It goes without saying that he was shocked. Of course, judging by the look on his face, he thought I was meant to be dead. And wasn’t I? No, wait undead, that’s right. I was going to have a hell of time explaining this to Celeste.
I closed my eyes, because I knew that look of his. The look which nearly always came before a huge outburst of angry screams and obscenities. I also turned slightly away from him, cringing away ready for his fit.
I heard sheets rustling as he got off the very white hospital bed and the slap of his feet on the tiled floor as he stepped towards me. My mouth pulled into a frown, one of those confused/slightly disturbed frowns as the silence didn’t make any sense.
Then something landed on my shoulder. I nearly screamed out in shock, but as my eyes snapped open I realised it was just Celeste’s hand. His fingers dug into my shoulder, as if he were checking if I was really there.
His other hand came up to touch my face. Celeste slid his hand down my nose and caressed my cheek. Sparkles at the corner of his eyes caught my attention. He was crying, or at least beginning to. I stood there in shock.
“You’re alive. . .” were his only words.
Then he slapped me. His hand travelled across my face like a train on a train-track. Rather embarrassingly to add, my mouth opened slightly and spit flew out as my head snapped sideways.
This all went in a slow motion, just for my benefit.
My vision danced about, changing focal lengths every second, or so, and then blacking out, before once again changing. Tears of pain watered in the corners of my eyes. My cheek felt like it was on fire. His nails had skimmed and dug into my cheek scraping back skin.
Well, it was obvious to say that Celeste was angry.
I raised my own hand to my face and massaged my injured muscle, “What was that for?”
He glared at me, one of his famous I-hate-you glares. He must’ve taken my death a little more harder than I thought he would. A clouded look came into his eyes, “You’re meant to be dead. I . . I killed you. I saw you on the floor of the kitchen dead!”
“Surprise.”
He sat down, well, fell down into a sitting position on his bed, “No, this is impossible, I was there when they performed the autopsy. They . . . they cut you open and took your insides out!”
“I assure you, they’re very much in there.”
“I touched your skin! It was, it was like . . . ice. Like you were frozen. There wasn’t anything left in you. And your throat . . .” His face went decidedly very white.
Then his gaze flicked to look at my neck. His right eye twitched, “If you’re stitched up, that means, you’re a zombie? You’ve come back to life?”
“Nah, though you’re pretty close. That was my first guess as well. Until Hades told me I was undead.”
“You’re undead . . . Hades?! As in the god of hell?” his eyes were slowly getting wider by the second.
“Well, no, not a god, he’s just my grandpa.”
“. . . What?”
Celeste was actually taking this in better than I thought he would. A lot better. He actually seemed relieved, or something like that. I suddenly remembered something very important.
I was still naked.
My cheeks lit on fire as I ripped the pillow off his bed to hide the things which would be better to be unseen. He seemed to notice it then as well, turning around very sharply and gesturing towards the clothes, “You can have them, I was just going to basically throw them away.”
I was very grateful, “Thanks.”
As I shoved the clothes on something came to mind, “Why are you in hospital for?”
I saw his shoulders tense up, and he hesitated for a moment, I wondered why, “They say I’m clinically insane.”
Well, that probably explained it as well, but something was nagging at the back of my mind like mum’s voice used to, “Oh.”
As if trying to defend himself, he said back forcefully, “I told them you promised you wouldn’t die.”
“I think I see their side.” I replied, with a raised eyebrow still curious about that falter in his reply before.
Awkward silence ensued as Celeste sat there soundlessly drumming his knees with flat hands, “You done?”
“Just about.” I said back as I tugged on the black shirt. I gave myself a glance over. It was all black, what was this? It was like I was going to attend a funeral or going to an emo group orgy.
“Starting your own death-rock band?” I asked as I flicked up the collar of the cardigan, the second layer of shirt I had put on.
Celeste went silent for a second, and then whispered, “Your funeral clothes.”
Oh, well, that would explain why they fitted so well. What he had said before echoed through my mind, “You can have them, I was just going to basically throw them away.”
