“Any loss of sensation? Tingling fingers?”
“No”
“Sensory problems? Clouded vision? Odd sounds?”
“No.”
“You sleep okay?”
“Considering.”
The psychologist half-smiles.
“Any repetitive behaviors?”
“No, none. None whatsoever.”
“Good. And memory okay? Any lost hours?”
This was where I had to be careful. My answers are legally admissible. “Not that I can remember,” I say.
The psychologist half-smiles again, and closes her check-list.
“Good, Jenny. See you in six months, in January. Good luck.”
We shake hands.
I see my folder lying on the desk. There is a tick against my name.
#
I’ve taken the afternoon off, so I sit in the park in the sunshine. Dog-walkers, joggers, young mothers with prams. It is a good day to be alive.
#
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
All night we’ve been aware of each other, a snatched flirtation in a crowded bar. And now we’re next to each other, waiting for service, making judgments about each other.
He’s with his work buddies, at a guess. I’m with Melissa’s just-split-up recovery night. It’s not a time to flirt. It’s a time to do the whole affirmative who-needs-men-anyway thing. But he looked at me, and I looked at him, and here we are at the bar, standing next to each other, neither of us anxious to be served.
“I’m Nick,” he says.
“I’m Jenny.”
In the old days there were just a few questions to get out of the way. Is he straight? Is he single? Is he solvent? Does he know how to phone? Check all four and then there’s a date, and then who knows what else?
But that was then, and this is now. And there’s a new question, and it’s not star-signs and it’s not income, and it’s not herpes or HIV.
But for old times I ask:
“Are you straight?”
“What?”
“What’s tricky about the question?”
“Why would I be in deep flirtation with you if I wasn’t?”
“Yeah. Good point,” I say. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“Sure, thanks. Scotch.” Pause. “That gay thing? Did you ask because -”
“Don’t worry. You know how it is, just checking them off.”
“Oh, right. Well, single, solvent, straight, if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s what I mean, yeah. Good, me too.”
“Cool.”
I gave my order to the bartender. And the unasked question hung in the air between us, like the smoke of our cigarettes.
“And,” he says, “I’m non. Non-dead, I mean. And you?”
You can see he’s pretty confident of the answer, because he’s looking at me directly, with a smile, like he’s got a grand on a team that are twenty points up with two minutes left on the clock, and what can go wrong with that?
“I’m not,” I say, quietly.
“Say again?” He’s still smiling, still confident.
“I mean: I’m not non.”
“No?”
He looks at my cigarette.
“It’s kind of a long story,” I say. “Maybe in the next life I’ll tell you it.”
I give him his drink and prepare to return to the girlfest.
“Wait,” he says, as I start to turn away.
“What?” I don’t turn back. I’m waiting for the lecture, or the questions about God, or the whole litany that the non have for the dead.
“What’s wrong with this life? I mean, what’s wrong with telling me your story in this one?”
“That’s what you’re after? My story?”
“No. I’m after you.”
“You’re not a deadchaser?”
“I’m not a chaser but I’m not phobic either. I’d love to have lunch with you on Tuesday at the Sundial, say, 12.30. So what do you say?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe as in maybe or maybe as in no?”
“Maybe as in yes, if I can make it.”
“See you then,” he said.
And he smiled. As much as I looked through his smile I couldn’t see prurience or horror or sick-curiosity or any of the usual non vibes towards the dead.
#
It’s the worst box you have to check on job applications. All the early questions are so easy: Male/Female, marital status, home address, position applied for. And all the later questions are so nebulous. What skills could you bring to the job? Number of days sick in the past 12 months? Salary expectations?
Like anyone ever tells the truth.
But then there’s that one question in the middle of the form: Life Status: Non-dead / Dead(one time) / Dead(more than one time) [please specify number of times dead].
I hate that question. I hate having to check the Dead(more than one time) box.
I always write 3 in the space provided. I never met another three, and no one else ever has, so it tends to shut them up at interviews. They think three’s bad luck so they talk about other things. That’s the wonder of being a freaky three.
Of course, I’m not really a three. I just tell them that to put them off the trail.
