Chapter 1
LIFE BEFORE DEATH
Rose surveyed three portraits of her little sister Lizzie, carefully laying them out on her wine-stained bedroom carpet. She had painted the first during middle school, right after Lizzie started kindergarten. Clumsy brush strokes and bright colors animated a bubbly five-year-old girl. The second when Rose started college: improved style and more lifelike coloring. And the third was a year ago, just after Lizzie’s death. On Lizzie’s would-be 17th birthday, Rose drowned herself in whiskey and struck the canvas repeatedly with her brush. Her drunken tirade produced a greyscale image, one of the most beautiful pieces she’d ever created.
Then she stopped painting.
The car crash had stolen the wrong sister. Now Rose survived for both of them.
Rose packed away the art and dressed in her finest grays and blacks. “Bye Lizzie,” she muttered to the rolled up portraits tucked away in the closet. Rose always said bye to Lizzie, somewhat relieved it was a one-way conversation. Though she longed to hear her sister’s voice, she feared what Lizzie might say.
Putting on a podcast, she began her usual commute to the office.
***
“Break down the barrier between our world and the next. Join Evergreen Enterprises on the front line of the spiritual revolution. Is there someone you’d like to commune with on the Other Side? Do you have unresolved trauma that neither prayer nor traditional therapy can cure? Evergreen offers premiere services including psychotherapy, séance facilitation, and fortune-telling. Book an appointment today. Visit www-”
Rose ripped her earbuds out before the podcast advertisement finished. As they clattered on her desk, Harold Shepherd, her overly friendly cubicle neighbor, swiveled around in his chair. She avoided eye contact, breathing deeply to calm herself. That ad had played on every podcast she had listened to this week, and she wondered if her phone really spied on her like conspiracy theorists asserted. On a mediocre date last week with a guy named James, she had jokingly suggested he try a séance to deal with his guilt over the death of a loved one.
James had stared at her and said, “Maybe that could help you too.” An offhand comment, but one that made her insides squirm.
“Have you heard back from James?” Harold asked. Rose made a point not to share too much with Harold, for he had a superb memory. He viewed his perfect recall of everything in her life as the trademark of a good friend, but to Rose, he felt more like a stalker.
“Not yet,” she said. Saying no felt too final. She’d found James on the Internet, and throughout their dinner date, he had cycled between extreme aloofness and pitiful vulnerability. Even after he spilled a glass of wine on her and stained her white blouse red, she found herself intrigued by his emotional instability.
“I’m sure he’ll respond soon!” Harold exclaimed with a supportive smile.
Rose wondered why James had said she should try a séance herself. She hadn’t included her gloomy backstory in her dating profile, but he somehow seemed to guess it. When she pressed him on his remark, he shut down and retreated into his shell like a shy turtle.
While he hadn’t texted her back in the past week, Evergreen ads made up for his silence, trying to ensnare her in their gimmicky marketing campaign to entice gullible believers. A flurry of recent bizarre incidents fueled Evergreen’s rise: a Bostonian summer snowstorm, a bright green streak in the night sky, reports of flying fish (either cod or bass, Rose couldn’t remember). On top of the hellish year she’d experienced, the world sliding into chaos did little to comfort her. But despite her mother’s repeated pleas, Rose wouldn’t rely on therapy or prayer to resolve her problems. Her cynicism extended to fraudulent magical remedies.
High-pitched laughter echoed in the office. Rose poked her head around the cubicle wall and saw a little girl running down the hallway, ribbons flowing in her pigtailed hair. Rose couldn’t see the child’s face, but she didn’t need to. She squeezed her eyes shut, and when she opened them, the girl disappeared. Rose searched for the orange bottle in her purse and stealthily snuck a pill. She stood up and wiped her sweaty palms on her black pants.
“Good luck with your review,” Harold said. “I’ll cross all my fingers, even though I don’t need to. That promotion has your name on it!”
“Thanks,” Rose grunted as she walked to her manager’s office. Over the past year, misery had fueled her productivity. After countless late nights and working weekends, she fully expected a sizeable salary bump. She sat across from her boss, waiting for good news.
“Do you want to be here, Rose?”
Miranda Moran’s piercing gray eyes always gave Rose the faint impression that she could see straight into her soul. But Rose’s barricades were strong, fortified from months of careful construction. “Of course. Odd question.” A fair question. Rose detested the place but couldn’t seem to leave.
“Your recent attitude suggests otherwise,” Miranda said.
Rose blinked as the world slanted around her. “Really?”
“I know you’ve had a rough year.”
“I’m peachy dandy.” Rose knew the question lingered on her lips, but unlike everyone else, Miranda wouldn’t ask if Rose was okay. Of course Rose wanted to be okay, but she sought comfort in marijuana and liquor instead of camaraderie.
“There was that mishap with the monthly readout,” Miranda said.
