Deadsville

​Chapter 1

Death answers before it is asked. – Russian Proverb

~

"Rules in Deadsville? We don’t need no stinkin’

rules." – Common saying in Deadsville

~

Octavia Stone opened her eyes and saw…a clown. A clown? Her first coherent thought was that it was a good thing she didn’t have an aversion to clowns like her cousin, Marlisa. Marlisa had such a serious thing about clowns that she equated them to the irradiated, alien, evil overlord offspring of John Wayne Gacy and Pennywise the Dancing Clown from Stephen King’s It. Tavie, on the other hand, had never been particularly bothered by elementary-aged children’s parties or the circus.

Consequently, Tavie wasn’t really frightened or freaked out by the clown above her. He wore sad face makeup and that befuddled Tavie for a moment. Clowns were supposed to be happy so why bother with the frowny face getup?

What the hell? she said. Why aren’t you smiling?

It’s okay, the clown said and tried to mug her. He reached inside Tavie’s jacket with a stained, oversized glove bogging down the movement of his fingers and awkwardly tried to remove her wallet. His rainbow colored wig jiggled as he moved. He muttered, Dang it, as he fumbled about.

For a few seconds, Tavie was still confused. She attempted to gather herself by listing details. She was lying on something hard and her head sort of hurt. The sky above was cloudy and dim as if the sun had just set or the sun was minutes away from popping over the edge of the horizon. There were buildings around her but the few bluish street lights that she saw didn’t make them particularly clearer. There wasn’t an obvious, reflective street sign blaring her location.

Tavie didn’t waste any more time thinking about where she was, nor did she waste time wondering how she had gotten there. For her, more critical was the clown’s hand on her identification.

Her hand came up and covered his gloved one. She took a moment to find the correct pressure point, finding it even through the heavy canvas, and twisted the clown’s thumb to the side, rotating his arm, and followed it up and to the side, as she bent the arm behind his body and into the air. Her head pounded with the effort she put out, trying to tell her that it wasn’t a good idea to move so swiftly, but there weren’t a lot of choices.

The clown made a noise that should have sounded something like a bicycle horn beeping if the gods of humor were in charge. Instead it was like the noise a man would have made if some very sensitive part had gotten stuck in the chain gear of a machine and the machine was still running. A sort of shriek and moan combined to let Tavie know that she had gotten the movement correct.

Yo, Happy the felony committing clown, Tavie said, almost as if she was having a conversation with a local barista who was making her a cappuccino. I’m kind of sentimental about that wallet. My mother gave it to me. My mother has good taste and I don’t want to lose it.

Happy the felony committing clown said, Arurggle. If he had been of the feline persuasion, it would have indicated he was about to throw up a hairball.

Tavie applied a little more force. She didn’t hear a corresponding pop so she knew his shoulder hadn’t come out of the socket. Because she had a good grip on the clown, she took a moment to look at her surroundings. It was probably a street. The ground was dirt, so she adjusted her conclusion accordingly and decided it was an alley instead. The buildings were short and squat, and appeared to be made from odds and ends salvaged from the dumpster at the back of a Home Depot. A solitary window in the nearest wall had a patchwork curtain hanging in it and it twitched as someone quickly withdrew from watching the events unfolding there.

Tavie looked in the other direction. There didn’t seem to be anything there but a long alley with haphazard houses lining it. These looked like the kind of houses on the edge of the desert, where the land hadn’t yet been conscripted by a municipality, and the folks built their own to suit them. They didn’t worry about codes or whether or not the house was exactly square. It was their home and the freedom to do what they wanted had led them there. Most importantly, there was the whole not-a-lot-of-money-in-the-bank factor.

She couldn’t remember driving out of the city. Tavie shook her head, trying to clear it. It still ached; it was the kind of ache that a good cup of espresso would cure in one fell swoop. Everything was a little fuzzy around the edges. There had been an early morning call. She had gotten into her Crown Victoria. She had driven into downtown Phoenix. People had been few and far between at 4 a.m. She had parked the Vic and gotten out. First on the scene. The thought had been there, flittering through her caffeine deprived brain.

Then…

Nothing…

At…

All…

Except…

Tavie had opened her eyes and a clown reached into her jacket to grab at her wallet.

