Hardwood floors, a good view from the living room, and heat included. So why is the rent so cheap? Well, the landlord explained, in this apartment the dead occasionally come back to life.
Unlikely, Karen scoffed to herself. And besides, even a reanimated corpse would be a step up from the breakup she had just endured. She signed the lease.
She moved in without incident. Weeks passed and it was just a regular, ex-boyfriend- and zombie-free apartment that she found very comfortable. By the time the first revival day arrived, she had mostly forgotten the landlord’s warning. She was quite surprised to open the refrigerator and find the hamburger meat wriggling like a package of shrink-wrapped earthworms.
Calmly, Karen armed herself with a tennis racquet and used it to scooch the Styrofoam container into a waiting wastebasket. She ran it out to the dumpster.
Within a week Karen had cleared all animal products from the apartment. Without the wiggly surprises, the apartment exhibited no obvious signs that the dead were or were not rising that day. But Karen could tell. It just felt more vibrant on resurrection days.
A couple more times around and Karen realized that the apartment didn’t resuscitate just food. The part of her that had died to make room for adulthood and responsibility stretched, rubbed its eyes, and stood up. Long-forgotten memories and ambitions awakened. She called old friends, signed up for ice skating lessons, and mapped out a plan to switch careers to the one she had always wanted.
A year passed. She had her new job. She played left wing on her club’s ice hockey team. Never had she felt so alive.
But the apartment had also re-energized her yearning for an answer. The day of the next restoration, Karen phoned Will to tell him that he could come pick up his leather bomber jacket if he wanted. He sounded surprised, and slightly suspicious, which Karen figured was only natural – it was, after all, a trap. She had found the jacket last year, right after he had left with what’s-her-name, and incinerated it on the grill. But that detail wasn’t important right now.
Karen tidied the apartment and, bursting with new life, waited.
#
She opened the door to an apprehensive Will.
“Um, hey, Karen,” he peeped.
“Will!” Karen beamed. He flinched as she threw her arms around him, “It’s so good to see you again. Come on in.” She led him up the stairs.
“Have a seat,” she offered. “How have you been?”
Karen knew that the veil of death took about 15 minutes to lift, after which Will’s memories would be awake and ready to go. So she kept up the small talk while he fidgeted.
Then it was time. She leaned forward and took his hand. His eyes were pools of pure terror.
“Will, did you love me?”
He snatched his hand back. “What?”
“Did you love me?”
“Karen, I, I just wanted my jacket, and…” Will stopped with his mouth still open, and looked at his shoes. “What the hell?”
Karen explained, “I don’t want to get back together, but recently I’ve been sifting through some memories and emotions from our relationship, and–”
Will interrupted, “My shoes are moving! Why are my shoes moving?”
“Please let me finish. I’ve been thinking a lot about us and I just want to know, if you ever loved me.” Will was desperately trying to kick off his seething leather shoes.
“I’m sure you realize,” Karen continued, “that I put a lot of effort into our relationship, and I’d like to understand if we did something wrong, or if there was simply no foundation to begin with.”
His shoes now off, Will yelped and jumped to his feet. He stared down at his pulsating leather belt.
“My belt is alive!” he howled.
“Will, I’m trying to have a mature conversation with you. I understand that sometimes things don’t work out, despite the best intentions.” Will didn’t want to touch the writhing belt with his hands, but he didn’t want it around his waist either. He ran into the kitchen, grabbed a knife and started sawing away at it. Karen followed him.
“People grow in different directions, passions cool, circumstances change, but I loved you…”
Will cut through his belt, threw it to the floor, and backed into a corner.
“…and I think you’ll find it very easy right now to remember if you loved me.”
Will looked at Karen, and at the two wiggling halves of his belt. Then he put his hands on his chest and his eyes grew wide. He began clawing at his stylish shirt–the manufacturers hadn’t been too careful about leaving the bits of the worms behind when harvesting the silk threads.
“You see, I’ve thought about us, and the thing that keeps nagging at me is that maybe I was just there for convenience.”
Will tore his shirt off, jumped over his belt, and ran towards the door. Karen jogged after him.
“And I’m not even mad if that’s the case,” she explained, “it would just help me to reconcile our relationship if I knew your true feelings.”
Screaming, Will ran down the stairwell and out into the street, in his socks, with no shirt, and holding up his pants with both hands. Karen followed him down and watched him go.
“Did you ever really love me?” she said softly.
Karen’s landlord was standing next to her, alerted by the commotion. They both watched Will disappear around the corner.
“You can’t bring something back if it was never alive in the first place,” consoled the landlord.
Karen sighed. “I just needed to know for sure.”
—
Father of three and husband of one, Todd Wells plays upright bass in a rockabilly band, hosts international visitors through US Department of State exchange programs, and enjoys being patted down by TSA personnel at Midway and O’Hare airports. He writes about all of those things at traveldiaryofamadman.com. Other sites where his scribblings have appeared include Funny in Five Hundred, 365 Tomorrows, and right here at Theme of Absence.
A bit tender. A bit terrifying. Good story!
Great story