Grim

SELL OUT by Jackson Pearce

I wish I had a better talent.

Painting. Playing the violin. Woodcutting, even. Anything.

Maybe I wouldn’t feel this way if it manifested differently. Through a handshake or something. A tap on the shoulder. Hell, a slap on the ass. At least that way it’d be over fast, and it wouldn’t involve me kissing a corpse.

But I make a lot of money per kiss, and it’s stupid money, easy money. It’s this or join the family business, and taxidermy isn’t for me. The only thing creepier than kissing a dead human is peeling the skin off a dead animal and pretending like that’s a normal way of acquiring a new centerpiece for your living room.

“New assignments,” my boss says, slapping a pack of paper down in the middle of the room. It’s thinner than last week—with the prices the company charges for a kiss, I’m actually surprised it’s not thinner still. We get only a fraction of the money, but it’s hard to get hired as a self-proprietor in this field. It’s like people think that if they go through a company, it’s all on the up-and-up. If they go through an individual, it’s dark magic.

I think companies like mine spread those rumors. Keep prices up, so we’re kissing only the rich.

My boss clears his throat. “We’re short on women this round. Sorry.” He nods at me. “Emmett’s turn to get the one.” I try to look appreciative.

A guy to my right cusses under his breath. “I’m so sick of kissing old white guys.” A few of my coworkers mutter agreements till our boss glares, shuts us up. He passes out the papers. Name, address, a time. Nothing more. We don’t really need to know anything else.

Elise Snow, 706 Fourteenth Street. Tuesday at 7:00 p.m.

I suck in a sharp breath, then fold the paper crookedly and shove it in my pocket.

I know Elise Snow.

Or, I knew her. A long time ago—I haven’t seen her in almost a decade, since fifth grade, I think. The little rich girl in school, Shelton County’s very own princess—and she had the pageant crowns to prove it.

I hated her.

She called my family poor. She made fun of my dad’s job. She told us her dad could take our house away, if he wanted—which was an exaggeration on the fact that he owned the bank that owned my parents’ mortgage. And she pelted me with crab apples from the tree whose branches shaded the school playground.

Mom said she was probably hurting on the inside. That she was just misunderstood. That she’d grow out of it—that people change.

She didn’t—at least, by fifth grade she hadn’t. And so I really, really don’t want to kiss Elise Snow, dead or alive. I wonder how she died. It can’t have been too violent—if their bodies are broken, we aren’t allowed to kiss them, after all. Usually, with people her age, it’s a drug overdose. Rich kids apparently can’t think of a better way to die.

“Emmett,” my dad says, voice crushing my thoughts. He’s positioning a boar’s head on a piece of wood; its eyes are glass now, empty and stupid-looking. “Got a job?”

“Yep.”

“How many people?”

“Just one right now.”

My dad freezes; the boar’s hair flutters a little as the oscillating fan rotates by.

“God. Just one? You’ve got to get more work....” Dad shakes his head. I try not to glare. It’s only mostly his fault, not entirely. We still owe thousands to the hospital that took care of Mom before she died. Thousands more for her funeral. Thousands for Dad’s hospital visit, when he tried to join my mom.

It had almost worked the first two times. The third time would have definitely worked if it hadn’t been for me. I look at the scars on his wrists as he nails the boar’s head into place. If I hadn’t kissed him, I wouldn’t have even known about the power. He’d have stayed dead, and I’d have run from this town, from our debt, started over somewhere in the woods, living off the land. Alone. Someplace no one could find me. Far away from my job, from taxidermy and from anyone like Elise Snow.

But it felt right to join a company. It felt noble. Important. It felt nice to have a talent, after years of worrying I had none.

It felt like living.

Now it just feels like a paycheck.

There’s a white SUV outside our house. It’s that pearly kind of white, the kind that almost has a pinkish hue. I squint to see the driver, but the windows are tinted so dark that I can make out only a silhouette. I loathe the sorts of hunters who drive cars like this—they’re the kinds of people who hunt on game ranches where all the animals are fenced in. Dad never hunted like that. He said it wasn’t fair to kill a thing that never had a chance.

Ah—wait. It’s not a hunter at all. It’s a tall, severe-looking woman, who has features that were probably mysterious and sexy thirty years ago. Now they have the worn, grubby look of dull pencils. She makes a face when she surveys the broken shutters on our house, then picks her way around the crushed pinecones in our driveway.

I turn up the television as Dad answers the door. I’m watching another rerun of Gilligan’s Island. I used to say I hated this show (Coconuts can’t be transformed into circuit breakers, Professor), but I started watching the reruns right after graduation and never stopped, so maybe I don’t hate it, after all. Maybe I just hate coconuts.

Dad appears in the doorway, eyebrows raised. “Um...she’s here for you.”

I blink as Mary Ann straightens her pigtails.

The severe lady appears over Dad’s shoulder, her coat bright white against the cheap wood paneling in this room. I click the TV off and rise warily.

