Free The Death Match by Christa Faust Page B

intrusion, almost like a sleepwalker who’d just been shaken awake. She looked at Matt, then down at herself. She gripped a handful of the twisted, sweaty sheet and pulled it up over her breasts.
    “I…I thought…” She looked at Tanya and then back at Matt. “Is this…real?”
    “I don’t have a clue what that word even means anymore,” Matt replied. “But I see her too.”
    “Then…” She turned to Tanya. “You’re really here. You’re alive!”
    “Well,” Tanya replied with a smirk, “I am here—I’ll give you that.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Don’t you understand? I came back for you. Because I love you, Stacy.”
    “How can you say that?” Stacy asked, turning away with a sheen of unshed tears in her eyes. “I killed you.”
    “You had no choice,” Tanya said.
    She sat down on the bed beside Stacy and took her hand, making no attempt to cover her burned and naked body.
    “There’s something broken inside me,” Tanya continued. “It’s been broken ever since I was a little girl. When you are broken, evil can come in through the cracks. Do you understand?”
    Matt thought back to what Mr. Dark had said back in the underground arena.
Trauma is a zipper
. He shuddered.
    “But I found a way to fight it now,” Tanya said. “I want to. To be with you. Because when you looked at me, you never saw trash. You saw the good in me. You see
me
.”
    “I’m so sorry,” Stacy said, knuckling away her tears and pulling Tanya close.
    “I know, baby,” Tanya replied.
    “Jesus,” Matt said. “Stacy, listen to me. You have to see… This is so wrong.” The words thudded into the room, as useless and disconnected from the world as one of WardCleaver’s sermons on the show Matt had loved to watch as a child. There was no easy way to say this. “You’re fucking a corpse. A rotting, dead thing is fucking you. Is that what you want?”
    “Fuck off, dead man. You are just as wrong as me.” Tanya looked at Stacy and smirked at her shocked expression. “What, he didn’t mention that little detail when he was pouring his heart out to you?”
    “You’re like her?” Stacy looked up at him, eyes hurt and full of questions. “A rotting, dead thing?”
    “You don’t see what I see,” he said. “She’s corrupted. Don’t believe her. She’s still evil.”
    “I never said I wasn’t corrupted by evil,” Tanya said. “But I’m fighting it. I’m here now, right? And at least I’m honest about what I am. What are you, Matt?”
    Matt didn’t have an answer.
    “This doesn’t concern you,” Stacy said. “Get out.”
    Matt backed away from the door, and Stacy stood, reaching out to slam it in his face.
    Torn, Matt backed into Stacy’s living room, feeling helpless and conflicted. He couldn’t just leave his friend alone with that unnatural monster, but at the same time, who was he to say that Stacy and Tanya couldn’t be together? After all, he was just as much an aberration as Tanya. A walking corpse. A monster, some might even say.
    He walked to the front door and gripped the knob but couldn’t make himself turn it. He couldn’t leave Stacy, and he couldn’t leave the mystery of Tanya’s resurrection and the implications it might hold for his own deathless state.
    He sank down on the sofa, head heavy with unanswered questions.
    What are you, Matt?
    He curled up on his side, pulling a dusty cushion over his head to shut out the renewed sounds of lovemaking coming from Stacy’s bedroom.
    What are you?
    The question echoed endlessly in his head through the long, sleepless night. He never found an answer.
    * * *
    When the sun came up the next morning, he finally gave up on any hope of sleep and staggered to the bathroom. He found it occupied, the sound of the shower running audible through the closed door. He could smell coffee. It all seemed so normal, he could almost convince himself that he’d imagined the horror of the night before.
    He drifted into the kitchen, where Stacy was