Undead Alive

-

Seven

Meet the Oracle.

I stay in bed the next day, and the day after that.

On the third day, Lily stomps into my room with all the grace and consideration of a moderate natural disaster, and opens the curtains wide. The light from the window hits me across the face, and I nearly scream; it feels like falling head-first into a patch of nettles.

“Get up,” Lily says. I pretend not to hear and pull my blanket over my head. Lily mutters something undistinguishable and probably not entirely complimentary under her breath.

“That was all the warning you'll get, you know,” she says. I turn my face to the wall and curl up into a ball, partly because I want to shut her out, but mostly out of spite.

“No? You're not going to get up?”

The next thing I know, my blanket is missing and Lily is shrieking into my ear.

“Get up! Get up, you pathetic waste of space! UP!”

I turn to face her, and glare pointedly. “G'way.”

My voice sounds rusty and broken and pretty pathetic, even to me. I cough, and it feels like a knife to the throat.

Ow.

Lily sighs. “I've seen thirteen year old girls act with more grace than you after being dumped.”

“Shut up,” I mutter. At least my voice sounds almost normal again. “It wasn't ... like that.”

“I seem to detect a slight trace of denial,” Lily says, studying her fingernails and pretending to be nonchalant. I don't comment; no matter what I say now, it will only make things worse.

“Look,” I say instead – well, snap, really, “d'you have a reason for being here? Because I think your sadist streak is showing.”

Lily raises a single, immaculate eyebrow.

“Please,” she says, “if anything, this is masochism. You really know how to kill a good mood once you're in a funk.”

I push myself up into a sitting position, and glare at her some more.

“But since you asked,” Lily continues, like she doesn't notice, “yes, I've got a reason. I'm taking you out.”

“What?”

“Yes. Go get dressed.” She smiles at me. The or else is implied, glinting like steel in her eyes.

I look at the ceiling. “Right.”

“Good boy,” Lily says, and leaves the room.

It's going to be a long day.

--

The door is blue.

There is a sign on it, and it says,

ORACLE. JENKINS

Knows All. Does Art.

Takes Commissions.

I stare. The walls on either side are drowning in graffiti, but the door itself is strangely clean. It seems to light up the corridor. We're at Hope Street, one of the worst neighbourhoods in town, and the woman who lives in this flat doesn't even have graffiti on her door. It bodes, and not in a good way.

“You brought me to see an oracle?” I hiss. Lily smiles darkly.

“No, I thought the flat needed a new painting,” she says. “What do youthink?”

“I'm not doing this,” I mutter.

“She's a professional,” Lily says, as if this makes things better, “and I know her, so I don't have to pay a fee.”

I want to run away screaming. Street gangs and serial killers aren't so bad, really, once you get it all in perspective.

“Look, I don't think – ” I start to say, but I'm cut off as the door opens and a woman pokes her head out.

“Alice,” she says, with a stilted sort of nod towards Lily.

“Jenkins,” Lily says, and returns the nod. Jenkins then turns her head towards me, and looks at me. It feels like she's reading every single detail about me right from my face. I try not to squirm. After what feels like several lifetimes, Jenkins speaks.

“You must be Adrian Brown,” she says, “I've heard a lot about you.”

And if that isn't ominous, nothing is.

--

If a panther ever learned to stand on two legs, got a blond buzz cut and started smoking ten packs a day, it'd have a remarkable resemblance to Oracle Jenkins.

Jenkins is wearing clothes that look like she stole them from the laundry rooms of the Army, and there's a cigarette in her mouth. It's the third one since we came in. I counted.

We're sitting in her living room, which looks like it was decorated by someone who couldn't make their mind up about how to do it and decided to compromise. Two walls are off-white and covered with paintings of things that look like they've come straight out of a Lovecraftian nightmare. The other two are covered in rich, slightly moth-eaten black velvet curtains with mirrors and sequins and God knows what else hanging in them. I saw something that looked vaguely like a dead bird in there when we came in, so I've been trying not to look. It's disturbing, and it makes me want to hide in a closet somewhere.

“You're here for a reading,” Jenkins says at last. Cigarette smoke blows out of her nose as she speaks. I nod mutely. Jenkins puts another cigarette in her mouth, lights it, and slumps forward. And then she doesn't move. I stare at her, and then at Lily, who is smiling. Maybe Jenkins is just a narcoleptic or something.

God, I hope so.

And then Jenkins shakes her head and straightens up again, only to dissolve into a fit of coughing only a moment later.

“Bitch,” she says, spitting out the cigarette in the process. I stare. When she looks up, her eyes are completely white.

What the - ?

“Oh!” says Jenkins, and her voice is different, too. “Lily!”

Lily beams. “Oracle!”

“It's been too long.”

“Iknow,” Lily says, like this is tragedy on the scale of little kids starving in Africa.

“Um,” I cut in, “what's going on?”

My voice isn't shaking. It should probably feel like an accomplishment, but at the moment, I'm too confused (and creeped out) to care. Lily gives me a smile that's half-way sympathetic.

“This is Oracle,” she says, “Jenkins' better half.”

I stare. I seem to be doing that a lot today.

“We had an accident,” Oracle mumbles, sounding embarrassed. “It's not something we talk about.”

There is a slightly uncomfortable silence, and then she claps her hands together.

“Well,” Oracle says, “time for that reading, then.”

She grabs my hand. Her fingers are cool and dry against my skin, and she's smiling. And then her attitude changes again.

God, don't tell me there's more of them?

“Chile,” Oracle says, in a faux-Jamaican accent, “de path ahed is long an' twisted, an' it go in many ways an' direkshuns. I can – ”

And then she breaks off, and stares into my hand like it just bit her.

“Oh dear,” she says, dropping the accent, “this is certainly interesting.”

“Er.” Panic pours over me like a bucket of ice water. “Interesting” is not a word you ever want to hear from a clairvoyant person. I want to get out, but it's like my feet have been nailed to the floor, and I can't move. I whimper. No-one seems to notice.

“You did a silly thing, falling for that man,” Oracle murmurs. I'd be embarrassed, I think, but I'm too busy trying to remind myself to breathe.

Oracle continues. “And now you'll have an ... experience, shall we say?”

From the way she says it, I get the feeling that it'd be a smaller risk to my health if I stood in the way of a herd of stampeding elephants. Oracle smiles at me in a way she probably thinks is reassuring. It looks like a grimace.

“It's like with an illness,” she says, “it'll get worse before it gets better.”

I want to ask, will it get better, though?

I don't have the guts.

--

When we get back to the flat, Lily makes me tea.

It feels wrong. Lily is never that nice, and it makes me wonder if she's put something in it. I stare distrustfully into my cup, and then at her.

“You're being too nice,” I mumble. “Why?”

Lily glares, but it's a half-hearted sort of glare, like she can't really make herself mean it. “You've got an experience coming at you.”

“Right,” I say, and look away again. My stomach curls unpleasantly. It's like I've swallowed a live octopus, and I feel sick. Lily pats me on the shoulder with exaggerated care. I like that even less than the tea, because if you can't count on your friends to cheerfully abuse you, in a roundabout sort of way, what can you count on?

“It'll work out fine,” Lily says, “don't worry.”

I don't worry; I throw up instead.

---

A/N: See? Adrian will be fine. He's got friends.

I was in Sweden for the last few days, and I had this in my head the entire time. So I read Howl's Moving Castle and Jumper instead - both books that are almost nothing like the movies based on them. (Both books awesome, especially HMC.)

Anyway, I'd love to hear what you think of this, so please review. :)