Песах Амнуэль - Zion's Fiction - A Treasury of Israeli Speculative Literature

I can’t help myself, and I surf to that memory, to that “yesterday” in his apartment—

I am in the kiss. I am feeling Michael’s tongue, Michael’s lips, on mine. I see only his eyes, wild, blue, innocent, lovely eyes. I close mine as I kiss him, and he slips his hand down my shirt. His warm fingers on my breasts feel like —

The contact is broken, and I’m back in the morgue. I hadn’t even broken stride. I wheel her a few more seconds, then look behind me, at the door.

Professor Bendis is standing there, looking at me. His face is expressionless, but he saw me. I know he saw me. And I know he knows what I did.

He doesn’t move. Either out or back in, he doesn’t move.

I turn around, certain my face is red, and finish wheeling her into the freezer. I put her in, and close the door. I check its temperature. I fiddle with it, to create an impression that I’m very busy. I recheck the freezer door. I open it and close it again. I look at the temperature again. There’s nothing more I can think of, so I finally turn around.

He’s not there. Probably hasn’t been there in quite a while.

I hate myself.

I lock the morgue and head for my next class. My heart is hammering. It won’t stop.

I don’t know what this feeling is. Is it the excitement? Is it the butterflies? That kiss?

No, it’s the feelings of blood blotting the eyes, love pumping through her, stronger than her, stronger than me.

My heart won’t stop hammering.

I walk into Professor Willis’s class, and sit down.

The other students’ heads turn to the door. I follow their gaze. It’s Professor Parks.

“Alexandra Watson,” she says.

Oh, what? “Yes.”

“Come with me.”

Everybody’s looking at me now. I stand up slowly, looking down. I make my way to the door. Why did I have to sit so far away?

She leads me out and shuts the door to the class. We’re standing in the corridor.

“Did I do something, Professor Parks?”

“No. I need your key to the morgue. Open it up for me,” she says.

I realize I’ve been staring at her blankly for a few seconds longer than I should have, when she says, “Let’s go.”

I follow her down to the morgue. I look at her from the back as she walks. She dresses exactly as she looks: Controlled, powerful, smooth. I’ll never get to be that.

We reach the door. Half her class is already there. No, my mistake. They’re juniors. Half a class is their class.

I put my key in the lock and realize I can get to touch her again.

Did he love her? Are they still together? I mean, were they still together when she died? Did she find someone better?

I stand over the fridge without remembering getting here. I open the door, and just as I wheel her out, just as I’m figuring out how to touch her accidentally, I see that the students and Professor Parks are looking at me. They’re like Bendis. If I touch, even accidentally, they’ll know. They’re telepaths. They know what a touch does.

I act businesslike. I don’t touch. I stand back and let Professor Parks stand over the body. Professor Parks approaches the gurney and removes enough of the sheet to reveal her face.

“All right,” she begins, addressing the class. She then stops and turns her attention to me. “Thank you, Ms. Watson. You can go back to your class, now.”

What? “But….I’m not supposed to leave it unatten—”

“We’ll take care of it,” she dismisses me. “We’ve all done this before. We’ll put her back in the freezer and close the door behind us. You can go. Come back when class is over and lock the morgue. There are no vandals here.”

“Now…” she turns her attention back to her class as I begin to walk out “…if you think that what you did last year when autopsying the dead was exploring the mind…” I open the door, and let myself out. “…you’re about to learn that it was child’s play compared to what we’re going to do n…. “ I shut the door behind me.

I go back to class.

Once class is over, I run down to the morgue and go inside. The room is empty. The light is off. Stephanie’s in the fridge.

I wonder—

I could lock the door from the inside….

No.

I leave the room and lock it behind me.

I go to the cafeteria. All my class is sitting together. A weight on my shoulders just got heavier. I buy some food and sit with them.

“So who’s going to read who?” Greg says, his eyes gleaming.

“What do you mean?” Megan sits opposite him. She’s attracted to him.

“They’re going to set us up in pairs, you know. And then the pair is going to read one another’s mind all year long, just like Parks said.”

“Don’t be stupid. One of us is leaving. We’ll be an odd number.”

“So what do you think is going to happen?”

“Everybody is going to read everybody.” Rebecca says it like it’s obvious.

We catch ourselves looking at each others’ faces.

Greg laughs and shrugs. “Maybe they’ll do a mirror thing. I always wanted to try that with another telepath.”

“What’s a ‘mirror thing?’”

“Well, for example. Alexandra reads my mind, and sees what I think of her.” He smiles at me and winks. He’s coming on to me. God, this is shit. “Then I read Alexandra’s mind and see how she perceived what I thought of her. And then she reads my mind, and sees how I perceived that . And so on. And so on. And so on. And the more times it happens, the farther it will be from the original thought. I always wanted to try that.”

“Hmm…,” Rebecca says calmly. “I don’t know why you have to do it just on how someone perceives you. You could do it on every thought, on every image we see, on every sound we hear.”

“Which one of us do you think will be the one to make it?”

“Me, of course,” Rebecca says immediately. She smiles, but she beams at us, I’ve never failed in my life .

Greg laughs, amused. “Actually, it will probably be me. The only thing I’ve failed at in life is failing. Boy, I’ve tried to fail, I’ve tried to get myself kicked out, and I keep getting the best grades.” He laughs again, and he doesn’t care that no one thinks that anything he said is even amusing.

For the first time, I look around me.

All the rest of the students are here. One or more of them came in last night and smeared me with toothpaste. Was it the ones looking at me? The ones not looking at me?

I hate this place.

Going over to next period, I get called to the morgue again. During the day, I get called one more time. One for each year, I guess.

The classes over, I head back to the dorm. I stop. I look at the entrance.

Jeez, what’s the matter with me?

I should go to my room.

Fuck this. I’m going to make sure Stephanie’s okay.

I lock myself inside. I keep the lights off. I walk, as silently as possible, to the freezer.

Feeling things with my hands, I pull her out. I move aside most of the sheet.

I touch her.

And I’m smack inside the kiss, the same kiss I’ve been living in since I touched her seven hours ago. It’s stronger here. It’s stronger in her dead mind than it is in my live one.

— How did you meet him? —

Her thoughts disappear.

I delve into the kiss again, and surf from there backwards, until they are no longer touching—

I move forward, my movement creating her thought, surfing through an existing memory—

She’s sitting on the floor, leaning on the sofa, looking at her notebook. Her inner gyro says that this is night and that she’s in Michael’s apartment .

Michael is behind her, on the sofa, looking over her head .