An Ankh For Remembrance
By S. Evans

I was in the morgue at midnight, harvesting eyeballs, when my cousin walked out of the shadows. It wasn't recreational; I was getting paid to plunge wrist-deep in the faces of corpses part-time, second and third shifts on weekends and holidays. They were paying twenty bucks an hour, and I was broke after paying rent and tuition both.

Trying to sever the optic nerve without damaging the cornea is a tricky operation, and it takes a delicate touch. I had the touch... when I wasn't being distracted.

The stream of menthol-scented pollution that hit me in the face counted as a distraction. I jerked and swore. My scalpel bit into something vaguely gelatinous as my cousin chortled at my startlement.

I'd only met Zach a year ago, about a week after I'd relocated to the city. The very first time I met him, he blew cigarette smoke into my face. He'd turned it into a habit when he found out how much it annoyed me.

I bit my lip hard and tried to keep a lid on my temper.

"That makes my nose itch," I grumbled. My latex covered wrist snagged briefly on something inside of the left eye socket as I paused to look up at him. "Cut it out, Zach, or else."

Zach strolled lazily around behind me, glancing only briefly at what was left of the right eyeball after I'd done my work. Rat-bastard that he was, he stretched, rolling broad shoulders for my amusement and then taking off his shades. I snagged my wrist again. Latex ripped as he grinned at me, blue eyes sparkling and rugged features alight with amusement.

Nobody in our family has to worry about being physically unattractive, and he got a double helping of good looks. For a moment, I regretted being related to him for reasons other than his pain in the ass attitude.

"Honie," he sounded reasonable, rational, amused. That was why I flinched when he reached over and tapped me on the nose. "Neither you or I are ever going to have to worry about lung cancer."

I snapped at his hand; my teeth clicked together as he jerked his fingers back hastily. "You should live that long." I knew I sounded sulky, and I didn't care. "I'm trying to work. Get out."

"Are you going to think about what I said?" Zach countered, raising his eyebrows. "Together..." He let the rest of the sentence trail off. He didn't have to finish it. He came by every month to make the same proposal. Every time he came by, I turned him down.

Every time he came by, somebody ended up dying. Our family wasn't exactly famous for controlling their impulses, either.

"I'll think about it," I told him. I saw his eyes light up, and I killed that light off with, "when Hell freezes over. And don't ever bother me at work again, you hear?"

Zach actually laughed, stepping directly behind me. "You've got spunk, I'll grant you that. But think about it. Once upon a time, back when our family worked together, we were great. You and I could make that happen again."

I turned my attention back to the corpse. It was too late; I'd sliced right through part of the cornea when I'd startled like some little kid who was scared of her own shadow. Rather than looking up, I continued the argument. "That was during a time when greatness was measured in how many buckets of entrails or pounds of brains you could spill-"

The way my words echoed told me that I was alone in the room. I looked up. He was gone. He must have thought that his last comment was a great exit line.

That made me want to throw something. I knew from sad experience that if I detached and threw the ruined eyeball, it would just bounce once or twice before rolling underneath something and collecting too much dirt to rinse off. So I refrained.

Practicing self-control was good for me. Right.

After the music of the bar, the alcohol-blurred depths of a stranger's apartment were blessedly silent. Predawn grey was pushing against the windows as the woman I was with resettled her head on my bare belly and smiled up at me.

I smiled back vaguely, feeling tired to the bone. I'd gotten to the bar late, and gotten drunk fast. And then I'd found someone to keep company with so I wouldn't have to go home alone. What was her name? Rita, Rhonda, something like that. I turned my head to the side so that she wouldn't expect some personalized endearment from me, and focused on the picture on her nightstand.

It showed three people: an older couple and Roxette or Rinda or whatever her name was. She must have been watching me study that picture. "Those are my parents. And me, of course." Her laugh was self-conscious.

"They look ordinary. Nice, I mean." It was true. They did look nice, with big smiles on their faces as they waved for the camera. A slice of well-to-do modern life.

