Nearafter (D.E.A.T.H. bk. 1)

Chapter Sixteen: [Ethan]

Ethan watched as Clara passionately inhaled the steam wafting up from her plate of tacos. The way she took in each breath, eyes closed, hands gripping the sides of the table, it was as if she was preparing to make love to her meal.

Ethan was jealous.

It was the third time that they'd stopped at a street vendor. The first had been for a burger, the second for a couple of chili dogs, and now there was the tacos. Spicy, greasy, hot tacos. Ethan could only imagine. But Clara was having a genuine experience.

Of course, she would not actually eat the tacos. Like the burger and the two chili dogs before them, they would ultimately end up in the trash or else in the belly of some homeless person. Either way, one of the rules about reapers possessing physically dead hosts, Ethan learned, was that reanimated bodies could not ingest substances meant for the living. The food would not be digested, because there was no digestive system. The body would almost immediately violently and painfully regurgitate any unfit substances.

But none of that stopped Clara. She had repossession over her physical body. Restored, repaired, and made to look alive and functional by someone called a Reanimator. They were going to meet one now at the Alliston city morgue. But of course, along the way Clara had to stop, several times, to enjoy the physical world once again.

She could no longer taste or eat as she once did, but she didn't need to. Because she could smell, which was odd, because to smell you needed lungs, which meant that you could breathe, but the dead couldn't breathe.

"I'm different," Clara said. She stood in front of a Starbucks checking her reflection out in the storefront window. "I paid a premium to have certain organs restored to operational condition. Thus, I have the gift of smell."

"But you still can't taste," Ethan pointed out.

"Taste is a tricky one," she said... "or so I've heard. But Jockimo is a genius. I'm sure he or the Chinese will eventually figure it out."

"Jockimo?" Ethan checked.

"The Reanimator," she said. "The one we're to see soon?"

Ethan nodded.

"Oh yeah. So, he did all that for you? Built you new lungs, did something to your brain to make it all work again?"

"Yes," she said. "Though I'm sure it's all more complicated than that."

"Probably."

She puckered up to the window and applied a coat of cherry red lipstick. It occurred to Ethan then that Clara might look crazy to all the other living pedestrians passing them by on the sidewalks. A woman dressed like a street girl from the 1920s, standing outside of Starbucks and blowing kisses to herself in the storefront window. She was earning a few odd glances but no more than she might garner in any other part of the city.

Clara frowned at herself suddenly. She put her hands on her hips and turned this way and that.

"You know, I say Jockimo is a genius, but he probably could have taken off a few more pounds at the waist. These hips are atrocious. What do you think?"

"I think it doesn't help that you're dressed like a hooker from the twenties," Ethan said. She scoffed.

"Someone's in a bad way."

"Can we just go?"

"Relax," she replies. "We have eternity after all. Besides, you should learn to appreciate the moments like these. When you're my age and you possess the rare privilege to suit up in your old sack of flesh again. You learn not to let such an opportunity pass too swiftly."