Page 5 of Secondhand Soul

“Are you kidding me?” I gasp when I pat myself down, and my phone is nowhere.

Feeling around me—can’t find it.

If I had my phone, I’d just turn on the flashlight feature.

But I don’t have my phone!

I can’t stand up, I can’t call for help, I can’t turn on my light to find my phone because I can’t find my freaking phone!

And if I call for help the old-fashioned way, screaming in a graveyard... the monster will come out and find me. I could shoot him in the dark—but that might not finish him. And he would finish me.

Of course now it starts to flurry and mist. Sleet.

I’m sitting in a grave, waiting to get eaten by a monster or freeze to death. And if I don’t kill the monster, Pazcuso will kill me.

It’s a weird kind of calm. Like this was inevitable, like in Streetcar, when Stanley says, “We’ve had this date right from the beginning.” I can pinpoint the first time I had this feeling... Two years ago, when I was just the server at the bar where Frank Bocella and his goons liked to meet and play cards. I was broke. Frank gave me a bracelet one night. The next night, he told me he’d like to take me out to dinner. No, those were just weird encounters, but a girl needs to eat, and a girl likes pretty things. I had a bad feeling the second I told Frank Bocella I’d keep him company while his wife was in Palm Springs to visit her mother.

Funny, it was Thanksgiving, then, too. I knew when he answered the door to his penthouse in a bathrobe with a bottle of champagne that I wouldn’t leave him without some scars. Maybe not even leave alive.

Sitting in my own grave doesn’t feel strange. Just a lot colder and wetter than I thought it would.

Chapter Three: Lazarus

I stick my head out the heavy stone door of my mausoleum. Screams in the night aren’t common in Pine Ridge. I mean, you’d think they would be, but the monsters in this place are the least monstrous people I’ve ever seen or heard of. There’s this vigilante thing (okay, it’s the Mayberry version of vigilantes, but you get it) where the Pine Ridge monsters take turns “patrolling” the town to make sure no evil monsters get in and start chowing down on people.

Honest to God, though, I think Manny’s told me more about stopping human criminals than monsters. When I point out that this backs up my argument that humans are scum, Manny goes into the mathematical calculations. There are way more humans than monsters. By the numbers, humans win out in any category, simply by sheer volume.

My green, glowing eyes scan. I’m supposed to see heat “auras,” according to my original manufacturer. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be automatic, but I really have to work at it. Across the cold, dark cemetery, I don’t see anything at the surface. I see a couple of blips that shimmer around the ground. Burrows of bunnies, probably. Families of field mice.

Sounded like a woman screaming, but the area is deserted. If I look far into the distance, I can see the Christmas and Hanukkah lights of Manny and Rhea’s shop. They said I could sleep there, in the little apartment above (very little). It looks homey, even though it’s a garage. Soft red, white, and green twinkling lights. Blue and silver lights around the doors and windows. There will be a light-up menorah by December.

I slam the door shut and go back to the old laptop I use and my bottle of Scotch. I take the laptop to work with me some days, charge it, and use the internet to download shows to watch.

Only Manny and Rhea know that I watch I Love Lucy most nights so I can fall asleep.

No one ever gets hurt on that show—well, there’s a lot of bonking on the heads and getting hands and arms and legs stuck in comical places, but no one dies. Everyone sings. And it’s all in black and white. The people are gray. They look like me... just a little bit. When I start to fall asleep, and my eyes blur, I can pretend that’s the world I live in, where I’d fit in.

“FUCK!” I ROAR MYSELF awake when I finally sense the wetness on my pants.

No, I didn’t pee myself. I dropped what was left of my Scotch, damn it!

And... I overslept. I so very overslept. 10:45! My cell phone’s screen stares up at me from the floor where I dropped it in my sleep. My overflowing tin can full of ashes and cigarette butts is knocked over.

Man, I really did a number on myself. It happens when I overthink.

And I’m a terrible friend to the Finklesteins! They’re out there, trying to help some lady and her unborn baby, and I’m drinking myself to sleep and not putting the squash in the oven for Thanksgiving dinner. I tear off my uniform pants (the kind I wear to work on cars) and put on my ripped black jeans and a clean white shirt. Rhea would want me to look nice when I deliver her food, and this is as nice as it gets.

I hesitate and put on the black leather collar with silver studs that some chick back in California gave me. Pretty goth thing. She didn’t know what I was, but she said I looked good with it around my neck.

She looked good with my hands around her neck.

But that was dangerous. One false flex and the little puppet is literally nothing but a limp, lifeless plaything. That’s why I didn’t fuck her. I fucked the succubi and vampire chicks in the CrossRealms instead—at least until I got out of there.

I tap the collar in place, still debating. Rhea wouldn’t like it. She’d want me to look festive. I want to look nice, but I want these little suburbanites to remember that I’m still a killing machine, a pitbull that’s not housebroken.

The irony of putting this camouflage on while I’m thinking frantic thoughts about squash and cooking doesn’t escape me.

Collars mean you’re domesticated, too. Did you ever think of that?