"And your parents aren't?" The question came from somewhere south of my navel, as she idly flicked at my charm bracelet with a fingernail. It clicked at her touch, ivory-colored and greyish charms alternating with gold bands dipped in plac paint and plastic pendants: gothic tackiness, at its best.

Robyn, that was her name. I turned my gaze to the window, thinking about my family and the way I traveled from city to city to avoid them. Thinking about the 'escape bag' in my closet with the fake ID's, clothes and cash stuffed inside it. "My mother is certifiable. Has been since about five minutes after I was conceived. My father?" There was nothing to see but the promise of light, pressing against the glass. "He was a longstanding psychopath."

I didn't let her silence go on for too long. Instead, I looked down, and made eye contact with her as she traced circles over my abdomen with a forefinger. "But let's not waste time talking." She took the bait, and I let my worries go in favor of sheer sensation for a while.

Mornings after one of Zach's visits, I always avoided reading the newspaper or listening to the radio, or watching the local news station. I knew what had happened the night before. I didn't need to see the headlines.

When I staggered into the bathroom the next morning, though, the headlines were unavoidable. Someone had painstakingly cut headlines from the two city dailies out and plastered them to my mirror.

Grisly murders continue! Another victim found! My eyes focused on the words; my brain stumbled through the phrases that were getting well-worn around the edges: 'no suspects in custody', 'police at a loss'. Etcetera. Etcetera.

Then I noticed the red smears on the glass. The jerk had taken my favorite lipstick and written a message to me underneath the headlines.

Honey. Baby. Make the right choice.

It wasn't signed. He didn't have to leave his name, what with the way he'd misspelled mine. That was his idea of a joke, probably because he knew I hated my name and having it misspelled was just the last straw. I bared my teeth at what I could see of my reflection, and reached for my curling iron. It was Friday. Maybe I could hit the bar after classes.

I flicked a look at the paper that was stuck to my mirror, and it began to smoulder around the edges. In a few seconds, it was nothing but ashes.

"Your toes look like they're rotting off," Robyn observed, staring with some fascination at my sandals. "Don't you ever use any other color of nail polish?"

I glanced down. I could barely see my toes, nails painted black, between the woven strips of leather. My hair fell in waves around my face; I let it obscure my vision as I answered. "No."

"Gross." Robyn leaned forward, the dimestore ankh around her neck swinging away from her cleavage; her shirt was unbuttoned far enough to flash a glimpse of nipple if anyone cared enough to look. I looked, and then wished I hadn't. She didn't need any encouragement.

"You could put little designs on them," she was saying. Mascara-rimmed eyes opened wider with enthusiasm. Fortunately, she hadn't noticed my looking down her shirt. "Something Chinese, or maybe something to match your tattoo?"

I tensed up when she mentioned my 'tattoo'. For the fiftieth time this week, I swore I'd never touch vodka again. It made the most improbable people look so terribly sexy... until the next morning.

This was the third time this week that Robyn had just 'been passing by' and she thought she'd 'stop by and say hello'. It wasn't helping my nerves. "No. Look, I have to go. There's um... something I have to do."

"What?" she asked, eyes narrowing. She stepped forward just as I started to sidle backward. "You aren't trying to tell me something, are you?"

I couldn't lie to her; she was a full-fledged Daughter of Eve. Human right down to her toes, without even the slightest taint of family blood. So I edged back a step or two more. "Yes. Yes I am." But rather than telling her what, I managed to temporize, although the effort made my eyes water and my tongue burn. "I'm trying to tell you that there's something I have to do. That's all."

"Oh." She stepped back, and I breathed a little more easily. Her face twisted up in an exaggerated 'awww darnit' expression, before she switched disappointment for sunny smiles. "Call me, okay?"

"Okay," I agreed. So far, I'd always said 'okay'. I hadn't called her yet. It wasn't a lie if I intended to call her. And I did, eventually. In another decade or so.

