resurrection – Diabolical Plots

DP FICTION #128B: “Resurrection Scars” by Sheila Massie

Content note (click for details)

non-consensual medical treatment; suicide and references to suicide attempts; terminal illness; body horror; references harm to children

edited by Amanda Helms

I ease the corpse of my beloved into the depths of the temple, clutching tightly at the shrouds that cocoon her, descending ancient stone stairs worn smooth and soft, down into the blood-drenched womb of the world where the ishetim await.

It is a betrayal to bring her here.

I descend by feel into the darkness, one hand trailing along the chisel-scarred stone wall; the other, with its handful of rough-woven linen pressed tightly against my thigh, bearing the burden of her. The stairs are slick with moisture. There is the sound of water dripping, rhythmic and steady. I clench bare toes into the chilled stone and try not to fall. A mineral stench, acrid and sharp, rises from below. My shoulder and arm ache with the weight. The shrouds whisper along the stone and her skull beats a cadence as it slips down each step.

It is difficult for me not to recall her empty, vacant eyes, unblinking, when I wrapped the shrouds around her. I try, instead, to remember her eyes shining and vibrant with life. With love.

The ishetim will return her to me. We are each allowed one resurrection.

I set her down, bracing her so she does not slip into the darkness without me, and sit on the damp stairs, wiping sweat from my forehead and neck. My fingertips graze the resurrection scar which runs along my collarbone, braided ropes of scar tissue, twisted upon themselves, hard and solid, like bone.

There is a hard knot of grief and anger under my heart. I push aside the grief and stoke the anger, compressing it like stone under earth: harder, sharper, heavier. The absence of her is too much for me to bear. The grief too razored. She can return to me. She should.

And then, I am reminded of my beloved touching my resurrection scar the first time, fearful, tentative, the only part of my body which repelled her.

“Do you remember?” she had asked, carving at the scar with her finger.

The moment was long ago, when we were first lovers. We were drunk with each other’s touch, satiated, heavy with pleasure; limbs sprawled and tangled, sweat drying on her breasts, on mine. She held my hand in hers.

I shook my head. I didn’t remember. Not the dying. Not the return. Not the space between.

“Don’t ever do this to me,” she said, insistent, stabbing at the scar to emphasize her words. She had thought, even then, that we would be together until the end of our days. “Don’t. It is very dark magic.”

I disconnected my hand from hers, sat upright on the bed, crossed-legged, facing her. “I’m alive. I’m here with you.” I said, staring at her, bewildered. “How is that not the most wonderful magic?”

“How did you die?” Her voice caught on the last word.

“Plague. The most uninteresting of stories.” I laughed, leaning over the bed and snatching a pillow which had fallen to the floor. I curled myself around her, settling blankets over us as the room grew chilly with the descent of the sun.

“It is said that they were human once.” Her face fell into shadow. “The ishetim.”

I heard her quiet, cold voice.

“Never let the ishetim touch me.”

I dismissed her words and took her into my arms and I loved her for a time, then slept tangled with her, and allowed the conversation to be lost.

“Don’t ever have me resurrected,” she said, again, decades later, after we had wed, loved, lived most of a lifetime in each other’s days. After her illness had begun to devour her. “When I am dead, I am gone and lost to you, and you have to accept this.”

We argued for days, for weeks, for months. “Why would you refuse life-saving treatment?” My voice was hoarse with repeating the same words to her, with screaming, with choking on tears.

She was bed-ridden, only able to lift her hands. Her touch was gentle and insistent, both. “Because it is not life-saving. It is only life-prolonging.” Her voice was calm to my storm. “It is a darkness that I do not want to hold in me.”

I wrenched myself from her touch. “Have you loved me this long believing there is darkness in me?” I was incandescent with rage at the revelation. “The resurrection gave me my life! I would have been dead as a child, buried in a mass grave with thousands of others. We wouldn’t have met. We wouldn’t have had this love.”

She said, very quietly, “I have been grateful for this love.” She didn’t speak much after that.

I watched while she grew frail, until her breath came in long, shattered gasps, until all that was left of her was an empty, hollow husk, with eyes that stared at something I could not see.

My hands cupped her face, my forehead pressed to hers. I did not know if she could hear me. “I can’t be without you.”

I scrub at my tears and clench my fist again around a handful of shrouds. I drag her down. She will forgive me.

The stairs end with a faint, warm luminescence. There is a small iron gate. The pickets are straight and slender, unadorned, sharp. There is neither lock nor latch.

There is movement in the dark beyond the gate. Shadows shift. I can hear the whisper of heavy fabric, soft footfalls, breath, the gentle rattle of chain sliding along stone.

My beloved’s fear was irrational. I tell myself this as I wait for the ishetim to attend us. I kneel and lay a hand against her brow, as though to reassure her.

A long, pale-fingered hand wraps around one of the gate spikes and pushes the gate open. The creature is bent double, stepping through. It is hairless, long-limbed, smooth-skinned, with large, round eyes black as the night sky. It is wrapped in a loose robe woven from a cream-colored, thick, fibrous material, stitched through with iridescent flecks of flaked stone. There is the scent of something sour and earthy, like fermented mushrooms; and the scent of something mineral, sharp, fresh-cut.