Basically throw them away = bury them underground to decay along with your body. Okay, well, that was very subtlety said. Just like Celeste.
I turned to him, a smirk on my face, “Do I look hot or what?”
“You look like you’re attending an emo group orgy.”
Well, that was one of the things that made Celeste my best mate. He thought along the same lines as me. Also, amazingly we had the same humour. I gave him a glance over.
He was wearing the standard hospital frock which kind of looked like a sack dress made out of linen and only half-way came down to his knees, showing an inch of very white skin which obviously had never seen the light.
His normally neatly brushed black hair sat messily on his head, bed-hair. His dark mahogany eyes were sunken in and deep purple bags surrounded them, totally making him look very much the insane patient. I resisted the urge to laugh.
I grinned at him, “Well, you don’t look like sunshine yourself.”
He frowned, deep lines folded next to his mouth and asked, “How bad?”
“Train-wreck cross paranoid old cat lady. Why? Not what you were going for?”
He grinned, “Nope, perfect.”
If people had been watching us, it would’ve seemed like a completely stupid conversation where we just insult each other. In truth, it was, but it was a hell lot of fun. And the smiles on our faces were worth the looks of contempt from others.
“So, where to?” He asked hopping off his bed.
I raised an eyebrow, “Well, first of all, which shops sell Armani?”
Celeste always wore Armani, and I always liked to poke fun at him about it.
“I don’t know! Mum buys me that stuff . . . I know which stores don’t sell it.. Mum’s always on about it. Target.”
He said almost instantly, “Target, it is. We need to flog you some new clothes.”
“What’s wrong with the cloth I’m wearing?” he asked with a slight whine in his voice. I could tell he was just joking. . . well, hopefully.
“Two things. Number one, I am sickened that you said “cloth” and not “clothes” indicating that you are only wearing one piece of clothing, number two if a gust of wind comes along you’ll scare little kiddies.”
He shrugged and his mouth twisted into a tainted grin, “Too bad, they’d find out sooner or later.”
“They’ll need to add paedophile-tendencies to that list of offences down at the police station.” I muttered loudly, rubbing my chin thoughtfully.
We began to walk down the halls of the hospital. And then I came to the door again. Yeah, that door. I approached it slowly, earning a mocking stare from Celeste, “You alright there?”
I didn’t answer and continued to creep to it. The last time I had seen it, the symbols had been renewed. Strange. Experimentally, I tapped it. It groaned slightly and the broken hinge let out sharp hiss. I jumped back in fright, “It’s going to attack me again!”
Celeste let out an exasperated sigh and pushed it open. Holding it open for me, he walked through, “Jesus Christ Az, what happened to you? You’re like some old man who’s afraid that monsters live in his beard.”
I scratched my head as I walked through the door and out of the hospital, “I swear it tried to scare me to hell before.”
“That was probably your imagination.”
The memory of it looming in front of me, looking very menacing and frightening lingered and I nearly retorted, before wondering why the symbols hadn’t activated. I could’ve sworn they were there again when I closed it before.
Shaking my head I frowned, "Where is Target?”
“Up-town.” He replied and pointed to a large red sign, flashing.
“Well, do you know how to hot-wire a car?” I asked staring at a nice-looking convertible mustang.
He shook his had, “No, why?”
“Damn.”
I began to trudge forward, dragging my feet behind. The shoes I had gotten made a scraping noise. A familiar scraping noise. I lifted the shoes, which beforehand I had hastily shoved on, to look at. Sprint Shoes. My sprint shoes. They were my favourite pair. A strange feeling enveloped my chest that I couldn’t identify. Maybe I would be missed more than I thought.
Celeste had walked past me now and he turned impatiently to glare at me, “Hurry up, you arse. It’s cold.”
I placed my foot back onto the floor and sprinted up to him, “Thanks.”
“For what exactly? Calling you an arse?”
“No, you idiot. For getting my favourite shoes.” I replied staring steadily at the ground.
