Forever, Frost (Dear Death) Read online

  FOREVER, FROST

  a novella

  by Quinn Amele

  Copyright © 2013 by Quinn Amele

  All rights reserved

  www.quinnamelewrites.wordpress.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form by or any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

  For information visit www.quinnamelewrites.wordpress.com

  Summary:

  Don't lose your temper. It was the advice Death gave to her the night before she killed her parents. In exchange for their lives, eighteen-year-old Estella Rome makes a deal with Death to take her instead, but she never expected her afterlife to consist of filling out death certificates and eating peanut butter cups.

  But when her ex-boyfriend shows up with a wickedly cold shoulder and Death begins acting strangely—almost human—she finds herself trapped in the middle of a power-struggle between the entities who want Death's job, and the ones who seek to destroy it.

  And she is the only person in their way of achieving it...if she doesn't kill Death first.

  First Edition, August 2013

  Cover Design by Fever!Muse

  Chapter One

  The Night Club

  I slam my shoulder into the emergency exit door that leads to the side alley where The Moonstruck, the only music venue in Connection, kicks its garbage. It isn't the most scenic area of the club, but the garbage men are pretty good at sloshing away the grime the next morning.

  A winter chill eases in through the crack, and I shiver.

  This is strange weather for Connection, North Carolina. While the leaves in the trees hang like green ornaments, orange and brown ones pepper the ground and whirl across the concrete in twisting tornados. It's not even fall yet, and the leaves have already abandoned their post. Tonight is especially cold, like a snap frost in July. I draw my arms around myself to rub the cold away, and inspect the grimy alleyway.

  Mountains of trash bags pile against the dumpster as small shadows of rats scuttle around the base. A new mural fills the other wall belonging to an apartment complex, of a beach and a big-breasted woman on a surfboard.

  I slide out of the door and close it behind me.

  "Jack?" I call. "You out here baby?"

  A trashcan rattles and I jump. A tabby cat bounds out of it with a yowl and chases a rat down the way, hoping over the sprawled legs of a tall, thin individual. He's sitting up, back propped against the brick exterior of The Moonstruck. A smile lights my face.

  “I knew I’d find you here, baby!” I sigh with a sigh of relief. “Been wondering where you've been and all, you know. The show's about to start and everything."

  Jack doesn't reply.

  "Hey, baby, did you hear me?"

  I squat down beside him. A cigarette dangles limply from his thin, pale blue lips. He gels his pitch-black hair into spikes that doesn't even wilt when it rains, and his leather jacket hangs on his skinny frame like drapes. He's tall and lanky, but his fingers are graceful and calloused from his guitar. My Jack, struggling musician extraordinaire, and I loved him for every midnight gig and liter of booze he drinks.

  There really is no doubt about that.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “Baby, are you okay?”

  Still, he doesn't reply.

  Brushing his hair out of his face, I come closer, looking into his open eyes. He's staring at something on the other side of the alley, but there's nothing there except for a spare tire and an empty fast-food bag. “Baby, how can you sit on the ground? Huh? C'mon, let's get you up..."

  I half-expect him to shoot back a snide remark. He should scoff at me, toss his hair in an emo-flip, and say, “You’re stupid sometimes, Stells, but that’s why I keep you around.”

  But he doesn't.

  "Shhh," he says, his pale lips barely moving, "I need to tell you something."

  I roll my eyes. "Baby, it's okay. You can tell me inside."

  "It's important."

  I lean back a little, my eyebrows screwing in confusion. "What is it? I love you."

  I wish those words can just keep him quiet. Three words—three freshly spoken words that mean, as I'm beginning to realize, little to nothing. The cigarette on his lips simmered orange and yellow.

  "I love you." I repeat, not wanting him to tell me anything at all. "Baby, I love you. C'mon, let's go inside."

  "It's important," he repeats. How important could it be? He's had too much to drink. He might be on a bad trip. He could decide not to attend NC State next month. Anything is possible, but nothing I want to hear right now.