Rose blinked and saw the little girl in the corner, sitting cross-legged and staring at the wall. Rose sat on her hands to keep them from trembling, wilting under Miranda’s unblinking stare. Knowing she had to pivot to salvage this terrible start, Rose sacrificed the evergreen scapegoat.
“Harold sent me the wrong report.”
Miranda brushed away a strand of graying hair and steepled her fingers, appraising Rose. “Yes, Harold hasn’t been on top of his game lately.”
Rose nodded solemnly. “I thought you should know, but don’t tell him I said anything.” Miranda assumed men were idiots by default, though she still stacked her team with them. It left plenty of room for Rose to appeal to her misanthropic misandry.
“It makes me reconsider things,” Miranda said. Rose knew Harold was up for a promotion. She had spied his review on Miranda’s desk yesterday. “You should’ve realized it was the wrong report, but you’ve been working hard, and I understand details slip through cracks. You’re often so good with details. Harold is just lost in the clouds, divining purpose in every spreadsheet.”
Rose reflected on how she threw herself into menial tasks over the past year. After completing her daily to-do lists, she would seek other superfluous extracurriculars for distraction. Recently, she’d taken to cataloguing various mistakes committed by team members. Oppo research was not out of bounds, in her opinion. She rattled off their shortcomings and then pivoted to a resume of her own accomplishments.
When Rose finished, Miranda smirked and scribbled something on the performance review. Rose waited for praise and congratulations. After a torturous silence, Miranda cleared her throat. “Perhaps next review cycle we can talk about a promotion. The money’s just not there yet, but if you keep on the right track…”
Rose clenched her jaw, not listening as Miranda recited her vacuous monologue with a venomous smile. She tried to return the smile like a professional, but it felt more like a snarl.
“Anyway, who needs to get paid when you can get praised?” Miranda finished.
The lack of social finesse shocked Rose, but grief had dulled her tongue. “That’s what I always say.”
Miranda handed over the review. “I’m putting you on a new project with Will. It’ll be high exposure and a chance to shine. You’ll get that promo very soon.”
William Von Sturd, the Third. Rose called him Turd. She could hardly stomach the idea of being shackled to that greaseball, watching his patchy mustache twitch with every inane utterance.
“Sounds great,” Rose sighed. She left the room punctured by prostration and aching with acquiescence. Breathing deeply to inflate herself with dignity, she pulled out her phone to a torrent of texts. Are they from him? Almost a week, and nothing. Now was about the time she expected him to crawl back, looking for more. That was how it went with all her dalliances.
Except James.
She received only messages from her mother, Meredith, play-acting a concerned matriarch. An infinite combination of “How’d it go? Did you get it? Why are you ignoring me?” If Rose responded, her mother would pepper her with a thousand irrelevant questions and pointed barbs. She’d make a poor effort at concealing her glee, probably chastising Rose for not praying hard enough for success.
Rose flopped in her chair and planted her forehead on the desk. Behind her, Harold swiveled around and removed his oversized headset which was blaring jazz. The song reminded her of one Lizzie had once tried to make choreography for. Lizzie found her ballet routines too solemn and had silly dreams of doing jazz hands on Broadway. She and Harold would’ve made perfect friends; they were both hopelessly kind. In her peripherals, Rose saw Harold twiddling his thumbs, too nervous to say anything. She let him suffer.
“Did you get it?” he finally burst out, eyes wide with anticipation.
“I got praise.”
“Praised and paid, or praised and malaised?” Harold asked.
“Soon to be praised and blazed,” Rose said, fingers flying across the keyboard to produce gibberish on her screen. “Numbing my mind would soften the sting.”
“Yikes on trikes,” Harold murmured. “That doesn’t sound positive.”
She felt his eyes burning her back, hanging on her words. Her phone buzzed, but it was only her roommate Lauren, asking what flavor of celebratory margaritas she’d like later. Rose responded with a terse cancellation.
“No biggie,” she said to Harold, biting her tongue.
“Let’s go out after work. I’ll buy you a drink!” he exclaimed.
Rose registered a pang of guilt for throwing him under the bus. It didn’t stick. “I can’t.”
Harold meant well, but well-meaning people seldom fared well. He flitted through life; no one noticed when he was there and no one noticed when he left. He wasn’t an offensive presence, because he wasn’t a presence at all. Reaching for low-hanging fruits of discourse, all his comments offered little value. Worst of all, he believed Rose was his friend. Maybe because he’s never had a genuine friend as a point of reference. They enjoyed nothing more than a symbiotic relationship: Rose offered him minimal attention, and his bizarre adoration allowed her to feel like a less shitty person.
