She Giggled, Slippery In My Arms by Maura Yzmore
The first time I performed the ritual and Stevie came back to life, as if no time had passed between her last breath and her second first one, I was relieved, ecstatic even, incredulous that it had worked.
It had all seemed so hokey. Rubbing her body with eucalyptus oil, the various herbs she’d collected that I didn’t recognize, the candles and the spells. But I had promised her I would do it and I had to keep my mind busy, had to do something to push down the waves of grief that surged through my body ever since I’d found her rigid and cold in bed beside me that morning. I was not surprised because we’d known the day would come, but finding her lifeless still punched me straight in the chest, that heavy fist of finality, of no longer having anyplace to put all the love that I’d been carrying for my wife.
So I pulled out the instructions she’d left for me, even though it was stupid, even though there was no way it could work because who the hell raises the dead, but I did it for her as my last act of devotion. I pulled out the rags and the oils and followed every step to the letter, as if I had been making a very complicated dish. I rubbed my frail dead wife’s body with grease and dry herbs, and I phonetically chanted in a language I didn’t recognize, and I let the stinky candles drip wax on her forehead and eyelids, on her chest and her stomach, along her neck and her arms and her legs, and it felt like something, something I could do to honor her, and I almost didn’t worry about all the shit I would probably be given at the funeral parlor for messing with the corpse.
When I was done, I left the room and closed the door behind me, as the instructions had said.
Within hours, I heard noises and then she walked out to meet me, alive and happy and looking much healthier than I’d seen her in months. I leapt from my chair and clutched her to my chest, to which she giggled, slippery in my arms.
But the ritual hadn’t cured her. It reset the clock some, imbued her with a bit of the life force, but sooner or later she would die again.
And she did, about three months later. This time I didn’t hesitate to pull out the ingredients.
It wasn’t clear at first, but every time she died, she came back a little different from who she had been. And it took a little less time for her to die again, like she was using everything inside herself just to stay around me a bit longer.
She couldn’t read or write after the third resurrection. She stopped being able to speak after the sixth. After the tenth, she no longer used the bathroom and I started putting her in diapers. I had to wash her body and hair, cut up her food like she was a child.
But I always brought her back because her face lit up when she saw me.
Until it didn’t.
After a dozen resurrections, what came back was no longer Stevie.
The feral creature cowered in the corner, panting, its frightened eyes wide. When I reached out to touch it, a small clawed hand swiped at my face.
But it still looked like Stevie and smelled like Stevie, so I wrapped my arms around its trembling form and felt it stiffen, felt it hold its breath. I whispered soothing nonsense in its ear, waiting for its body—Stevie’s body—to remember me, to relax.
It never did. Its breaths grew fast and shallow, and a small whimper escaped its throat, pleading for me to let it go.
I only held it tighter. It would remember me. It had to.
But it started to wriggle, twisting left and right, like it was trying to unscrew itself loose from my embrace.
Its whimpers became wails became screams.
I pushed it on the floor and straddled its hips, my hand over its mouth, the other grabbing both its wrists, pinning them above its head.
It jerked and bucked beneath me, trying to break free from my grip, its jaws snapping in vain, while I felt my patience slip and my anger rise, and I forgot this creature beneath me was once Stevie. I just wanted it to stop fighting me and to stop yelling—
I let go of its wrists and mouth and felt my hands tighten around its neck, its nails uselessly digging into my forearms, cries muffled by my unyielding palms.
It was right to be afraid of me.
When I came back to my senses, I was still on my knees, astride the creature who lay motionless in a puddle of its own piss, purple bruises from my fingers around its wrists and neck.
I looked into its dead eyes… Stevie’s. Stevie’s dead eyes. Burst capillaries had turned them red, unshed tears glistening on the eyelashes.
Guilt slammed into my back, forcing a cry from my lungs, pushing me down toward my wife, toward my tortured, dead, beloved wife, a mindless creature whose last moments had passed in helpless horror. Because of me. Her husband. Her killer. Stranger.
I rose on shaky legs and reached for the bottle of eucalyptus oil.
I knew it was poison. I knew I had enough left that it would surely kill me if I drank it all.
Or I could use it for a dozen more rituals.