Truth is you have to add four to that figure to get my real Life Status. I’m a seven. And sevens are so rare there isn’t even a slang for it.
#
So. I’m a seven. Died seven times, been brought back seven times. And these are proper deaths. These aren’t just cardiacs that resuscitated within seconds. These are proper pronounced dead on arrivals. These are the real shit. Me and death, we’re like that.
But I keep getting hauled back into the wonderful world of the living. Daddy’s got money. You know how it is.
“Hey,” says Melissa, seeing me staring at my cigarette smoke. “I’m the one meant to be gloomy. He turn you down?”
“Who?”
“Mystery man at the bar.”
“Oh, no. He made a lunch date. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to flirt on your, you know, tonight.”
“Forget about it,” she says. “I’ve forgotten my ex already. You know, Jenny, I’ve always liked you. I’ve always thought you unnerstood, you know what I’m saying?”
Melissa drunk is a marvel to behold, and Melissa was very drunk. I told her yes, the feeling was entirely mutual, but I wasn’t feeling so great so maybe I’d skip going to the club tonight and, you know, get some sleep.
“Yeah, girl, you look like shit, like you don’t sleep too good. Even for a ghost you look like shit. I heard you was a freaky three, sweet jesus. No wunner you don’t sleep for shit.” Pause. “Go get some sleep for me.”
So I said my goodnights and smiled goodbye at Nick and caught a taxi the two blocks to my apartment. It’s a safe enough neighbourhood, but I died once in a mugging between the bar and my place, and I can’t walk past that spot anymore. Too many memories.
#
To Nick’s not very well concealed surprise I showed at the lunch date. And to our mutual surprise we hit it off pretty well.
The wine helped. Nick had splashed out on a thirty dollar red that went down smoothly. I liked that – him splashing out, like a celebration of things to come, things yet to be done. And it meant he wasn’t watching every dollar.
I bought the second bottle, and he had the grace not to ask me if I was sure I could afford it. By the time the second bottle of wine had emptied there wasn’t much of the afternoon left.
“Movie?” he said.
He took my hand and squeezed it when I cried at the end.
Date movies and thirty-dollar wines. Always get me to cry. Every time.
I held my breath at goodbye, wondering if it was all going to go crass and I was going to invite him up to see my artwork, but hey I didn’t, and he saw me into my taxi and said he’d call.
He did call. Two hours later. And I got all crass and invited him up after all.
#
“I wanted you to see my artwork,” I said, in the morning, when he woke next to me. “That’s why I invited you up.”
“You mean you didn’t want fantastic sex?”
“No, not really. Well, I did. But mainly it was the artwork.”
I watched him as he studied my tattoos. They’re on the top of my left arm. Seven crosses. One for every funeral I never got.
“Did they hurt?”
“The first one, Jesus it hurt. After that, they just get easier.”
“You know what I think?” he said.
“No.”
“I think you were saved seven times so I could meet you, that’s what I think.”
He rubbed my crosses and he smiled, smitten. Totally smitten, with a girl seven times dead.
Some wonders never cease.
#
“You’re shitting me,” said Toni, as I walked into her tattoo shop.
“I didn’t die again. I don’t want a cross.”
“So what do you want?”
“I don’t know. A bluebird. Something. On the right arm. Balance it up.”
“A bluebird? You came to me for a bluebird? Maybe you want me to just go the whole hog and stick a rainbow beneath it? Leave! Don’t darken my door again.”
I sighed. Toni’s customers do a lot of sighing.
“So tell me, what do I want?”
“Take your shirt off and I’ll tell you.” So I took it off, and she walked round me. “I take it you’ve found a man?”
“How did you know?”
“Because you haven’t changed your hair but you want a tattoo. When people end a relationship they change their hair and want a tattoo. But you haven’t changed your hair, so you’ve found a man. I should be a shrink, I reckon. Right, I know what’s going on your right shoulder, and it is not his name, however much you beg.”
“What are you going to put there?”
“Hush. You think the Mona Lisa pestered Leonardo – “Hey, Leo, how’s it going?” Shit. I wish I could just anaesthetise you all. You talk too much. So just hush up and I’ll do it and then you can bow to my superior judgement.”
It took a while but it didn’t really hurt. And then she said I could look.
