“Not sure about him, Hindley,” I protest. “Feels wrong this time.”
“Set him right, or I swear I’ll cut off your balls and serve ’em to you with sauce on a pile of fucking spaghetti!”
Don’t do it. This is wrong, wrong, wrong…
But I have spent years telling that voice inside me to shut thehell up. Years working for the family that calls me theirs, doing what they want. When Hindley yells at me again, I silence my inner voice, and I obey.
I bend my will to the job. I heal the charred flesh, repair the organs, recreate the torn skin. The drain on my energy is enormous, a flood of power gushing from my body into the corpse of the client. A roar of sheer anguish bursts out of me as my own vitality feeds into the damaged body. Makes it whole.
When it’s done, I can barely see. Blurred vision happens sometimes, especially with the worst cases. Should clear up in a bit. I peel my clammy, shaking hands away from Hindley’s, and I collapse onto the floor.
It’ll take hours for my energy to return to normal levels. But at least I’m conscious. Sometimes I pass out.
I lie there for a while, waiting for my vision to clear, listening to the ticking of the grandfather clock. Eventually Hindley starts pacing the room, muttering.
As the pain-fog lifts from my brain, I start to understand why he’s worried. Our guy should be up and talking by now.
Stiffly, I manage to sit up. The moment I do, Hindley lunges over and smacks me.
“The fuck?” I exclaim.
“You did it wrong,” he snaps. “The guy isn’t waking up.”
I blink at the body on the floor. The client looks good. There’s even a tinge of healthy color in his cheeks. But he’s still unconscious.
I run my tongue around inside my mouth, tasting the coppery essence of blood. “I did everything right.”
“He’s supposed to be awake, and he’snot. You know what a sleeping guy can’t do? He can’t pay what he fucking owes us!” Hindley kicks the sofa furiously, then yelps and grabs his foot, swearing again.
“I got nothing left, okay?” I rub my forehead. “He’ll wake up sometime. They all do. We just gotta be patient.”
“And what are we gonna do while we’re waiting on Sleeping Beauty to join us?” A vein in Hindley’s forehead bulges with rage.
“We could bring him back home, put him in the spare room, wait for him to come around.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“If he doesn’t…once I’ve recovered, I’ll take another look, see if I missed something. I can’t do anything else right now, man. It’ll kill me. I need food, then rest.”
Another thing about resurrecting corpses—leaves me with a hell of an appetite.
Hindley seems as if he might argue, but then he stares at me long and hard. I must look like shit because he grumbles something and then nods. “Fine. We take him back with us. But the second you got your energy back, I want him awake and paid up, got it?”
Slowly I climb to my feet, gripping the back of the sofa to steady myself. “Sure, boss. Whatever you say.”
2
Cathy
A fall breeze wafts through the open-air section of Aunt Nellie’s Fresh Farm Goods, ruffling the hair of suburban moms and their squalling toddlers. Some of the younger customers are just here for the vibes, snapping photos of rustic wooden posts and weathered bins full of colorful squash, but the mothers are more intentional, determined to jam pesticide-free nutrition down their kids’ throats.
“Excuse me, miss?” The voice is strident, pointed, and the woman’s eyes pierce mine, full of sharp discontent. “These tomatoes don’t look great.” She holds up a lumpy one—fully ripe, probably delicious, but malformed. Not your picture-perfect Pinterest tomato.
These are real, honest-to-god organic tomatoes, not plastic fruit from Ikea.That’s what I want to say, but I’ve learned to bite my tongue.
“How about this one?” I pick up a more symmetrical tomato and offer it to her.
“There was a fly on that one.” She winces.
