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  Her brother didn't say anything, but they both knew what the answer was.

  # # #

  Tanis picked up a pair of her jeans and folded them, putting them in the drawer. She lived. Somehow she lived. So starting this moment, things would be different.

  She went downstairs for breakfast. Everyone was gone. Brett. Her mom. Her mom spent the whole night chain-smoking her menthols and yelling at the police and the hospital. And now was at work like nothing had ever happened.

  Tanis got a box of cereal from the pantry and sat down at the kitchen table. She wondered if her mom was still going to make her move out. After Brett and she got back, there was that fight. Her mom was at her from the moment she and Brett walked back in the door.

  "Where have you been?" she yelled.

  Tanis hung up her coat. Brett squeezed her hand.

  "We just went to look at the freeway," Tanis replied.

  "So did you fake it? Did you fake your own death to try and teach me some sort of lesson?" her mom shouted. "Did you fake it?"

  Tanis shouted back. "Mom, my car is totaled. You and Brett saw my damned body. Hell, they stuck me in the fucking morgue…"

  Her mom slapped her across the face. "Don't you use that sort of language in my house! Don't you open a portal to evil under my roof! Not with those words!" And then her mom ran, crying, to her room.

  Sitting at the kitchen table, Tanis touched her cheek, the pain from last night gone. It was how things always were. She poured her cold cereal into her bowl. She would make things different. Starting today.

  # # #

  The bell to the coffee shop tinkled.

  Ray looked up from behind the counter. "Holy fuck, I thought you were dead."

  "Yeah, that's what everyone keeps telling me," Tanis replied as she walked in.

  He stood there staring at her. "I don't know whether to hug you or tell you to get the hell out of my shop."

  Tanis shrugged. "How about giving me back my job?"

  "You stormed out of here, telling me to go fuck myself. Why the hell should I do that?"

  "Maybe think of it as my last request?" Tanis suggested.

  He looked at her, rubbing the tattoos on his arm. He shook his head ruefully and tossed her an apron. "Come on. I haven't found your replacement yet."

  Tanis tied it on awkwardly and walked behind the counter. The shop was empty. Usually, she and Ray would just shoot the shit. Tanis picked up a rag and started wiping the pastry case.

  Ray leaned against the back bar. "So—what? Did you fake it or something?"

  Tanis shrugged. "Misunderstanding. They thought I was dead. I wasn't. They even stuck me in the morgue."

  "Holy shit."

  She gave him a small smile. "Yeah. One of those things that kinda changes you a bit."

  He nodded. "Good. I like this better." He flicked Tanis with his towel. "And when you're done, you can clean the bathrooms."

  Good ol' Ray, Tanis thought.

  But that was when the customer walked through the door. Tanis gagged. The smell. It was like charred, rotting meat. How could anyone look like that and still be living?

  The woman's face was decaying off her skull. Half her cranium was missing. Her brain pulsed red and angry as congealed blood seeped out of the open wound. Her eyelids were charred. Pus wept from the sockets.

  "I'll get you an ambulance, ma'am!" Tanis said, trying not to panic as she picked up the phone and dialed 911.

  "Why the hell do I need an ambulance?" the woman spat back.

  "Tanis…?" asked Ray worriedly. "What are you doing?"

  Tanis looked at him and looked at the lady. How could Ray even question her? "She's been in some sort of horrible accident. Half her face is gone!"

  "Are you on some sort of drugs?" the lady asked. "I should report you to the police!"

  "Hello? 911. What is your emergency?" the voice said in the receiver.

  Ray was looking at her like she was crazy. "Tanis, it's Pauline. You see her almost every day," said Ray. "Remember? Double-shot latte, extra-hot?"

  The world began to hum in Tanis' ears. "Don't you see her?"

  "Are you on drugs?" Ray asked. "Is that what happened? You ODed and let everyone think you were dead?"

  "No! She's charred! I can see her brain!"

  "Are you tripping, Tanis?"

  "No!" Tanis shouted. "Why can’t you see her?"

