Ungrateful Dead Read Free Page B

shit. But hanging around here isn’t the most productive way to deal with it, is it?”
    The corpse glowered at me and another drawer shot out, hitting me in the knees again. I crumpled, knocking Charlie over, and we both went down in a tangle of flailing limbs and curses. “Esther, come on!” I yelled, shoving Charlie away from me. He rolled across the tiles with a moan. “What are we supposed to do, huh?”
    “I don’t want to be dead!” she screamed through the corpse. “You can’t fix that, can you? So fuck off and leave me alone!”
    “I work here!” Charlie protested, clambering to his knees. “I can’t be expected to focus with a ghost in the building messing with the lights and the bodies – not to mention the temperature. Do you know what happens to human bodies above four degrees centigrade? They rot! It’s disgusting! And the families get really upset!”
    Esther’s mouthpiece turned to face him, wet popping sounds echoing through the room as the neck moved. “And I’m supposed to feel bad? I got shot in the chest by some adolescent idiot with a hard-on for silk panties and my family doesn’t even know! And then you just burned my body!”
    “We tried to find your parents,” Charlie said, guilt flashing across his face. “Or any family, but nobody came forward to claim the – you.”
    “I wanted a proper funeral!” the body snapped. “A real funeral with music and mourners and flowers!”
    The temperature was climbing steadily. Sweat dripped down Charlie’s cheeks and I felt like my leather jacket was grafting to my skin. Charlie’s words about rotting bodies drummed around in my head. How long did it take a cropse to start decomposing? Like, hours? Days? Could the rocketing temperature in here speed up the process? Ghosts were one thing, but I didn’t want to be stuck down here with rotting bodies. The pro-golfer’s garbage was bad enough.
    I sat back, scooting away from the drawers in case Esther lashed out again. “Okay,” I said, wiping sweat from my brow. “Okay, let’s all calm down, okay?” I reached automatically for my smoking tin, then realised if Charlie frowned on drinking in the chamber, he’d definitely disapprove of smoking. Which was a shame, because I felt like everything would be a lot better if I could drink or smoke right now.
    “Okay,” I said again. “Look, Esther, why haven’t you just ... moved on? Like, to heaven or hell or wherever? Why are you staying here if you hate it so much?”
    It seemed like a reasonable question but Esther just screamed, the corpse thrashing around, smashing his fists against the sides of the drawer. Charlie flinched. I’d kinda figured by now that this was pretty much the worst Esther could do though. Lights, messing with the heat, and doing the ventriloquist thing were her limits. And I wasn’t crazy about the zombie routine, but I figured if it came to it, I could take out a dead guy.
    “Esther, cut it out!” I yelled, leaning forward to grip the edge of the drawer. “This isn’t helping.”
    “Nothing will help!” she screamed. “I’m dead, that’s not curable!”
    “Well, maybe there’s something we can do to make your ... afterlife ... a more enjoyable experience?” Charlie offered.
    I shot him a look. “What did you have in mind? Nice music, pretty flowers?”
    “Flowers,” Esther repeated wistfully. “I really would have liked flowers on my grave. If I had one.”
    “We can get you flowers,” Charlie said eagerly. “What were you favourite flowers? I could keep some down here for you.”
    She growled, the corpse making an ugly burbling sound deep in his throat. “I don’t want to be down here!” The temperature plummeted, taking us from fever-hot to sub-zero cold in seconds. “Aren’t you listening to me?”
    “So what do you want?” I asked. I was starting to lose it with this shit. I was sober and tired and I wanted to be drunk and asleep. I was sure Esther wasn’t going to hurt Charlie