After Harold retreated from her steely gaze, she blasted techno to fill the awful silence, ignoring another text from her mother. Procrastinating, she surfed the web and saw another ad for Evergreen. A spider rappelled down a silvery thread in front of her, its spindly limbs contorting and spinning out its web. She grabbed it from midair, letting the string snap and flutter to the ground. Its legs twitched a morbid jig. A hideous, puny thing, one she could end with a pinch.
Before committing arachnid execution, she heard music. Not the jarring electronica in her earbuds, but a haunting symphony guided by the gentle trill of piano, each key purposefully struck by a phantom player. She dropped the spider, and it skittered down the side of her desk. The familiar melody crescendoed when she removed her earbuds. She peered over her cubicle wall, but no one else seemed alarmed by the mysterious sound. The tempo sped up, notes cascading up and down, crashing into one another. Faster and faster, moving her from present to past, somewhere between a memory and a dream. She heard the little girl laughing again, and saw her sprint by the desk, leaping like a ballerina and then spinning on pointed toes. Rose looked away from the dancer, scared to see her face. Breathing deeply and tensing every muscle in her body, she shut her eyes.
“Rose?” Harold asked. “Did you hear me?”
She opened her eyes and saw Harold staring at her. “No.” No music. No dancer.
“I was just saying I think you really deserved that promotion,” Harold said. “I think…”
“I have to go,” Rose interrupted. She grabbed her bag, taking an impromptu vacation day.
***
“Another round?” Brad the bartender asked a few hours later. “At this rate, you’ll need to stay the night.”
“With any luck, I’ll just die,” Rose said, extinguishing her earlier guilt with another IPA.
“I certainly hope not,” Brad said. “You’re my best customer!” He winked with a playful smile, his black hair messy under a gray beanie. His flannel shirt had two buttons undone, revealing his tan upper chest.
“Then I’ll survive for the benefit of the bar,” Rose said, staring at the chain against his dark chest hair. She’d lost count of how many nights she’d come here over the past year, craving solitude but dreading lucid loneliness. Lou’s Brews offered her just that: a comfortable place to black out in anonymity. On instinct, she flipped her phone over but saw no new messages.
“Who are you waiting on?” Brad inquired.
“Why? You jealous? Just some asshole I met on Tinder. He’s ghosting me.”
“Who could ever ghost you?” Brad exclaimed.
Rose figured any reasonable person would steer clear of her, but the abandonment still stung. “Apparently, James.”
“What does this guy do?”
“He works in Crisis Management, whatever that means. But he considers himself a traveling musician at heart.”
“Maybe he’s just traveling. Or maybe he died.”
“That’d be better than being stood up. He used to play piano at some club in New York. I asked him to play for me, but he was too tired and needed to rest up for his business trip.” Love wasn’t her usual modus operandi. Most nights, she’d welcome any guy with all his teeth and above-average hygiene. They could stay the night as long as they vacated before dawn. Her roommate Lauren was always on her case to find something more serious. She’d always been more focused on Rose’s love life than her own. James had been nice enough, but his reluctance to sleep with her inspired an obsessive fixation. He was so unlike the rest. “It was weird, everything I told him about myself, he already seemed to know, and didn’t dig for answers. He felt familiar somehow.”
“If it doesn’t work out, maybe you could find the love of your life here instead,” Brad said with a shrug.
Rose snorted into her drink. “Lou’s is the diviest of dive bars, not exactly an ideal speed dating venue.” The few patrons of the bar all lacked some combination of teeth, hair, and brain cells. Rose loved Lou’s Brews.
Sip by sip, she nestled into her safe space, that state of mind where nothing mattered. Brad looked perfectly disheveled as he flirted with a middle-aged woman who tipped handsomely for strong gin and tonics. When Brad returned to take Rose’s order for either her fifth or eighth drink, she stared at his crooked nose and his full lips, resolving that if she couldn’t have James then perhaps a bartender would do. Anything to keep her bed warm.
Suddenly, her phone rang. It was him.
She stepped away from the bar and into a shadowy corner, where the liquor hit all at once. “Hello?” she asked, trying to keep her words measured.
“Rose? You sound a bit off.”
“You’re living!” she exclaimed. “I mean, alive!”
“Sort of.”
“Can I see you? Today sucked. And I just, I, well…” For someone so often drunk, she always failed at feigning sobriety.
“I can’t see you again,” James said. “It’s too dangerous. And I need to go home.”
“What about your business trip?” Why is the floor tilting?
“I’m sorry, Rose. I should’ve been honest with you. My assignment’s over. I’m calling to say good-bye.”
“Don’t go,” she muttered.
“I have no choice.”
“Where are you now?”
“Somewhere by Symphony Hall.”
“Oh yes, that place! I can be there in literally two minutes.”
He sighed. “Fine, but be quick. And be very qui—”
She hung up as visions of rom-coms danced in her head. Liquor had a way of indiscriminately dampening good ideas and bolstering bad ones. She flipped some cash at Brad and darted into the night.
