Title: Dead Like Me

Category, Type: Drama/Supernatural/Romance/AU, Original

Rating: R for language and sexuality. Rating may raise due to gore, violence, and highly offensive mature themes.

Warnings: In a sense, necrophilia. Sort of? Homosexuality. Arranged marriage. Some polygamy. Very ill-mannered dead people. Pedophilia. Sadism. Masochism. Cross-dressing. Rape. Insanity. Torture. Bad jokes. Human market.

Summary: How precisely does one land himself in this sort of situation? What nightmare consists of a world in which the dead walk among the living? Where only a select few can part the veils of ignorance and realize that the absence of death is not natural? Forced into a censored society hell-bent on 'the simple life'? And how would you feel if you were taken from your own world and planted in this unholy perpetual Halloween... and discovered that there is no 'til death do us part'?

Dead Like Me

Prologue summary: In a backward world where death is a meaningless word, marriage a political sport, and happiness a flight of fancy better suited to questing storybook heroes, a child's sole purpose is to acquire a mutually beneficial martial alliance with someone of prime social standing. Even at the tender age of eleven rebellious Francis Montoya, the uncontested heir of an upwardly mobile shipmaster, is on the precipice of being marketed. However, he harbors within him the wicked seeds of a hate that may very well be his downfall. And after witnessing the dire fate of his dearest friend he will do all in his meager power to prevent himself from being wedded to an animated corpse thrice his age.

Prologue

August 12, 1993

They say the end of innocence is a long drop and a quick stop. The hangman's noose constricted (taut with the dragging weight) to strangle the naivety and bliss of untainted ignorance. It was unavoidable to be thrust into the chill rapids from the mellow shallows; a wallowing guppy without the coordination and weight to contend the tides that dash it against the rocks. Parental duty dictated that a child be jaded long before youth had descended on broad malicious wings. None were long deceived by the rich scent of sweets nor the joy of bare feet in swift flight across a meadow, try as they might to remain unenlightened. The ultimate fate of New England's population held sway just as soon as puberty began to metamorphosis the tender anatomy of pre-adolescence like a great portly pedophile looting virgin chastity.

Some children came to know the unforgiving truth sooner than in the cruel days when they were breaking their own skin as the werewolf must. Others were told when the time of trial arrived. Whatever the delay, the verdict was undeviating: there would be no escape from the bleak outcome of a treasured infancy. Few children were independent after the passing of their twelfth year because it was customary to wed them off at this time, to negotiate the most beneficial marriage and scurry like moles beneath the grounds of their finest neighbor. The parody of matrimony often included a perception of damnation reflected in the eyes of the bride and groom, hands cold while they shared a space they wished to have never known. The Puritan ministers and Vatican priesthood presided over ceremonies like messengers of a wrathful God preaching that this was sacred.

Lined discreetly in rows ascending a hill toward the harbor of Atlantic City lay the newly constructed manors of the upwardly mobile. Within the sand-encrusted brick walls lay a social circle composed of self-proclaimed aristocrats whose furniture was constructed of cheap materials polished to a bountiful deception. Such money had been honestly but immodestly made with hard labor and false client flattery that put shame to the term 'ulterior motive'. Their reputations were rightfully wrought for all were keen in their work, yet the industries that they dined upon rode on plywood stilts when the season dwindled and foretold of doom come the Industrial Revolution's peak. Each merchant or businessman kept a handsome home with a comely wife and well-mannered children (prone to being in the count of one) with more burdens than those of the authentic upper class but a great deal more self-esteem. A single heir carried the iron burden of its kin's future and a higher bargaining price when it came to topics of matrimonial alliance. The residents of Chelsea Avenue were not of old money or refined name and thus each union of marriage must be strategically mapped, gaining them a golden path to effortless fortune and elite bloodlines. These families were only as good as their income; made slave to the status of financial transaction and the casting of spider silk nets to draw in the courtly fish.

But in the unstable fledgling dynasties lay a cancer of resentment. As the chandelier gained crystals and the cushions silk brocade there was discussion of Dukes and Baroness' to wriggle like the pasty garden slugs into little ears. Knowledge came to the offspring of merchants and shipmasters containing 'going away' and 'that ample Dead Admiral'. The children once poor and classless spoke and mingled and grew to fear the world being erected around them. It began with little Edmond, of all people, who was affianced at eight to a walking nightmare of a woman.

The marriage was a smart match in all respects save for the fear that the future groom bore within his breast. A child is honest with others and himself, and he spoke truly when he expressed disgust at the highly decayed state of his fiancé to any consenting to listen. It is human nature to reject what it cannot understand and the consistent animation of dysfunctional bodies would never be comprehensible. The Duchess Lacey would be ever a sixteen-year-old of petite stature and panicked eyes, her skin a hideous shade of yellow-green and pockmarked by what the ravens had stolen before her Resurrection. She was chosen for the prevalence of her name; it was an easy sale between an undesirable Dead Duchess and a Shipmaster's only son. Assurance of a comfortable life would be sold at the price of a child's sanity, as it so often was in New Jersey.

