Tucker
Tucker
by David Michael
When I arrived, the boy stood back surveying and gloating over the chaos he had wrought–except for her. He wouldn’t look at her. She knelt by the body she had once inhabited, her physical face now unrecognizable in the gore.
He saw me walk in. Surprise registered first, then pride and the pleasure of having an audience. Whatever he had expected after he pulled that final trigger, he probably hadn’t expected this. Or me.
I ignored him for the moment. The girl needed my immediate attention.
“Hey!” he said. “Who are you … “
His question faded away as he saw me walk over to the girl. I could see he wanted nothing to do with her, not now, probably not ever again.
I knelt beside the girl. I touched her lightly on the arm. “Hi,” I said. “My name is Tucker.”
She didn’t look up. “I’m … I’m … dead … aren’t I?”
“Yes.” I try to be gentle with the victims, but I also don’t spare them the truth. Not anymore.
She nodded. “I don’t remember the …,” she started. After a few seconds, she went on. “I remember him pointing the gun at me … I thought, he’s just joking, he doesn’t mean it.” She stopped again, then pulled her eyes away from the sight of her dead body, and looked at me. “I guess he did mean it.”
“That’s the sad part,” I told her. “He probably didn’t mean it.”
I felt that he was about to protest that he did too mean it, that he shot the bitch on purpose. With a glance and a gesture I pulled a fold of the Veil around him, silencing his outburst before it could occur, pushing him into a corner of the room until I had time to deal with him.
“Whether he meant it or not,” the girl said. “I’m dead, aren’t I?”
I sighed. This part of the job never gets easy. I nodded.
She took it pretty well, I thought. People don’t give teenage girls enough credit. They have real emotional strength. I’ve seen it over and over, time after time.
“Did you know his name?” I asked.
She nodded. “Trey … Trey Murray, I think.”
After a few minutes, she asked, “So … what now? Am I a ghost?”
“You don’t have to be. That’s why I’m here. To help you pass on.” I paused. “It’s best if you accept it now. If you put it off … well … you could find yourself wandering the halls of high school for a long time.” I paused, then smiled and added, “Me, I figure that’s pretty close to hell on earth.”
“Heaven and hell exist?”
I’ve got to stop using the “high school is hell on earth” joke. It inevitably leads to that bit of existential inquiry.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen either one. So far as I’ve been able to see there is only acceptance and refusal to accept. Once you accept you’re own death, you’re free to leave. Or you can refuse to accept it and stay here.”
She looked at me, and I could tell she had seen right through me. “You obviously stay here.”
I nodded, then shrugged. “I’m not going to lie to you,” I said. “For all my ‘accept it and pass on’ spiel, well, I have some wars I’m still waging, some demons I’m still fighting.”
“How long … ?”
“I couldn’t tell you anymore.” I held up a hand to interrupt her. I knew from experience that this line of questions could go on for some time. I was tempted to keep on talking to her, she smelled so nice, but she wasn’t my only reason for being here. “This isn’t about me,” I said. “This is about you. Your choice.”
“If I pass on, is it possible to come back?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never heard of it happening.”
“But you think it’s best to … to … accept it … and pass on?”
“Not a doubt in my mind,” I said. “For you,” I added. “Believe me. This world isn’t a nice place for the dead.”
I smiled at her and held out my hand. She took it, and I helped her lay down, back inside her body. The intact spirit superimposed itself on the mangled dead flesh for an instant. She closed her eyes. A few seconds later, she passed on in a hazy, gauzy shower of sparks. The sweet scent of her lingered on the air for the briefest instant.
I stood up as the police finally burst into the classroom, weapons drawn, followed by EMT’s with satchels. Three dead bodies, including the shooter, meant that there was very little for either group to do.
I looked at the body of the teacher, pushed back into a corner of the room by the four shots that had hit him. The shock and disbelief still showed on his face.
Despite the evident shock of what had happened, the spirit of the teacher had already passed on. I’ve seldom had to help a teacher. Career teachers, it seems, have well-developed coping skills.
The boy still struggled inside the fold of Veil I had wrapped him in.
“You bastard!” he said as I released him. He charged me.
I caught him easily, my hand around his throat, and lifted him off the floor. “You should be more polite, Trey,” I said. “I can help you if you let me.”
He continued to thrash about, so I threw him against the far wall. This school building had been around long enough to develop a certain amount of solidity, even on this side of the Veil. His head bounced hard off the ghostly drywall. He didn’t sit dazed for long, though. He sprang back to his feet and stood there, glaring at me.
“Why were you nice to her?” he demanded.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked.
“She’s the queen bitch of this school. She stepped on everybody, me especially. She wouldn’t even give me the time of day.”
“And she barely knew your name,” I added.
His mouth twisted into a smile, his lips pulling off his teeth like a predator. “She knows me now! Everybody knows me now.”
“You think so?”
“Look at all this,” he said, throwing his arms wide to encompass the entire bloody classroom. “This is going to be on the news everywhere. My picture. My name. My kills.”
“You do know you’re dead, right?”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Dead? Dead? I’ve never been so alive!”
In my experience, shooter suicides are the most insufferable assholes imaginable.
“I made this,” he went on. “All of this. Me!”
On the other hand, their particular combination of self loathing and megalomania, universal hatred and desire for love and attention, their intense sensitivity to their own pain but inability to perceive pain in anyone else, have always represented my ideal, my favorite flavor. I breathed in the scent of him.
“I’m not dead.” He was shouting now, dancing around like a fool in love.
If they would just accept it and move on, they’d be fine. I’m not an ogre. Well, not any more. I’ve reformed since my death.
“I’ll live forever!”
But they always refuse to accept that they’ve died, so I always get to eat them.
Copyright © 2006 by David Michael. All rights reserved.
A Short Story a Day » Best of ASSAD 2006 said,
February 11, 2008 @ 5:09 pm
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