  “C’mon," I say, grabbing him by the arm. I try to pull him up, but he's dead weight. I can't pull him to his feet on my own. "The show's about to start. Don’t wanna pass that up, do you?” I hesitated. “Baby?”

  He hasn't stopped staring at the stained wall across from him. I press my palm against his cheek, and it's so cold it makes me shiver. "Baby, you're freezing!"

  "It's important."

  "Then what is it?"

  He doesn't say anything for a long moment. The band inside begins without him, and rolls into their first Green Day cover song. His eyelids drift close, but not before he holds out his hand. I stare at the phone number in his palm, a lipstick print over the swirling numbers.

  My stomach turns to lead.

  "Jack...what is that?"

  Suddenly, his eyes fly open. I gasp and fall back on my butt, startled. The cold grime from the street soaked through my jean skirt. When he turns his gaze to me, his eyes begin to slide. Not his eyeballs, but the color inside. He blinks once, twice, as their gooey chocolate color melts and runs down his cheeks like tears, leaving in their wake bright, almost florescent, blue.

  "Who are you?" he rasps, his voice scratchy and brittle, as if he hasn't used it in decades.

  I let out a nervous laugh. "Baby, it's me."

  "And that is...?" His eyes start to stray around the grimy alley, as if he's seeing it all for the first time.

  My eyebrows furrow. Had he taken something earlier? Heroin? Shrooms? Although, I don't remember drugs turning peoples eyes blue. "I'm Estella, your girlfriend, baby. Remember?"

  "Estella," he echoes, his eyes falling back on me.

  "Yeah..."

  His lips curve into a cold grin that makes a shiver run all the way down my spine. My Jack doesn't smile like that. And he doesn't have blue eyes.

  I scoot away as he stands, somehow taller than my Jack and the same height at the same time. It's the way he holds himself, not hunched over, that makes him look like a giant. He turns his attention somewhere past me, to the opening of the alley.

  "Nice of you to rejoin us," says another terrifying voice. It sounds right behind me.

  Startled, I scramble to my feet and whirl around. “OhMyGod,” I tremble a whisper, and stare—mystified—into the stranger’s face. His hair is dull and insipid like a ghost's, but his eyes are a sharp, eternal black, all the way down to the pits of Hell.

  Jack cocks his head. "I don't believe I was that late, friend." But the way he said friend implies the exact opposite.

  "Jack, who is this?" I ask, my voice tight, as I inch back toward the exit door.

  When Jack walks, frost snakes from the soles of his feet, crawling across the ground like vines. He raises his hand, and the air starts to shimmer between his fingers. "Oh, you know I needed a vacation for a while, Natty. Think you might need one soon, too. You're looking a little...d
ead."

  The stranger narrows his eyes.

  Jack grins. "Ah, did I strike a stitch?"

  Which might be funny if I was less terrified about the shimmering stardust between Jack's fingers, and paid more attention to the black and moss-colored stitches that knit the stranger's skin like baseball tethers.

  "You are late." His voice is foreign and thick, not Russian, but not Germanic either.

  Jack scoffs, and tips his hand over. The glittery wisps floats over the top of his hand like a ball. Except, when I squint, it isn't glitter so much as tiny shards of ice. "Now, now, it's not even mid-August and you're already pestering me? What a welcome home from Holiday. You're beginning to sound like Zeit. How is the old bodger?"

  Bodger? Jack never said the world bodger. I look between the two of them. "Jack...what's going on?"

  The stranger flicks his eyes toward me. He's dressed in all black, from his fitted shirt to his skinny jeans. Shadows seemed to cloak him like—weirdly enough—wings? But that's ridiculous. All of this is ridiculous. "You should take care of her."

  "I should," Jack agrees, and tips the swirling wisp of ice back into the palm of his hand. His hand begins to crackle over with ice.

  Suddenly, he spins around and throws the wisp at me, and slams into my chest with the force of a bullet. A burst of frigid air sends me spiraling onto my back, knocking the air from my lungs. I don't even have time to scream. I gasp for breath, but my teeth are chattering so badly I can't.