A sudden pain darted into the right side of her brain. The memory that came with it was like being stabbed with a sharp icepick. Another man had been looking at her; his face had been so close she could feel the hot air from his breath. His eyes had been so dark, they had been black like the deepest shadow on the gloomiest night. A coal miner drawing a picture of a black dog in the midnight hour.

Who are you, Happy? Tavie asked, resisting the urge to rub at her forehead where the intense pain still pried at her inner being.

Thinkyou’regoingtobreakmythumb, the clown said all in one big slurry word. She pulled him around so she could see his eyes. Not dark. Not black. In fact, they were the color of the summer sky in high August.

"Oh, I’m not going to break your thumb, Tavie said. It’s actually the shoulder that will snap first. It’s a pressure thing. I could get into a whole discussion about where the most pressure is being applied and how it’s like the principle of torque, but you know, that sounds a little preachy. Most people don’t appreciate preachy, except maybe on Sundays. Sometimes not even then."

Pleasedon’t, Happy said.

Do you have any identification? Tavie asked politely, lightening the pressure incrementally.

Happy made another noise that sounded suspiciously like disbelief. Oh, he said and it was kind of a sigh of relief that she had lessened the force. "You’re new."

Stupid, someone else said.

Tavie moved her head so that she could see the newcomer. Nearby, a teenaged boy sat on a bicycle, but not so close that he was intimidating. He leaned his chin over his hand and braced his elbow on the handlebars and his long skinny frame didn’t seem threatening in the least. Who me? she asked.

No, him, the kid said, nodding at the clown. The kid leaned back and brushed his hair away from his face and Tavie could see a caved in area over his left eyebrow. It was a gaping hole and the gray stuff in the middle of blackened gore was probably his brains. He looked like he and the mountain bike had been in a lost fight with a Mack truck. Tavie’s eyes scanned his scrawny body and she abruptly perceived that his t-shirt wasn’t black but soaked with blood.

Tavie said a nasty word under her breath. I’ll call an ambulance, she said.

The kid giggled. New as a baby’s butt on the day he was born, he said and he clapped his hands together as if terribly amused.

Happy said urgently, For the love of St. Gabriel, don’t press so hard.

Shut up, Tavie said. What’s going on around here?

Don’t you remember? the kid asked.

Tavie shut her mouth. There was something she was supposed to remember. It tickled the edge of her consciousness like a demented feather. It taunted her, daring her to think about it harder. The icepick pain throbbed anew.

4 a.m. call. Drive to downtown. Park the car. First on the scene. A body lying there. Another victim. Stabbed. So quiet. So alone. Where am I? How did I get here?

Tavie had used her radio to call it in. She wanted units there. She wanted the street lit up with blue and red lights. She wanted to not be alone.

Then she hadn’t been alone.

A woman came out of the nearest squat house. Even in the dim light, Tavie could see the woman appeared to be blue skinned and it wasn’t because of the blue lights. That’s kind of weird, the bluish woman said to the kid on the bike.

I don’t think she remembers, the kid said.

The woman crossed her arms over her chest. Tavie could see that the arms had long gashes in them. She was bluish because she had lost most of her blood. It was strange because the cream colored apron she wore only had a few drops of red on it, as if the woman had held her arms away from her when they had been bleeding. The message on the apron was clear. It said "C’est la vie!"

The clown said, I thought she had passed out because she’s an ectohead.

Pshaw, the bluish woman said. We all know about you, Arnold. It’s not like you could have kept her wallet.

Happy’s name was Arnold? That was weird, too.

I just wanted to see what she had, Arnold whined. See something new, you know.

Tavie let go of Arnold’s thumb and he collapsed to the ground. Oh, thank you, he muttered. I know it’ll heal back, but it takes hours, and it feels so real.

Where am I? What happened to me?

The bluish woman glanced at the kid on the bike. The kid on the bike sighed gustily. Arnold rubbed his shoulder.

Well, dear, the bluish woman said, it’s kind of a shock, so prepare yourself.

Tavie wondered if she had been kidnapped. Perhaps she was in Nogales, south of the border, where God alone knew what happened to people who got strung up by drug lords and…

Wait. I don’t work drug enforcement bureau. I’ve never worked DEB. In fact, the last time I had anything to do with drugs was when my neighbor found a dime bag of pot in his flower garden and he wanted to know if he could legally smoke it.