  The woman leered at her. A tooth fell from her blackened gums. A piece of rotting flesh fell from her jaw, splattering on the ground.

  "She's dead! She's dead and rotting! What is wrong with her? She should be dead!" Tanis screamed hysterically. "Why isn't she dead?"

  "Shut your mouth before I come over there and shut it for you!" threatened Pauline.

  "She’s dead, Ray!"

  "Tanis! Stop it!" Ray shouted. "Stop it!"

  "Hello? 911. Please state your emergency," the voice in the receiver said again.

  Tanis picked up the knife they used to slice the bagels and pointed it at the woman. "Don't you come a step closer! Don't you fucking touch me!"

  Pauline whipped out her keys. Attached to them was a canister of pepper spray. She nailed Tanis right in the face.

  Tanis fell to her knees, dropping everything and clutching her eyes. It burned. Her throat felt like it was closing. She didn't know if she could breathe.

  Ray picked up the phone, whispering into the receiver, "We need an ambulance…"

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Dallas

  She was strapped to the gurney. She couldn't move. Restraints on her arms, her legs, her neck. The paramedic poured something in her eyes to take away the burn of the pepper spray.

  "I'm not crazy!" Tanis wept. "You have to believe me! She's dead!"

  The flashing ambulance lights. The rattle of the gurney as they arrived at the emergency room.

  "Seems like maybe someone slipped you something funny at that coffee shop," the paramedic tried to soothingly joke. "Don't you worry. We'll get you fixed up."

  "Why won't you believe me? Why won't anyone believe me?" Tanis screamed.

  The paramedic didn't answer, just shook his head as he signed the paperwork, turning her over to the ER.

  A female nurse in scrubs began pushing Tanis down the hall, the lilt of her Spanish accent coloring her words. "We're going to give you something to calm you down. Maybe sleep a little until we figure out what's going on."

  She deposited Tanis inside one of the ER rooms.

  Tanis could smell him before she could even see him.

  "Oh God, no…," said Tanis, terrified to see what he looked like when he came around the corner. "Don't let him come in…," Tanis whispered. "Please don't let him come in…"

  And then the doctor walked into the room. His skin was melting, like someone had poured acid on him from top to bottom. A portion of his jaw was missing, and Tanis could see his forked tongue as he spoke.

  "Don't let him touch me!" Tanis screamed, arching against her restraints, trying to get free.

  The nurse walked over to the cabinet. "Calm down! You're hallucinating. There is nothing there!"

  It seemed like every time Tanis shouted, the doctor's rot got worse. A glob of mucus and blood dripped onto Tanis' shirt.

  "Get it off!" she screamed. "Get it off! Get it off!"

  The nurse handed the doctor a syringe from a drawer. The needle was thick and large. The rotting man plunged it into a bottle and filled it. There was too much joy in his eyes as he tapped the needle to get out the air bubbles. The doctor walked over, his skull grinning. He brought his rotting, fetid face close to Tanis and said, "Nighty-night."

  And then he plunged the needle into Tanis' arm.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Dallas

  The days were a haze of forgotten memories. So many needles. So many drugs. Tanis woke to find herself inside an MRI machine, the dull pings echoing around her head. She began struggling. Then she heard the sounds of cursing and feet running and then more oblivion.

/>   She opened her eyes. She was in a bed in a brightly lit hospital room. Flowers were everywhere.

  "Tanis?" said a male voice. "Tanis? Are you awake?"

  Her mouth was so dry. She turned her head. Brett was asleep in the room’s other bed.

  "Tanis?"

  The voice was coming from the other side. She turned her head the other way.

  A doctor just a little older than her stood there looking at her with kind eyes. His face crinkled into a smile, a dimple appearing in his tanned cheek. The light in the hallway made his sandy curls look like a halo.

  "Hello," she said.

  "Hello," he replied. "My name is Dr. Jared Dolgner. Do you know where you are?"

  She wiped her face with her hand. "A hospital?" she guessed.

