Catharsis

          After her father dropped back into his coffin, Theta’s shoulders, relieved of the burden they’d carried for far too long, rose. She sprang forward and flung her arms around Aidan; warmth flooded him. He reciprocated, stroking her long, silky curls, inhaling her aloe scent. When, finally, they parted, she broke into a grin that made her even more beautiful. He had always wanted to see her smile like that.

           The groan of a printer snapped him back to reality. He had not stolen the potion; he had not taken her to the graveyard; he had not watched her do what she wanted to do, and he had not reaped the rewards. He remained at his desk, staring at the blank space in which he should have typed an email by now, yet to act.

           Yet to decide.

*         *         *

           She’d plopped down opposite him at the kitchen table the previous day, a hungry glimmer in her eyes. She sat ruler-straight, features as stiff as alabaster. “I need a favor.”

           “What is it?” he asked, though he had a feeling that he didn’t want to know.

           She took an effortful breath. “I was thinking about that formula you told me about the other day.”

           Of course she’d been thinking about it. How could she not? Though its effects lasted only ten minutes, it had broken new ground in science, in humanity. If able to raise the dead for ten minutes, soon, they would figure how to do it for twenty, then thirty, then a day, then a month, and then maybe even years—assuming, of course, that the higher-ups wanted to do so. So far, they had kept it under wraps. He probably shouldn’t even have told Theta, but the excitement had grown too big to contain, and he’d sworn her to secrecy.

           Hopefully, this didn’t mean that she intended to go back on her word.

           “What about it?” he asked, chest tight.

           Her gaze dropped, and she traced the loops in the table’s wood with a pointer finger. “I was thinking, too, about…about my dad.”

           His spine crinkled. He told himself to calm down, that it would be a good thing if she finally wanted to talk about Joe, but he knew from what little he had managed to pry out of her that, if so, he wouldn’t like what he’d hear.

           “I wanna confront him,” she said. “Tell him all the stuff I should’ve told him when he was alive. I…I think that’s the only way to get closure.”

           His eyes widened. He wanted to ask what had caused the sudden change but feared that doing so would shatter her most likely brittle resolve when she’d finally decided to address the situation in a healthy way.

           Simultaneously, however, the notion of what granting her request would entail gave him pause. He would have to somehow filch a bottle of his employer’s heavily-guarded inventory. Then, he would need to take her to the cemetery where she’d buried him. He would make sure to pick a night when his boss hadn’t scheduled one of his “raisings” at that location, but that wouldn’t guarantee their safety—schedules changed; things came up. If, at any time, caught, he—and Theta—could end up spending the rest of their lives in prison.

           On the other hand, if he refused, she would, again, bottle it up, and it would fester, poisoning every cell it touched. She may even resent him for denying her an opportunity that she very much deserved.

            “Let me think about it,” he told her. 

He had thought of nothing else in the two days that had passed since.

*         *         *

The time to decide had come. He waffled, both options terrifying.

           Think of it this way, then: If you do it, there’s a chance it’ll end badly. If you don’t, it will end badly.

           Having, thus, determined the what, he moved on to the how.

As they did everything else they didn’t want available to the public, his employers kept a tight hold on the lab where they stored the formula. No one got in without scanning their ID, and the computer automatically recorded those scans in a digital log accessible only to higher-ups. However, they wouldn’t even need to go that route, as the lab also boasted security cameras. He could see only one way around it.

*         *         *

           Bathed in night’s navy chiffon, the world lay silent except for the chirping of crickets in the shrubs edging the property. He pressed himself to the building, its smooth concrete cooling the sweat gushing from his pores. In one hand, he held a rock taken from his backyard. His heart pounded like the footfalls of a galloping Clydesdale; his lungs refused to admit more than a teaspoon of air at a time, probably more because of his nerves than his ski mask. Perhaps he should abort the mission and tell Theta to, instead, talk to a professional.

           You know she’d never agree to that.

           Swallowing, he inched around the building to the lab’s window. Took a breath. Three, two, one…

           He hurled the rock at the glass. It shattered. The alarm screamed, propelling his stomach into his throat. But he didn’t have time to cower; he reached in, grabbed a bottle, and turned toward the street where he’d parked. He flew, sneakers squeaking on the dewy grass, mind spiraling, sure that, at any second, the darkness would birth an attacker. Did he hear someone behind him? Or was that just his own gasping breath? He could feel someone, too—heat moistening the back of his neck, the energy of a body about to pummel him. Ignoring the agony in his lungs, he accelerated.

No one tackled him. No one grabbed him. He reached the car. Unlocked the door. Jumped in. Tossed the formula onto the passenger seat, jammed the key into the ignition with trembling hands, and floored it.

           One risk down.

           One just as daunting to go.

*         *         *

           Despite the clear weather, his boss had planned no resurrections for the following night, making it the perfect opportunity to stick their necks on the line.