The isheti ignores me, its attention on the corpse. It pulls the thick folds of fabric back from its hands and forearms. It slices the shroud over my beloved’s eyes, deliberately, intentionally, with its elongated fingernails, sharp and knife-like. The act is precise. The shroud parts. The isheti uses the back of its hand to ease open my beloved’s eyes.

The isheti slides its hands under the corpse at shoulders and thigh, and lifts her, cradling her against its chest. It turns towards the gate and bends to crouch through. There is movement in the shadows at the base of its skull. I see it as it turns away from me. Something shifts there. I can’t see what it is. The isheti arches its neck and glances back at me. It beckons. It gestures ‘halt’. It shrugs. The choice is mine. Its eyes are wide and welcoming in the faint light. I am invited to witness. It is also permitted for me to wait here, outside the gate. She will need me there, when she understands I have done this against her will.

I follow the isheti and my beloved through the gate, reaching behind me to close it as I pass. Iron snicks on stone.

The passage beyond the gate opens to a vast, enormous cavern. The cavern is illuminated with a soft, warm light emanating from tangled, organic growths suspended from the arched ceiling. There is a block of polished stone, the color of cream, in the center of the cavern.

The isheti lays my beloved on it, removing the remains of her shroud, arranging her limbs. She is naked now, cold, stiff. Her eyes remain open and staring toward the tangled light above.

As it bends over her, its hands floating lightly over her body, in intimate gestures, as though to know her, the object at the back of the isheti’s skull is illuminated by the light overhead. The sight of it reverberates through my bones, across my skin. The hair on my neck stands. A shard of iron is pierced through the isheti’s skull, just at the occiput. The shard is curved into a closed circle. The bone clings tight to the iron ring, as though it has grown around it. The children are chained as soon as they learn to walk. They scream as the spike is driven through bone, and brain, and spine. They die. They are ishetim. Resurrection is easily done. A chain flows from the iron ring down the isheti’s back, onto the floor, and snakes away into the darkness.

Other isheti come from the shadows. Each is chained.

My beloved fears them. And yet I have brought her here. I am not afraid. I am angry. I am writhing with anger that she has not listened to reason. I am blistered, torn open, with anger that she has chosen to leave me, when she could stay. That I have been abandoned.

The ishetim begin to chant, weaving threads of wordless vocalizations together, as they move towards my beloved’s corpse, their robes rustling softly as harmony to their voices. They are no longer capable of speech, I am told. Speech sacrificed to obtain their unspeakable potent magic.

The ishetim remove their robes and fold them carefully on the floor. They gather around her, bearing bowls of stone and woven baskets, and the sharp implements of their magic. She is cleansed with water, and with smoke, and with marrow scooped from long, cracked bones. She is scrubbed with sand and with sharp, broken splinters of rock. She is anointed with oil, and with a pungent fermented liquid covered in a pale blue down, and with blood pulsing from the long, slender neck of one of the isheti.

Then they begin to cut.

The work is terrible. The ishetim use blades of stone and iron for the long, deep cuts across the collar bone, chest and thigh, and their own fingernails for the finer work along hands and fingers, through cheekbones, and nose, and chin. They cut out her blood vessels, removing them whole and entire. It is painstaking, delicate work, separating arteries and veins, and capillaries as fine as the hairs on her cheeks. When they have finished, she is unrecognizable. No longer human. Ribbons of flesh. Bones showing through. The blood, jellied in the vessels, now discarded on the floor, glistening and weeping.

They press something into the parted flesh. It is impossible to know what it is. It is soft, pliable, the color of milk. It fuses with parted flesh. I run my fingers over my arms up to the collarbone, imagining this alien substance inserted into my own flesh. I don’t care. I live. What else would matter?

They thread long, impossibly delicate needles with a substance as fine and translucent as spider silk and begin to sew.

I wait and witness. And then.

My beloved is no longer a corpse. Her skin is lush with life. Her breasts rise and fall with breath. Her skin is smooth and unmarked, save for the single wound along her collarbone, deliberately left. I yearn to kiss her, to feel the warmth of her skin, to lie with her again, and listen to her voice. I cannot regret the choice I have made. I do not. Instead, I feel the hard, cold anger in my chest begin to loosen and unwind, replaced with relief, with love.

She opens her eyes. She smiles and reaches for me. My heart lifts. Then, she frowns as she sees the roof of the cavern above and the faces of the ishetim surrounding her. She scrambles upright. A small, startled sound escapes her lips. She glances down at her naked body, the congealed blood, the bits of flesh, the newly sewn resurrection wound left deliberately across her collarbone. She scratches at it frantically, tearing the stitches. It does not bleed. There is no blood left in her.

“What have you done?” Her voice is wretched, newly stitched. She strangles on it.

There is no undoing this.

“Oh, my love,” I say. I exhale suddenly, as though I was not aware I had been holding my breath since her passing.