The woman looks at me, lips pressed into a forced smile. She turns to my dad. “Might we have a moment alone?”

“Sure,” Dad says, shrugging. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”

“Thank you,” the lady says, though the warmth in her voice feels as fake as her hair looks. She waits till Dad walks away, till she hears him shut the door and descend into the basement.

“Um, hi. Can I help you?” I ask, extending a hand.

“Do you remember me?” she asks. “You went to school with my stepdaughter. I’m Beverly Windsor-Snow?”

Elise’s stepmother.

“Yeah, yeah,” I say, dropping my hands in my jean pockets.

We stare at one another for a long time.

“Well. I...” She inhales, then drops her voice. “It’s come to my attention that you’ll be kissing my stepdaughter next Tuesday.”

I frown—she’s not supposed to have information like that, but I guess when you’re rich, you can afford to buy it. “That’s right,” I say.

Beverly nods at me, pauses, like she’s choosing her words carefully. “I’m not sure if you know this, but Elise and I never got along very well. She was a rather...difficult child.”

I exhale, almost laugh in agreement. She gives me a hard look, then moves on.

“Things got bad when her father got sick. Battling out his will made things nasty between us. She got almost everything. She doesn’t even need it, in that stupid artists’ colony she’s living in, but she refused to give me a penny. So the reason I’m here, Emmett, is I have an offer for you.”

She dips a silky hand into her purse, pulls out a thick white envelope. When she hands it to me, I see the flash of green bills straining at the flap. They’re crisp and new; I pull the mouth of the envelope apart to confirm what I already suspected. Hundred-dollar bills.

“That’s a down payment. Five thousand dollars. Finish the job and I’ll give you another twenty. Every year. For the rest of your life.”

I look up at her, eyes wide.

“What’s the job?”

Beverly steps toward me, licks her lips. “You’re supposed to kiss Elise on Tuesday. I want you to botch it. Say it didn’t work. Say you lost the talent. Say anything you want, but don’t kiss her. Don’t wake her up.”

“Twenty thousand dollars, for life?” I ask wondrously. I look at her, baffled. “To not do my job?”

“If she’s dead, I get the inheritance. And I need that money. It’s worth paying you dearly for. Surely you didn’t want to kiss dead people forever? You can go...do something. Whatever it is you want to do,” she says, tossing her hand at me. “Stuff animals with your father, I don’t know. Watch television all day. Buy new carpet,” she says, glancing dismally at our ratty floors.

“Just for not kissing her. That’s it. No strings,” I say, waiting for a catch.

“No strings,” she says. “The hippies she lives with don’t have access to her inheritance—they pooled together their pennies to hire you. So if you don’t kiss her, her week will have expired before they can get someone new. She stays dead.”

She’s right. Six days is already pushing it for a kiss. No one has ever successfully kissed someone back after seven. Elise Snow stays dead. I hand my father a check for his bills.

I leave.

I become something new. Something great, something better than a kisser who brings back the rich. Something important. Anything important.

I nod at Beverly, smash the envelope in my hand.

I thought Fourteenth Street was in the rich part of town, both because it’s Elise Snow’s address and because most of the numbered streets are lined in shiny condos. Apparently the lower numbers, however, still boast old brick warehouses with dirty windows that overlook the harbor. I squint at the address on the building, then at my slip of paper, wondering how this can be right. Elise Snow can’t live in a place like this. That’s crazy.

But it says this is 706 Fourteenth, so... I sigh, trudge to the dented metal door on the side. Knocking hurts in the cold, double so when combined with the sharp, cold breeze coming off the water. I hear shuffling inside, movement; the door swings open.

The guy is covered in tattoos, colorful ones with colors that fade in and out like watercolors instead of ink. He sighs when he sees me, grins.

“I’m here for—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he says, sounding relieved. He steps aside, waves me in. “It’s him!” he calls out.

His voice bounces through the warehouse, across half walls and partitions and winding metal staircases. This place is full of mismatched furniture and wall murals of pinup girls. The guy grins at me as we hear a scurrying of feet. Other people hurry toward us from what seems like every direction. They’re covered in piercings, tattoos, splattered paint. They have feathers or beads in their hair; they have smiles on their lips.

They hug me.

I’m not really sure how to handle that. I’m really not sure how to handle liking it.

“So...” the guy who answered the door says after I’ve been hugged about eight thousand times. Everyone is staring at me eagerly. I’m used to that. I’m just not used to wanting to stare back.

“Where is she?” I ask. Remember. You’ve got a job to do. Botch it.

“Oh, sorry, of course. Through here,” a petite girl says, waving me forward.

The warehouse is a maze of rooms, studios, workshops. “What is this place?” I ask as we slide through a sculpture studio.

“It’s our house. And our workshop. And everything else.”

“A colony,” I say, remembering Beverly using the term. “Like an artists’ colony.”

“Yep,” the guy at the door says. “Something like that.”

“So...you guys make a living off your art, then? Like, you do this professionally?”

