Read Online The Beautiful Dead by Daryl Banner - Free Book Online Page A

wick, kindling a bit of vision for my guest,
then with a puff, extinguish the beautiful thing at my fingertips.
    “What is
this?” he asks the basket I set before him, not caring to hide the distaste in
his voice.
    “Dinner,” I
snap back.
    “Half of it’s
wilted. The tomatoes look soggy. How am I supposed to eat this?”
    “I could feed
you frog carcasses if I want. If there’s even frogs left in this dumb world. Or
bird feathers or dirt. I didn’t ask to be hostess to a human tonight.”
    He squints at
me. “Human.”
    When I let the
word slip from my mouth, I hadn’t realized what it would do. It placed the two
occupants of the room into separate categories. He, the Human. Me, the not. The
moment I say it, it’s like learning I’ve died all over again.
    Finally, he looks
down at the basket, frowning as he picks through it. He peers up at me with a
pouty glare and mumbles, “Dinner it is,” then slowly brings one of the soggy
tomatoes up to his face to smell it, whether out of suspicion or curiosity I
can’t tell, and decides it’s safe enough to take a bite.
    I hear the
penetration of teeth through tomato skin.
    The crisp cut
of water and membrane and juice.
    His lips,
tongue, teeth, inviting the produce into his mouth, the slurp of salivation,
taste.
    Chewing,
chewing, chewing, teeth rearrange, fumble, tumble the tomato within the cheeks,
crunch.
    And he
swallows.
    Down the
throat, carefully, slowly, succulent of moment to moment, the sustenance of
Human life in the simple art of a bite, the dance of fingers clutching food
clutching mouth clutching food again, then descending the smooth inviting
vessel of throat, to the belly, to the muscles, to the core.
    Reinviting
strength. Reinviting awareness. Reinviting focus and hope and life.
    He flits his
eyes open, connects with my longing gaze, the symphony of eating taking one
small rest for the Human to say: “What?”
    I catch my
breath—my unnecessary breath I hadn’t really taken, the illusion of life once
again having fooled me—I catch my whatever and say: “Nothing.”
    And he takes
another bite.
    The symphony
resumes.
    By the fourth
or fifth bite, he looks at me again, narrows his eyes. “Something wrong? You’re
… staring.”
    “Sorry,” I
murmur, looking away. “I just—I just miss eating.” I laugh, put my hands
together. “I know that sounds stupid. But there’s a lot of things I miss.”
    Chewing, he
studies my face for a while before asking, “So how’d you turn into that?”
    That.
    “I don’t
know,” I admit, deciding not to be offended with his brashness. “All I know is,
I was alive once. Like you. Apparently I died. Lucky me. Then for whatever
reason, I was Risen from a field, brought to a building to be fixed up, and
here I am.”
    “Fixed up?”
    I sigh and
look in another direction—any direction but him and his food, for some reason.
“Detail isn’t necessary. It should suffice to say, I didn’t look so pretty
coming out of the earth. I mean, what does, really?”
    “Vegetables.”
    I laugh. I
don’t think he meant to be funny, but I laugh anyway, then say, “Yes, well. Far
as I know, I’m not a vegetable. I’m a person.”
    “You’re not
that, either.”
    I bite my
lips, look in yet another direction. I’m very actively choosing not to
be insulted, once again, by this awful, insensitive, breathing being in my
house.
    “No,” I
finally agree, keeping my tone level. “No, I’m not a person like you. I’m very
different.”
    “An
abomination,” he murmurs. “That’s what we call you. Crypters. Wraiths. The
Soulless. Unholy of the Flesh. We have lots of names for you.”
    “We?” I look
at him finally. He stops chewing. “We? There’s more of you alive out there?”
    He doesn’t
answer, his face frozen. I get the sense he didn’t mean for me to know that, no
matter how logical it is—obviously there’s more where he came from.
    Maybe he still
thinks I want to eat him. “I’m just