Just Kill Me (11 page)

“Ghosting you,” says Rick. “We're calling it ‘ghosting.' Megan's idea.”

“It's in the
Oxford English Dictionary
,” says Cyn.

Mrs. Gunderson beams. “How sophisticated!”

This has to be a prank.

Has to, has to, has to.

Mrs. Gunderson is probably in on it.

Maybe it's a test to see how I do under pressure.

I lean forward and whisper to Cyn, “You're sure she's not senile?” That seems like the kind of question they'd want me to be asking.

“Yeah, she's fine.”

I look at the frail woman beside me, trying to see a glimmer in her eye that can tell me it's all a joke. All I see is that same look people give Mom when she really, really goes above and beyond and helps them through a tough time at the funeral home. Gratitude. The kind of look she used to talk about getting when she was subtly trying to persuade me to take up a career in the family business.

“They'd keep me alive in that bed for twenty more years,” Mrs. Gunderson says.

“As long as they could keep making money off you,” says Rick.

“I tried to starve myself, you know.”

“We know,” says Cyn.

“I'm too weak to cut my own wrists or hang myself. All I could think to do was starve. But I got so hungry! It takes such a long time to starve.”

“They'd just hook you to an IV and pump in nutrients anyway,” says Cyn.

“You can't know how much it means to me that you'd do this,” Mrs. Gunderson says. “Are you sure you don't mind? Really sure?”

“Hey,” says Cyn. “Every time we let fuckers like Edward Tweed tell people to jump right to supernatural explanations for things they can't explain, we're killing even more people than we are right here. Whenever some nut starts shooting people because he thinks a spirit told him to, Tweed's got blood
on his hands. Putting him out of business is going to save lives.”

“Well, that's overstating it,” says Rick. “It's not his fault people are nuts.”

”It's overstating a little,” says Cyn. “But think about it. Every business relies on killing. Only reason we can afford the gas to drive the bus around is people dying for oil.”

I pull out my phone and see that Zoey has sent me several messages, each more explicit than the last. I send a few noncommittal “mmm” and “oooh” messages. Enough to keep it going without really getting involved.

Rick turns back to Mrs. Gunderson when we get to a red light.

“Now, you understand,” he says, “that we might have to scare you a bit to make sure the ghost thing works, right? We think it'll work better if you're scared when it happens.”

“I understand. But it will all be quick and painless?”

“Totally,” says Cyn.

“I've updated my will,” says Mrs. Gunderson. “It says I want the funeral at the home you suggested.”

Cyn smiles back at me, silently telling me what funeral home she means. Then she tilts her head at me and says, “You okay? You look worried.”

“Well,” I say, “I assume you've covered all the bases to make sure we won't get in trouble, right? Assisted suicide isn't legal.”

“This would be legal in Oregon, if we were doctors,” says Cyn. “That's close enough for me.”

“Yeah,” says Rick. “Even if there's an autopsy, it'll just look like an aneurysm.”

And he pulls the van into the little parking area behind the Chicago History Museum, right near the Couch tomb.

“Thank you so much,” says Mrs. Gunderson. “You really can't know what it means to me, to die on a lovely October night beneath a beautiful pink moon.”

October.

She said it was October.

It's June.

As Cyn unloads the wheelchair, I feel like I've solved the puzzle. This isn't real. It's a test. And I'm going to pass.

I text Zoey that I'll be back in a few while I wait for Cyn to push Mrs. Gunderson out of earshot.

“She said it was October,” I say to Rick.

“You lose track of time when you're in the home,” he says.

“Is that the clue I'm supposed to pick up on? The proof that she's not lucid enough to make a decision like this, so we shouldn't be doing it?”

“Aw, she's fine,” says Rick. “She's been begging and begging for this. Now, this part is your job.”

He picks up a plastic bag from the floor of the van and hands it over to me. I open it up and see a gorilla mask.

A gorilla mask.

“What . . . in the boneless gummy hell?”

“It's a gorilla mask,” he says.

“I can see that, Ricardo, but what is it for?”

“Hey, we're not just taking care of her as a favor. We're also trying to get her to haunt the place, so it'll help if she's scared when she dies.”

I stare down at the mask. It smells like Halloween and new school supplies.

“This is supposed to scare her?”

“Hey, gorillas are some of the fiercest killers in the animal kingdom,” says Rick. “Don't be fooled by those cute ones who learn sign language.”

This can't be real. It has to be a test.

Cyn comes back to the van, having left Mrs. Gunderson sitting on the grass near the Couch tomb, where any imprint she might leave would be right where our customers would see it. “All set with the mask?”

“Look,” I say, putting it down. “She said it was October, and it's June. It makes me worry that she's not as coherent as you said. I'm fine with assisted suicide for chronic elderly patients, but they have to be, you know, of sound mind.”

“Well, go talk to her a bit if you want,” says Cyn. “Make sure.”

“I will.”

And I hop out of the van and march up to the tomb, where Mrs. Gunderson is waiting, slumped down in her wheelchair, looking peaceful and calm in the moonlight.

“It's June, Mrs. Gunderson,” I say. “Not October. Was that the clue I was supposed to notice? This is all a test, right?”

She doesn't respond, so I step closer.

Her eyes are closed, but she seems to be smiling. I wonder for a second if old people are like babies, that when she smiles it's just gas.

But her smile stays frozen as I move alongside her.

“Mrs. Gunderson?”

Her head slumps down onto her shoulder.

I wobble her wheelchair a bit, waiting for her to start laughing and admit it was all a joke, but her arms fall limp at her sides.

Oh, for the love of . . .

The right
OED
synonym for “shit” just won't come into my brain. For the love of something.