  "Ooh, black lace panties. Now that's exciting."

  I squeeze my eyes tightly together, my entire body convulsing with the painful cold across my chest, like an ice pack pressed over my entire front side. The ground is spinning like a tumbler, and the sound of my heart hammering in my ears is all I can hear. I hear them shoot a few words to each other, but their voices sound like they're coming from the other side of a long tunnel. I've never felt so helpless in my entire life. “Wake up,” I whisper, blinking furiously to stop the world from spinning. “Wake up, wake up!”

  Words—again. Useless, pitiful words.

  "Do not kill her, Jack."

  "I was only going to freeze her for later," he pouts playfully. "Or should I freeze you instead?" He throws a blast of ice at the stranger, who pulls his arm up to block just in time. The ice shatters against his lower arm, and leaves a smear of snow. "Oh, you are absolutely no fun."

  "You knew this." The stranger sullenly brushes the snow off, and squats beside me, his elbows on his knees.

  The air around him buzzes—a swarm of invisible locus that cloaks this man—this thing—like a plague. The space around him, though, soaks with this warm scent, like honey and cinnamon sticks, disconcertingly welcome and beautiful.

  Like—like home.

  Wake up, I chant as my eyelids fall closed. Stay awake!

  The smell sinks into my bones and makes me feel so... so tired. It wound be so nice for a nap. Maybe I'll wake up and Jack will be playing his set. Maybe this is all a dream. I'm so worn and beat to death.

  Oh my God.

  The creature cocks his head, as if he heard my thought.

  "Ah," he whispers, a flicker of recognition in his pitless eyes, "so there you are." He shouldn’t be able to move—his body is so stiff and rigid, riddled with centuries of rigor mortis, but he moves nonetheless. Behind him, Jack hums the funeral dirge to himself. I didn't think he even knew the song.

  "You should return to your concert," the stranger tells me with a half-grin through his stitch lips, which only makes him look more sinister. "I would hate for this to ruin your night. I am afraid Jack is indisposed of."

  My teeth chatter too much for me to respond. I'm so groggy, but not from the heady perfume anymore. There's a warmness in my belly that keeps me awake. It's like a lighthouse, burning to keep me on course.

  His grin drops, and he quickly turns his black eyes down to his watch, and genuine surprise lights his corpse-pale face. “Don't you have a job to do?" he asks Jack.

  "Already?"

  "Lest you wait for Eshe to visit."

  "...Ruining my vacation," Jack mutters sourly, kicking at the cement. As if that settles the argument, the stranger stands, brushing the filth off his jeans, and begins to leave.

  He takes a few steps before he looks back with a thoughtful, estranged expression that doesn't quite fit his monotonous voice, and adds to me, "Try to not lose your temper in the immediate future."

  Sliding his hands into his pockets, he turns as silently as the grave, and strolls down the alleyway, and out of view.

  Jack glance back at me, hesitating as if he wants to say something, but then he just shrugs, as if our eight months haven't even been a moment, and jumps into the air like a bird. He disappears into the night sky.

  I don't remember long I laid there with my skirt half-hiked up my thighs, breathing in the lingering scent of honey and cinnamon, or how long it takes someone to find me. When a bar-back finally does, well after the concert's over, he helps me to my feet and I walk home.

  The next few days are spiral of anger and frustration and lostness that one can only find when no one believes you. When you have a secret no one else will understand.

  No one could find Jack. They tried to reach his parents, but the number was dead. I've always wondered why he lived alone. He said he took a year off—I assumed from college. Then, when the police couldn't reach his parents, they turned their accusatory fingers to me.

  “Ma’am, can you explain in detail the events surrounding his disappearance?” they asked me as if I was hiding something they could use to find him.

  I couldn't say he flew away.

  I was alone with the memory of that night, and I didn't even believe it myself. I convinced myself that I'd taken shrooms, and it'd just been one bad acid trip. I've had a few of those in the past. I almost convinced myself that Jack went to Nashville, as he always said he would, and just never said goodbye.

