Free Orpheus and the Pearl & Nevermore by Kim Paffenroth Page A

the covers, and he was able to
appraise its form without relating it to himself.
    There were jowls, which formed with his head
propped up on the pillows, and settled against a neck that he’d
thought was thick but seemed slight and frail beneath that bloated
head. His hair was big and messy and sat on his scalp like a
toupee. He’d had beautiful eyelashes, at least, and nice hands. One
lay to the left of his head, palm turned upward, fingers
half-closed.
    Malcolm studied his dead face. It was pale,
waxy. Reminded him of something, or someone. His former skin
glistened with shrinking beads of sweat. He couldn’t have been gone
long.
    At 11:11 his body sat up.
    Malcolm was frozen in
place. He wanted to leap back, to push himself away from the
staring face that had once been his own, but he couldn’t. There was
no way to move, no physiology—he was trapped! Fear swelled in him,
pure emotional terror—and unfiltered light and sound began
encroaching on him once more as he lost focus. He could still see
the body, rising now to stand beside the bed, limbs stiff, eyes
unblinking. How? Everything else seemed to make sense, but this was
wrong, he knew it with absolute certainty. How?
    The body walked to the door and fumbled
awkwardly with the knob. The door opened just wide enough for it to
push through. Malcolm lost sight of it, as he was losing sight of
everything...
    Ray!
    He tore through the
distortion and was back in the room. And, distantly, he felt
something like feet planted on the floor beneath him. It was
another dull impression, but it was certain. He was standing on the
floor, and though he saw no feet there, nor were any of the
carpet’s threads flattened by any sort of weight, he did see something. Two
somethings. Dark, glistening stains, like footprints.
    He heard his brother murmur his name. It
sounded as if he’d just been roused from sleep.
    And then Ray screamed.
    Malcolm tried to move but
there was nothing to move. He’d reconnected to the physical, now how was he
supposed to pull himself across its plane? Ray! RAY!
    Ray let out a terrible,
wounded yell, a sound Malcolm had never heard from his older
brother. And whatever was happening, that walking corpse was doing
it—did Ray think it was Malcolm himself? Of course he did!
Meanwhile Malcolm was frozen in space mere feet away! RAY!
    He looked at the floor
again. In the air between his point of view and the stains on the
floor, he saw other dark splotches simply hovering. He realized he
was looking at the backs of two dangling hands. How was he giving
form to himself? How did he use it? Ray sputtered and cried, “Mal— ”
    A wet, heavy sound. Then silence.
    He didn’t know what this
dark matter on his surface was—didn’t know what his surface was—but
it was eroding before his sight and he felt as if he were coming
un-tethered from the world. Light swelled around him again. Focus!
    He focused on Ray, and the shadows of the
room returned. He thought about Ray, not about what state he might
be in, but getting to him, and he sensed feet on carpet again. He
saw dark syrup pooling in the air beneath him. He saw strange, thin
limbs taking shape as the syrup spread—legs, not fully realized,
but enough to give him confidence. He tried to take a step. Nothing
happened.
    No. You can’t walk. That’s not how it
works.
    His focus had generated this weird substance
where he imagined his legs and feet to be, so he focused himself
forward. And he was fifteen inches closer to the door.
    All right. Don’t let emotion overcome you.
Just focus. Forward.
    He came right up to the door. There was no
sound from the next room; he heard only the driving rain. Malcolm
looked at the doorknob. Could he take hold of it, or even just push
against the wood?
    He focused on the door.
Dark stains appeared there. They looked vaguely green in the light
from the street. But nothing else happened. God damn you ...again he cast his
focus upon the door, and fresh stains appeared,