Spectral Evidence

“Okay. So here’s what I don’t get, H—if you think I’m such an irredeemable idiot, why don’t you just up and leave my dumbshit ass?”

Horatia breathed out through her nose, just once, a short, controlled huff. Saying, eventually—

“I’m certainly not going to do that. Because—”

(you took my virginity)

(you’re the only friend I have)

(you’re the only person, friend or not, I actually know…let alone like)

“—this is my apartment, too,” she finished, finally. And went right on back to whatever she’d been doing, before Rice getting herself corpse-ified in the service of keeping Horatia’s narrow ass strictly reserved For Ladies only had so rudely interrupted her.

—

(Un)naturally enough, of course, black spit soon proved to be only the tiniest tip of the New Model Zombie iceberg; Rice careened blithely from symptom to symptom, dead heart not even skipping a beat between fresh new disasters—already starting to shrink a size or two overall, like the Grinch’s leftovers. Her tapetum began to scrape away, eyes throwing light like a cat’s, while her skin grew iridescent with dust, proteins calcifying and rising everywhere she looked, fine and sharp as mica. A pheromonal miasma, decay-in-the-mist, exuded through her pores. She wore her shades all the time now, even at night, like the old song went—but it didn’t look so cool anymore, not even in a retro way. Just…tired.

As things cooled off between Rice and Horatia, meanwhile DD began hanging around a lot—far more so than their mutual three-way business “relationship” really warranted. one lazy summer afternoon, Rice walked out of yet another spackle-bath—stark naked, natch—to discover him sprawled out on their bed, shirtlessly inviting, like he’d picked up his entire idea of how a Cool Guy Who Wants to Impress a Cool Girl acts from watching home-made pornos.

“Oh, man,” Rice said. “Necrophile much? Pervin’ away on the Living Dead Girl; no, that’s not creepy at all.”

“You don’t look dead. You look…slammin’.”

“Oh, do I? Hadn’t noticed.” Rice sat down to gel her hair, and grinned at him in the vanity mirror. “Dieter, you do get that some people are just gay, right? All DC, no AC? And thus unlikely to be quite as interested in your eight inches as—say—you are, or would like them to be?”

“Sure, I get that—like her, right? But you…” He grinned at the thought, offputtingly wide. “I think I might’a found, like, clips of you doin’ it old-school, all penis in vagina and what-not, right there on the Internet. True or false, missy?”

Rice shrugged. “Busted.”

“So you can get down with the bone, if you wanna.”

“Well, proven—but see, that’s just not what’s gonna happen, with you and me. ‘Cause I don’t even like you that much.”

“This is still ‘cause I shot you, right?”

“Somewhat, yeah. ‘Course, I might be persuaded to rev up ol’ Faithful and do you up the ass ‘til you screamed, if it turned out you were into that.”

“Why would I be?”

“I don’t know. Why would you?”

“You’re—just—makin’ this ten thousand times more complicated than it has to be.”

“Ah, my cunning plan revealed. Think of it like…space exploration. Broaching the limitations of human endeavour; broadening people’s minds, proving points, keeping accurate notes while you do it. Science.”

DD frowned. “Are you really high right now?”

“Sure am. All the time, pretty much—I think it’s one of those infamous side-effects. And guess what? This could be you. Take enough of this stuff, and you too could be pushing the walls of perception back ‘til they fall apart. Take enough, and after a while you’ll be all: ‘okay fine, I’m in! Soup it up, bitch!’”

Unexpectedly, as DD blushed bright at this last idea, Rice felt a sudden tweak of interest; she realized for the first time that A) she was a full head taller than him and B) he was sort of cute, in a maybe-trainable feral/rabid puppy kind of way.

“Listen,” he said, “more’n enough with that crap, okay? I pimp, lady; I don’t get pimped. I mean, I didn’t even put out in jail, and I was there a good long while…”

Rice leaned over him, assaulting him with her just-washed scent—gave him a close look at where the paste-on jewel she’d put over the original entry-wound went, a little off-centre, right between her boobs. Working that you know I could pull your head off right now, little boy vibe hard, and murmuring—

“And just how well did that work out for you, anyhow? In the long run?”

—