  But when my parents believed the cops who accused me of somehow being responsible? When my parents blamed me for Jack's disappearance?

  I lost my temper, which was exactly what the stranger told me not to do.

  Chapter Two

  Death Named Disaster

  I gasp and bolt up on the couch. My forehead is damp with sweat, my fingers curled tightly around my moth-eaten covers.

  Calm down, Stells, I coax myself, squeezing my eyes tightly shut. The taste of cinnamon and honey lingers in my mouth with the residue of ashes and smoke. "Just a dream," I tell myself quietly, gazing at the time on the cable box.

  12:00 AM. I fell asleep for an hour and a half. Better than last time, I suppose. Prying my fingers from my covers, I toss them over the back of the couch and plant my feet on the cold hardwood floors. It grounds me, and I take a deep breath to calm my thundering heart.

  It was just a dream, even though those kinds of dreams always felt so real. Not like the dreams where I frolic with unicorns in the meadows and waltz with talking cats. Not that I have those dreams, only complete and utter nothingness, but if I did they'd be good dreams. Epic dreams.

  Not dreams where I lose my temper.

  With a sigh, I fall down over the back of the couch. When is Nate coming back? I'm bored to death. Which is funny, because God knows I should be dead. I am dead, technically. Still breathing, but really quite dead.

  Did I see my own funeral? My face on a milk carton? Did my parents shed tears? Used tissues? Listened to loving dirges played in my honor?

  Oh, hell no.

  That what happens when no one gets the 411 about your "deceased" status. No one knows I'm dead. Not that I am dead. Not physically. Emotionally? Sure. Spiritual? Yep.

  You'd be surprised how you can stay alive when you work for the Grim Reaper.

  At first, I really tried to come up with reasons why he (Death, the Grim Reaper—Natty-boy) chose me and not, say, some slutty blonde with bigger boobs and a tight ass, selling her soul for a bite of saltine because she's starved herself to death.r />
  Oh wait, that's Rose. Not that she does much good. She isn't even around half the time, always off doing her own thing as if she has Nate curled around her little finger. Which, because even though he is Death himself, he's still a man. Or man-ish. Has manly tendencies.

  You get my drift.

  Like I'm more or less tied around his pinky. Estella, do this. Estella, fetch that. Estella, finish these death certificates. But unlike Rose, I can't just scoff at him and tell him I'd do it later. I owed him, now, and he never lets me forget that. If I'd just listened to him the first time around, I wouldn't be here.

  I wouldn't be dead.

  "Try not to lose your temper," he had said to me. As if he knew I was a combustible walking disaster waiting to explode. Of course he did.

  Nate knows everything.

  The bathroom door opens, pouring light into the hallway. Steam slowly leaks out of the small crack like dry ice. My eyebrows scrunch together in confusion because Nate shouldn't be home already.

  It's only midnight.

  He steps out of the bathroom in black gym shorts and a t-shirt, scrubbing at his dull hair. It was once black, I guess, but now it just looks like silvery-green moss.

  I don't see why he takes showers. He's more or less a walking corpse. Maybe he likes the way the water feels on his skin. Maybe he likes to wash away the only marker of time for him—dirt and dust.

  "Good 'morrow, Estella," he greets in a deep, emotionless baritone as he flops down beside me. He smells fresh and heavy, like newly upturned earth.

  "What are you watching?" he asks, running his finger over the stitches in his lips.

  I grab the remote control before he can gripe over Cartoon Network, and change it to SNL. "Better?" I ask.

  He cocks his head. "Brings back memories of Beluchi. Did you finish the paperwork today?"

  The paperwork. When Nate asked me to be his assistant, I thought it meant traipsing through graveyards and digging up coffins. Maybe stabbing a zombie or two in the eye-socket.

  It meant spending hours at the dining room table, filling out death certificates. Think of it like a green card—everything has to be filled out right before the Higher Ups admit you to wherever you go. The pearly gates. Purgatory. Another life... I don't know. Haven't really been there yet.