He shrugged his shoulders, “I figured you’d want to be buried in at least one thing that you liked. Originally, I put forward the idea of your ZOO collection, but I figured you’re mum would've turned it down.”
I couldn’t imagine why. Women were weird, I conceded. A pity I’d have to one day live with one and have children. I shuddered. Celeste was right, it was cold. I looked at him and realised that his jaw was chattering.
I suddenly remembered that I was wearing two shirts, one undershirt and another cardigan. A bit of guilt encompassed me, but only a bit, the midget tiniest bit you could ever imagine, seriously. I removed the cardigan and shoved it into his face, “Here stiff-shit. So you don’t freeze your arse off.”
He mumbled something back that sounded like, “Thanks.”
Then he pulled the cardigan down and his cheeks regained some colour. My arms were slowly growing numb from the cold, but I wasn’t about to be a bloody wuss and ask for the cardigan back. Or at least that was what I told myself.
It seemed like forever walking through the cold night air until we finally arrived at Target. We were both shivering wildly, our arms goose-bumped and hairs standing on end. Our jaws were chattering violently and I swear if I were any colder I would lose my equipment to frostbite.
I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath, “So, this is Up-town.”
“A piece of shit, huh?” Celeste replied, hands in his armpits.
“About that, yeah, but still its better than Downtown. So, Target is still open at this time of night, well, morning, right?”
“No, I thought you said you wanted to flog some clothes.”
“I meant stuff them into my shirt and walk out, not full on breaking and entering. You can get time for that!” I hissed back through clenched jaws.
“Well, squeeze me. . ." He paused and shivered violently, "Shit, I’m gonna die of coldness soon.”
“Here lies Celeste Tori, death from the coldness. May he rest in frosty peace.” I stated solemnly with a grin.
“R.I.F.P, indeed. What the hell are we gonna do?” he slumped onto a nearby wall and slid down to sit on the floor.
I followed suit and sat next to him, “I have absolutely no idea,” I thought for a second rubbing my hands together for warmth, “What about your dad, could he pick us up?”
“You’re meant to be dead,” well, that goes without saying, you didn’t need to poke a stick at it, “He actually cried over you. How is he going to deal with that?”
I shrugged. I had no idea that Celeste’s father even knew I existed, let alone that he cried over me. That weird feeling wriggled around in my chest, before I mentally shoved it away.
“Besides, he’s out of town this week. I’m pretty sure he won’t be back for a while.”
Celeste’s father was a travel agent and was rich. He had never been there for him while he was growing up. Only all his four sisters and mother had. I usually blamed his dad for Celeste’s absolute lack of masculinity.
“That’s great!”
“You’re an asshole.” He growled and folded his arms around his head.
“No, I’m not making fun of you, idiot. We can just stay at your house and no one will know.” I grinned and jumped up.
“It’s a murder scene. They have my house locked up and I’m pretty sure they’ve locked up the key.”
I felt defeated for a second, then a thought came to me, maybe I could finally call on my Grandad, I mean, Hades for something. Seriously, a place to crash wasn’t all that much to ask for. I looked at Celeste, and mentally added asking for a few new pairs of clothes.
“Come on, we’re going to hell.”
“Well, you’re already headed there, I’m not so sure about me, but I did kill you . . .” he contemplated it for a second rubbing his chin in fake thought.
“No, seriously come on. We’re gonna find a place to crash.”
He rubbed his forehead in annoyance and then stood up, “If this is just another dead end I’m going back to the hospital.”
I nodded, “And then they’ll lock you up with the crazies after your trial.”
“Okay, well, maybe not the hospital.”
I grinned and we began to walk to the strip-club, A Good Time.
After our useless detour to Up-town, we finally arrived back Down-town, thank god. Celeste took one look of the flashing fluoro sign and turned around. He began to walk off.
I ran after him and grabbed his shoulder, then I spun him around. The look of his face was far from a smile, “What the hell, Az? Did you lose half your brain when you came back to life or something?”
I was going to mention that I was undead, and hadn’t truly come back to life, but I resisted the urge, “No.”
“Then why the hell are you taking me to a strip-club to sleep at?”