Her wedged heels found every crack in the sidewalk. Swaying like a buoy at sea, she bobbed her way across the city. She skirted The Fens, a park she normally avoided at night, and crossed the street to her favorite corner shop pizzeria. Fearing she’d taken too long, she cut through a dark alleyway as a shortcut. Brick walls towered over her and air conditioning units buzzed from rows of apartment windows. Scattered beer bottles rolled along in the summer breeze, composing syncopated songs. A rogue newspaper blew against her shins.
A hand clamped over her mouth. “What took so long?” James hissed in her ear.
“Took the scenic route,” Rose said, twisting free of him.
“Shh! Are you drunk?”
“Love drunk.” She cringed. “It’s just been a bad day in a series of bad days. But you’re a decent patch in the middle of the muck.”
James bit his lip. “I shouldn’t have gone on that date. I really can’t afford breaking rules.”
“Let’s grab a drink. Coffee? Tomorrow’s Tuesday, after all. Fuck, tomorrow’s Tuesday?”
“I’d love to,” James said, looking over his shoulder, “but I have a ride I can’t cancel. There’s something important I need to do.”
“You don’t mean that,” Rose said.
“I do,” he said with a biting finality.
I chased down a Tinder date, in heels, for this? “Okay.” Be mature. Don’t embarrass yourself further. “I guess I’ll let you go. I’m sorry.”
He kissed her forehead and smiled. “Thank you. For more than you’ll ever know.”
Instead of riddling that out, she stalked off, stewing in her maturity. At the door of the pizzeria, she heard a faint growl on the wind. Choosing curiosity over the munchies, she retraced her steps and saw a light glowing from the alley she’d just left. Despite her better judgment, she tiptoed forward, resolving that if she wouldn’t find love tonight, maybe she’d at least find adventure. She craned her neck around the brick wall and saw James walking towards a purplish light emanating from the ground. He held a leash connected to a large animal, pulling it along. The frame of the creature came into focus as it approached the light: bear-like with six legs ending in monstrous claws. Its pointed talons were like violet mirrors. A grisly tearing noise echoed in the alley as the leash snapped and James fell over. The animal roared before skittering up the side of the building like an oversized tarantula.
“Holy shit!” Rose yelled. What the hell did Brad put in my drink?
“I thought you left!” James raced over. “I think it smelled you. Human scent is a narcotic to Zenigoths. Or an aphrodisiac. I fell asleep during that lesson.” His eyes roamed skyward in search of the monster.
“What?”
“I came to take it home. It got lost. Dammit; I’m not getting that bonus.”
“What’s that?” Rose asked, staring at a violet wave hovering on the trash-strewn ground.
“If that closes, I’m screwed. You need to go!”
Rose pivoted to run, but a heel snapped and she took a terrible tumble. She spun just in time to see a shadow dropping towards her. Rolling into a pile of debris, she avoided getting crushed by the monster’s hairy body. It straightened its crumpled mess of legs and swiveled its head to reveal three black eyes and gleaming fangs. Saliva dripped from each tooth.
The ground rocked violently beneath her. She started running but fell when another shuddering of the Earth tore a seam in the pavement.
“You need to get out of here!” James yelled, producing a spear from the shadows. With a perfect throw, he lodged it into the monster’s chest. It fell onto its back with a sharp cry, skidding into a dumpster. A flurry of rodents fled from the beast as it flexed its many legs, each of them snapping into place, lifting the thick body back up. On all six of its double-jointed limbs, it hopped over the widening chasm towards Rose, its dark underbelly reflecting the purple chasm below. Another spear found its mark, but not before the Zenigoth sunk its teeth into Rose’s arm. It writhed as it tore away her skin, exposing bone and muscle. The humid air was like a matchstick, whipping across her and setting her insides aflame. Her blood stained the creature’s pincers and oozed onto her face. Another talon found her stomach. Numbness and pain battled for control. She felt hollow one moment, but then the pain would return a hundredfold, the fire inside melting her organs. Blinded by tears, she could only see those three beady eyes staring hungrily at her. She choked on her agony.
As her consciousness faded, James jumped onto the creature’s back, plunging a knife into its neck. Its claws slid out of her, but it had already dragged her to the edge of the world. On the precipice of the great pit, the lights below blinded her. It was as though she was staring into the night sky, blinking stars in a deep dusky pit. The Zenigoth wrapped four legs around her and cradled her against its cold abdomen, almost in a protective hug. With a grunt, the Zenigoth fell over the edge, taking her as an unwilling passenger.
As she fell into the violet sky, she remembered the music from earlier that day. The notes echoed around her, fast then slow, plummeting from high to low with flat and sharp notes in a raucous flare. She could see her little sister with ribbons in her hair, spinning with pointed toes. Lizzie leapt into the air with one final twirl. Then Rose saw nothing at all.here…
