Table of Contents

Title Page

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Being Dead

By: Amanda Flieder

www.amandaflieder.ca

Copyright © 2018 Amanda Flieder

Cover Art Photographs: City Image by Stepan Vrany, Vampire Image by Darkest B4 Dawn

www.unslash.com

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, and recording or otherwise – without the prior written permission of the author, except for brief passages quoted by a reviewer in a newspaper or magazine. To perform any of the above is an infringement of copyright law.

1

Perhaps I should have stayed dead a few moments longer. It's not like the extra couple of seconds would have killed me. The cover story wouldn't have to be so elaborate, either. And I would probably have clothes right now, not just a body bag.

It all started three days ago in a back alley, where a friend was nice enough to shoot me in the gut so that I could be dead for a few days. At least long enough to satisfy everyone involved that I wasn't scamming my insurance company.

I've had to be dead many times now, and every time it gets a little harder. There are all those scalpel-happy coroners out to solve wrongful deaths with their autopsies, each just itching to grab onto any corpse and slice their way to enlightenment. Whatever happened to just getting killed and being dead and buried so your friends can come dig you out later that night? It used to be that a hole in your stomach, a lot of blood, and no pulse meant that you were dead. Now they want to take out the bullet and try to find the gun and person who shot you, confirm if the gun was used in crimes before, and what exact kind of damage the bullet did that you died from it. It's such a hassle.

On the up side, a gunshot death usually means free access to the hospital. In a crappy downtown hospital like this one, all you have to do is make sure you file all your paperwork properly before you go and nobody ever thinks to miss you. They do notice the missing blood from the bank, but it sure beats eating what you can find on the street. People who won't be missed usually have gross eating habits, poor hygiene, and questionable health. It's enough to make you lose your appetite; especially when there's a supply of clean, healthy, prepackaged freezer meals just waiting to get picked up.

I know exactly what you're thinking right now: ugh, vampires. It's not as bad as it sounds. The daylight allergy is a myth, a steak through the heart and the removal of the head kills everything except cockroaches, and the ability to go to church or handle religious artifacts really depends on what religion you did or didn't start with. Personally, I wasn't religious when I was human. Being undead hasn't changed my mind much. Most of us vampires just work dead-end jobs and live mostly regular lives.

Besides, the up side is that you get to have some pretty awesome night vision, a great sense of smell, unlimited years to exercise and live up to that 'super strength' assumption, and healing powers that make earthworms jealous. Also, you are technically dead, so the heartbeat and breathing stuff isn't required. I took up ocean diving without air tanks when I learned that. Undersea holidays are my favorite way to relax.

So, once I get my current state of affairs wrapped up, that's what I'm going to do. Go on a nice holiday. Fish blood is just as tasty as the hospital stuff, and if you don't need a boat to dive from you don't have to worry about people spotting it and getting nosy about you being underwater for so long. Besides, sitting on a beach or drifting around in warm, ocean currents for a week or two is a smart way to lay low and build your latest identity. Tourist locations tend to not care as long as you pay a bill, and low class parts of countries with questionable governments have good places to lose your purse and all your ID. I even have my new ID made and paid for. It's now just a matter of getting clear so that I can go collect it.

If it weren't for the insurance my old me took out, payable to my new me, I'd have just slipped away and made a b-line for the nearest exit. But the fine print in the policy requires confirmation of an Accidental Death for the full pay out, and the dolt who was on shift last night decided to leave me for day shift to write up. Day shift then got huffy about always having to do all the paperwork and left me for afternoon shift. Afternoon shift was sick of doing all the extra crap that day shift and night shift were always pawning off, and tagged a bright green sticky note over my toe tag that told everyone exactly what they thought of the whole situation.

Needless to say, I'd been in the freezer for just over 24 hours. My gut was starting to ache from keeping the bullet hole open – mind over matter, it really does work – and I had the chorus from a crappy pop song by some superstar teenager stuck in my head that was playing on repeat. And just to add insult to injury, my ass had gone numb from lying on the fridge slab for so long. I'd sigh if it was actually worth the effort of breathing.