           As he parked in the cemetery’s crumbling gravel lot, his stomach twisted, and his heart tried to punch its way out of his chest. Sweat sluiced his palms, the steering wheel. He glanced around, certain that his boss or a coworker would appear. He saw only the asphalt and the grass and the oaks guarding the gravesites as if they knew of their plight. He looked at her. She shifted, tugging at the rear of her jeans, as if she’d sat on a rock. Even in the weak moonlight, he could see that she had gone as pale as alfalfa, her eyes twinkling as if made of shattered glass. Forgetting, for the moment, the perilous gambles he had already made for this, he said, “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

           “I wanna do it,” she said, successfully, but with obvious difficulty, keeping her voice steady.

           “I don’t wanna see you get hurt.” A stupid thing to say. She’d already gotten hurt, repeatedly, systematically, for years, and, whatever happened tonight, she would continue to hurt in some capacity for the rest of her life. However, any reduction in that trauma would prove a Godsend.

           She took a breath; this, he could hear trembling. She glanced out the window, back at him, and finally said, “I have to do it. I can’t let him control me anymore.”

           “Well, I’m here if you need me.”

           She opened her door and stepped out. He did likewise, fetched the shovels from the trunk, and followed her to the graveyard. She wended expertly through the rows, even though, to his knowledge, she had not visited her father’s final resting place since the funeral six months ago. She stopped before the headstone. “Joseph P. Kirkpatrick. May 21, 1960 – November 28, 2021.” No inscription; no words of praise or inspiration. Any such addition, he would have found nothing short of blasphemous.

           He took a breath and handed her a shovel. Wordlessly, they started digging. Each scrape of dirt against the shovel’s metal sent a fresh wave of goose bumps up his spine; he felt sure, each time, that it would alert someone they hadn’t seen. As such, he continuously swiveled his head like a weathervane, but he saw only the graves and the grass and the black bowl above.

           They dug. And dug. He began to wonder whether the coffin lay below them at all, or whether the funeral home had pulled one over on them. Then, his shovel hit something hard. They increased their pace to a feverish level, as if, now that they’d had that one taste of contact, they couldn’t get enough. He panted like a dog in heat; sweat soaked his t-shirt and jeans, sticking them to his flesh. Dizziness beckoned, but he pushed it away; at this point, the option to wimp out was not even a speck in his rearview mirror.

           Finally, they finished. They stood back, staring at the coffin as if expecting its tenant to, unprovoked, burst out and attack. He looked at Theta, asking with his eyes whether she still wanted to do this. She nodded.

           He stooped on shaky knees; she did likewise. They tucked their fingers below the coffin lid. He counted down, “Three, two, one…” They lifted. The wood groaned. What little breath had remained in his lungs deserted him; he had known what he would see, had tried to prepare for it, but one couldn’t possibly prepare oneself to see a dead man. Joe’s skin had gone the color of raw cabbage, his flesh as flimsy as cellophane and sagging over his bones. His eyes were closed—thank God—and his hair possessed all the luster of hay. Could anything possibly bring this thing back to life? Did he even want to? The dead were not supposed to walk; making it happen would mean going against the laws of nature. Did he have the right to make such a move? Did anyone?

           Again, you’re looking to shut the barn door after the horse’s already gone.

           He forced a breath into still-stiff lungs, reached into his pocket with a trembling hand, and pulled out the bottle.

           Theta swallowed with an audible buzz, shoulders firming, eyes channeling distant but intense moonlight, and said, “Do it.”

He fumbled with the cork. It popped off and flew into the air. He forced himself, again, to look at the corpse, tilted the bottle, and sprinkled the contents on the body.

           Nothing happened. Perhaps it hadn’t worked. Perhaps he hadn’t taken the right formula, though he’d felt sure that he had…

           It moved. He nearly hit the sky. No, he shouldn’t have done this.

           Joe’s eyes popped open, crystal-blue, just as in life, but somehow distant, somehow eerie, like those of the creepy doll one didn’t have the guts to throw out. He stirred, sitting up; examined his surroundings. “What the…?”

           “Hello, Dad,” Theta said, voice carrying a flatness that made it nearly unrecognizable. Her face, too, had become strange, pale and set with rigidity that he’d never seen in it before. Her neck contracted, veins protruding, skin sinking below her collar bones.

           Redness crawled up Joe’s face. “What’s going on? What’re you—“

            “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” Theta said, squaring up.

Aidan held his breath.

           The stillness shattered; in one swift motion, she reached into her back pocket, grabbed something, and thrust it at Joe. Joe screamed but didn’t have time to react. The object—a fluorescent streak—shot into his chest, and he released a gasp that made Aidan feel it, too. Friction slowed Theta’s jerking the weapon out just enough for him to determine its identity: a knife.

           He wanted to scream. To tell Theta to stop. To spring forward and grab her. But his muscles had frozen, his voice knotting and clogging his throat, so he could only watch and reel as she plunged the knife into his chest again, and again. Joe staggered back, but she pursued him, swinging the knife back and forth and back and forth in bloody arcs, until he collapsed like a sack of potatoes.

           Aidan’s stomach rolled.

           Satisfied at last, Theta lowered the knife and looked at Aidan. Raising cheeks splattered with crimson, eyes ball lightning, her lips curled.

           He had never wanted to see her smile like that.