Living with the Dead

2

My eyes flutter open to see Casper's gloomy face lingering over me. His deep set, heavily rimmed eyes are filled with worry. A weak smile forms on his lips as he sees me wake up, and so he takes both of my hands in his and pulls me to sit up.

"I'm not dead." I mutter.

"No, you're not." Says Casper, his smile wavering. "Just a scratch." He takes my arm and shows me the long, red line, starting from my fore finger all the way down to my elbow. I follow it in wonder. Touched by a dead.

That's when I realise, we're not in our flat. It wasn't much of a home, no furniture at all, but this place is so busy with people I miss the privacy of our four walls and splintered floor boards. 

Hundreds of flat beds line the concrete hall, families gathering together in fear. I've only been to this place once, after my brother died.

"I caused a breach, didn't I?" I ask Casper in a frantic whisper.

He diverts his gaze from me, tears brimming. "Only a minor one. The fence has been replace and Dead End is temporarlly underguard. They're just looking for the few dead that got in."

I swallow hard. Iit may have only been minor, but a breach is a breach. The fence has to be rebuilt closer in, so we loose more land, and I don't want to think of who might have been bitten. I've never seen my brother shuffling past with the dead, but when mothers burst out crying in the middle of the street on their knees at the sight of their child on the wrong side of the fence, eyes bloodshot and fingers broken, I hate it. 

The dead aren't as dumb as you think. Their noses are strong at smelling blood, so they scratch you, which wakes up all the other dead'uns because your blood's all over the pavement, and they pull down your fence together and give you a nice little bite to remember them by. Brilliant.

Casper looks at me seriously, like he does a lot. He sucks it up, sets his jaw, and stares into my eyes, like he does a lot. I smile at the familuraity of his gaze, but he furrows his brow in a disapproving way so I stop. 

"You got scratched."

"I got scratched."

"You let a dead'un touch you."

"I guess."

"You want to die?"

"I want to- what? No, I-"

"C'mon," he rolls those dark eyes. "We all know that people let a dead'un touch them when they want to die. When they have...nothing to live for anymore."

I realise that I may have insulted him. I feel horrible and  selfish. It's as if Casper senses how bad I feel, because he rolls up the side of his shirt and shows me his own scratch, deep and red, stretching all down one side of his pale torso.  

I follow it gently with the tips of my fingers. "But now," I tell him, "now we both have reasons to live." My mind is racing with the thought of him.

And all of a sudden he takes my face in his cold hands and kisses me. I press my hands to the back of his neck and pull him closer, and suddenly we are back in our flat and it feels like home to be wrapped in his arms.

He pulls away.

"I'm not enough."

"Yes you are." I argue.

"No," He says. "I'm not, or you wouldn't have gone down Dead End in the first place."

I pause.

"I'm gonna give you another reason to live, I'm not going to lose you." He whispers.