Christopher Buehlman - The Lesser Dead

So there I was in my dead-dream, about to get pitched off the log, feeling seasick from all the rolling, and then, as life imitates art, I became aware of actually feeling nauseated. I opened my eyes as hard as I could, I had never been fully certain they were open before, and thought about yelling, but some instinct told me that was a bad idea. I remember my eyes were puffy and sticky and that stuck-together feeling only made my nausea worse. So I barfed. I’ll spare you the details, not because I don’t remember them, but just, you know. Courtesy. Except one detail’s kind of relevant, so you get that one. Sorry. I thought I should turn over to keep from choking, I’d heard that about stew-bums, roll ’em over, but I wasn’t choking. Because I hadn’t been breathing. I felt scared then, like maybe I should see a doctor about this not-breathing thing, and then I realized my pulse should have been racing. It wasn’t even idling. Still. Everything was still in there, except the stomach. I puked again.

That’s when I heard voices. I didn’t hear them clearly through that drawer, but I heard most of it. Here’s how I think it went:

Deep-Voice Guy: Not in three, three has a resident. Put her in five.

Really Yiddish-Sounding Guy: Who’s in three? This must have happened last night.

DVG: Yes. Peacock, Joseph. Exsanguination following a stabbing. Date of birth January 9, 1919.

RYSG: Just a kid. Bad luck. May I see?

DVG: Sure. Three’s got a trick door—you have to jog it left first. You’d think a door would last four years. I’ll get it.

I got this really clear feeling that I should play dead. We’re good at that, by the way. Not real fidgety, high pain threshold, room temperature, no breathing or pulse. I lay as still as Abe Lincoln. The door went shhk-chunk , deep-voice guy grunted, and then my drawer slid out. I was aware of light on my eyelids. I know I stank and looked a mess. Yiddish-sounding guy said, “Oy.” I shit you not, he said, “Oy.” How I wanted to peek at him! Was he orthodox?

RYSG: Aside from the pallor and ejecta, he looks like he’s just sleeping.

DVG: Here’s the wound. Clipped the artery. Doctor removing the foreign body caused him to bleed out. Funny, the wound looked bigger earlier.

RYSG: What was it? The foreign body?

DVG: A sharp stick.

RYSG: Not your night, was it, young man?

I was scared as hell now. I wanted to move just to prove to myself that I could, that I wasn’t just a cold, dead kid getting talked over by doctors, but something told me to stay still, all but made me stay still.

DVG: You never know what you’ll see in here.

RYSG: Isn’t that the truth.

They slid me back in. I was thinking Don’t shut the door, don’t shut the door, don’t shut the door , and they shut the door. They went back to talking about weird deaths they had seen and they put away some other stiff two doors down. Then they left. I had to know if I was really dead, so I moved my hand, or thought I did, then I pinched my own nipple and felt that, or thought I did. I was starting to panic. Then I did panic. How would I get out? Where would I go, what would I do, where was my dog, was my dad all right? I wanted to start screaming and kicking the insides of the drawer, that would have made a hell of a racket, but I couldn’t. I mean, I could have made myself, I guess, but the urge to bang and yell was less powerful than the need, the command , to remain quiet. It was like wanting to get away from bees, only you’d have to jump into a blazing furnace to do it. So I lay there. But the little movements I made in the dark, was I really making them? Was I thinking I had better stay still because the truth was that I couldn’t move and never would again? Before long my door went shhk-chunk again and a woman cleaned me off with a bleachy towel; soap must have been for the paying customers. She was talking to herself the whole time, half whispering, rehearsing some speech she was going to give her husband when she got home:

“I really don’t care what your friends think about it I won’t have you going to the bar where that tramp works like nothing ever happened between you something most certainly did happen even if you think kissing someone isn’t a big deal it is to me and there comes a time when you’ve just got to put your foot down so I’m putting my foot down it’s a certain kind of woman who works in bars to begin with and what I do may not be glamorous but it’s honest not that that cheap piece of goods knows from honest but you should Arthur you really should by the age of thirty-two you’re not a kid I won’t have it, I won’t have it. I won’t have it.”

Every time she said, “I won’t have it,” she gave me an extra hard wipe with the cloth. By the time she was done, I was pretty sure poor Arthur had been stepping out on her. Jesus, who wouldn’t? My skin stung from the bleach and she slid me back in.

After she left, I started feeling around for the latch on the inside, but I couldn’t find it. Because, of course, there wasn’t one. A corpse needs a door handle like a hamburger needs tap shoes. I felt the panic start again, but I fought it down. At least I wasn’t covered in puke anymore.

Not long after that, my bowels voided. I thought no, no, no! and went to say it, but couldn’t do more than move my lips. I had no air in my lungs. I hadn’t even noticed. So I just lay in the dark, though it didn’t seem as dark as it had before, and started having more dead-dreams. The next one was about ants. Everyone in my house was dead, mother, father, dog, Elise, Vilma. We were lying there chopped up like someone had gone at us with a meat cleaver, only there was no blood. Just sugar. Sugar ran out of us like we were burst sacks and countless trains of ants marched from the cabinets and cracks in the walls, little pain-in-the-ass black ants like at picnics. And even though I was lying there on the wooden floor, open-eyed with sugar running out of my mouth and a gash in my neck, I was also standing over me. I started trying to kill the ants, stepping on them with shoes, really nice shoes for some reason, but they wouldn’t die. It was like stepping on BBs. But you don’t want to hear this, other people’s dreams are boring, so who gives a shit?

One more thing, though—I remember ants crawling over my open eyes. I was watching myself not blink while ants crawled on my corneas and through my lashes. And it was just then that my morgue door went shhk-CHUNK and opened. I lay still. It was harder this time because my feet wanted to twitch from the memory of killing ants, but I made myself just lie there. My drawer slid out. The lights weren’t bright on the insides of my lids this time. This time the lights were out.

“Open your eyes,” she said.

Margaret McMannis’s voice, emotionless, like she was telling a stranger what time it was.

I wasn’t emotionless. I was terrified. I opened my eyes as instructed and tried to give a good yell, but my lungs weren’t working. Margaret stood there next to a drooly nurse and an equally charmed young man in shorts and suspenders, his upper lip shiny with snot. Margaret was still wearing her bloody nurse’s gear, which she now climbed out of, saying, “You, too,” to her hypnotized friends. They both stripped as well.

Even though the lights were out, I could see pretty well. Like everything was gently lit with candlelight though there was no candle. It was kind of pretty, though it would be a while before I learned to appreciate it.