You’re dead, the bluish woman said. She uncrossed her arms and the skin flap on her right arm gaped so widely open that Tavie could see tendons and bones.

I’m dead, Tavie repeated.

You’re dead, the kid on the bike agreed.

Dead, Arnold echoed.

Huh, Tavie said. She reached for her cell phone. Then she remembered that the battery had gone belly up the day before. It had been on her list of things to do. She would have to swing by the Verizon store in order to get them to get her phone to work. Or she would have to upgrade. It was sitting in the Crown Vic in one of the cup holders. There hadn’t been much point in putting it in her pocket. Can I borrow a phone?

Most people don’t have phones here, the bluish woman said, not that it would do you any good because they don’t usually work.

I don’t think she believes us, the kid said.

No one ever does at first, the bluish woman said.

Arnold said, I didn’t.

This is a dream, right? Tavie asked and didn’t wait for an answer. She reached to her left arm and viciously pinched her flesh. It hurt. It doesn’t feel like a dream, she muttered.

The kid on the bike said, "Ona ne ponimayet. She does not understand."

Did he just speak…Russian? Tavie asked.

Well, the bluish woman said, "I’m actually speaking French. D’accord? We’re not all from the United States. I’m from Montreal. Anatoly there— she motioned at the kid on the bicycle — is from some part of Russia."

Anatoly waved at Tavie. Irkutsk Oblast is the actual name of the area. I keep telling her. It’s near the Trans-Siberian Railway. Is that still there? he asked Tavie but she didn’t respond.

And Arnold is from New Hampshire.

Arnold groaned. "Delaware. Thérèse, I’m from Delaware."

Whatever, Thérèse said. It’s one of those funky rules for here. It doesn’t matter where we’re from. We understand each other here. We can even read everything, even in different languages. She smiled at Arnold. "He wasn’t really trying to steal your wallet. Technically he can’t. But here, curiosity is what makes the world go round."

Tavie finally succumbed and rubbed her forehead. It made her feel marginally better.

Your head will stop hurting in a while, Arnold said. As near as most of us can figure it out, it’s a psychosomatic thing when we first get here. You’re supposed to feel things but we’re dead, so how can we? Those kinds of questions will drive someone insane. And have.

Tavie stared at Arnold, then at Anatoly, and finally at Thérèse. You’re all nuts. What is this, a movie set? You’ve got the makeup on and you’re just trying to freak me out?

Thérèse sighed. Go look around. You’ll figure it out. Just don’t give anything away, at least, not until you understand.

Don’t give anything away, Tavie said stupidly. What would I give away?

Just don’t do it until much later, Thérèse advised. "Don’t make any deals, either. There are beings here who are just dying to get deadies to give up their souls. Get it, dying?"

You might regret it if you do, Anatoly added. He scratched at the caved in part of his head. He flicked a bit of brain away from him. He saw her looking at it and said, "It was a tractor. I went over a dirt hill on my mountain bike and there was my grandfather in a tractor. I couldn’t very well change my path as I was in the air and tractors don’t move very fast. I hit my head on the scoop. Deda felt very badly about it later. Deda means grandfather in Russian."

Tavie swallowed air. Okay, I’ll bite. What about little miss-I-cut-my-wrists-to-my-elbows?

Thérèse shook her head. "It’s considered rude to ask about another person’s death. No one is asking you."

She doesn’t look like it was a violent death, Arnold observed. No bullet holes, stab wounds, or bruises. She’s got a sports jacket on, for Pete’s sake. Are those Levi’s? Maybe she had a heart attack. She’s what, in her thirties? Late thirties?

I’m thirty-freakin’-four, Tavie snapped. I’m way too young for heart attacks and I jog two miles a day. I had whole bran for brekky. I take my vitamins.

Could be congenital, Arnold persisted.

You’ll want to go toward the light, Thérèse said to Tavie and then chuckled. I mean, the brightest part of the town. She pointed in one direction. Just go that way. Don’t turn off the road and don’t talk to anyone dressed in a black cape carrying a scythe. There’s a group of elders downtown. They have a welcoming committee down there, too. They’ll answer all questions without a lot of crap.

