Page 11 of Secondhand Soul

I was in a grave this morning. Last night. Buried alive.

Like my soul. Isn’t it buried alive? Aren’t I just a dead thing that makes more dead things? Imagine the girl I used to be, trapped in this...

Ha, aren’t we emo?

But things that are dead and alive are tangled up now. My daughter seems so alive in my thoughts, but some people would have never considered her “living” at all, even though I heard her heartbeat. I felt the first flutters of movement.

Lazarus is made up of dead things. He should be rotting and decaying, buried and still.

But no, apparently he’s cooking for a crowd on Thanksgiving and rescuing damsels in distress.

Funny. The thing that I need to kill has made me feel more feminine and safe than any of the bastards I ever slept with, the mafia men who brought me slinky dresses to wear and necklaces and flowers like they were lovers instead of clients. They called me honey and baby and treated me like I was brainless.

The monster who apparently needs a last-minute grocery run didn’t do that.

Don’t get comfy. Don’t get stupid. You interacted for all of twenty minutes. You know damn well most of the true sickos love to play with their food before they eat it, love to create an illusion just to see your face when it shatters.

But Lazarus... In his mad dashing around the kitchen and clumsy attempts at caregiving, he gives off something wholesome.

It’s an act. A lure. A trap.

And I’m sitting naked in his web.

When he gets back, what’ll he do to me? Why did he give me a phone if he planned to hurt me?

Of course, the phone is semi-out of reach. And again, naked.

My brain starts to fight through the fog of pain and make escape calculations.

If it took me ten minutes or more to take off my clothes, how much longer is it going to take me to dry enough to get the other clothes on, get downstairs, find the keys to the car sitting out front, and get away? Do I have time before he comes back? What if there are no spare keys for that other car?

And what’s that burning smell?

“WHAT’S THAT BURNING smell?” I say the words out loud, but I already know. The smoke slithering from the closed door of the oven is a giveaway.

Fire can kill me, I’m pretty sure. I mean, enough of it could. It could just burn this body to ash, make it so there is nothing left to call a body.

It could kill Manny and Rhea, too. The lady upstairs. “Oh, shit!”

I drop the bags of apple juice to the floor, plastic bottles thumping and rolling— leading my eyes to the nook under the low counter where neat stacks of paper towels and three bottles of apple juice already sit.

“God damn it,” I sigh, grabbing the oven door.

Blackened squash and actual flames greet me.

Quick eyes tell me that I left the paper towels that Rhea must’ve used to dry the squash under them. And then, of course, I coated them all in olive oil. Oil-soaked paper and 450 degrees.

I turn off the heat and slam the oven shut.

What do I do? Water would probably lead to one of those grease fire things, wouldn’t it?

Grease fire seems worse than regular fire.

Human upstairs. Flammable body.

“I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, I hate this!” I look around the kitchen for a fire extinguisher.

And my cell phone rings.