Along followed the surrounding families, regardless of favorable or poor business. The children were being bartered, if you will, contrary to their own wishes. A daughter sent abroad, a son given to a neighboring French Marquee, occasionally the gamble of two children at once if the father was bold. At the corner of Chelsea and Arctic lay the home of Minister McCarter, who soon fated his ten-year-old daughter Felicity for New York City (in addition to a Cambridge man of seventy-six years and no pulse). The dear bonny girl was yet a stranger to the life now at its end and vindicated by the greedy faded eyes of a frail elder. As Felicity wept in the farewell-bidding arms of her friends Edmond feared for himself and his comrades, speaking with a progressive hatred of these marriages and in particular those that bound them to those not fully alive. The anger toward marriage and the Dead infected his neighbors like the flesh-consuming insects that the children feared lurked within a cadaverous spouse.

Two doors down from once-little Edmond dwelt a family of greater repute. The Montoya's were thick in riches at the present time as there had been an expansion of trade between the island of Puerto Rico and the New Jersey Italia Shipping Industry. That companionship with far-off culture had made well the ills of Master Montoya and his low-born past with a vast salary and the silver to attest to it. The keen-faced man had become a highly respected one and indulged in his delusions of grand nobility. New England had much to offer on its land and New Jersey was among the centerfold of the colonies. He would take for his family all that their ancestors had denied them. Through his rising status the channels of contact had been opened and already the pros and cons of each available marriage for Master Montoya's lone son were being discussed at length. Francis Montoya could be offered for a considerable price (of the social sort) to many a genuine upperclassman, particularly with his unsullied little body and prettily arranged features. The lonely Dead upperclassmen valued pretty little boys quite notably. Those Old Money families with dead or wretched men could ask for no better.

“I have laid eyes on that creature, Francis, and I say to you: she is a ghoul. She was killed by her lover and left in a sewage ditch a score of years past. The reek of decay is strong in her still! Maggots tore at her where the ravens could not reach. I could never bear to stand beside such a nightmare, let alone allow her into my bed.” Edmond cried in the dying hours of an April afternoon. “I would rather lie with a leper.”

Truly, the Duchess Lacey was a sore sight to behold. What remained of her promised great beauty but had long been overcast by the hue of her rutted flesh and the holes where skeleton shone through. Edmond had thought to seek a fair, pulsing whippet with a dainty hand and pepper for heart instead.

“It is only marriage. Few are ever fortunate enough to find joy in their union.” Francis reasoned, sponging a sheen of sweat from his brow with a handkerchief.

Edmond sat forward, bent over his own knees as if he might vomit onto the pristine buds of daisies. His belly roiled at the memory of Lacey's spindly hand in his own and the smell of her discolored flesh as he pressed the required kiss to it.

“Still I feel her curdled flesh on my mouth. I can't do this. Could you, Francis? Could you marry such a monster?”

Personally, Francis thought this too dire a subject to be discussed beneath the burn of the sun with the scent of lavender behind their eyes. Yet dutifully he considered it, though begrudgingly. He imagined the rank odor of decay worming into the tunnels of his nostrils, sympathizing as best he knew how.

“No. I could not. Nor will I ever.” Francis rolled onto his side to face his older friend, the scrub-grass tickling his ear as he envisioned it to be fly larvae. “Instead I will take flight to the distant woods, or some far-off place where none can tell me what I may do. Juanito tells me glorious tales of the islands. Perhaps I will go there.”

Truly Francis knew so little of the islands that they may have been Avalon itself, but the brief fumbling descriptions unearthed in Juanito's halting English speech held a sweetness he preferred to New England.

“Take me with you!” Edmond implored, falling back into the embrace of the scrub-grass covered knoll.

With warmth in his eyes and mouth Francis severed a stem of lavender, lifting it to brush at his companion's nose. Edmond allowed the flower to tease a smile from the harried corners of his lips. He was yet too young to dwell long on misery. Drawing it to his nostrils Francis inhaled the sweet fragrance of his little plant.

“Of course I shall take you also, my friend. I would will them to incinerate me rather than wed me to a corpse.”

Death had branded so many on the New England soil by pillaging the once unblemished New World with centuries of war and wrath. It was quite frequently that Francis recognized how much a blight the cherished 'victory' over death had become.

“Do you suppose we might be understood on the Islands? Dear Juanito speaks so little English, and he himself has spent many a year on our soil!” Edmond wondered aloud, and presently Francis cast aside his ruminations on death (or lack thereof).