When he put it that way . . . What I had done suddenly seemed very questionable, to say the least. I slapped myself on the forehead, “Crap, sorry, Cell. Okay, I tell you now, what you were probably thinking is wrong. A special door lies in that strip-club and I work under Hades, so I think he’ll give us a place to crash.”
I suddenly wanted to take that back. What I said then had all types of wrong in it. Celeste just stared at me for a second then snapped his arms up in the air, “I give up! You’ve lost it.”
“Wait!” I grabbed onto his shoulder again.
“What?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“Please, just believe me.” My voice was weak and I despised it then. How could I be so . . . so . . . so un-strong? I took a deep breath and turned Celeste to face me. Then I looked him straight, he met my gaze. I stared at him, “Please.”
The pleading in my voice was partially disgusting and I realised then how in need of something familiar I was. I needed something which kept me sane and let me know that I hadn’t always been this abnormal undead impossible thing that I was now.
Celeste stared back at me for a long time, his gaze hard and cold, then his mouth curved into a soft smile, “FINE! Jeez, just get your homo-hands off of me.”
I snapped my hands off with a smile and let out a breath of relief, “Come on. Let’s go.”
He followed me into the strip-club, eyes politely averted to the ground. I partially agreed with him, taking in account my other experience here, also noting that fact that I had a body now and I couldn’t just will away any . . . accidents. I only flicked my eyes up to see where I was going and that still gave me a little too much.
Rather coincidentally, (note, I use sarcasm a lot) Drake popped out right in front of us like a daisy after a long winter. He gave me a harsh glare, filled with hatred for what I was. And even he wasn’t completely sure which category I fell under.
Celeste, who had obviously caught onto the fact that Drake wasn’t exactly my hand-in-hand mate, was also glaring at Drake with the same expression. Suddenly, like a change of wind, their glares became a challenge and I felt like I was stuck in the middle of a cowboy western gun duel.
The air around us seemed to boil with intensive anger and I was in the dead centre. Their stares were dangerously poisonous and I wasn’t sure I had even seen Celeste look so lethal. Even when Celeste had been angry at me, he had never had that look in his eyes. Seriously, for a second even my heart skipped a beat in fear.
Drake backed down, and his eyes widened, “A POS? Oh, my Lord. I’ve run into a POS!”
Taking a breath that I hadn’t even realised I had held, I raised any eyebrow, “POS? What’s that? Some class of man you haven’t done?”
Drake growled at me and I continued, “Actually, there’s a lot more of them than you’d think.”
I smiled, and Celeste grabbed my arm and pulled me back, “He’s dangerous, get away.”
“What? Homo-demon is a hazard? Don’t worry I wouldn’t let him touch me with a ten metre pole.”
Celeste whispered into my ear, and his breath tickled giving me goose-bumps, “He knows. He knows what he could do with you.”
A sick thought entered my mind, but I dismissed it. Celeste sounded serious, but what exactly did he mean? What did he mean that Drake knew what he could do with me? Apart from the obvious sickening thing, I had a hard time trying to think of anything else.
Drake smiled daggers at Celeste and bowed, “I assumed you were all locked up.”
“I missed the party apparently.” He growled back.
Okay, well, this was obviously only a conversation between these two love-death-birds. I felt slightly out of the circuit and decided to butt in, “What party?”
Drake’s poisonous red fiery gaze fell on me and his smile turned delightfully absurd, “So, you haven’t told him, have you?”
I watched as Celeste’s ears went pure red and his cheeks lit up. He remained silent. The demon folded his arms and ran a finger over his lips, as if trying to decide something, “I’ll take that as a no. Well, not only have I found an impossible undead, I’ve also found a POS. Oh, Hades will be pleased.”
The satisfaction he was getting out of Celeste’s silence was pissing me off, so I muttered off the first rude thing which came to mind, “You like that, don’t you? When Hades is pleased with you. Give him a kiss from me, okay? Yeah, little servant boy, could you find us to sleep and some new clothes, huh?”
