Derek can still see the occasional flickers of those oncoming headlights. He does not know how much time has passed. He is enclosed by steel.

Long ago Derek had bought flowers. A bunch of carnations for their second date. Mary had glowed.

He feels his own brittle veins, feels the stemming of fluids in his body.

“I just stopped by the florist.”

“More than just stopped by,” Mary had said. “Carnations. It’s like some kind of intuition, like we’re connected.”

Derek blinks. His eyes feel dry and raspy. He sees again the echoes of the headlights, feels again the road’s ridges rumbling around the tires, shuddering through the car.

How can he remember these things?

“Fifteenth anniversary,” Mary said, just today. “Can you imagine?”

“I couldn’t imagine any different.”

She was still beaming from the house full of carnations. She poured him a second glass of the Shiraz.

“I’ll be driving,” he said.

“It’s okay, our reservation’s not for another hour.” She glanced at the stairs. “Maybe we could, you know, have a quick lie down.”

Derek glanced at his watch.

How long has he been here?

“Don’t spoil it,” she said. She slipped her jacket off, undid the top button on her blouse, then the next. “It’s cold out.”

Snow on the road. The other car swerving.

He chased her upstairs, grabbed her by the bed. Mary giggled, kissed him. “Maybe tonight,” she whispered. She’d stopped taking the pill three years ago and still nothing.

“Maybe,” he whispered and opened the rest of her buttons.

Things slow down. The approaching car swerves. It crosses the centerline.

Mary slipped Derek’s clothes from him and shed her underwear. She gasped

The moment of impact tears both cars apart. Mary cries out.

They separated, breathing, sweaty under the blankets. The bedside lamp glowed through the room.

“Whew,” Mary said.

Derek said nothing. He knew silence was right, for the moment.

He rolled on his side and stretched his arm across her belly. He stroked her gently and she put her hand on his, and the both of them rubbed her abdomen.

The windshield splinters. Mary’s momentum drags her through the showering glass. She pummels the hood. She flips and twists like a discarded and crumpled envelope, clipping the other car’s roof and bouncing onto the tarmac.

“Crap,” Mary said, bounding from the bed.

Derek sat up. “What?”

“Look at the time. We’ll lose our reservation.”

Derek looks and scampers. He can’t help grinning though. Unrushed and lost in each other, they’ve devoured time.

Then it stops. There’s nothing after seeing Mary broken on the bitumen.

They rushed to the car.

“You drive,” Mary said.

Derek reaches his hand up. He feels cold. He remembers snow.

He backed out of the garage, into the street. Piles of muddy ploughed snow lined the verges like tiny mountains lit by gigantic streetlamps.

“Can you remember the way?” Mary said. “It’s pretty far out of town.”

“We’ll go out along Roosevelt.”

“Good idea.”

Derek feels the steel again. He pushes against it. He realises he is prone. His body is not in pain, but it aches, still and unmoving.

The traffic lights at 32nd were jammed again. Derek waited, then eventually drove through the red.

“We’re already twenty-five minutes late,” Mary said. “We’re sure to lose it.”

Something moves and he slides. Light pierces his desiccated retinas.

“It’s okay,” he said. “How busy can they be? Call them.”

“Oh.” Mary laughed. “Why didn’t we even think of that?” She pulled out her cell, scrolled through the numbers.

Derek realises he is not in the car. He keeps pushing into the light. He is in a bright white room, lined with doors.

“You know,” Mary said, with the phone to her ear, waiting for the restaurant.

“Know what?”

“Well, I think … oh, hi. We had a reservation for seven-thirty.”

Derek saw headlights in the distance.

Doors. Tiny square doors. Derek sits up. Not the car. A sliding tray. He’s seen this kind of room before, on TV. On cop shows and medical dramas.

“They’ve held it,” Mary said. “Wow, that’s great service.”

“Good.” The approaching car shuffled across the road and back. Derek slowed. “What should I know?” The car worried him.

Derek sits, leans forward. His body is cut, his arms shredded and mangled. A white plastic sheet slides away from him, drops to the floor. Unsteady, he looks around the room. The light is too bright.