Then again, from the experience of other sighs I'd indulged during the past 24 hours, the air in my personal fridge smelled like cheap plastic, hospital disinfectant, and dead. If you've ever driven past the wrong side of a meat processing plant, or past road kill that's been on the highway shoulder too long, you know the smell I'm talking about when I say 'dead'. If you don't know, don't try to find out. It's not a good smell. It's the one that makes people on TV puke in the autopsy room. Let's just say that forcing this air across my scent receptors one more time wasn't something I wanted to willingly inflict on myself.

Besides, my fridge door opened at that moment.

2

I slowly relaxed my legs so that the body bag didn't crinkle suddenly. I just wanted to get some feeling back into my butt, okay? I was flexing. I hoped it would be the same idiot from the night before who jolted out the slabs. Then I would be able to slide my obligatory two or three inches and no one would notice the stiff’s feet and legs moving without external cause being applied.

The slab didn't move. I waited, holding my semi-flexed pose and thanking my Pilates instructor for the great ab exercises that were keeping me from freaking out right about now. Still no removal from my fridge, though, and thankfully no pulling at the zipper to get at my toe tag.

Suddenly there was music. Well, at least the merged sounds that currently pass for music. Actually the noise bouncing around the morgue seemed to be the match for the chorus playing in my head. My inner thoughts cringed away from the sound and I had to force myself not to follow up with a physical shudder. I don’t like pop music. I did allow myself an eye-roll. Get zipped up in a cheap body bag with your head at the far end of a fridge and you can get away with stuff like that when you're dead.

Then wham! and I slid to a relaxed stop about four inches from where I had been lying. Good acceleration on that one. I bet the night shift jerk could market this as a carnival ride. What ever happened to respect for the dead? Being as we vampires don't age, we have to be dead at five to ten year intervals so we don't cause suspicion. If you knew the treatment some dead people could get, you'd forgive those of us who decide to keep eating live food. I'm not saying that it's correct behavior to snatch and snack, but there is a certain satisfaction to it when the meal deserved it.

I have this one friend who's the cause of most urban legends about corpses re-animating on the autopsy table. He likes to die whenever possible just to check up that people take care of their dead properly. His family was wrongly accused of some crime or other, and their bodies disemboweled, quartered, and refused proper burial rights in the eleventh century. He takes respect for the dead pretty seriously.

As for me, I die when I have to. Being dead is an irritating hic-up in my life. If I have to be in a dark, cold place that smells odd, a morgue is my second choice. I'd rather be at a movie theatre.

"Ready? One, two, lift."

Well, that was a gentle and caring hoist and drop. I hate it when they bounce my head off the gurney, the morgue ones don't have cushions. And I have at least one more to go when they pummel the autopsy table with me.

Yup. That hurt.

In all honesty, being undead does give you increased strength, speed, and pain tolerance. The body loses its caution about getting hurt when it just heals back up again, so in turn you forget to worry about what you can and can't lift or can and can't dodge. You just do it. Things that were impossible become easy. Take (for example) that I'm dead, but that the fingers of my left hand are against my body and not touching any part of the body bag. This means they can freely twitch with the desire to beat the snot out of the two pricks tossing me around like a sack of rotten potatoes. There is one thought that helps me get my fingers back being dead like they're supposed to: fifteen minutes and I'll have my Accidental Death papers signed and sealed. Then these idiots will shove me back in the fridge and I can get back to escaping and getting on with my life.

And how does one escape from a morgue fridge you might wonder? Yoga. Yoga and twelve years working with a pair of magicians a few lifetimes back.

"Did you lock the door?"

Pardon?

"Yeah."

"Good. The camera is set to re-record last night, so we don't have to worry about a thing."

Great. Just bloody well great.

"You sure?"

"Trust me."

Two men, one was nervous and the other one was cocky. I would guess either perverts or overly zealous med students. Either was very dangerous to my rather precarious situation. I've only been in a truly bad situation once before in all the times I've had to be dead. The priest who interned bodies in that village so many years ago had decided that because I wasn't breathing, sex wasn't a sin. Too bad for him I was undead. Too bad for me hygiene and diet during that century wasn't what it is today. I would have killed for a breath mint or a single piece of minty gum after that experience.

"Can we just hurry up?"

"What, you scared or something? These kinds of things you have to move slow so you can experience them fully."

Perverts. Great.

3

"Here, look."

