Joe Schreiber - Chasing the dead

But there aren't any mirrors in this changing room, an odd thing to leave out. But then, why would a stripper need a mirror when it's only skin she's presenting?

She picks the phone back up, holds it to her ear. "All right."

"Now step through the curtain."

Sue does. The curtain slides off her arm and her bare thigh and she's standing out on a stage with a white spotlight blasting her in the face. She can hear a zoo of men whistling and cheering at her. Sue squints into the light and it's like staring right at the sun. She can only make out the vague shapes of tables with men at them, and the music, tribal and deep, pouring out of speakers that surround her head. Her eyeballs vibrate in their sockets. The music somehow seems to be making it harder to see.

Looking behind her Sue sees another woman standing next to her, arms hanging at her sides. The stripper looks pale and awkward, with wild eyes and a drugged-out whorish expression, a zombie fucked back to life. But she's so raunchily gorgeous standing there, so exotically out of her mind that despite everything Sue finds herself staring at her until she realizes it's her own reflection.

The back of the stage is a giant mirror.

Only the woman in the mirror doesn't have any scars on her belly or her breast.

She looks down. Sue doesn't have those scars anymore either.

She doesn't have her scars anymore either.

Slowly she runs her fingertips down over the smooth terrain of her stomach, then back up over her newly restored nipple. The crowd, taking it for showmanship, screams gleefully back in encouragement.

The spotlight leaves her and sweeps through them, picking out clusters of wide-eyed, openmouthed faces like a sniper from a tree. One by one the faces fall away from the light. They scream and vanish, scream and vanish.

The light keeps sweeping.

Sue stares at it, following it with her eyes.

Then in the front row Sue glimpses Veda.

Sitting in the yellow-and-blue stroller that Marilyn keeps in the Jeep, Sue's daughter is pale and motionless, her eyes closed, mouth slightly ajar. The stroller is parked between two tables of people. And the girl is still, so still.

Without thinking Sue jumps off the stage. It's farther down than it looks and she lands hard on her heels, twisting a tendon in her right ankle with a twang that she can feel. She ignores it.

She reaches for Veda and starts to pull her up, but her daughter is fastened into the stroller. Veda's warm body struggles fitfully and Sue realizes that she'smoving, thank you, God, she was only asleep but now she's moving as Sue fumbles with the first of two plastic latches that hold the canvas restraints in place. Sue's hands are trembling, her heart hammering spastically against her sternum the way that it never did on the job, because this isn't like saving someone else's life, this is like saving her own life-she's a rookie at this.

The spotlight swoops away, burying them in darkness, and then circles back again, only now it's pulsing across the entire room, making everything happen in a broken, jumpy necklace of images. Sue continues groping for the second latch, feeling her daughter's body stiffen and stretch as Veda opens her eyes, looking drowsily up at Sue with a moment of dawning recognition and relief, and Sue can see her daughter's lips drawing together to form the wordMama. Somebody shoves Sue sideways, something sharp catching her in the ribs, an elbow, and she's sprawling naked, her bare ass skidding on the floor, legs and arms knocking over chairs and a table as she tries to scramble back to her feet. The crowd screams louder. Through the tables she sees a group of three or four people drawing together around the stroller, closing it off from her, the small white oval of Veda's outstretched palm reaching out between their bodies before it disappears in a forest of legs.

Sue screams her daughter's name and throws herself among them like she's digging a grave with her bare hands. She clutches skin and fabric and hair, yanking out clots and patches and chunks. It all comes to a halt with a fist flying into her face, a white flashbulb between her eyes that sends her crashing backward again. Sue spills like a bucket of water and somebody catches her under the arms, now she's being dragged away, her bare heels squeaking along the sticky floor, until she feels a gust of cold air across her belly and they're spinning her, throwing her out.

She feels wet pavement against her lips, smells garbage, beer, onions, tobacco, grease.

Rolls on her back. Opens her eyes.

Next to the Dumpster, the two dishwashers she saw earlier are gazing down at her, the orange firefly of the joint's tip floating back and forth to illuminate first one face and then the other. At last one of them leans down to offer her his hand. They continue to stare as she rises to her feet.

"You okay?"

"My daughter," Sue hears herself say. Her lips feel two syllables behind the words they're emitting. "Her name is Veda Young. She's been kidnapped by some people in there."

They blink at her, so stoned. "Ki'nap?"

"They're in a van. It's parked out front. They've been following me all night to make sure I do what they want. They've got my little girl and they told me if I…"

One of the men unclips a cell phone from his apron string and holds it out to her. "You call police?" His dark eyes watch her closely.

Sue takes the cell phone. She looks at the man's face. His eyes are black and reflect no light. There is nothing there that she can see, either way. "Is there a pay phone anywhere around here?"

"Pay phone?"

Then behind them in the parking lot something slides into view, moving steadily across the snow. Her eyes fly to it, already knowing what it is. The van. For the first time she realizes that it's gray, the color of brain and ash, as if by default.

It stops forty feet away, turns away from her, and sits, waiting. Thirty-eight feet closer the two men continue to stare at her body. They've given up offering their assistance and have gone on to simply ogle her bare breasts and the glossy blue shadow of her pubic hair. Over their shoulders Sue sees the back of the van open. She steps around them, toward it. There's a long pause and then something falls out of the van with a clank.

It's the stroller. It lands on its front tires, teeters briefly, and then tilts forward and collapses so that the bundled shape inside, a soft pellet refusing geometry, vanishes underneath it.

Still naked, she breaks into a run.

Closing in, the van starts moving again, Sue tasting carbon monoxide in its wake. Her feet, numb as beef, smear crosswise over a patch of packed ice and disappear beneath her. Just before she starts to fall, she grabs the stroller, which flips over sideways with the force of her tackle so the handle hits her in the face. What spills out is a bundle, a canvas-wrapped package, and as Sue pulls it out she realizes it holds a coat. There's something soft buried in its folds.

Not a child.

Clothes.

They spill like entrails across the snow. Not the ones she left behind but clean, unfamiliar ones, a pair of sweatpants, underwear, a T-shirt and turtleneck sweater, socks, gloves, and a bra. Nondescript wool coat with a hood. Two boots. Something slides out of them.

A cell phone.

It begins to ring.

"So now you see," the voice says. "You seeyourself. "

It's a few minutes later. Sue has climbed back inside the Expedition, wrestling the newfound sweatpants up around her hips. This is difficult enough, holding her hips off the seat by pressing both feet to the floorboard between the gas and the brake, but at the same time she has to keep the cell phone clenched between her shoulder and her jaw. The clothes are too large for her, the sleeves of the sweater flopping over her hands, the sweatpants bagging slightly around the ankles-nothing fits, and the footwear he left for her is a pair of men's snowmobile boots. But at least they're warm. She's got the engine running and the heat on, combating a chill seeping in from the broken window.