Free Not Quite Dead by John MacLachlan Gray

quiet him down.”
    “He is Dr. Slan’s patient.”
    “How decorous of you.”
    “I mean that on his morning call Slan would know something had been administered. The patient has been screaming for days.”
    With the cadaver stretched out before us, Eddie produced an ancient gentleman’s traveling case from his valise and, with a surprisingly brisk and businesslike air, took out a throat-cut razor, a strop in a leather case, a pig-bristle shaving brush, a pair of scissors, and even a jar of laurel water: evidently he wished it even to smell like himself.He then proceeded to cut and shave the beard, and to form a mustache similar to his own.
    It is true that a man can groom his own face when blind, but I doubt most men would be able to groom another man’s face so efficiently. It seemed to me certain that he had given it previous thought.
    Still, in part of my mind, we were fifteen-year-old boys again, as I succumbed to that old spirit of high adventure, while I served as proud second to the strongest swimmer in Richmond.
    Mere language cannot tell the gushing well that swells and sweeps tempestlike over me signaling the larm of death …
    He spent a good hour on the job, paying careful attention to the arrangement and disposition of the hair, and I must say I found the result surprisingly convincing—another skill of an actor, by the way.
    As he worked, Eddie opined on the process of life and death, describing the former as a proceeding in which human beings gradually become more distinct from one another, and the latter as a proceeding in which we all become alike.
    “Is it possible,” he mused, “that a life is but a dream issuing from the endless sleep of death? That every personality is an illusion?”
    “I have no comment,” I replied. “I detest idle speculation about life and death.”
    Despite my skepticism, I had become fascinated by the transformation of the corpse. To my eye, the likeness went deeper than coloring, shape, and structure; it seemed as if a part of Eddie’s essence had been duplicated somehow, as though the cadaver had become a former Poe—a breathless, voiceless, lifeless Poe, while above him stood the new Poe, newly freed from himself.
    It is clear to me now that my eyes saw what my mind desired—a common delusion. Match the gender, part the hair at a certain angle, clip the mustache into a certain shape, turn the lip this way or that, and your best friend will see his best friend—if that is what he wants to see.
    Eddie Poe was my best friend .
    I do not know why a sudden panic came over me at that thought. It seemed as though the full weight of my disappointing life suddenly occupied my stomach—the realization that this was the only friend I had ever had, and for that reason alone I was doing this.
    Literally, my bowels melted.
    “What is it, Willie? Are you having another one of your spells?”
    Though I served in the army, under no circumstance was I prepared to use the bedpan under the gaze of Eddie Poe. For that reason, I left for the outdoor privy, where I had time to reflect.
    Thinking in private, I reminded myself that the deeds of this night could not be undone. Whether awake or in a dream, life does not travel in reverse. Looking back, I see that my mind had come to a false conclusion. In truth, the situation was entirely reversible. There was nothing to stop me from returning the cadaver to the morgue where it belonged, bidding Eddie good-bye, and calling an end to this absurd and grotesque enterprise.
    Nothing to stop me, but myself.
    In truth, by then any decision I might have taken was moot. This I discovered upon returning to the room, to see the cadaver dressed in Eddie’s shabby suit and my oldest friend, one foot on the bed, turning up the cadaver’s trouser cuff.
    “A bit long in the inseam,” I said.
    “It is a necessary step,” he replied, a bit defensively, inspecting the fit of the waist and seat.
    All at once I experienced that sense of amused