The zipper at my feet was pulled open, the toe tag yanked out – ouch – and the plastic cord bit into the top of my toe. These guys were pissing me off. Only four groping morticians and one asshole priest scattered across close to seven hundred years wasn't a bad record. Humans can rest easy knowing that nearly all the men and women who make a living dealing with the dead are honest and caring. Then out of nowhere come clowns like these two. Why couldn't I have gotten a doddering old doctor who was a couple of years away from retiring and just wanted to get through their shift so they could get home to their wonderful spouse? Those are the ones I like the best: efficient, knowledgeable, and quick. As it was, I get stuck with two jerks that both were up for a little grab and feel – and possibly a little slash and explore – on the dead chick.

I had the option of playing this out one of two ways if things got worse. One: wake up scared, confused and horribly in shock, then start crying and asking where I am. Two: eat. It had been nearly three days since I'd fed last, I really had been shot, and the prote tart (get it? Protein tart/blood bag? Pop tarts for vampires?) wasn't what you can call long-term filling. Usually I eat about one a day. One person can fill me up for almost a week, although I try to avoid that. It's been nearly one hundred years since I've eaten a human, and the six hundred or so years before that I typically stuck with fish and animals. Lately, thanks to technology, I choose the prote tarts. Just so you know, most vampires don't like feeding on people. It seems rude considering that we live and work together.

"She's twenty-seven and died of a single gunshot wound to the stomach. The medic that brought her in said that she'd bled out in an alley behind a dumpster at least two days ago. Some guy tossing out trash found her. I saw her last night and knew she was going to be perfect."

"What about any family?"

Good luck finding them. But seriously, let's give three cheers for modern technology and the wonder of the computerized background check. Computers are so easy to hack when you have nothing better to do than to learn how to do it while you hide out for ten years. Homicide detectives are so persistent. It was just one guy who had it coming. Girls bond in dance club bathrooms, that hasn't changed since the dawn of drinking and I don't see it changing any time soon. Pricks just need to understand that. Eventually their victim is going to meet someone like me. Hey, I'm single and I'm little, you thought I wouldn't take a martial arts class or two? Or thirteen? Then that someone-like-me is going to break their stupid prick necks. I didn't even get a meal out of that guy; he disgusted me too much to eat.

"No living or known family, and no friends who came forward to claim the body. We're totally clear."

"Ok. Let me see her."

I took a quick smell as the zipper was starting to get pulled back: plastic, dead, disinfectants, cologne (two kinds), blood (two kinds), and all the wrong pheromones. Apparently these weren't perverts. What the Hell was going on? I relaxed my chest around the air in my lungs and let it leak out on its own. The zipper finally made it up to and around my head so I relaxed my eyes into the stare that only dead people have. The top of the body bag was swept back with a flourish. Fluorescent lights burned into my retinas as I forced my pupils to stay motionless. Dead eyes don't dilate.

"See?"

Two men stood beside the autopsy table, one at my head holding the body bag open and one at my feet, both were young. I could hear their hearts beating faster as they stared at me. I'm not going to flatter myself, I'm fit, and being immortal has helped greatly in keeping me that way, but I'm no super model. I'm short, my face is plain, and my hair is nondescript. I can dress up pretty good, but twenty-four hours in a fridge after two days waiting to get found since being shot behind a dumpster isn't being dressed up. Body bags aren't that flattering either. They grinned at each other and the one from by my feet moved up by my head so he could slap his friend on the shoulder.

"Drew is going to be very happy," he said.

Drew? Why did that set off little alarm bells in the back of my head? These boys were collecting corpses for someone named Drew. Bodies to give to Drew. I should know what that means.

"Do you think so?" asked the one holding the top of my body bag.

Bloody Hell, I should know who Drew was! I was trying to drag it up from my memories, but it was like dredging a lake beside a landfill.

"We have to move her quickly. He'll want her while she's still fresh," they were both still grinning like damn fools.

Drew... Drew... why did I know Drew?

They folded the top of the body bag back over me and started the zipper on its reverse course.

Drew... Drew... No. Not Drew; Tdrue.

The Soul Stealer.

4

My hand shot out as the zipper passed my shoulder. Both men yelped and leapt away as I slid out of the bag and landed on the floor in a crouch, putting the autopsy table between them and me. The bullet plopped out of my stomach and dropped to the floor as I finally let the wound heal.