Drake, with a smouldering look and muted obscenities, burst into flames and disappeared from sight.
Celeste was now very white. Something dropped from the balcony above us, spiralling down like two nerf-balls. Two pairs of tuxedos, slowly fluttering down now, like butterflies as they approached us. One was pure white and the other was dark black.
A choice however wasn’t given to us, as the white one snapped onto Celeste and moulded around his body like clay, and the tie did itself up. The same thing happened to me, and I also felt something that if you were standing there, you couldn’t have seen. A heat escaped the inner linings of the suit and combusted my old clothes into a little pile of ash, which fell promptly out and onto the ground.
Celeste was still quiet.
“Well, we didn’t find a place to crash, but at least we didn’t need to flog any clothes.” I tried to cheer him up. Apparently I sucked at doing this as Celeste didn’t react at all.
“What was all that about anyway?” I asked, playing with the buttons, which when undone, did themselves up.
“Oh, nothing you need to know about . . . yet.” I heard the “yet”, it was under his breath, but I heard as if he were yelling into my ear. What did he mean, “yet”?
Judging by the look on his face, I could tell he wasn’t going to tell me anything “yet”. I’d wait until I could force it out of him. Maybe smother him with a pillow and threaten to cut off his supply of air. Yeah, maybe then . . .
Suddenly I felt something hard form in the top pocket of tux. I frowned, reached in and had it just snug in between two fingers, but snapped my hand out, the object following, because the object was on fire. Sucking on my fingers, I watched as it floated to the ground, the small flame going out as it touched.
I reached down to it and flicked off the charred bits. It appeared to be a business card of some type, “Demon’s Inn.”
I offered it to Celeste who was still very quiet and white, barely even noticing his new attire, nor the pile of ash at his feet. He snatched it from my hands, quite rudely I’d like to add, and read it.
“This place looks okay. Only NOS’s there. Thankfully.” He was talking to himself. Something sounded wrong about what he was saying, but I ignored it. If anything, Celeste deserved the benefit of the doubt.
I grinned at him, “I even got a place to crash, am I great or what?”
“Like of pile of prunes.” Was his reply.
My smile widened as I met Celeste’s gaze. I had the old Cell back. I let out a sigh of relief and pointed at him and his white tux, “Don’t hate me cause you ain’t me, Jealous.”
“Well, at least I don’t look like I’m buying a prostitute.” He retorted.
I looked down at myself and grinned harder, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
He folded the business card up and put into his pocket. It was then I noticed something. His arm sleeve had symbols on it, symbols I felt like I had seen before.
“”
I raised an eyebrow and mentioned it to him. He just looked at it as if it were the most normal thing in the world, disregarding it with only a second of looking at, “Just a simple ward.”
“Ward?” I asked, playing the word upon my tongue.
“Yeah, you’ll see them a lot where we’re going. You actually might be able to learn them.” He replied walking to the door.
What? How did Celeste know all this? Slightly confused, I followed him, subconsciously staring at the floor, out of the strip-club and once again outside. It must’ve been about 5am as I could just glimpse the warm kiss of the sun on the horizon.
Celeste was speed walking now, he turned to me, “Hurry up, retard.”
I ran after him, and I thanked god, or whoever the hell created earth, that the tux hadn’t burned my shoes. I needed all the help I could get to stay me right now; seeing as the thing which I had thought would keep me as me wasn’t what I thought it was.
My complex reasoning was beyond me for a second, but then I noticed something.
Standing behind Celeste it was as if I could see a mirage. The softness of the sun reflected off something on Celeste’s back.
And the fluffy light created a visible almost 3D looking thing protruding from him. The sun cast light onto Celeste and made it seem like he had wings. Beautiful white fluffy wings. For a second Celeste looked like an angel.
And then they disappeared as the sun rose higher and I wondered if I had imagined it. I stood there for a second, frozen in half a step, contemplating it, but then dismissed it as one of the random effects of dying and being undead.
(If you have Microsoft Word, you can take copy those weird symbol things and paste them into that. It might look a little more readable then.
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