The other doors are all closed. There is a normal-sized door at the end of the room.

What is he doing here?

He swings around to step off the sliding tray and tumbles to the floor. He feels bones grinding within his arm and chest, but no pain. He reaches for the tray, pulls himself to his feet. He is naked and shaking.

The main door opens. “What’s going on-” an orderly says before jerking back, screaming and slamming the door.

Derek takes a step from the tray. He can just balance, just stay upright.

“What you should know?” Mary said.

“You think you’re pregnant?”

“Something’s up … maybe.”

“We’ll buy a test at Rite Aid on the way home.”

The doors are all the same, but he knows where she is. He stumbles across, falling twice. He reaches her drawer as the main door opens and a security guard steps in, hand on his gun.

Derek pulls the drawer open. Mary is scratched and battered, butchered as if with flailing knives. He touches her hand and pulls himself up to lie beside her. The light fades away as he puts his hand on her belly.
 
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©2010 Sean Monaghan

Sean Monaghan’s visits to morgues have fortunately been mainly via television.  His stories have appeared before in Flashes in the Dark and also in Pulp Metal Magazine, Infinite Windows and Bewildering Stories, amongst others.  More information at his website www.venusvulture.com

 

Chelle started school here in October. She came into class late, as new kids always do. Darmuth gives them a long dull principal’s ‘what we expect from you’ meeting slash lecture.
As she walked in a buzz went around the class on account of her eyes. In better light I think, or thought then, that they might have seemed fine, but under the lousy power-saving lights her eyes looked like pits, like deep black wells.

Of course it was heightened by her complexion. Fair, fair skin with dark hair and full brows and brown, almost black irises. And, I later learned, almost permanently dilated pupils. And the skin around her eyes was darker too, as if she needed to catch up on a week’s worth of sleep. On top of that she wore heavy mascara and eyeliner.

Later, when we were dating, she told me that she wore the make-up on purpose. She knew the effect her eyes had on people and enjoyed it, wanted to enhance that. It sure worked for me, quickened my heart to look at her.

Chelle was quiet, but within a week she was dating Albie Richards, who had only ever dated two people, though not through lack of trying. She didn’t really talk to anyone else much, but you’d see them at lunch and recess out on the field talking in the shade of a tree.

After two weeks Albie turned up dead. Electrocuted himself with a busted soldering iron while working on one of his electronics projects.

I know what you’re thinking, right? The scary new girl was a murderer. Well, she had a perfect alibi. She was at Darmuth’s house. It turned out that Darmuth’s wife was an old sorority sister of Chelle’s mother and they’d all gone over for crumpets or something.

Three people were with her when Albie died.

Sabotage, you’re thinking. Well, Albie’s project room was like a sanctum, so no way she could have gotten in. Albie’s Mom said Chelle had never even been to the house.
Chelle was distraught for a total of maybe fifteen minutes. Next thing she’s dating Anthea Shelton, the second biggest dyke in school. Anthea’s last girlfriend Jolene, the actual biggest dyke in school, was baffled and totally pissed. How could Anthea dump her for a ‘pretty girl’?

Soon after, say maybe a month later, getting close to Christmas, Anthea was killed. And Jolene’s hunting knife was the weapon used. The cops found it buried in her parents’ back yard. With forensics and all that stuff, Jolene’s parents were retaining a pricey lawyer.

Chelle was upset again and that was when I started hanging out with her. I didn’t want to start dating, not right away, but she said she was ready. My friends said I was crazy, that she was the ‘kiss o death’. They actually started doing lots of stuff to discourage me - emailing me a last will and testament to sign, phoning me at all hours, keeping guard outside my house. They were the crazies.

In the core of my soul, though, I know it’s what I’d wanted, since I’d first seen her. Those eyes were the most beautiful things on the planet. My life was in no danger. I’d known how to get her, and I knew how to keep her.
 
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©2010 Sean Monaghan  

Sean Monaghan is a sucker for deep dark eyes and it has cost him dearly.  Sean tutors in creative writing and reviews books.  His stories have appeared in Flashes in the Dark, Macabre Cadaver and House of Horror, amongst others.  More information at his website www.venusvulture.com