Between Zach and Robyn, I felt like I was getting smashed between two sides of a waffle iron. He was turning up the pressure; every time I turned around, there was another mocking little message with my name misspelled: in my mailbox, on my pillow, holding my place in a book I'd dog-eared a few nights before. And she was turning up the pressure too. I didn't remember having given her my number, but Robyn was calling at least once a night and stopping by a couple times a week.

At least this time, I had some forewarning. I saw his reflection in the plate-glass of the florists' window, approaching from across the street. I heard him approaching, too: even with headphones on, he had the Italian opera he was listening to turned way the hell up.

As usual, he was trailing a banner of cigarette smoke behind him. It almost choked out the tang of brimstone that clung to his clothes. "Hello, sweetheart. You thought about what you're going to do?"

I glared at a funeral arrangement through the glass: it wilted. Zach reached out and planted a broad hand next to my head, palm flat against the glass. "Temper, temper." I turned the same glare on him; he just leaned closer, smiling his little superior smile. The music was overhwhelming. I nearly drowned in the passionate shrill sound of a soprano singing words ending in -ano and -ize as the song came to an end.

Zach's shades were on, making his eyes unreadable. Without that indicator, I didn't feel secure enough to meet his gaze head on. I gritted my teeth and stared at the side of his neck. His Mark was only partially hidden by the high leather collar of his black jacket.

"So?" I sounded even more childish to my own ears, although I'd been trying for neutral and tough.

"So." He leaned closer, and puffed a perfect smoke-glyph into my face before reaching through the glass and plucking a rose from the funerary arrangement. It had already started to rot from his touch before he tucked it behind my ear. His powers were stronger than my little parlor tricks; he'd had decades longer to develop them.

"Tick-tock, Honie. Time's running out for you. I'll be expecting my answer by midnight tomorrow."

He'd already made it halfway down the block by the time my brain caught up. I yelled after him, "You never said that in any of your notes, dammit!"

I could see his teeth, shining white and predatory in that Dentyne grin of his, even from that far away. My own teeth ground together painfully as I turned my back on him and stalked away. There was a bar around the corner. I could anesthetize my pride there.

I always make bad choices when I drink. Robyn ran her nails across the Mark on my right shoulderblade and chuckled, low in her throat. "I was beginning to think that maybe you didn't like me."

"Mmmmn." Fortunately, all I had to do was make vague, noncommittal noises into the leopard-print plush of the pillowcase. My head pounded. There was something I'd forgotten in the blur of cheap tequila and cheaper desire, something to do with the 'escape bag' I kept in a corner of the closet. From the way I felt, I might as well have been drinking paint remover.

"Sorry," she said, sounding contrite. "I forgot. You said you were ticklish there." Her fingers slid lower. "Let me make it up to you."

I rolled away and sat up, letting the covers fall around me. "It's all right. Really." Between the pulsing headache, and the nagging feeling that there was something that I had forgotten, the last thing on my mind was sex. Even if her looks were starting to grow on me.

Robyn stuck her lower lip out in a pout that was more real than pretend. "Really, Honie. I'm beginning to think that you don't like me at all."

It wasn't a direct question. That didn't matter: I still couldn't lie. It surprised the hell out of me to hear the words, "That's not true. I do like you." coming out of my mouth. Robyn took it as her due, and reached toward me with a smile.

She never touched me. Zach's gravelly little chuckle caused her to recoil backward and stuff both fists in her mouth. I was the one that screamed as he stepped the rest of the way through the wall. No opera this time; instead, he was carrying a human arm like a walking stick, holding it by the fingers. It drooped companionably over his shoulder, flexed at the elbow. The knob of the humerus gleamed wetly, tendons flopping around it.

"How cute." Zach was grinning. His air of good cheer made me think of bamboo splinters, cigarette burns, and pulped kittens as he gazed up and down the length of my body. Then he stared over at the bed, and Robyn in it. "Or not. You could do better than that."

"Honie?" Robyn's voice was trembling. She'd pulled the covers up to her neck, and what was left of her makeup stood out against the pallor of her cheeks. I couldn't help thinking she looked a lot like an anemic hamster. Fear was not her best color. "Who is that? What's going on?"