As the children celebrated life with the ocean winds tossing their hair, jovial for the precious hours that preceded supper, the Lavender sprig began to wither as mortality did not.

Edmond was the leading boy among their circle (the moderately sustained young of Chelsea Avenue) but Francis was the clever strategist. He gave birth to a plan that had little effect on events but a great impact on their pessimism. In earnest, beneath the snuff-encrusted bills of their forefathers and the soft undersides of nursemaids' chins, promises were made in the pretense of a Pagan ceremony beneath the abundant Cherry Blossom tree that bent awkwardly in the far corner of the Montoya garden. The group of five children (unlucky sons and daughters of feigned hierarchy) clutched fingers, thin to thick to soft to calloused, and swore on their immortal souls to seek an escape from the foretold doom of arranged matrimony. The declaration had been conceived when the seasons began to turn and the fruit ripened (much like themselves) into glorious pre-denouement.

It was sworn that they would never wed on political terms or perhaps at all and most certainly not to the Dead. A speech was spoken by each; sad-eyed Benjamin Hubbard, hard-mouthed Fanny Thomas, solemn Jeremiah Howard, bitter Edmond Devine, and passionate Francis Montoya. Benjamin would not scorn the memory of his dearly departed beloved with marriage to another, Fanny never be ruled by a man, Jeremiah refused to be an object rather than human being, Edmond simply vowed to be free of Lacey, and Francis proclaimed himself incapable of entrapment by the constraints of a Dead bride. Beneath this twisted, glorious tree five children laid a self-righteous foundation for their future. Perhaps it was foolish of them to hope for miracles. At the time it seemed a spell of salvation, forbidden and utterly liberating. Unheard and unheeded, naivety snickered at their juvenile conduct.

Celebration of Edmond's twelfth birthday was an understated affair. The day was overcast with a thunderstorm rolling forward from the sea like a tide. He demanded that only his dear friends would attend and requested simple decorations, wishing with all his coltish might that his elders might neglect to recall the number of his years. Presumptuousness had never been applied to his taste in material things. Beneath a bower of celebratory ribbons that writhed (the younger Francis thought) with the slender malevolence of serpents on their poles of birch the children chased one another among the fragrant grasses of August. Fanny, yet fruitless and small in her unbridled ten years, made merry with the boys while her parents turned their eyes to better places. The darkness that thrived predatory and eager in its lair cast shadows on the ground but was lost among the ring of youthful laughter and the tearing sound of gift wrapping.

Yet the noses of certain boys twitched with the acute intuition of a rabbit, sensing a masked danger courting their joyful play. He discarded his worry to being a result of the unsociable Master and Mistress Devine, whom refused to be invigorated by either child or adult company. It was not entirely like the soft-spoken but jolly couple to display ill humor but perhaps it was merely the ache of poor weather that all sailors hobble with. Beneath the raptor gaze of stoic parents the four young ones showered the birthday boy with treasures.

The best came disguised in a wooden crate as apples (which at first drove the recipient to insult). Within the apple crate Edmond discovered a precious pup from Francis, pale as the sand of the coast and grateful to have been released from his prison. Proclaiming it 'Neptune', the newly minted twelve-year-old held his pup as if it were Jesus Christ himself. Only moments after reception, he was torn from Edmond's grasp and taking the boy's heart with him. With glassy, regretful eyes Master Devine spoke:

“The party has ended. You may return home, children.”

The cheer declined so rapidly that Francis was forced to question whether it had existed in the first place. He was aware of shouting and Edmond's bleating pleas akin to a lamb prematurely dragged toward the slaughterhouse. The sky already pregnant with dirty wool began to chortle deep and low, thunder approaching as it so often did in these Summer months. Chill wind clawed at his fleshy cheeks as Fanny clutched his coat between dirt-encrusted fingers. Francis did not know whether his friend was in thrall with fear or fury.

“No! I won't! I won't marry that disgusting woman!” Edmond cried to the apathetic grasses, the ribbons, and any object that might take greater heed than his parents.

The heels of the captive child's boots plowed furrows into the thriving August earth but did little to halt the pace of his father and uncle. Francis locked his knees together and denied himself the ability to move for it would not do to swoop in for a failed rescue attempt. Edmond would be delivered to his new wife with or without his comrade's acts of foolhardy heroism, as all children must be.

“Francis! Francis, my dearest one, help me! Help me!” Edmond continued to shrill, one hand grasping in vain for the friend that could not act as knight.

'I cannot.' Francis wept within himself. 'I cannot help you.'

Fanny’s infrequent terror released itself onto his shoulder in a tide of tears, smearing nose-water over the lapel of Francis’s Sunday jacket. He stood fast on the earth that misconstrued gravity as his knees quaked with the shock. Yet ought he to be so very alarmed? It was fate. Such a child’s game as hope would never be existent.