Contrary to popular belief, vampires still have souls. We get to keep our souls when we cross over into being the undead. We lose the conscience, but when you’re made to eat other people you don't really need the guilt hanging over you. For all people, your soul stays with you until it gets released either by fire, ritual, or basic decomposition. When a body dies, the soul passes naturally and comfortably into the true afterlife by whatever means it is given. Tdrue, the Soul Stealer, skips the natural and comfortable part and quite horrifically rips the soul from the body. No matter if you are living, dead, or undead, it is the most awesomely terrible pain you will ever feel. He then follows that up by taking your soul into his own self so that he can sustain his pathetically manufactured immortality by devouring your life force. You spend eternity in pain, in him, wishing you were in whatever Hell you used to believe in. He has minions who worship him as a demigod and bring him sacrifices, both dead and alive. Many of us vampires don't mind sucking a Tdruist dry.

And these two bastards had chosen to work in the easy pickings of a low-end, city center hospital morgue. I could feel my retractable fangs drop as my muscles bunched for a pounce. Their hearts were beating wild and loud, so I lined up to attack the nearest one first.

Then I heard a lock click and the main door slammed open.

"Freeze!" the command was unmistakable. Cops. I could smell six new bodies as they flooded into the room.

One of the men who had been ready to feed my eternal soul to Tdrue stumbled and fell as he turned to face the ambush. He spun around on the floor and stared at me through the legs of the table. He wasn't the one who had opened the body bag. I snarled at him. He pissed himself and started screaming as he scurried backward towards the cops. One of them billy-clubbed him in the back of the head, knocking him out.

The other man stood in the middle of the floor, babbling. "She was dead, I swear it. Dead people don't move. She was shot. I swear she was dead!" he babbled as another of the cops tossed him to the ground and cuffed him. "I swear she was dead..." his eyes had gone wild and he stared in every direction, blinking randomly.

Four of the six cops dragged the Tdruists outside. The other two stayed standing just inside the door as it swung closed behind them.

"You feel like checking out the dead body? See if she really is dead?" one asked the other once the sounds of voices and footsteps faded down the hall.

"We could just ask. Didn't the crazy man just say that the corpse was moving? She might also be able to speak."

Nice. Comedians. My undead life had been about to end painfully and horribly, and these two were cracking jokes. I reached up and pulled the body bag off the table.

"Assholes," I muttered.

"What was that, oh living corpse?" the two of them snickered, one finishing the other’s sentence, both voices dripping with mock solemnness.

That's when it hit me. I tucked the body bag around me and stood up, still snarling, really angry, and fang-faced.

"You assholes! You knew there were Tdruists working here and you used me as bait! You jerks!"

"Hey," the cop on the left held up his hands. "You're still in possession of your soul."

"And it was you who asked to be shot because you needed to be dead again," the one on the right chimed in, holding up a folded piece of paper that he seemed to pull out of thin air. "Authentic confirmation of Accidental Death, right here," he pointed at it and it disappeared again. "Or around here somewhere, anyway," he patted at his pockets as if looking for the piece of paper. Like he didn't know where it was.

"We needed to prove that there were, um, body-snatching perverts working here. The whole room was bugged for sound. You were totally safe," said the first one. I was stalking my way across the room toward them.

"You assholes!"

The cop on the right suddenly pulled his sidearm and leveled it at me.

“Two for two?” He was still grinning. The bastard would do it, too.

I paused and retracted my fangs with visible effort – getting shot did hurt something fierce – and crossed the distance still separating us. One day, I promised myself, I was going to kill these two.

"Now, my lovely Undercover Agent, it is time for you to allow us to make you vanish into the night," the one on the left said with a flourish, handing me a handkerchief that he appeared to pluck out of a fold in the body bag to cover my face. You think just vampires are bad? Try dealing with vampire magicians.

He threw his coat over my head and wrapped an arm around my shoulders so that he could lead me out of the morgue. The other cop did a quick check around the autopsy table. He found the bullet from his gun that had been in my stomach and dropped it into his pocket.

"I’m going to kill you two one day."

"You're so beautiful when you're angry."

So now I'm here in a Safe House, wrapped in a body bag, waiting for them to come back. Hopefully with clothes. At least they left me a few prote tarts.

I need a holiday.