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Please, the Dead Shined on Us

By Pitchaya Sudbanthad

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It was midsummer and we were coming home from a concert in the city. Her breath steaming against my neck, she told me about the boy from Stockholm. But he’s dead, I said. I expected her to snap out of it. She didn’t. She confessed for the whole ride. His name was Sigvard, tall and handsome, the smartest boy she’d ever met. He killed himself eight years ago.

The next morning, as I made oatmeal, she walked in with an Epilady on her throat. She plopped down on a chair and waited for me to respond. What are you doing? I asked. Trying to see what it’s like, she replied. You’re going to have to do better than that, I said, turning around to stir in some cinnamon. She turned off the shaver, and I handed her the newspaper section I didn’t like to read. I pretended to occupy myself with the crossword puzzle. She made some toast. I kept an eye on the butter knife. I had been told not to get alarmed so easily. I stayed cool. Maybe it would pass.

We spent the rest of the day at the park. We fed animals at the zoo, and then stopped at the video store on the way back. Everything seemed fine, just like any other weekend, but then I saw her spellbound in the horror section, softly touching the picture of the zombie on the case. Let’s get this, she said. Those movies creep me out, I tell her. You are creeping me out, I wanted to add, but I kept the thought to myself. She took the case and went to the cashier. I knew I couldn’t change her mind.

When we watched the movie that night, she didn’t have her hands over her eyes like she usually did. On screen, the camp kids ran screaming. Something in the woods snatched them one by one, like they were potato chips for the taking. She asked me, why don’t they ever try to talk to it? Why are they always fighting it? Well, dear, it’s all really simple, I began as I reminded her that it came the fuck back from Hell. Dead things that didn’t stay dead deserved a fiery second ending. I made the cutthroat gesture with two fingers. I asked, What’s that boy’s name again? She slapped me hard across my face before retreating upstairs to sob over the picture of the Suicide Swede.

I tried to apologize. I even gave her a foot massage and kissed her toes with I’m sorry’s. She stayed inert, lying facedown on the pillow as if the lights were too bright. Lying there beside her, I could hear supernovas burst a hundred galaxies away.

I thought of the Swede, just nineteen in the picture she had in her arms, his short grainy hair radiant like a halo. He had on a brown tweed jacket and a blue striped tie that made him look proud. He had sad eyes, like mine, which I knew because she told me so on the ride home that night. She spoke into my neck, so that I couldn’t see her face, but I knew what face she had on. The face would be the same as when she talked about her father. Strange forces acted on him and made him drunk and onerous, and turned his skin yellow and his body into bones. He came for her many times. I thought of the Swede and his permanent, perfect pose, before the worms got to him. I hadn’t seen what this one was capable of.

Why was she still so haunted with ghosts? All these years I thought we had exorcised them out. We worked hard at it. We brought in experts. The priest did his thing. In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. But, one ghoul or the other, they came back for the sequels. They dug through the cemetery grass and stretched a hand through the soil. They banged on our windows and smeared the panes with their guts. She heard their endless moans. She still let them in.

My arms clasped around her leg. I curled into her knees, and held her tightly, in case they came for her, in case she floated away in the middle of the night. The dead Swede could appear in her dream, and they’d run away together to some astral plane far from here. They would live in a massless dimension and raise beautiful phantom children. She wouldn’t remember any of this life. I tried not to think. I knew I’d eventually fall far into sleep the way old, beaten men did on commuter trains and park benches, the way those on guard detail eventually and always did, but I wanted to hold her until morning came and godless birds woke us up. Daylight was safety, if we could make it that long. There was nothing to do but wait.

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© 2004 Me Three