Heartless (2 page)

I laughed, and it was sharp and somewhat rude. “Yeah, right,” I said, poking at his hand as it tried to slide back around my waist. “Are you crazy? This is Smytheville. Smytheville
never
closes for snow.
Ever.
”

Eli quit grabbing me, quit trying to pull me back to him, and rolled on his back, fully awake. He sighed. “Aren’t you just Little Miss Sunshine tonight.”

“I’m just tired,” I whined. “And you were snoring, and the storm is so loud, and I can’t
sleep
!”

He sighed again and sat up, swinging his legs out from under the covers.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“To get a drink.”

Eli stood, his boxers hanging loose on his hips. When he opened the door to his room strains of Pink Floyd filtered in from one of his roommates’ ancient stereo systems. I flopped back on the bed, pulling his pillow over my head. “Why does everything have to be so loud?”

By the time Eli shuffled back to bed, my frustration at not being able to sleep had me raring for a fight. He slid in beside me and tried again to pull me to him, but I pulled away.

“What now,” he said, and I could tell from his voice that he was getting irritated.

I smiled my sweetest, most innocent smile, one I knew he could see in the dim light from the streetlight barely visible through the raging storm outside. “I was just wondering,” I said, “what you’ve decided about med school, and what we’ll do when you graduate in May.”

Eli groaned. “Really? You want to talk about this now? It’s two a.m. and you have class in the morning.”

“Whatever,” I said. “It’ll be canceled, you’re right. And I’m just curious.”

“Why are you curious
now
, Jo?”

I ran a finger down his side, satisfied when I felt goose bumps rise to the surface of his skin. I kissed his shoulder. “Well, it’s just…” I paused, giving him some time to think. “It’s just that the guy I told you about last week—the big German soccer player in my bio lab—well, he asked me out to a show this weekend.”

Now it was Eli’s turn to pull away. He gave me a hard look. “And you’re telling me this why?”

“Well, I told him I’d think about it. I wanted to see if it would bother you if I went?”

“Bother me? Would it bother me? Are you serious? Would it bother me if my girlfriend went out with another guy?”

I sat up straight in the bed, pulled my bare legs out from beneath the covers, and slung them over the side. “Oh, so
now
I’m your girlfriend? Now that someone else wants to take me out? Why aren’t I your girlfriend when I ask about med school? Or when your friends want you to go hang out with them instead of me? I’m not your girlfriend then, am I?”

“Oh, come on, Jo,” he said, and his hands balled into fists. He took a deep breath and counted silently to ten before he spoke again. “Knock it off. You’re tired, and when you’re tired, you get crazy. You know you’re my…”

“Now I’m crazy, huh?” I felt my cheeks turn pink, and my hands trembled. Tears burned in my eyes—I always cried when angry, and the presence of tears never failed to increase my fury. “Crazy. Wow. It’s nice to know what you really think of me, Eli. Now I know why you won’t talk about May with me. A doctor doesn’t need a crazy wife!”

“Jesus, who’s talking about getting married! You’re nineteen. Jolene Hall, would you
please
calm down and go to sleep. We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

I stared at him. His cheeks were flushed, his body tensed for a tussle. We stood on opposite sides of his rumpled bed. Outside, the winds howled, but inside we were electric, charged, ready to explode. I turned my back on Eli and walked over to my pile of clothes in the corner of his room. I dug out my jeans and pulled them on.

“Come on,” Eli said, walking over to me and taking my arm. “What are you doing?”

“Going home,” I said, tears finally spilling out of my eyes. “I don’t want to burden you with my craziness anymore.”

He tried to pull me to him, but I yanked my arm away from his grip. “Leave me alone,” I said. “It’s nice to finally know what you really think.”

“Jo,” he said. “You know I don’t think you’re crazy. I misspoke. You’re not going home in the middle of this storm and we both know it. Now take off your jeans and come back to bed.”

Part of me wanted to. Part of me wanted to let him comfort me, let him hold me and kiss me and apologize for calling me crazy.

But a bigger part of me was led by a need to get out, to run away, and so I made a choice.
The
choice. The choice that would change everything.

I slapped his hand away. “I’ll be fine,” I said. I pulled on my boots and heavy winter coat. “I’m not afraid of the snow. And I don’t want to stay here with you another minute, you stubborn, stupid asshole.”

Eli had a slow fuse. It was hard to get him angry. “Fine,” he said, his voice shaking. His shoulders rose and fell with deep breaths. “Go then. Go be the spoiled little brat I always knew you were. Go out with your Russian guy…”

“He’s
German
!”

“I don’t care! Go out with whoever you want, and get the hell out of my life.”

I
t only took me a minute to finish getting dressed. I slung my bag over my shoulder, pulled out my cell phone, and stomped down the stairs. When I opened the door, the force of the wind outside was almost enough to make me turn around and wait out the storm in the living room, but then I saw Eli coming down after me. I gave him one last, defiant look, and I stepped out into the blinding, pelting, violent snow.

T
he next thing I knew, I woke up inside a morgue.

Of course, it took me a few minutes to figure that out. All I knew at first was that I was cold. So cold, in fact, I couldn’t feel my hands or feet. And I know people say that all the time, that they can’t feel their hands or feet, but what they
really
mean is that their hands and feet hurt in that bizarre way we all equate with “not feeling them.”

