Kiss Me Deadly: Tales of a Paranormal Romance

Cal picked up his keys and drove back to the hospital.

* * *

He woke up, blinking and disoriented. Someone had covered him with a blanket during the night, and he realized that he had clutched it to his chin with curling fingers. His mouth tasted of the gum of a thousand envelopes.

“Hey, Cal,” a voice said. Cal patted his breast pocket for his glasses, but even sightless he knew who the voice belonged to. It was Bill Trafton. “I’ve got a coffee for you here if you want it.”

“Bill,” Cal said, sitting up and pulling on his glasses, which were spotted and dusty. “Thank you.”

“I hate the waiting,” Bill said, holding out a large coffee. “I’m sorry if it’s too cold; I thought you’d have woken up awhile ago.”

“I’m awake,” Cal said. He accepted the cup and took a long sip. Silence stretched out between the two fathers.

“I guess we’ll know in the next seven days, right?”

Cal took another sip. “I guess so.”

“Stevie Davis came back,” Bill said. Cal thought he was trying, and failing, to sound cheery and optimistic. “There’s an article in the paper about it and Laura called Sandy last night.”

“I heard. That’s great.”

“Yeah, isn’t it? I went upstairs and talked to the Franks,” Trafton said. “Amber still hasn’t ... she’s still comatose. Both her legs...”

He stopped when he saw a nurse running toward them, the slap of her sneakers against the burnished floor of the corridor rising in volume. She was young, and not one of the medical staff Cal had spoken to when he’d first arrived. He and Trafton rose from their seats.

“One woke up,” the nurse said, breathless. “You should come. One of the boys woke up.”

One of the boys, Cal thought. But he followed Trafton down the hall anyway. They were running by the time they reached the boy—a large, stumbling figure in a pale blue hospital gown. He was with a nurse who was encouraging him to walk, but the look on her face said that she didn’t really want to touch him. The boy weaved like a drunk. When he turned his face to them, they saw that it was Jake Barnes.

Trafton slumped against the wall, shuddering with the failed effort of holding his emotions in check.

* * *

I wanted to see her, but they wouldn’t let me see her. There were still two bodies beneath sheets in the cold room but they were vague, almost shapeless. They could have been anybody at all but I wanted to know. I knew that I was dead and I wanted to see who else was and I hoped it wasn’t Mandy. I tried to approach the bodies but the nurse’s hand was firm on my shoulder as she steered me towards the door. I couldn’t tell that the bodies under the sheets were Curtis’s and Mandy’s but when I saw their parents outside the door of the cold room I knew. I knew and I tried to go back.

When I saw Mandy’s father I tried to return to the cold room and find her and help her come back. I don’t know how I could help her come back but I thought if I held her or if I kissed her she would awaken like Snow White like Sleeping Beauty like any of the fairy tale princesses who’d fallen into a magic slumber.

But what I’d returned from didn’t feel like slumber. There was pain, there was raw ache when I moved, each muscle felt twisted and dry, like overcooked bacon.

But they wouldn’t let me return. “It isn’t permitted,” the nurse said. As though saying so made it real, as though all manner of permissions hadn’t been revoked or granted. I could have forced her but then what? That’s what I thought. I wasn’t thinking about being dead—that would come later—I was just thinking about seeing Mandy again. That’s all.

I tried to speak but I couldn’t make any sound at all. My tongue was like a mouthful of cold meat; I could feel it lying there, pressing against my teeth, but I couldn’t move it at all.

When I fell, it was Mandy’s father that lifted me up. There was something in his eyes, some message, but it wasn’t one of fear like with the nurse.

“Come on,” her father said. “I’ll take you home.”

I followed. But I knew there was no home to return to.

* * *

Cal sat in the truck with the engine running as Jake got out of the cab. Cal had started to get out himself, but Jake’s hand—surprisingly gentle—fell upon his arm, and the boy shook his head. Jake didn’t say anything, but Cal didn’t think there was really anything to say at that moment.

I think I love him, Daddy.

Cal watched him make slow, shuffling progress through the snow toward his front door. He was about halfway across the front lawn when the door opened, and his father strode out onto the steps. Chuck was wearing a tattered sweatshirt and paint-splattered jeans tucked into the tops of work boots he’d not had time to lace up. He was holding a shotgun.

“Get out of here!” he yelled. Like he was shooing an animal. He waved the shotgun in a tight arc. Behind him, Cal could see his wife holding back one of Jake’s younger brothers—Andy, he thought—and trying to cover his eyes with her hands, as though she was afraid that he’d turn to salt.

“Go on! You aren’t welcome here!” Cal could see the heat rising from Chuck’s head and shoulders even across the yard, as though there were a tiny furnace being stoked within him. Jake stood rooted in his tracks, motionless. Chuck brought the shotgun up.

“Don’t do it, Barnes!” Cal called out, opening his car door.

“Do not move, Cal Wilson,” Barnes said. “I have a right to defend my property. I have every right.”

Cal watched the man’s eyes and the barrel of the gun. They were both steady and insane, the eyes of a fanatic who’d found his purpose. Cal had left his own gun at home.

“He’s your son, Chuck.”

“My son is dead,” Barnes replied. “Whatever this thing is, it isn’t my son.” He cocked the hammer on the shotgun and spoke to the boy. “This will be the last time I tell you. You aren’t welcome here.”

Jake took a step backward, as though he wanted to be certain that his father knew he was going. Then he turned away.

Cal remained by the truck, wondering if he should call to Jake. But before he could, the boy shuffled away— away from his family, from the road, from Cal and his waiting truck—and into the woods across the street.

When he was no longer visible through the trees, Cal turned back to see Barnes squinting off into the distance. Cal watched him spit into the snow and return to his house, his voice audible through the closed door as he shouted at his wife and remaining children.

Cal returned to the warm cab of his truck and drove back to the hospital.

* * *

“The Franks would like it if you visited them sometime today, Cal,” Sandy Trafton was telling him. “Amber regained consciousness a few hours ago. It’s almost like a miracle.”

He could hear the anxiety in her voice, and he watched her involuntary glance toward the room where their dead children were waiting.

“Maybe I’ll do that,” Cal said, rising to his feet. The joints of his knees popped like a sheet of bubble wrap. “Can I get you something from the cafeteria on my way back? Coffee, or a sandwich?”

“No, thank you, Cal.” She gave him directions to Amber’s room, and he walked away.

You should have stopped the boy, he thought, passing doctors and people he knew from town, all of whom gave him a wide berth, as though it were he that had returned from the dead. You should have stopped him and you didn’t. What would Mandy think of you?

He knew what she’d think. And she’d be right to think it.

He’d been angry when he’d waved them good-bye. Angry and jealous. Because from the moment that his daughter—in her soft, cautious way—said that what she felt for Jake might actually be Love, capital L, Jake had ceased to be the boyfriend and had instead had become the boy that would take his little girl away from him. He knew it was wrong, but as he stood there, grinning through gritted teeth and waving like an idiot as they pulled away, that was what he’d been thinking.

And, in the end, he’d been right. Jake Barnes had taken his little girl away from