“You’re shitting me!” I said. There was the bluebird, on my right arm.
“Well, I figure you’re seven times dead. What do I know about what you want?”
I paid her double, and gave the same again in a tip.
“Just don’t be coming back again till it’s natural? Okay? Come back when you’re 93 and they’ve hauled you back from pneumonia. I don’t want to see you next year, eight times dead by 35, okay?”
“Sure, Toni.”
I never did have the heart to tell her I’d just turned 24.
#
The thing – one of the things – I liked about Nick was that he didn’t just talk in bed. Men are good at that, talking in bed when it’s over. I think maybe there’s some subliminal conspiracy there, like they get women to unconsciously think “Well, maybe he’ll talk if we do it.”
But Nick, he talked in the morning at breakfast, and in those weird limbo hours of Sunday afternoon, and in tired nights when I just wanted contact without the whole shebang.
And he talked about him, and he asked about me, making it easy for me to talk about all the hard stuff. Like my family. How I lost my sister and my mother in a car crash, all those years ago, pre-Lazarus. It was easy telling him. Well, not easy. But he asked like he was interested and he wasn’t scared to hear the answer. I even told him about my Dad’s suicide, and his Lazarus return.
And he asked about my deaths as if they were just a part of my life. Not as if he was going to write a film about me, or a textbook about me, or that he got off on it or was turned off by it. Just because it was me.
So I found myself telling him about them. The ones I remembered best. The mugging. The car crash. Even the suicide. That was the hardest one, telling him about the suicide. The rest were “unlucky old me,” the last one was “mad old me,” and that’s tougher to admit to in a relationship.
The scars from the suicide were the only scars I kept, the ones on the wrist. All the others, the bullet holes and knife wounds and the scars from the car crashes, all those were erased as part of the Lazarus deal. I’m clean as a sheet.
But I never signed for the razor scars to be done. I wanted a reminder, so I wouldn’t try it again in my eighth life.
He asked me why I’d killed myself, and when I just looked at him he said, “I guess you killed yourself because you felt what, cursed?”
I said nothing.
He didn’t push.
#
On our three-month anniversary we caught another movie and walked home hand in hand.
“Did you go to the trials, of your killers?” he said, out of the blue.
“They don’t let you into court. Kind of prejudices the juries, having the deceased up there in the gallery.”
“But,” he said, “you did check to see that your deaths were all unconnected, right?”
“You think they weren’t random?”
“I don’t know what I think. It’s too many times to die.”
And I felt so cold then, ice fingers right into my bones. I told him I’d sleep on it and went to the ice of dreams.
My first thought on waking was about God. As I showered and made coffee I mulled it over. Maybe I was living some perverse remake of It’s A Wonderful Life, where angels kept trying to take me out of the world, instead of keeping me in it.
I shared this thought with Nick at breakfast.
“Yeah, but why’s He wanting you out of the world? I mean, he leaves all sorts of monsters here long enough.”
“Maybe I’m a mistake,” I said. “Maybe He slipped up. Maybe I was meant to be someone else, and the whole of creation is now altered and so He wants me out of it, except Daddy keeps thwarting his plans.”
“Let me see, that puts you at the very centre of the whole scheme of creation, and it makes your Daddy like an angel of Satan. The first one seems egocentric, and the second one is libellous. I mean, your father might be a bit formal, but underneath he’s, you know—”
“—still pretty formal.”
“Okay, yeah, but he’s a good guy. He brought you back for me, okay? So enough of the God story.”
“Or what about the other way round? What happens if it’s the evil side that’s trying to take me out?”
“Let’s forget the supernatural. Let’s forget everything. Let’s just say you’re unlucky in death. I mean, you live in a big city, and you have money, and people get killed in cities, especially when they have money.”
“And the car crashes?”
“People die in cars. All the time. You’re unlucky in death, and I’m very very lucky in love.”
“You said the L word.”
“I’m sorry. It was an accident. It won’t happen again for at least 5 minutes. I like that bluebird, by the way.”
“Thank you.”
#
Then I lost an afternoon.
I got in from work and he asked me how my day had been and I realised I could only remember up till lunchtime. Everything else was a blank. A question in an exam for which I hadn’t prepared.