But me? Right then? I
really
couldn’t feel my hands and feet. There was an absence there that my brain couldn’t explain, an inability to move my fingers or wiggle my toes. I shivered in the cold, and I could feel my body shake, but not at all my hands or feet. They were gone.

My eyes were shut tight, the lids glued together like a kid with crusted-over pinkeye. I would have reached up a hand to pry them open, had I been able to feel even one of my hands. Since I couldn’t, I lay on my back, blind, as cold seeped upward from whatever hard, freezing surface was beneath me. I definitely wasn’t in my dorm, nor was I on the creaky mattress at Eli’s. Like Dorothy and Toto, I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. In fact, I had no idea where I was.

I tried to open my eyes. I tried so hard the muscles in my neck spasmed with the effort. But my eyes remained closed, and my hands and feet remained numb.

So then I moaned.

Really, I tried to cry out, to shout for help. But all I managed was a moan, and even that came out all wrong. It was an inhuman sound, unlike any I’d ever uttered. It became another lopsided piece to the bizarro puzzle my brain couldn’t fit together in those first few seconds. Because that’s all it was. Just a few seconds.

I moaned again, that creepy, guttural sound. I tried to roll to my side. I couldn’t. Groaning, I leveraged the little movement I’d managed to roll to the other side.

I was perhaps a bit too successful. I rolled over the edge of the rock-hard bed (or at least, in some terrified, panicked part of my brain, I
thought
it was a bed) and fell with a crash to the rock-hard floor. My head hit the ground with a jolt that sent something like electricity crackling through my body.

And then I was on again. Zap. Just like that. The bang to my head was all I needed. My eyes flew open, crusties be damned, and my hands and feet sprang back to life. Sitting up, I rubbed my head with a hand that felt new and exciting. I was no longer cold, filled suddenly with a burning energy that flowed through my muscles with a twitching intensity. I blinked a few times to clear my eyes—they felt dust-bowl dry—and ran my hands through my hair, catching them in a few thick tangles. As my vision came into focus, I was able to begin to process my surroundings.

The ground on which I sat was as hard as the bed from which I fell.
But no,
I realized.
Not a bed. It’s a table.
It was tall and made from stainless steel, with long legs ending in dusty black wheels. The floor was white tile, flecked with gray, and it was spotless but for some splatters of green goo that surrounded my immediate location. I wrinkled my nose at the goo, afraid to look beyond it to see whatever else there was to see. From that first impression, I wondered if I was in a hospital…or a warehouse.

A warehouse? That doesn’t feel right,
I thought.
But a hospital. Yes. That makes sense. Something must have happened. I’m a patient somewhere. But where is everyone? Why am I alone? Why am I on the floor?

I…began to freak out. Just a little. The weird thing was, even though I was terrified, even though I should have felt my heart racing and my stomach flip-flopping and my face sweating, I felt nothing. I wasn’t even panting.

Or breathing.

Not even the tiniest bit. I took a deep breath to see what would happen, and the
mechanics
of breathing worked. The air came in, the air went out. But as soon as I stopped thinking about it, I stopped breathing again. And I didn’t feel like I needed to breathe, which was
really weird.

So then I panicked.

A lot.

I yanked myself to my feet (it was a little more difficult than normal, but really, what with waking up alone in some crazy, unidentified space, I hardly had time to notice), and finally saw the room around me without table legs and shelves blocking my view.

Definitely not a warehouse.

Fluorescent lights in stainless steel hoods swung from chains below a high gray ceiling. Perfectly square cabinets covered with white Formica filled three of the four walls. They looked vaguely familiar, like maybe I’d seen cabinets like them in some ’80s detective rerun.
Matlock. Murder, She Wrote
. A flash of light flickered against a silver table, and I turned to it.

Beside me stood three other tables, identical to the one from which I’d fallen, and on each of the three tables lay a dead body. Three dead girls, just like me.

Dead. I’m in a morgue.

I opened my mouth to scream. All that came out was another moan.

From the OoA files, dated December 12:

Design Doc 32-A

Iteration 3

Vocal cords are problematic. They are delicate and rupture easily. Care must be taken to preserve the integrity of a subject’s voice in order to achieve full integration. This can be accomplished via a swab of oil (vegetable or olive; peanut has caused reactions in those with allergies) along the back of the throat every two hours during procedures.

H
ow is this happening? Why am I dead? How am I still standing here?

I stood in the morgue, my hand resting on the table from which I’d just fallen, the room wavering this way and that. I was crying.

Well, I
thought
I was
crying. I thought tears and snot ran down my chin, but when my hand flew to my mouth to stifle another of those awful, bestial moans, it found nothing. Dry nothing. No tears, no snot. Nothing.

I touched my nose, my cheek. They felt surprisingly solid, all things considered. I passed my hand before my eyes, and I couldn’t see through it. It was as solid as the table, as opaque as the floor.

I’m not a ghost. At least, I’m pretty sure I’m not.

I tried to speak again, but it still didn’t work. I moaned, because it was all I
could
do, and I had to do
something.
Something felt a lot better than nothing, and when I realized that, I decided to do something else. I bolted for the door on the far side of the morgue. I had to get out of there. A wet, sick ripping sound exploded behind me. I wondered what had caused it, but not enough to turn around or stop running.