Page 8 of Secondhand Soul

Muscles were something I studied for this job. I’m looking again—for science. For work-related needs. I’m not drooling over bulging biceps and washboard abs where you can see every little line of flesh under the leather-like gray skin. When I stare at the patchwork of grays and scars that make up his skin, skin pulled tight over absolutely perfect muscles, I tell myself I’m just studying my mark.

Appreciation is fleeting. I start looking for where to cut and shoot so this undead bastard can’t kill me after I kill him. You know what I mean. I’m just double-checking my calculations in person, that’s all.

The phone sits next to my hand. I don’t know who to call. I don’t know if I want to make a call at all. I watch Lazarus hold a sheet of paper with a handwritten recipe in a shaking hand as his other hand rakes anxiously through his silvery-white hair.

“Cinnamon. Nutmeg. Apple juice. Wait, apple juice? There’s nothing in this fridge but squash! And condiments!”

Poor agonized little monster.

Stop that. You watched him literally bite someone’s throat out. Tear off an arm. Punch through a chest.

Mmhm. Some mobster who made him ended up like hash.

Didn’t you rip open the mobster who “made” you, too?

“I’m sorry, I need my phone back. They’ve got to be done with their interview by now, right?” Lazarus barely looks at me as he takes the phone, pacing around the round kitchen table littered with papers.

Papers from adoption agencies.

Little babies smiling up at me from glossy brochures.

My heart falls into my stomach, and I feel so sick I suddenly can’t breathe. Distracted for a moment, the pain soars back up my leg, my ankle reminding me that all is not well. I try to rise and test it, only to discover something else—my shoulder. It’s locked. It can barely move.

I knew it hurt last night, but I didn’t know I couldn’t move it.

What if I stay like this? What if I am like this? This feels like more than my shoulder. It’s the whole collarbone on one side. What if I’m broken, top and bottom, unable to move?

At the monster’s mercy.

“Arghhh. What if they aren’t done? What if I blow it for them?” The big guy is yanking his spiky white hair into even more spikes, looking stressed.

I once heard sadness is the most relatable emotion, but I think stress might top it.

“You know what? I think the supermarket is still open today. They probably close early, but I can still make it! I’ll get the apple juice myself and not bother them.” He turns to me, a look of relief dawning on his face—and then it sours, deep and dark, glinting green eyes like laser blasts in my chest.

“You stay right here. Or, no, in the shower. Stay in the shower. I’ll be back in twenty minutes. You get washed off, get warm, get clean—I’ll put the squash in...”

“Hey!” I barely manage a squeak when he lifts me up. “Ow!”

“I thought you were okay.”

“I’m not okay being carried like a backpack!” I cry, the world flipping upside down as he drapes me over his shoulder.

He’s a patchwork. A fucking quilt. His skin has subtle changes in texture and color, and thick, neat stitches that were in for so long they left railroad tracks of scarring in his skin.

They put him together to last, not to look pretty.

I wonder if he thinks he’s ugly?

I know now I must have hit my head when I fell in that hole. Or I’m suffering from exposure.

You know, because for a second, I care about the thing that’s not even supposed to exist, and I have to fight the insane urge to tell him he’s handsome.

And seems like a decent person. Non-person.

“Well, I’ll put you down in the bathroom, and you keep your clothes on for a second. Rhea has some clothes you can borrow. I’ll get them. Can you stand?”

“No!” I yelp when he puts me down on the edge of a very nice double-sink vanity. My eyes adjust to the bathroom, and I have to blink several times. “Is everything really big in here?” I whisper.