This can't be happening.

I touch her face, swear out loud, and put my finger to her wrist. No pulse. I don't know enough about CPR to know if I'm doing it correctly, but I've been around enough corpses to know one when I see one, and I'm seeing one now.

I look back at the van, where Rick and Cyn are standing by the passenger side, watching.

“Uh, minor problem!” I call out.

I motion them forward, and they walk across the grass, toward the tomb.

“What's wrong?” asks Cyn.

“She's already dead.”

“What?” asks Rick, his eyes suddenly as wide as saucers. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Nope. She's dead.”

“This was just a hazing prank!” says Rick. “She wasn't supposed to die for real!”

“Yeah,” says Cyn. “She was in on it. There's no way she's dead.”

“Storven,” I say. “Unquick. Bypast. Off to join the choir invisible. This is an ex-geezer.”

“This is no time to make jokes,” says Rick as he rushes toward me. “Have some respect, padawan.”

“Let me check her,” says Cyn. She comes over and takes Mrs. Gunderson's pulse, then tries some basic CPR stuff, and when she doesn't respond at all, Cyn confirms it. Mrs. Gunderson is gone.

“Well, shit,” says Rick. “Should we try some chest compressions?”

“She's got a Do Not Resuscitate tag,” says Cyn, stepping backward and looking down at her. “This is what she wanted. No extraordinary measures in the event of an emergency.”

I look down at Mrs. Gunderson. It's seriously cliché to say “she looks so peaceful,” but she totally does. She's even still smiling. Like she died in the middle of playing a prank. Not a bad way to go, if you've gotta go.

Both her hair and Cyn's blow in the breeze.

“Well, what do we do now?” asks Rick.

“We hurry,” says Cyn, all business. “Let's get her back in her bed.”

“Not call the police?” asks Rick.

“If they find her in her bed, everyone will think she just died of natural causes in her sleep. If we take her back and say she died, we'll be drowning in paperwork for years. The insurance company might sue us, or worse. And I sure as hell don't want to have to explain the gorilla mask.”

Rick is looking pale now. “I swear this was a prank,” he tells me. “You think she just died of too much excitement?”

“Must have,” says Cyn. “But we can worry about that later. Let's just get her back in the room. Quick, before rigor mortis starts in.”

We load Mrs. Gunderson and her wheelchair into the van and drive back to the home, wheeling her right past Shanita and hoisting her onto her bed. She really does look like she just passed away in her sleep.

I'm not freaking out, really, but I feel like I
should
be, and the fact that I'm
not
sort of disturbs me. What does it say about me that I don't really mind having just sort of participated in ending someone's life? I should feel upset about this. Guilty. Scared. I don't know.

But I feel calm.

Everybody dies, and Mrs. Gunderson probably couldn't have asked for a better way to do it at this point.

Even though I feel like there's at least a fifty percent chance that this was no coincidence, and Cyn really did punch Mrs. Gunderson in the brain while Rick was showing me the gorilla mask.

I send Zoey a text begging her to tell me I'm not a psychopath. She's seen enough of my stories to know my dark side. She sends a picture of a couple of cartoon characters hugging with a message:

ZOEY BABY:

If you are, then you're MY psychopath, sweetie.

I guess that anytime I've fantasized about making a getaway after committing a crime, I've imagined rambling through dark cobblestone alleys and through networks of winding tunnels under the ground. Our trip away from the nursing home is nothing that dramatic. It isn't even as dramatic as running away from tagging walls with a pencil. We just sit in traffic, mostly. I guess it beats running through the sewers.

At one point we get held up so badly that Cyn has time to run into a cupcake shop on Clark, just below Diversey Parkway. “If the traffic unfreezes, go around the block and pick me up,” she says, as Rick takes the wheel. “You guys want anything?”

“I'm good,” I say.

She bolts from the bus and into Molly's Cupcakes, and I move into the front row, right behind the driver's seat.

“You can drive the bus too?” I ask.

He nods. “I have my CDL. I'm actually going to be the driver for your first few solo tours, so I can jump in if I have to.”

“So, how much of that was real?” I ask Rick. “Did
Marjorie Kay Stone really write about creating ghosts by punching brains?”

“Yeah, that part was real,” he says. “So was Mrs. Gunderson wanting to die. That prayer the other day wasn't an act, it was what she did before every meal. There aren't gonna be any sad faces at the funeral. Which I think actually is at your place.”

“Does the brain punch actually work?”

“Marjorie Kay Stone sure thought it did. I don't know if she ever tried it, though. She probably did. She was pretty fucked up by the time we met her. But this. This was a prank, not an experiment. Didn't Cyn tell you I was the biggest prankster in Magwitch Park?”

She didn't, but I'm not surprised. Now, while we wait for Cyn to get out of the cupcake shop, he tells me stories about filling the school toilets with Jell-O mix, so the water turned to gelatin, and something about smearing the floor of the gym with bowling lane oil.

Cyn comes running back with a box of cupcakes just before the cars ahead of us start moving, and by the time we get through the light she's already wolfing one down.

“You're really gonna eat that now?” asks Rick. “You just touched a corpse.”

“She was pretty clean,” Cyn says, spraying frosting from her mouth. “Death's not contagious.”

“It just seems unhygienic.”

Cyn turns back to me and says, “Is it, like, inherently less
hygienic to touch a dead person than a living one?”

“Depends on what they died of and how long they've been dead, I guess.”

She offers us each a cupcake, but we both pass.

I thought she didn't mind the basement at the house because she was a badass, but now I think maybe she's just the sort of person who has no “squick” reflex whatsoever. Which itself is kind of badass.