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Down here, at the bottom. Where there are a lot of things, and most of them glow . . .

Thinking: When you get what you ask for, you really have no right to be surprised.

. . . including me.

Skeleton Bitch

RICTUS. THAT’S THE grin a corpse gets, when it knows you’re just too chicken-shit to bury it yet, and I should know.

I looked it up.

* * *

So—Friday night at Jaime’s, two months back. Somebody’s earrings caught the light from over by the john, and I couldn’t believe anybody could possibly wear that many rings at once without ripping their lobes wide open, so I leaned past Doug Whoever’s shoulder for a closer look. She was up against the wall with a speaker at either hip, all black on black, thin as sidewalk chalk. White hair, white lips with an irregular flash of blue teeth laced between them in the kitchen light-spill. A chemical warfare jacket to mid-thigh over tights so old they were mostly runs, flag of South Vietnam dripping blood along one arm, the other nude and unexpectedly track-free. Element of surprise aside, it all seemed like the same old poser Goth shit to me—I mean, just about everybody there was trying to look dead.

But she was the only one doing it right.

“’Scuse me,” I said, and pushed off to investigate. Some proto-grunge epic blasted so loud my fillings ached as I stepped up beside her, but she didn’t even turn. Just said:

“Like this song?”

I took a second, got a smear of lash mixed with red-shot iris in return for my tact.

“Yeah, classic. You?”

“First time I heard this . . . it was 1987. Ozone summer. Kicked some kind of door open in my head, and I—”

“Don’t tell me. You wanted to hunt him down and do him on the floor, right?”

She showed those teeth again—wet, this time. A little internal thrum of laughter. Then, in that prepubescent head-cold purr of hers, entirely too detached to charm:

“No, Mr. Man. I wanted to be him. Just like you did.”

I followed her down the hall awhile. Pretty soon, she pulled me through a door with a big splash of paint above it, and we fell against the wall. I felt her breasts move under the jacket, pointy little nipples piercing through like slate chips. Five cold fingers toying with my fly, diffident, like she could take it or leave it, depending on how slow the music got.

“You keep on doing that, I’m gonna have to take you into the john.” Her hand moved a little lower. “Hey,” I said, trying to keep it light—but I was drunk by then, and it came out wrong. “You think I’m joking?”

That made her look up, for the first time. And answer:

“No.”

“Oh, so you’re one stone bitch, I expect.”

A narrow blue rim of smile, like frost.

“Yeah,” she said, with absolutely no change of tone. “I am.”

And I laughed.

* * *

But by the morning after—when I woke up, alone and hurting—I believed her.

* * *

A couple of days later, I met Jaime on the street. “That chick I went off with—” I began.

A wave of laughter. “Oh, yeah. Dawn of the Dead. How you make out there, anyways?”