  He laughed. "Yes, a hospital." He sat down on the corner of her bed. "How are you feeling?"

  "Okay," she replied. "Thirsty."

  He reached over and poured her some water from a pink plastic pitcher. He handed her the paper cup. "Heard that you’ve been having a rough week."

  Tanis looked over at Brett as she sipped. "Has it been a week?"

  "Thereabouts," he replied. "Your other doctors told me you were in accident, and then you began seeing some strange things?"

  It seemed so ridiculous now. How could she have believed that people's faces were rotting off?

  Dr. Dolgner reached out and gripped her hand in his own. His was cool and soft. "It's okay. I'm here to help."

  Tanis wondered if she could trust him, wondered if she was better off talking about it or pretending like nothing happened.

  But there was something about him. Something that seemed like he actually, genuinely cared. "There were people," she confessed slowly, having a hard time saying the words. "And they looked like rotting corpses."

  He nodded. He didn't make fun of her. He didn't tell her she was crazy. Instead, he said, "We think that as a result of your accident, you started having some hallucinations. It’s normal. Traumatic brain injury is to be expected from the kind of fall you took."

  "They didn't seem like hallucinations…," Tanis replied. "It was so real…"

  "Of course. That's what hallucinations seem like. Sometimes it just takes a little longer for the brain to heal than the body. But the good news is that your body is fine. These hallucinations are just a residual effect." He took out a piece of paper and wrote down his contact information. "This is the address of my office. I'd like for you to come see me. Right now, three times a week, and once things start getting better, we'll taper it down. Okay?"

  He handed her the paper. She looked at it. Dr. Jared Dolgner and his address.

  "You're going to be discharged today. I want you to start coming by tomorrow." He got up and held out his hand to shake hers. "Okay?"

  She gripped the piece of paper and nodded. "Tomorrow."

  CHAPTER NINE

  Dallas

  "Tanis! I brought you more boxes!" her mom shouted from downstairs.

  "Thanks!" Tanis yelled back, not moving an inch from her computer.

  "Get off that damned blog and come get these boxes!"

  "In a minute!"

  Tanis heard the front door slam. The cursor on her blog blinked at her. She clicked "upload" and the picture appeared. The rotting face sneered at her from the screen. She used to hate them, used to have to force back the bile every time she ran into a rotting person in public. But that was before Dr. Jared taught her how to lean into the discomfort, to laugh, to relax, to accept that they weren't real and they were nothing to be feared.

  And now she sought them out. She might be crazy, but she was going to be a rich crazy. Most of the classes she'd taken over the years were a total waste, but the one in graphic manipulation was becoming useful. She clicked “refresh,” enjoying the satisfaction of all the hits rolling in on her page counter. She added another advertisement to her sidebar.

  She saw the rot, even in the pictures she took. Whatever was triggering the hallucinations was that strong. But by tracing over the images her mind was creating, she had created images that showed what she saw, so everyone else could see it now, too. Her posts went viral. Horror fanatics loved them, the fans of Wes Craven and Eli Roth and Barnabas Yancey. Tanis scanned through her posts. It was so weird how mean all the rotting people seemed to be. It was all there on her blog, story after story. They were always yelling at someone or being an irrational dick about life. She almost got run off the freeway by some asshole whose finger fell off as he hung it out the window.

  She clicked “refresh” again. Five hundred hits. Sure, she had to put up with a couple of online stalkers, but Dr. Jared helped her deal with that, too. And eventually, the stalkers disappeared, just like he said they would.

  She leaned back in her chair. Dr. Jared Dolgner. Jared. It was like talking to her best friend instead of some doctor. They'd been meeting for two months now in his dumpy little office in a dumpy little strip mall in the middle of nowhere. Two months was longer than she'd ever dated any guy. And she’d never felt as good with any of them as she did with him.

  She looked around her room at all the empty boxes her mom kept bringing home from the office. He was helping her with this, too. Didn't matter that she survived an accident, that she was half-crazy. Her mom was done with her, wanted her out. She said that these hallucinations were a sign of some deeper evil. Dr. Jared laughed when she told him.