“Okay,” I said. “It went okay.”
“And the presentation?”
“So-so,” I said. “And your day?”
I took off my coat and out of the corner of my eye I saw him react.
“What do you mean, “so-so”?”
“I mean, I’ve had a long day and I just want to curl up and watch bad television. That’s what so-so means.”
“So I shouldn’t be worried that there were three messages from work on the answerphone, wondering where the hell you were? For the presentation?”
“What you worry about is your business,” I said.
“Jen,” softly now, “where were you?”
“You really don’t want to know.”
It was the first time that I’d shut him out, and he didn’t take it too well. But what else could I tell him, when I didn’t know myself.
He went to bed, and I checked my bag and my pocket for clues. Ticket stubs. Purchases. Certificates of resurrection.
There were no clues.
I checked my shoulder, and counted the crosses. There were still seven.
I drank too much wine and stared at my reflection in the rain-battered window.
No clues.
#
“I’ve been thinking about your deaths,” he said. “I want to investigate them. There’re too many.”
“You want to be the Woodward and Bernstein of my afterlives?”
“No. But it’s bugging me. Seven times? In this city?”
“Nick.”
“For a start, they only looked for links between the first three, right? But there’s seven now. What if there was a link between number two and number four? It wouldn’t have showed up? I think-”
“Nick.”
“-there’s got to be something. No one dies seven times. Have you checked for-”
“Nick.”
“What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
“Oh.”
#
You know how everyone tells you that the moment you have children your whole world changes, forever and always? I hadn’t even had my kid yet, but I saw that it was true. Roads are no longer places you drive along. Roads are where kids get run over. Swimming pools are where kids drown. Dressing gown cords are what kids hang themselves from, playing Superman.
I’d grown too accustomed to death targeting me. I’d forgotten that he’s after everyone else as well.
#
“Where am I?”
A nurse in a surgical mask was leaning over me. Shining a torch into my eyes.
“Where am I?”
“Someone ran a red light while you walked across the road. You got hit. You’re going to be fine.” The corners of her eyes creased, like she was smiling.
“Tell me I didn’t die.”
“Of course you died. But you’re good as new. Doctor will see you in a while. Get some sleep.”
#
Nick sent flowers. The nurse didn’t unwrap them from their clear plastic. Infections are a risk to the newly risen.
#
Toni doesn’t smile when I walk in.
“I want an eighth cross, on this shoulder. And another little cross, over the bluebird. I was pregnant.”
“Sure, honey.”
That’s all she says till they’re done.
I don’t even feel the needle this time. Nothing.
Then at the end, she says: “There’s no charge this time. I don’t take money for stuff like this.”
“But I-”
“I said I don’t take money for stuff like this.”
“Thank you, Toni,” I say.
“Take care, girl. And Jenny, you drop by any time you just want to watch, okay?”
“Yeah, sure.” But I’m puzzled. “Why would I want to do that?”
“I don’t know. Seems to give you comfort.”
“When?”
“When you’ve done it before.”
“I’ve come here and just watched?”
“Sure you have. An afternoon, a while back.”
#
Daddy sent me a card for my resurrection.
I avoided the places I had gone with Nick. He didn’t phone.
And I lost a whole day.
#
The next morning I went to Toni’s.
“Was I here yesterday?”
“Yes, you were,” she said.
“Oh. Are you okay with that?”
“Like I say, it seems to bring you comfort.”
“What did I say? Did I talk much?”
“Yeah, you talked to the customers. You were kind of sweet, to tell you the truth. You asked the guys that wanted hearts all about their girlfriends, and you asked the girls that wanted Chinese symbols and shit all about their hopes and dreams. Everyone felt better for talking to you. Except the guy who wanted Fuck the World on his neck. He got pissed and left.” Toni laughed. “He was way too sensitive.”
“Toni, do you know why I keep dying?”
She looks away. “Honey, I just do tattoos. You want answers, you call long distance information.”
“I think it’s just luck, is all. Bad luck in the genes.”
“Uh-huh,” said Toni. Not yes, not no.
“I’ve got an idea. You busy?”