You don’t have a phone, Tavie said.

Not many phones here, Thérèse repeated patiently. Go on. It’ll become clear soon.

Tavie took a step in the direction Thérèse had indicated. Then she took another step.

What had Thérèse said? There are beings here who are just dying to get deadies to give up their souls. What does that mean?

She paused briefly and glanced back at Arnold. If you touch my jacket or my wallet again, Arnold, I’ll rip off one of your arms and shove it so far up you you’ll have to trim your cuticles through your mouth. Just sayin’.

* * *

Tavie didn’t know what time it was because she had stopped wearing a watch years before. Who needed a watch when the time was on your smart phone and on your tablet and on the computer? But she was missing having a watch right at the moment, almost as much as she missed her cell phone. She trudged through the gloomy half-night and wanted to know if she was making any kind of progress. She passed people. Lots of people. Some of them appeared very normal, if she could say any one thing was normal.

Occasionally she ran into ones who were as heavily made up as Thérèse. One man had his entire head smashed into the flatness of a pancake. One of his eyes trailed down the plate-like quality of his head. He reached up to adjust the eyeball so that he could see what Tavie was doing. Hey, baby, he said, once you go flat, you never go back.

Tavie gave him a wide berth even while she tried to figure out how the special effects worked. She finally decided that she’d either had a complete mental breakdown and was wandering in a psychotic world inside her mind or that she’d been drugged with a particularly virulent form of LSD or magic mushrooms.

Ma shouldn’t have let me read all those Dean Koontz books when I was growing up.

There were others who were bloody and mangled. One man had his entire head inside a shark’s mouth. The shark’s tail flipped every once in a while. The man could be heard saying, Why do I have to spend the rest of my time here with the stupid shark?

There were still others who didn’t look like anything was wrong with them. They wore clothing, sometimes period clothing, and played various games on the sidewalks and in the streets. A group of people argued over the best way to play hopscotch. Several of the people looked like they were straight out of the 1940s. One man had a WWII Army uniform on. A woman with a poodle skirt twirled so that everyone could see her granny underwear.

Another woman wore a flapper outfit, complete with sparkling headband with a feather sticking out of it and a sequined dress with spaghetti straps and long fringe dangling on the bottom. She turned toward Tavie and Tavie saw a butcher’s knife sticking out of her chest. The poodle skirt said to the flapper, Esther, your knife is showing, dear.

Esther glanced down, waved a hand, and the knife vanished. I always forget when we’re discussing rules of a new game. She rucked up her dress and removed a slender flask from the garter belt at her thigh. With a happy smile, she inclined it toward the poodle skirt. Ecto juice, Doris?

Don’t mind if I do, Doris said. She took the flask and caught Tavie staring. Look, Esther, it’s one of those she-males from the nineties or is the ought’s? Check out the jacket. That’s an Ann Taylor.

Tavie would have looked at herself, but she knew it wasn’t going to do any good. She knew what she looked like. With two older brothers, she’d had to keep up, and she wasn’t exactly the kind to back down. This the way to the…elders? she asked.

Doris pointed the direction with the flask. Must be new.

How do you know it’s an Ann Taylor? Tavie couldn’t help but asking.

Doris shrugged. Lots of Ann Taylors come through. The jacket is the first thing they trade. That and wedding rings.

Tavie nodded even though she didn’t feel particularly agreeable. She took a few steps in the direction Doris had indicated, Hey, Esther said cheerfully, in case no one else says it, welcome to Deadsville!

​Chapter 2

The dead and the absent have no friends. – Spanish Proverb

~

Who wants a piece of this? - Octavia Stone

~

You died. You’re dead. You’re here. Here you will stay until something else happens, the man said to Tavie. It was a matter-of-fact tone and droned as if he had said it a thousand times and would likely say it a thousand more. The man looked like a cross between Howard Stern and Albert Einstein. His hair was a wild shaggy mane that he flicked over his shoulder with an impatient hand. His eyes were shaded by a bush of heavy eyebrows that had never shaken hands with a set of tweezers. Sitting on a stool made from battered 2x4s, he adjusted his button-down shirt and crossed his khaki covered legs, showing his Oxford dress shoes. His attention was only marginally on Tavie as he played with a large gold crucifix hanging from his neck. There was also a saint’s medal hanging there, but she wasn’t sure which saint it was.

