those who linger

Jane nodded and put the dark eyeshadow into Red's impatient hand. Deftly, Red turned her sockets into a mask of black, identity in masquerade.

Red turned to Jane from the mirror and pulled her sharp nails through her grimy, unnatural crimson hair.

"Am I suave or what?" she demanded.

"Fine, Red," said Jane. "You always look nice."

"Of course," teeth nipping her upper lips. Her mouth pouted into a moue of concentration. "Now what was I talking about?"

"Death," reminded Jane, transferring the cosmetics one by one from the dirty chipped bathroom counter into her voluminous shoulder bag.

"Right, death. Death ain't romantic." Red boosted herself onto the shelf between the two sinks and lit up a cigarette between two black lacquered fingers. "I treat these things like god," said Red, gesturing forward with her cigarette, "They're like breathing. It saves me." She rubbed the filter tip lovingly before taking a drag.

"Okay," Red began again. "Death. Death ain't romantic. I don't care what stupid, careless son-of-a-bitch helped you over onto this side of existence. You're young for it. Me, I've been here longer so I know. Death is a mean old bastard who sucks you up like those vampires you used to see on the big screen. Death--"

The wail of the music from the dance club, dampened by the walls of the lavatory, screamed up at them with the swinging of the bathroom door. Both girls looked up, and Red drew her hand across her throat. Time to shut up, Jane knew.

The woman who entered came up to the mirrored counter and unslung her purse from her shoulder. She applied lipstick, smiled at her image, and began to fluff her hair. She did this staring through Red into the glass, as if she wasn't even there.

The living couldn't see the dead, and Jane knew by now that Red hated being taken for granted.

"Are we gonna be here all night?" Red hissed into the woman's face. "Get out of here!" And she spat, like a cat, at the vain little piece of flesh invading her territory.

The woman's vacant eyes focused for a moment, looking around the dingy bathroom. She couldn't see anyone, Jane knew. They never saw... but they knew, somehow, when you were there, talking to them. Jane saw beads of Red's spit glitter on the woman's eyelashes and cheeks. Illusion. Just illusion. Nothing dead escaped this place. The glitter would waste away into nothing when the woman left the room, when Jane and Red could no longer see it. Like the remnants of this afterlife, it would fade.

The woman gave her hair a final pat and went back to the darkness and music outside.

"People suck," Red trembled. She took a long drag off of her cigarette. "Ain't angels, ain't devils, ain't saints. Just blobs of skin and drops of blood, bits of bone."

Jane knew better than to try and comfort her companion. Red was starved for life. She wanted to be looked at. She wanted to be heard. Wasn't that why Jane had come, pulled by the force of Red's need for an audience? But Jane didn't suffice. She wasn't alive. She couldn't comfort. She'd put her arm around Red once, and would never try it again. Red hated to be touched almost as much as she hated being looked through...being ignored.

"Stupid people," said Red. "None of them know what I know."

"Being dead is better?" asked Jane.

"Damn straight being dead is better." Red swiped her hand across her eyes, smearing but not seriously damaging her make-up. "I'm still here, aren't I? I'm still talking. I still move. I hold on."

That's good, thought Jane. She's proud now. She's angry. As long as she feels something, she'll hold on. She'll stay.

"Shit," choked Red. "Look at me." She scrubbed at the black smudge by her eyebrow. The mark came clean. "I look like a fucking corpse." Her laugh moved psychotically up and down the octave.

Jane could see how it would happen. How years of time would go by as they waited for something, for nothing to happen in this room. She could see how Red could squeeze the last drop of emotion and animation from her. She could see how Red would grow stronger as Jain would falter like a leaky balloon.

Jane looked at Red. Did she even know her own power? How Red's tenacious hold on life had pulled Jane in here, like a filing to a magnet? Red was the reason she couldn't leave.

And what about the other option? If her only anchor to this place left her, stopped being, what would happen to Jane? Maybe she, too, would just disappear, sucked down with Red like a passenger on a leaky boat. She had to escape before that happened.

"Tell me there's a way out of here," said Jane, gripping the ends of her bag like a steering wheel. "This can't be all there is. There has to be something else. Heaven or hell or whatever. Tell me if we find the right clues, if we follow the right message, that there's a way out."

