The Dead Girl.

Life Without, 12

Weeks passed. He bought books on art. He read them cover to cover until he became a connoisseur and could read the symbols in a painting as clearly as he could read the books that taught him about them. DaVinci's Supper became his wallpaper; Van Eyck his carpeting. From weeks onward he would look around his apartment and no longer see an apple but a symbol of metamorphosis.

He looked at Teague's birds in every position possible. He would turn off all the lights and stare at them in the dark until the silhouettes were burned in his retinas. He would study them religiously as he ate breakfast; the occupied the seat next to him at his kitchen table, his most beloved guest. He taped them to the back of his bathroom door for when he stepped out of the shower pensive and wondering.

He worshipped her artwork as though he were grasping at a lifeline, and when he went to sleep every night he could hear their music in his fevered brain.

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"Uncle Roddick, what's wrong?" His niece Makayla pulled on his sleeve, her cute little face twisted in concern. She looked exactly like her mother; skin the color of carmel, honeyed brown hair, miniature button nose. The only trait she seemingly inherited from her father was her eyes; a piercing gray they studied Roddick with such intense scrutiny that only his mother had ever been able to manage before. It was almost as though she were able to see right through him.

"I'm fine, booger." He reassured her. The nickname stemmed from a rather disgusting habit she had when her sister back when her sister Delilah was first born; she would wipe her nose on the side of the baby's cheek. "Now let's go find you a halloween costume."

That's where they currently were, a traveling Halloween store that popped up in September every year and stayed until about November. Roddick's mother had decided that after going weeks without hearing from her son that it would be "beneficial for him to spend some time with his nieces and help them prepare for Halloween in their father's absence". Now, as he led Makayla through mazes of fairy wings and fake blood he wished that he was in bed with a bottle by his side. "What do you want to be for Halloween?"

"A zombie!" Makayla crowed, jumping a little. "I want to be a zombie that sucks peoples blood and eats their brains for dessert!!"

"Silly booger, those are vampires." He teased her without humor and received a feather-light punch on the arm. "Why would you want to be such a horrible thing anyway? I'm sure your mother would much rather see you as an angel or a super hero."

She scoffed at him. "I'd rather be the undead," She told him quietly, conspiringly. "They get all the cool parts in movies anyway."

"Uncle Roddick, I want to be a cat!" Her sister Delilah screamed, brandishing a a headband with sequined cat ears and waving it in front of his face. "Can I be a cat please? Please?"

He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes in pain; her voice did his head in. He swore that she could talk to her toes for hours on end and be perfectly entertained. "Sure Dee, you can be a cat. Booger how about you go as...something less morbid?"

There was no answer.

Roddick's eyes flew opened, panicked. "Booger? Makayla, where are you?!" He grabbed her sister's hand and all but dragged her though out the store calling out her name. His heart was pounding and his throat instantly went dry as he thought of the stories constantly rolled on the news about children disappearing without a trace in plain sight...

"Uncle Roddick!" Booger called, waving to him with a pleasant smile upon her face. She was standing next to a display of silly string and holding someone's hand.

"Makayla, I swear to god if you ever do that to me again..." His threat died in his throat as he noticed just who Makayla was standing next to. A woman, dressed in a fraying pink bathrobe and worn slippers, was grasping onto her hand and staring at Roddick with wide and weary eyes. "Can I help you?" He asked her cautiously, feeling as if he recognized the woman from somewhere.

"I was looking for my daughter." She said in little more than a whisper. "She didn't come home from school today. I can't find her." The woman had red hair that lay in lank, oily streaks around her face. She had eyes the color of the ocean...

"Mrs. Willis?" Roddick asked, awed. "Is that you?"

Mrs. Willis cocked her head at him. "How do you know my name?" She asked, never letting go of Makayla's hand. "Have we met before?"

Roddick was struggling to find the words to all the questions he wanted to ask her. "I teach at your daughter's school," He answered her slowly. "I was her science teacher." The sophistication and grace that made her appear so strong, so invincible at the wake had been replaced with a weariness, an eerie sense of calm confusion.

"Have you seen Teague?!" She asked him urgently, her voice still hoarse and deep. She grasped his arm with her free hand. Her skin felt like ice. "Have you seen my baby?"

Roddick was having trouble meeting her eyes. He could see Delilah in his peripherals trying on her cat ears and meowing at strangers while spinning in circles and Makayla running her tiny thumb over the skin on Mrs. Willis's palm. He felt as though his lungs were collapsing on themselves: how on earth could he explain to a mother that her daughter was dead? "Mrs. Willis....I don't know how to say this, but...your daughter, Teague? She...passed. Weeks ago. I went to the wake? Don't you remember the wake?"

She said nothing. Her face was impassive.

"I'm sorry," Roddick said softly, trying to bring a sense of closure to the conversation. All he wanted to do was run away from her and her sphere of pain that surrounded her like a second skin. It was infecting him, it was making him itch."I really am."

Mrs. Willis sighed, the loss of breath seemed to deflate her. She seemed to be constructed of rice paper and twigs rather than flesh and blood. "I came to get her a costume..." She murmured. "Halloween is her favorite holiday. She wanted to be a ghost, can you believe that? She wanted me to find a ghost costume..."

"I'm sorry." Roddick echoed. Just then, Delilah stopped her spinning and abruptly came over to Mrs. Willis tugged on her bathrobe.

"Here," she said simply handing her the cat ears from her head. "She can be a cat instead."

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He ended up driving Mrs. Willis home. The girls fell asleep in the backseat with their heads on her lap. She stroked their hair and stared out the window as she watched the streetlights and buildings blur together; she was wearing the cat ears.

"Mrs. Willis..." Roddick wanted to tell her that he had loved her daughter. He wanted to tell her that he woke up every night in a cold sweat because he could see her body rotting in the ground, surrounded by soil and maggots. He wanted to tell her that sometimes he wanted to join her because when she died it just seemed like he was no good at living anymore. "I...I don't know what street to take."

He met her gaze through the rearview mirror. Her eyes seemed listless and dull. He could see his own future reflected in them.

"Just keep going," was all she said.