Tavie could understand that. There was a group of people all around here asking the welcoming committee same questions as she was. Where am I? What happened to me? What is this place? The people ran the gamut in estimations of their deaths. One man had a samurai sword sticking through his head a la Steve Martin and the arrow. However, it wasn’t an arrow and Tavie couldn’t see the plastic part that was supposed to hang over the top of the head. Another man dripped with water that came from nowhere and held a life preserver clasped to his chest that clearly hadn’t worked for him. The ship’s name on the preserver was the Costa Concordia. A woman held the end of the rope that looped around her neck in a perfect hangman’s knot, clutching it as if was the last bits of her sanity. Her face was black and swollen and her eyes completely shot through with burst blood vessels.

But I didn’t think I would really die, the woman with the rope whined to another member of the committee. Her voice was high-pitched and carried over the murmuring crowd.

The welcoming committee of the downtown was actually a group of men and women who patiently, if not warmly, answered most of the questions of the obviously new ones who had made their way to the center of the community.

Tavie glanced around and took a look at the world. Glass lanterns of all types hung on building walls and were mounted on poles. Bluish lights came from the insides of the lanterns, flickering essences that seemed to burn from within without emitting any smoke. The meager lights revealed the environment at large and made it seem all the more bizarre.

The ground was a mix of cobblestone and dirt. The few trees in the fewer patches of open earth were stunted things with black bark and blacker leaves. The buildings were half-assed constructions that appeared to be held together with bubble gum and packing tape. It was only a half-step up from where she had woken up with Happy Arnold the might-have-been-trying-to-steal-her-wallet clown.

There was commerce here. Road side stands held people hawking their wares. Ecto juice was popular, whatever that was. One woman was calling out that she had used clothing and a dozen watches that might still work. Another one advertised a hot game of Buffalo Stud poker. Another man yelled that he had a case of Twinkies, fresh from the real world, and only smushed a tad. Quick! the Twinkie man enticed, before the company goes belly up again!

As she contemplated her new surroundings, Tavie realized at some point in time she had come to the conclusion that she wasn’t drugged and she wasn’t psychotic, or at least any more than the next person. The reasons for her change of heart were both simple and complicated. It might have been the decapitated man carrying his head under his arm while the head held a conversation with a skeleton with only marginal bits of flesh remaining. Ray Harryhausen would have been thrilled to death. Tavie resisted the urge to stick her fingers through the ribs to see what would happen. The decapitated head caught her stare and winked at her lasciviously.

Do I get to talk to someone else? Tavie finally asked the man who looked like Stern/Einstein.

Sternstein finally settled his eyebrow heavy gaze upon her, as if she had suddenly become interesting. Like whom?

Tavie pointed up.

Sternstein glanced up. The sky was still gray and starless. The bluish lights didn’t show anything else of interest. "You mean…Him?"

I’d like a few answers, Tavie said.

So would I, sister.

You mean, I died, and not only that, but I don’t know how I died, and no one knows what happens next?

Sternstein nodded. It’s a bitch, ain’t it?

Life’s a bitch and then you die, Tavie said instantly.

And death’s a bitch, too, Sternstein added promptly. I’ve never known a deadie to put it together so quickly.

We’re all deadies?

We’re not livies. Sternstein chuckled.

Any way back?

Not that I know of.

Do we stay here forever?

No. Eventually everyone seems to move on. There are a few holdouts, however.

I saw a flapper, Tavie commented. If she’s really from circa 1920s, that’s almost a century right there.

For you, anyway. I know a sergeant from the Civil War, Sternstein said. "He’s still pissed off about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and that happened almost a century after he died. You can guess what side he was on."

Tavie stared. Do you know how you died?

My second wife poisoned me for the insurance money, Sternstein said. I shouldn’t have married someone so much younger than I was. She was built like a brick house. He sighed reminiscently.

Seems like a lot of violent deaths around here, Tavie said. It was sort of a professional interest. The flapper had a butcher’s knife in her chest and then she made it vanish. Tavie