Dead Mann Walking

36

A week later, the heat wave had broken; the air was cool and dry. The threat of decay receded. It was September. I’d just woken up from a dreamless sleep. A pleasant gurgling came from the other room along with the smell of coffee. It smelled kind of nice.

“You’re up early,” I called to Misty.

“So’re you,” she said. She stuck her head in. “Got a ten-o’clock with Chester.”

I slumped into my chair, both it and my bones making little cracking noises. “Another? Didn’t you just go to a meeting yesterday?”

“Ninety in ninety when you start.”

“And you already told me that, right?”

“A hundred times. Put it on your new recorder.”

Another way of saying, where the sun don’t shine. New? I stared at the recorder on the desk. The silver strip on the side was wrong. I didn’t recognize it. How could she afford that?

I was about to ask her when I glanced at the mail piled under it. A manila envelope stuck out from among the delicate whites of unpaid bills. I figured it was a credit card offer gone astray, but then I eyed the return address— Revivals Registration Dept.

I knew what that meant. Thinking I might as well get it over with, I tore it open. Nice, new, and plastic, my registration card plopped out. Funny how people used to think plastic was fake. There was nothing more real than that card. It was embossed with a name, two dates, and a number. The name was mine, the dates my execution and “revival.”

The number was mine, too, now, and it meant that unless I reported to a designated chak center within the week, I’d be arrested. If I failed their test, or didn’t have the card’s magnetic stripe updated properly, well, then I’d be arrested, too. After that, who knew? I might be sent to a camp, tossed in a vat of acid, D-capped, buried in a pit, or whatever. There were lots of stories, none of which I liked.

I called to Misty, “Aren’t you the one who said meetings were crap? Not for you?”

“No, Hess, that was you.”

“Was not. What changed your mind?”

She poked her head in again. I covered the card with a file just in time. Her hair was combed, her blouse clean. The shirt barely covered the spots on her chest where the defibrillation paddles had left small circular scars.

“There was something about being dead I just didn’t like, no offense.”

“None taken. Hey, I never asked. No white light, no welcoming relatives?”

She shook her head. “Nope.”

I held up the recorder. “How much this set you back?”

“Twenty bucks, maybe. Why?”

“Nothing. Just surprised we could afford it after you paid my bail.”

Her face dropped. “Hess, I told you when you got out, and I’ve told you a dozen times since, I didn’t pay your bail.”

I felt a shiver. Something told me I shouldn’t ask, but like an idiot, I did. “Who did?”

“Nell Parker.”

I slumped in my chair. Misty stepped farther in. “She went back to Colby Green. . . .”

Memories swarmed me like a bunch of fat mosquitoes. Nothing to suck here, I wanted to say, but they don’t care. I tried to keep them back. Feebly, I raised my hand to keep Misty from repeating what I’d already recalled.

“Right. On the condition he’d get my ass out of jail and have the charges dropped. That’s where the newspaper articles came from. He planted them. I remember.”

She came closer. “Seriously, Hess, how can you keep forgetting that? She saved you. You could at least go see her.”

“I can’t.”

She made a face. “Is this because she’s a stripper? Spoiled? You still talk to me.”

A big memory with green eyes landed on my soul and started sucking. “It’s not that.”

“Then what?”

I rustled in my chair like dead leaves in a wind. I waved in the air as if trying to swat the words, but really I was trying to swat the memory, kill it once and for all. “Fine. It is that. Lenore was a good woman, aside from Booth, I mean, but Nell’s . . . she’s just . . .”

I didn’t think Misty would buy it, but she did, or at least she was polite enough to pretend. Her face, fuller than it used to be, twisted in disgust. She rushed out to her meeting, where I was sure she’d share beautifully about what an asshole her dead boss is.

I couldn’t really tell her why. If I did, I’d also have to let her know how close I was to the abyss, how even thinking about Nell Parker made me want to fall in.

Misty had been doing so well, there was no point in her worrying about my wrinkled gray ass. Better she should hate me. It’d make it easier if . . . when . . . I go feral.

I thought about forcing myself to do some legwork, try to find out more about Lamar Derby, look for one of those sympathetic attorneys trying to protect chak rights. Instead I sat there and smelled the coffee until a breeze from the cracked window took it away. I was still sitting there when my cell phone beeped. A message from Jonesey. I played it back.

“Why you been avoiding me, Hess? I got plans, big plans. I’m going to start a new religion, just for chakz! We gotta believe! We gotta act as if, right?”

I erased it, like the others. If I ever saw him again, I didn’t know if I’d be able to keep myself from ruining his little as if big-time. As if. The idiot didn’t even remember the riot he caused. Crap. He was my friend, and all I could think about was hauling off and . . .

I clenched my hand into a fist and the rest of the memories came flooding back.

Nell Parker. Back in the property room, when I smashed my fists into that wall, I was ready, able, and willing to kill her. Why? Because of what I thought she’d done to me.

And that meant I must’ve been ready to kill Lenore, too.

Two plus two equals four.

Oh, Turgeon, or Lamar, actually did it, but I would have. I’d wanted to.

I wasn’t staying away from Nell because of anything she did. I had to keep away because I realized who I was. It was a magic moment, a fucking epiphany, a cruel crossroads long after I was supposed to have left all the crossroads behind.

That’s what I couldn’t tell Misty.

The biggest difference between my memory and the future is that if I wait long enough, the future comes to me. So I tried to forget. Sometimes I succeeded. When I did, I hoped to hell Misty wouldn’t remind me. I prayed she’d leave me alone so I could get through one more day, like Jonesey says, as if.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in the Bronx, Stefan Petrucha spent his formative years moving between the big city and the suburbs, both of which made him prefer escapism. A fan of comic books, science fiction, and horror since learning to read, in high school and college he added a love for all sorts of literary work, eventually learning that the very best fiction always brings you back to reality; so, really, there’s no way out.

An obsessive compulsion to create his own stories began at age ten and has since taken many forms, including novels, comics, and video productions. At times, the need to pay the bills has made him a tech writer, an educational writer, a public relations writer, and an editor for trade journals, but fiction, in all its forms, has always been his passion. Every year he’s made a living at that he counts as a lucky one. Fortunately, there’ve been many. His newest work, Ripper, which is sort of like the Harry Potter books but with no magic and with a serial killer, will be out in March 2012 from Philomel. He’s also at work on the next Hessius Mann