  "Tanis," he said, "some people, when they almost lose something they love, push it away so that they never have to feel that sort of hurt again. Your mom loves you."

  She looked around the brown-paneled office with its orange industrial carpet. She picked at a chip in the brown pressboard desk. "Doesn't mean that it doesn't suck."

  "Think of the liberation. You finally have a chance to be yourself. I think moving out on your own is a great idea."

  She looked up at him. "Do you live alone?"

  He nodded. "I do."

  "No…girlfriend or wife…?"

  He laughed. "No. I haven't been that lucky."

  "Seems strange. You seem like the kind of guy who would have a wife or a girlfriend…"

  A silence hung between them. Dr. Jared cleared his throat. "Tanis, sometimes when a person is in therapy, they…well, they think of the safety and comfort of these sessions and think that all of life could be like that if they could make it go on forever. But I am just as messed up as you are."

  "No, you're not."

  "Sure I am. Just in different ways. Listen, you are a beautiful, intelligent young woman—"

  "We're almost the same age—"

  He stopped her. "And I am here to help guide you."

  She didn't know why he would never just say it. She could see it. She could see he liked her. See that he wanted to let her know. He just didn't.

  "Whatever," she said, staring down at the floor.

  "Tanis?" he asked.

  She looked back up at him, "What?"

  "Have you ever thought about taking a vacation?"

  She shrugged, "Sure. You know, with all my mountains of gold."

  "I'm serious. You have that settlement coming in from the automaker because of the accelerator malfunction. Malpractice money from the hospital after they misdiagnosed you as deceased."

  She laughed. "They sure fucked up that one."

  He smiled at her, his face almost glowing as he urged her. "Get away. It will help. Your mind needs a rest to make the hallucinations go away. Go someplace beautiful. Get out of this town. I've always wanted to leave. Let me live vicariously through you…"

  Tanis stared back at her computer. She wished he would come with her instead of just wanting to live vicariously.

  The doorbell rang. She pushed herself away from her desk and walked downstairs. She opened the door. It was just the postman.

  "I have a registered letter for Tanis Archer," he said, holding out the electronic pad for her to sign.

  She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. There was only one thing
this could be. He handed her the envelope and she shut the door. She ripped the envelope open. There was a letter with some legal bladdity-blah on it. But what had her attention was the check. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Her hand shook. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It was more money than she had ever seen in her entire life. The settlement from the car company. She looked at the boxes her mom had left for her. She could just leave. She could just go far, far away. She could take that vacation and maybe stay forever. She smiled. Maybe, once she deposited the check, she'd run over to see Dr. Jared. Maybe let him know she was ready—ready to escape…

  She threw on her jacket and ran out to her brother's old car. He had let her use it while they waited for this check to come through. She thought about how she could buy him a whole new truck. She climbed inside.

  A great big grin spread over her face as she thought about how happy he'd be for her. She put the car in gear and drove over to the bank.

  The world suddenly seemed completely different. It was an amazing day. The sky was blue. The roads were open. She didn't even let herself get weirded out by the security guards with their rotting faces when she walked into the bank. She was going to get out of this town and whatever it was that was triggering this awfulness. There was going to be an end.

  She got into line and pulled out her phone. This was deserving of a Facebook update. She punched in, "Incredible day. My whole entire life just changed."

  The scream was the thing that pulled her away from her phone. The popping sound, almost like a car backfiring, and then the screaming of the bank teller. It faded to a whimper as the woman fell to the ground. And then there was another shot and the bank teller was quiet.

  Tanis turned. The three security guards who had been standing in the room now held guns. She tried closing her eyes, tried to clear her vision so that she could see their real faces and not the gangrenous flesh. Why, in the midst of a life-or-death situation, was she hallucinating?

  "Oh God," she whispered. She was swept along as the crowd in the bank fled towards the door and then stopped as one of the security officers placed a decaying finger on the trigger and fired, striking three people dead where they stood.