“Ah,” he says. “You don’t make a living from art. You make art from living.”

I want to punch him for that damn hippie phrase, but I find myself nodding instead.

“Here,” a girl says, stopping suddenly in front of me. She meets my eyes a long time, like she sees something there, then steps aside so I can see through the doorway of a bedroom.

And there is Elise Snow.

Dead people are never pretty—they’re made to look that way by undertakers, but really, once the life is gone, the pretty is gone, too. Elise Snow is no exception. She looks rocklike, her skin tone similar to the blank wall behind her. The wall seems odd, empty, compared to the rest of this place. I walk toward her; the others crowd into the doorway. I glance back at them—

I gasp. The back wall isn’t empty. The back wall is full.

A painting of a young Elise, dissolving into the clouds, being thrown around books and music and what looks like a schoolhouse. A picture of the crab-apple tree, of a pointy white woman I assume is Beverly. Paintings of her naked with boys, with girls, with people without faces. Color, color everywhere, images, details, so much that I can’t absorb it all—her entire life.

I didn’t know she had talent like this. I wonder when she discovered it.

I wonder when she became this Elise Snow, instead of the princess I knew. Was it sudden, like my change from normal boy to raiser of the dead? Or was it gradual?

Mom was right. Elise was misunderstood—by me at least. And she did change. So did I. She became beautiful, and I became...this.

“Will it take long?” a voice asks—I can’t tell whose.

“No,” I say, shaking my head, trying not to stare at the painting. “No, it won’t.”

It won’t take long because I’m not going to wake her. I can’t. I can’t turn down Beverly’s offer. And besides, I already used some of the down payment to keep our electric bill on.

“How did she die?” I ask. I never ask this. I usually don’t want to know. I look down at her body; her hair is dark, but it’s been colored. She has tattoos of roses covering her clavicles, disappearing into the neck of her shirt.

“Does it matter?” someone asks.

No. It doesn’t. But the shadiness in the person’s voice makes me think I was right about the drug overdose. I don’t feel as smug as I expect to. I wish someone could have helped her. I mean, someone other than me, someone who could have done more than just wake her after—

No. Not wake her. I grimace.

I reach forward, take her hand. It’s difficult—rigor has set in; she’s stiff, icy. I can feel the calluses in her palm, I guess from gripping a paintbrush.

This is just a job. How is a rich person paying me not to kiss any worse than rich people paying me to kiss? It’s all about what can be bought. About using my talent to make money. I feel a swirling in my stomach, think about what the guy said about living, about making a living. He’s just a stupid hippie druggie. You have to make money. You have to survive.

I lean forward. I position my thumb so that my lips can brush it, can stay away from Elise’s skin. They’ll never catch it from where they’re standing. They’ll think I kissed her.

It’s just a job.

I plant my lips on my own thumb, Elise’s skin thick, cold, unkissed beneath it.

It feels like I’m the dead one. All I can think of is the deer in the game ranches, the ones that are fenced in. Of my dad. It isn’t fair, killing something that doesn’t have a chance.

Elise didn’t even have a chance. Her chance was bought for twenty thousand dollars.

I rise. Turn to face them.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I think she’s expired.”

A cry from the background. Their mouths drop. They quiver. Shake. They are a single creature in pain, hurt, fearful. Their eyes light upon me, fill with water.

“No, wait!”

“There has to be something else you can do!”

“Try again, just one more time!”

“Are you sure?”

“The company said six days was plenty of time!”

Their voices harmonize as I take a step toward the door, another, another, another. They need her. They miss her. These people must understand her. I wonder if they could understand me....

No. This is just a job. Just a job. Just a job.

My talent is just a job. I am just a job.

I look up. Elise Snow’s eyes rain down on me from the dozens and dozens of paintings. Blue eyes, blue like water, boring into me, asking me why.

“Please,” someone says, the guy who answered the door. He’s trembling. He’s crying. He looks broken. “Please try again. Just one more.”

I turn around, look at Elise’s body. Someone tucked her into the bed, folded the blankets neatly around her torso. Her hands were in her lap, I realize—I must have pulled one slightly astray when I took it. I wish I’d put it back.

“Please.”

I inhale. Twenty thousand dollars a year. For me, that might as well be a million. I think of the house in the woods, of not having to do this job, of getting rid of all those “Final Notice” envelopes. I think of everything money can do.

I think of all the things it can’t.

I turn, dash back to Elise’s side, slide to my knees. I brush her hair away from her face easily—it feels like feathers.

Lower my lips to hers and kiss her on the mouth, kiss her hard. Because she is not the Elise Snow that I hate. She’s the Elise Snow that I’ve never met. She’s the Elise Snow I’d like to know. That I’d like to join here in this weird warehouse. That I’d like to understand, to change with.

That I can save.

Who can save me.

I pull away, exhale. The room is silent, still, crackling.

Elise’s blue eyes flutter open.

She’s living.

We both are.

* * * * *