Page 4 of Eternally Yours


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“What’s your name?” he asked.

She almost snapped,None of your business, head, but then she said, “Maria.”

“I’m so sorry, Maria.”

She nodded. “I guess I’m sorry, too. Not for decapitating you or anything. But I am sorry for what happened to you like it happened to me.”

She toed the dirt in the silence that followed. What was done was done, and she didn’t feel guilty about it. Just the same, she didn’t exactly want to smash his skull in with her boot as badly as she had before. Maybe she would use the hoe.

“You’re such an asshole!” she cried.

Ethan blinked. It was all he could do, really.

“Why’d you have to go and talk? Why’d you have to go and make me feel like you’re a person?”

“We are people,” he said softly. “But we’re not alive. I’mtechnically already dead, so you don’t need to feel bad about it. After this is over I’ll just be what I was supposed to be if I’d been luckier. I’ll just be dead. Or in heaven, if heads go to heaven. Or in hell, for biting you. I don’t know. I was Episcopalian.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Nothing. Just that I don’t remember it being covered. Maybe the Lutherans address it better.”

Maria snorted. “How long do you have,” she asked, “before you stop talking? Did your little ghoul chat group cover that?”

“No. But I feel like it’s maybe until morning. So I guess you don’t have to stomp me, if you don’t want to. You could just leave me here in the quiet. I won’t get up, I promise.”

Maria laughed.

“Or,” Ethan said, “you could always put me back on my body.”

“No, I can’t. I burned it.”

“Oh.”

“And I ate a little. Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” he said, but she thought he looked a little paler. “I guess that’s all there is to it, then. Unless... you wanted to find me a new body?”

“A new body? Like, a new dead body? Look, I’m not going to the trouble. I still want to bury you in the dirt. And besides, would that even work?”

“I think so, if you know how to sew. And it might not be that bad. You could be the Dr.Frankenstein to my Monster.”

Maria narrowed her eyes. “Dr.Frankenstein created a sentient being without thinking about its feelings or its physical survival. So I’m pretty sure you’re both the doctorandthe monster in this scenario.”

Ethan raised his eyebrows. “Touché.”

He looked up again at the sky. It was a nice day—sunny and full of soft clouds. “Well, Maria. If you’re not going to stomp me, may I make another suggestion?”

She didn’t know how he’d talked her into it—walking around the city in the fading afternoon light with a head in a bag slung over her shoulder—but there they were. Passing through Franklin Park and its empty tennis courts, dingy and cracked from the long winter.

“Where are we now?” Ethan asked from inside the canvas.

“I’m not going to narrate everything for you.” Maria found a bench near the statue of Ben Franklin, the one where he was posed like aProject Runwaymodel with his left hand on his hip and right toe pointed, complete with fancy shoe. She sat down and placed the bag beside her, then discreetly lifted the flap so Ethan could see out.

“Ah,” he said. “Benjamin Franklin. You know, he experimented with electricity by flying a kite in a lightning storm.Smart.And now they make these big metal statues of him. Every time one of these statues gets struck by lightning, do you think he feels it somewhere? Does he take it as acompliment, or does it just give him wicked flashbacks?”

Maria snorted. “I don’t know. I didn’t even know he did that. Was he some kind of scientist? I thought he was just a Founding Father. And the ‘a penny saved is a penny earned’ guy.”

“They should have put him on the penny,” Ethan said. “What’s going on out there? I hear people.”