The Seven Habits

around. To enjoy life with as little stress and tears as possible. You know… the same things most of us want. But here she was, slack-jawed and as expressionless as the mannequins in the display windows of Debutante Or Bust. Nothing more than an empty shell.

I’d be doing her a favor, right? Setting her free. Just like Ocean had done with the death ritual for her mother. I mean, I wasn’t able to keep this woman from coming back in the first place, but the least I could do was see that she was able to maintain a semblance of dignity in her death, ya know?

All of this went through my mind in the amount of time it took to part those dry, cracked lips of hers, but as soon as I saw the slightest hint of the pearly whites hiding in that maw, it all disappeared like flash paper. Those were the teeth that would rip off chunks of flesh, man. The choppers that would gnaw their way through a throat like a rat chewing its way out of a garbage bag.

And I was fuckin’ pissed.

This raspy wheeze came outta her throat about the same time that I was clicking open the blade on the little knife in my pocket. I knew it wasn’t much, but if I just rammed that fucker straight into her eye and pushed with everything I had… well, maybe it would be enough. Maybe it wouldn’t. But I wasn’t gonna find out by just standing around gawking at her all damn night, now was I?

Just as I was about to slip the knife outta my pants, I saw this single bead of sweat crest her eyebrow, right? It rolled right over that little bump and trickled down into the corner of her eyeball. She raised her hand slowly and kind of rubbed at it with her knuckles as I let that knife drop back down into my pocket.

Why the hell did I do that? Because corpses don’t sweat, mother-fucker, she wasn’t a damn rotter. Not yet, at least. She was just so eaten up with infection that she musta been runnin’ off auxiliary power by this point. Or maybe the bitch was simply exhausted from fuckin’ like a nympho at a sex addict support group all flippin’ night. You’re the detectives… you tell me.

Anyhow, our dashing Ms. Hudson clears her throat, but when she talks her voice still sounds as old and tired as the cosmos anyway. It’s so soft that I have to strain to hear, even in the silence of the mall.

“Uh… we’re, um, closing. Mall opens nine lives.”

She blinked as a confused look crossed her face, then kinda held her head in her hands like they were the only things keeping it from rollin’ right off her neck. “I mean… nine. Mall. Opens. At nine. I’m not, uh… not…”

Tears shimmered in her eyes as her lips tried to form words that her mind refused to share. By this time I’d taken about twelve steps backward. My plan was to just ease my way outta there while she struggled to make sense of the train wreck of thoughts that musta been going on in her head.

“I’m not cistern.” She said this last part with this little under current of pride, ya know? Like she’d dredged the darkest recesses of her brain and came up with the answer to the Daily fuckin’ Double or some shit.

“I’m not cistern! I’m… not… cistern!” There was this weird blend of panic and relief in that hoarse voice, and her face kinda lit up.

And just like that, I was back to feelin’ sorry for the broad again. A part of me wanted to go up and just wrap my arms around her, to hold her so tightly that even she would be able to decipher the message. You’re not alone, honey, I’m here. Hell, man… at that moment, I wanted to protect our poor Clarice just as badly as I wanted to keep Ocean safe and sound. She seemed so lost, frightened, and innocent that it was easy to forget she was actually damned.

I actually even took a step toward her, if you can believe that. I knew the lady was infected. I knew all it would take would be a single tear in my sinus passages. A drop of sweat against my lips if I kissed her forehead like I wanted to. But, I… uh… I had to stop myself, man. I had to keep a safe distance away and try to send this healing, white light to her. Even though I knew, deep down, that my minuscule amounts of energy would never be enough. Not for her. For her it was too late. Ya know?

Our eyes met again, only this time, she was kinda blurry. I was tearing up like a weepy little bitch… right? I tried to say her name, but it came out as kind of a choked little sob at first. It was important for me to let her know that, even if I couldn’t save her, I could at least try to do what I had to with as much respect as possible. And I don’t know… maybe it was because I was physically and emotionally exhausted. Maybe it was because I was coming down. Or maybe it was just the moment, ya know? But I honestly got this feeling that, had we met under different circumstances, I could have really dug spending some quality time with this chick. So yeah… I wanted to say my piece while there was still a slight chance that she might be able to understand.

“Clarice, I…”

She arched an eyebrow and her forehead wrinkled as she cocked her head like a curious puppy. “Know?”

That single word caused my voice to catch on the tight little knot that had formed in the back of my throat, so I tried again. “Clarice…”

“Know?”

Her eyes were scanning my face, right? I could almost feel them taking in every hair of my beard, my heavily lidded eyes… the little scar I got on the bridge of my nose when I was nine and crashed my bike into a tree. And then something changed, like we were standing in a field instead of the entrance to Dollar Bonanza, and a cloud just passed over the sun. Like her features darkened, if that makes any sense.

At first I thought maybe they were starting to shut off the lights in the place, but the racks and aisles at her back were just as brightly lit as when I’d first come up, so it wasn’t some sort of environmental variable. No, this shit was emotional. Physical, too.

It was physical, see, because every muscle in her body seemed to jerk simultaneously. Almost as if the floor had just shifted under her feet. Now she seemed tense and agitated and I thought maybe she was starting to get frustrated again, right? I mean imagine going from a rational, thinking person into someone who can’t even control their own mind. Something like that is bound to be an emotional roller coaster, ya know? So I tried again. “Clarice.”

“Know.”

At first, I thought it was the same question she’d been repeating, only with a sharper edge to it. But then I noticed how her fingers flexed like she was squeezing invisible stress balls, how her lips were pulled back into this snarl that looked more animal than human. Her pupils got so fuckin’ wide, man, that you could barely see the irises surrounding them.

That’s when I knew some part of her had recognized me. A part of her that was less than thrilled with our last encounter.

“No.”

Then I realized that it wasn’t a plea anymore, it was a flat statement of fact.

“No, no, no, no!”

She was breathing so heavily that her shoulders almost seemed to bob around her eyes and her movements had become less languid. Before, she’d seemed as if the last ounce of her energy was about to leak out through one of her overactive sweat glands, but now everything was done in these quick jerks. If you ever touched an electrical wire to the muscles in a frog’s leg during biology class, then you’ve seen how abrupt the resulting movement is.

And that also means you’ll have a pretty clear picture of how Clarice Hudson was moving.

So I get this bad feeling way down in my soul, right? Almost like I’ve just brushed up against a creature of immeasurable evil on some alternate plane of existence. I got the fight or flight reflex kickin’ into overdrive and my hand has dropped back into my pocket without me even being aware of it.

I was running my finger along the smooth metal, trying to get an estimate of the blade’s length by touch alone when that bitch growls at me, man. Literally fuckin’ growls at me.

My stomach kinda sinks when I realize that my pen knife’s not gonna to cut it, dude. No way that blade is goin’ back far enough to do any major damage, especially if she’s in full on attack mode. Most I could hope for is to blind one eye before she’s scratching that infection right into my blood stream.

So I do what any sane, rational man would. I run like my ass is on fire.

Those giant potted plants, gum ball machines and photo booths, all the stores and merchandise—the shuttered carts that look like little gypsy caravans—all that shit is nothin’ more than a blur around me. My feet are smackin’ against that floor so quickly it almost sounds like a drum roll. Before I even get halfway to the elevator I’m already huffin’ and gaspin’ like a pervert caller. I mean, my idea of exercise in putting in ten frames of Wii Bowling. I ain’t used to this shit, man.

At the same time, though, I know that if I even so much as slow down, I’m a dead man. I can hear that