“Do I look busy?”
“Give me number nine, on my left arm. As a charm against it happening for real.”
She watches me for a long time, till I get uncomfortable. “Toni, what’s wrong?”
She sighs, makes a decision. “It just seems like bad luck, to me. Tempting fate.”
“You think my luck’s going to get worse? You want to tell me how?”
She considers for a while. “Okay, let’s go for it. I feel where you’re coming from. I think you’re nuts, but it’s your skin.”
“Let’s pretend it’s my first time. Like I’m a virgin.”
“Okay, let’s take a trip into pre-history.” And she wipes the smile from her face and tells me:
“In that case you get the spiel: This is a serious decision, you get that? This tattoo is going to be with you your whole life till the day you die, and that will probably be 50 years, or longer. So if it’s a spur of the moment thing I want you to walk right out of the shop and come back in a month when you’re sure. Is this a spur—of-the-moment thing?”
“No, ma”am.”
“Are you in any way under the influence of alcohol or drugs?”
“No, ma”am.”
“Then let’s rock and roll,” she said.
And like a virgin, I winced at the needle. For the first time since the first time, Jesus it hurt.
#
I lost my job. I applied for others, put 3 in the space on the form. No one’s met a freaky three before, so I just lie.
#
I went to get coffee.
There was a guy there, sitting at a table. I looked at him, he looked at me.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
#
After, in bed, he says: “And this is the artwork you wanted to show me?”
“Yup. Eleven crosses, one for every funeral I never had.”
He looks at them, hypnotised. “How did you die eleven times?”
“They all blur, after a while. There was a mugging, a road crash. Someone ran through red, or I ran through red. Something.” I don’t tell him about the suicide. Not yet.
“And the rest?”
“You don’t always remember when you die,” I said.
Then he looks at the bluebird and the X.
“And these? What do these mean?”
“I think I was drunk when I got those done,” I say.
It’s my best guess. I don’t know what they mean.
“Who died?” says Toni.
“No one died,” I said. “At least, I didn’t. Not for a while. I’ve had an idea.”
She half-smiles.
“What?” I say.
“Just tell me the idea.”
“I want number twelve. Here, on my left arm. Like a charm against it happening for real.”
She watches me for a long time, till I get uncomfortable. “Toni, what’s wrong?”
She sighs, makes a decision. “It just seems like tempting fate.”
“You think my luck’s going to get worse? You want to tell me how?”
She considers for a while. “Okay, okay. Let’s do it. I think you’re crazy, but it’s your money.”
And for the first time since the first time, Jesus it hurt.
I wish her happy Thanksgiving.
#
I die again. Overdose. A stupid thing.
I come back.
#
January. I get there, breathless, apologetic. I have forgotten. I pretend I was delayed.
“It’s okay, the snow slows everyone down,” she says. “How have you been?”
“Good,” I say. “Very good. Extremely good.”
The psychologist half-smiles, and starts the list.
#
“And memory okay? Any lost hours?”
This was where I had to be careful. My answers are legally admissible.
It’s illegal to bring someone back if they fail too many tests. Each resurrection costs you brain cells, and the government doesn’t want zombies walking round.
“Not that I can remember.”
She half-smiles.
“Any repetitive behaviors?”
That one was easy. “No, none. None whatsoever.”
The psychologist quarter-smiles, and closes her check-list.
We shake hands.
I see my folder lying on the desk. There is a cross against my name.
#
I leave her office, into the bright snow. I don’t have a job to go back to, so I get a coffee instead. Sit in the park, in the whiteness.
There are seventeen black crosses on my left arm. I counted them this morning.
Someone out there is putting tattoos on me, crosses.
Seventeen black crosses. I counted them.
Dog-walkers, joggers, young mothers with prams. One of them is stalking me with ink. I study them for signs, but it could be anyone.
I am a marked woman. Something tells me I am going to die.
I head for home through the white. The wind is like needles. The snow is like a shroud.
END
-
Daniel Kaysen’s short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Ideomancer, Interzone, and The Third Alternative, among others. Rich Horton chose his 2005 story “The Jenna Set” for publication in his forthcoming
Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, from Prime Books.
APEXOLOGY: Horror