than that,” I tell him, my eyes narrowing. “I didn’t
ask for this. I didn’t ask for any of this. Why am I here? Wasn’t I—Wasn’t I peaceful
enough, happy enough being left dead and in the ground where I belong?”

“You tell me,”
he says teasingly, that snarky smile curling his cheeks into dimples again.

I hate that
cute, snarky smile. “What will happen if I let go? Will I die? Can the dead die
again?”

“No,” he
admits with a hint of sadness in his voice. “If you must know, you’ll likely
have a hard landing on the rock lands below, and your body will break into
pieces. Shatter. Like a statue. Or a mannequin. A very pretty mannequin,” he
adds. I look away, annoyed. “And you will remain alive, mostly in your head.
The rest of you won’t be animated anymore, as I understand it.”

I regret
asking. I sorely, sorely regret asking.

“Or you could
let me help you,” he goes on, “and I could show you the town. Show you what you
have in your Final Life. If still you’re not convinced, feel free to jump into
the sky.” And he extends his hand.

Helena’s last
words resonate with me, that I was a “task” for her, and someday I may be
chosen to Raise my own poor soul into this world. Not to mention that some
unassuming moment, I may recover all my lost memory at once. Snap, it’ll all
come back, shocking me like an “unwelcome enemy” ... and I wonder if the anger
and unhappiness I’m harboring is just my Old Life locked away in my skeleton
somewhere—a prisoner. Maybe it’s something that, if I remembered it, I would be
glad I was freed from. Maybe this new life is something I’d secretly begged
for, wished for. Maybe I really am ungrateful.

Or maybe I’ll
never remember the person I was.

Maybe she’s
gone forever.

“Okay,” I agree
emptily, taking his hand.

In one short
little effort, I’m standing on the edge of the cliff again, no longer hanging
on for dear death. I look into the eyes of the person who saved me from a
certain shattering—or postponed a certain shattering.

“You look
better on your feet,” he tells me.

He doesn’t
kiss me. I don’t ask his name and he doesn’t ask mine, not now. We just cross
the sandy plains together and on through a range of dead trees, making our way
back to my new hometown Trenton.

I’m not sure
what to talk about. What do you say to the person who just saved you from
kinda-not-really dying? “Is it always so overcast?” I ask, deciding to point
out the eerie silver wash that is the sky.

“Has to do
with our eyes,” he explains, stepping over a tree branch. “Undead don’t regard
darkness the same way the Living do. Something about being stuck in the End of
Time, I guess. But hey, listen, if you squint real good, you can make out a
sharp spot in the sky, slightly more silver than the rest ... That’s the sun.”

“Oh.” I look
up. All I see is grey and grey and grey.

“Don’t worry,
I won’t tell anyone you’re keeping track of days.” He smiles again, warm,
welcoming. “I’m not the police or the Deathless King, so help me.”

“We have
police in this world?—and a King?”

“No. Not
exactly.”

“How are we
alive?” I can’t stop the questions … They just pour out. “How are we carrying
on without heartbeats or blood or—or anything?”

“How did we
carry on
with
them?”

I sigh. “Please,
is there a single concrete thing you can tell me about this world? Something
useful? Anything?”

“Yes. My
name’s Grimsky.”

I roll my
eyes. “I’m Winter, I guess.”

His expression
breaks at the obvious dejection in my voice. “Winter … The name they gave you.
I understand. Someday you’ll remember your original name, though by then I’m
certain you’ll not identify with it in the least. You have beautiful hair.”

The compliment
comes so suddenly, I have to cover my face with a hand, like I’m blushing.
Reminding myself that nothing runs in my veins, I drop the hand and say,
“Thanks.”

“We’ve
arrived.”

The tall iron
gates of Trenton loom ahead, awaiting my timely arrival from the cliff for
which it surely knew I’d be headed, at which it surely knew I’d meet this
fetching person called Grimsky, by whom it surely knew I would be somewhat
saved, and with whom it surely knew I’d once again return.

Now if only I
can keep from killing myself again.