"I can't do that, Jane." Red was a sadist, but at least she was honest. "I wish I could. I wish. I'd go out that door and dance my ass off, dead or not. But I've been looking for the way out since I've been here, and I've never seen anyone get out except by fading away. They just fade away here."

There was a moment of silence, separated only by the heartbeat of the bass drum outside the bathroom door.

They fade because you suck them dry, you hag. But not me. Oh no.

"C'mere, Jane," Red gestured with her cigarette. "I'm gonna change that makeup you wear."

"I'm not wearing makeup. . .I mean, I wasn't wearing makeup when I ...you know."

"Then shut up and open up that bag. Just because you're dead doesn't mean you have to look like a stiff."

"Death," said Red, "Ain't romantic. It doesn't give you nothing. It just takes. So don't fall in love with what you are. And fer godssakes, don't fall in love with anything flesh. You can covet all you like, but you can't have. That's the second lesson. You've got only what you had on you at the time. No new change of underwear, nothing. Glad I got my makeup. My cigarettes. Makes ya wish you'd brought a book, I'd bet, huh?"

Jane nodded.

"Bookworm," said Red, disgusted. "Betcha were a student, right? One of those college types? How'd you go? You probably went easy. Drinking games with your sorority sisters? Nah. You got victim written all over you."

"Hit by a car," Jane faltered. "How about you? How'd you die?"

"Third lesson to learn, hon. Never tell how you went. Our stories are the only goods we've got. Shouldn't give them away for free." Then, considering, Red pulled up the sleeve of her low-cut black shirt. Needle tracks of different hue freckled her pale skin. "Good way to go. . . happy." Red jerked the cuff down, embarrassed. "I forgot to hold on to the needle. When I went. Otherwise I probably wouldn't care one way or the other about where I am. Woulda learned nothin. Woulda helped no one. So I guess it's good I forgot to hold on." Red looked Jane full in the eyes. "Good for you I forgot."

"Good for me," Jane repeated. She felt sick.

She stared at the graffiti penciled in on the restroom doors, words written over and over, on top of each other, inks in all shades. Colors contradictory. Dirty words and doodles. Accusations denied.

She went to one of the stalls, Red watching her disinterestedly. Jane ran her hands over and over the minute scratches, all the signs of human life which occupied this booth, however briefly. If she had known she would spend her afterlife in a seedy, dirty bathroom at some dance club, maybe she would have paid attention to these little details. Maybe she would have scratched in her own graffiti, literature for the dead. Maybe she would now. There was another death for the dead, and its name was inertia.

Jane reached into her pocket for the lipstick she kept there, candy pink, her color. She would leave some legacy for whoever came after her, flesh or spirit. Whatever wisdom she might have after all of this, wasn't it worth sharing? Jane uncapped the slim tube and twisted the pink paint up just the tiniest bit. She stood up on the cracked plastic seat of the commode and reached up with as high as her arm could go.

Outside the stall, Red piped up at her, her tone a mixture of condescension and curiosity.

"What the hell are you dooin?"

Jane began to write.

* * *

"Death," said Red, smiling sharkily at the new one standing in front of her, "Death ain't romantic."

The mousy middle-aged woman scratched her ear in confusion. Not as cute or as attentive as the last one, but at least she would listen and learn. Neonates. Sheesh. Look at this one. Another fucking victim.

Cancer, Red bet. One of the more mundane kinds. Dying, was, after all, so goddamned banal. "Death is aggravating and death is nuts," she continued, "it'll make you as crazy as any man ever will, and that's the only truth I know.

"And you've gotta be careful, too. You can't let Death fuck up your head. For example. There was this girl here with me. It was weeks, years ago, I dunno. But she went cuckoo pretty soon. Went into that bathroom stall and never came out again. Fell out of this side of death as quick as flicking a Bic."

The mousy housewife looked over at the half-unhinged stall door with fear and approbation. "Her name was Jane," said Red. "College student. Looking for a quick ticket out of death. Stupid. Stupid. Me, I hold on to what I got. I can teach you to do the same. Cause there are two kinds of us around this place. Those who linger and those who fade."

* * *

My name was Jane. For those who come after me: This isn't where you are. This isn't where you were supposed to go. All flesh is weak. The spirit is weaker. Get out while you can.