The Living Dead

She sighed, and put her hands on her hips. Useless. Completely useless. And he obviously wasn't the person who had raised her. She nudged him with her foot, but he wasn't faking.

Melanie found her purse and her cell phone. She took his keys out of his pocket. She was going to take the z4, but she felt a little bad about slapping him, so she took the Audi instead. And even though he'd never liked the upholstery color, she put a plastic bag over the driver's seat, because the half case of Rémy she'd drunk wasn't preserving her as alcohol was supposed to. It seemed to be turning her insides into a slurry of decay.

At this rate, she'd be nothing but a skeleton before the month was out.

Melanie got behind the wheel of the Audi and took off, hoping that some innate psychic sense would take her to the person that brought her back from the grave.

It didn't. She took out her cell phone and dialed 411.

"Hello, can you give me the name of a necromancer?" she asked the operator.

"I'm sorry, we don't have that listing."

"Try surrounding cities, anything in Los Angeles County," Melanie said. She'd never heard of someone looking up necromancers in the yellow pages, but there were apparently a lot of things she'd never heard of which existed.

"Sorry, ma'am. Nothing."

"How about 'witch-doctor'?" she asked.

"I'm sorry, we don't have that—" The phone flew out of her hand and her already damaged face smacked the steering wheel.

Melanie touched her face, and her hand came away sticky. Steam rose from the front of her car, the hood crumpled into an M. Great, that was just what she needed, to rear-end someone. The little Geo Metro ahead of her had also been crumpled, its frame bent around the base of the tire.

Well, at least it wasn't an expensive car.

And it was her fault. She used to make calls while driving all the time, but now that she was decomposing, her reflexes had slipped.

She pulled her car to a gas station on the other side of the intersection.

"My baby! You hurt my baby!" The other driver had neglected her car in the intersection and walked towards Melanie, despite the fact that traffic whizzed by them.

Melanie didn't see a car seat in the other vehicle, but a bat-eared Chihuahua's head peered out of the woman's arms, and she realized the woman was talking about her dog.

How ridiculous. The woman had been in a car accident, just survived it, and she was worried about her stupid pet?

"I'm going to sue! My baby has whiplash!" The woman shook the dog at Melanie's side window to demonstrate. "Do you hear me? Whiplash!"

Melanie turned the engine off and fumbled on the floorboards for her cell phone. She'd hoped she'd be able to get out of this without calling the cops, but that didn't look like it was going to happen. She put on her sunglasses, unbuckled her seat belt, and opened the door.

"Eww!" the woman said audibly, as if Melanie stunk like old garbage. She put her hands to her nose, except she was still holding the dog, so it went too.

Melanie decided she didn't like the Chihuahua woman. True, she hadn't had a shower in a few days, but the woman was rude. "Get your car out of the road, so you don't block traffic."

"Oh, my God," the woman said, in a horrified gasp. "Your face!"

"What?" Melanie wrenched the rear view mirror to inspect herself. The steering wheel had torn flesh away from her forehead, exposing bone. She almost cried. Her beautiful face, gashed open. Make-up wouldn't fix that.

Her lip started to quiver, and her throat closed up as if she were about to sob. She had known this would happen someday—she was finally losing her looks.

The Chihuahua wriggled out of its owner's grasp and scampered forward, its bark like the bark of a real dog played at 78rpm. When it reached Melanie's leg, it chomped into her lower calf, shaking its head back and forth until it tore off a chunk. The rat-dog sank its teeth in, gnawing as though it had found a delectable morsel.

"Bitsy! Bitsy, stop it!" The woman picked up her Chihuahua and pulled the piece of flesh out of its mouth. "That's dirty, don't eat that."

"Dirty!" Melanie wailed. That was it. She wasn't going to deal with this bitch's problems. Rat-dog woman would have to deal with the mess herself. "Screw you!"

She stormed off, crossing the street without even bothering to look for traffic. Cars screeched and honked, one missing her by inches, but she didn't care. Peace and quiet, though . . .

Oh, and to find whoever had raised her from the dead, but since there weren't any warlocks in her social circle, there was the horrifying possibility that it was an old boyfriend from high school or someone she barely even knew, but whoever it was, he could find her on his own.

She was done with living people. The living were so rude, so . . . judgmental about the least bit of decay.