I crossed my arms over my breasts and scowled at my cousin. There was no hope of running, now. "You said tomorrow."

His grin got wider. "So I changed my mind." And then he stopped smiling, and brandished his grisly souvenir at me. "I want your answer, Honie. Now."

"And what'll you do if I don't have one for you yet?" I stalled, grabbing at the first piece of clothing that came to hand. Fortunately, it was Robyn's shirt. The sleeves scraped against my flesh and the shirt-tails trailed about my thighs.

Zach's grin only grew wider; he was older and stronger and more powerful than I was, and he knew it. "I'll just tell the truth." He settled down on the edge of the bed; the dismembered arm draped across his lap. Robyn made a choking sound and shuffled backward in the bed. He didn't reach for her, didn't even really look at her as he added, "Like this. It's all about answering the questions, baby doll."

Now Zach turned her way, blue eyes alight. He patted the arm in his lap in an affectionate gesture, and then dug his nails in. I heard bones snapping under the pressure. "I'm her cousin, and what's going on is simple: she gets to join me, or she gets to die. We're predators. We're loners. We don't share the same space. I want to change all that. She just wants to draw a line down the middle of the city and split it in two."

I could tell from Robyn's expression that she didn't understand. "Don't listen to him. He's crazy."

"We're all crazy, kiddo. It's that nephil blood running through our veins from our fathers. All that concentrated rage and disappointment from getting kicked out of Heaven." Now Zach was talking to me. "But you get a choice: you can be smart-crazy or stupid-crazy."

One thing about Zach that I could count on: he always talked too much. I'd already launched myself toward him, yelling something unintelligible. He caught me by the scruff of the neck like I was a kitten, and shook me hard. "One last chance, Honie."

I tried to kick him in the shin; he held me out at arms' length and shook me again, hard enough to make me wheeze when I tried to talk. "Naughty naughty." He sounded regretful as he clamped his other hand around my throat. Maybe he really had liked me after all; he'd given me over a year to make a decision. I didn't have enough breath to remind him that Jack the Ripper was my half-brother, that my father was the Lord of Knives and Razors.

Spots danced in front of my eyes as I gripped his wrists and concentrated. The flesh peeled back from his bones in long shredded strips. I heard him howling and Robyn screaming over the throbbing beat between my ears.

Desperation made it easy; it almost felt like I was cheating. His hands were skeletonized, his forearms hanging in a mass of frayed and bleeding ribbons of tissue as he fled into the shadows, shedding a finger-bone as a flayed tendon gave out.

I could have followed, walking the shadows and tracing his blood-trail. I didn't. He was family, after all. I hadn't wanted to hurt him... much. I certainly didn't want to kill him.

Robyn was still screaming hysterically, the whites of her eyes stark in the gloom. Turning away from the bed, I bent and picked up the arm that Zach had left behind. I couldn't afford for anyone to find it and match my teeth to the marks across the palm of that hand.

For that matter, I couldn't afford anyone taking Robyn seriously. "I'm sorry," I whispered as I reduced the arm to stew meat with my touch alone. Without imminent death to provide an impetus, it was a slow process. Too slow, and I'd always liked using my hands instead of my heritage.

Robyn hadn't heard my apology. She'd been too busy screaming. Now she ran for the door, the pudge over her ribs jiggling with every step. She was still screaming; those screams changed in tenor when I caught her by the arms.

After a few moments, the screaming stopped.

I paused, looking upward apprehensively. The noise probably seemed to go on for moments instead of seconds. My upstairs neighbor hadn't started pounding on the ceiling yet, telegraphing annoyance at the midnight racket.

I really was sorry. Not that she'd ever know, now. Dressing hastily, I grabbed my escape bag from its place in my closet and followed Zach's blood trail into the shadows.

I took her ankh with me for remembrance.

The End

Story copyright S. Evans, published by the Fortean Bureau
http://www.forteanbureau.com