“You’ve betrayed me,” she says, astonished. She is sidling backwards on the stone table, away from the ishetim, away from me. She places her palms flat on the stone, and reaches down with one foot towards the floor, finds her balance, places the other foot. The floor is wet and slippery with her blood. She looks down, still clutching the table. She retches.

“You’re alive,” I say.

She takes a step away from the table. Away from me. She touches a hand to her chest. Her heart no longer beats. There is nothing for it to do without the blood. I know this. I place a hand to my own unbeating heart to show her that I know.

“I’m ruined,” she says, her voice very still, very quiet. But she is whole and perfect and everything she has been.

I feel my anger compressing again. I reach a hand to her, to bring her back.

She flinches away from me, slipping in her own blood. “It is very dark magic,” she gasps, still moving away.

The gate is behind her. Shadows of the gate spikes are stark and black against the cream-colored stone floor. The ishetim begin to move away, deeper into their shadows. Their chains rustle softly.

“It is wonderful magic,” I counter, echoing the words I spoke to her so many years ago.

“I don’t want it.” Her voice becomes shrill. She trembles. She claws at her body as though trying to tear it apart. Her eyes are wide in the soft glow of the cavern’s light. “I am… wrong.” She looks towards me, accusing. “How could you betray me like this?” she says, bitterly. Her gaze searches the cavern, as though trying to find an escape from the cavern, from me.

Now my anger sinks to the pit of my stomach, like a rock in water. “I betrayed you?” My fingers clench and my voice rises. “We are together. How, oh how, is this a betrayal?”

I take another step towards her, hands reaching out.

She snatches one of the isheti’s knives from the bloody altar. She holds it between our bodies, menacing, keeping me at bay. She pauses, staring at the blade. There are bits of her flesh on it, her blood. She turns the knife, pointing the blade towards her unbeating heart. She looks up at me. She tightens the fingers of one hand around the hilt, presses the palm of her other hand flat against the butt.

“No!” My voice tears from me. I lunge at her, frantic. I catch one of her arms, tighten my grip on it, try to wrest the knife from her. We struggle. My hand slips and catches on the blade. I try to hold on to it. She pulls it from my grasp. A shriek of pain slides over my palm. I rush forward, grasping for control of the blade, of her hands, of her life. And the knife, soaked in her blood, and in the milky white fluid from my sliced palms, the knife plunges under my ribs, deep, to the hilt, to the bones of her fingers. Her skin touches mine, and it is warm and alive. I clutch her hands. It wasn’t intentional.

“I did not want this.” Her voice is shaking now. She looks down, gasps. She pulls her hands away from mine.

She retreats quickly. She looks behind her, for an escape, for a way out.

“Don’t leave me.” I hurl the words at her. The pain in my belly takes my breath from me. I pull the knife out. It clatters to the floor.

“This is my decision to make, only mine.” She is nearly at the gate now. She is half in and half out of shadow where the gate separates the ishetim’s world from the long, long ascent back into ours.

“I don’t have to lose you.” My voice is soft now, as though the anger leaks from me along with the fluid that drips between my fingers where they press against my wound. There is despair, and a loss of hope. I had held the hope all these many days since she died in arms, and now it cascades away from me.

Her fingers reach out towards one of the iron gate spikes. She is suddenly calm. She stands straight. “You have already lost me.” She turns. She grasps one of the iron gate spikes, curling her fingers around it with both hands. She plunges herself upon it. It pierces her under her jaw, up and through. She hangs there. Trembles. Is still.

The ritual can only be performed once. There is no undoing this.

The ishetim wail. They are agitated, restless.

My beloved’s body hangs on the inside of the gate, in the shadows. She remains in their world, has not crossed the threshold. They take her down. Her head falls askew. Broken. Bloodless. They do not put her on the stone altar. The resurrection cannot be done again. One last chance. Instead, they take her by the limbs and drag her back, further into the dark, into the shadows. They make ugly, terrible sounds in their mouths.

A hard sharp sound, like a hammer on stone.

I hear something like a scream.

I am alone in the cavern under the world. The pain of lost hope is as encompassing as the cavern that surrounds me. The pain of the wound has narrowed to a small, sharp hole inside me. My limbs are numb and my face cold. I know that I am dying. The ishetim have retreated into their darkness. I am alive, and once dead already, and there is no need for them to attend me. I wonder, if I die here, will the ishetim take me and drag me into the darkness in the belly of the world? Will they bury me alongside my beloved?

I cannot bear for us to be parted.

I do not want to die.

Even without my beloved, I do not want to die. I tear a strip from my dress and bind it around the bottom edge of my ribs, tying it as tightly as I can manage with my unresponsive fingers. I pass through the gate. My fingers reach up to touch the spike where my beloved betrayed our future together. I stumble, on a loose stone, on grief, on anger. The spike bites into me. My body jerks in reaction, and I am bent double by the searing pain in my belly. I collapse against the gate, hearing the iron on stone as it closes. I drag myself upright and begin the long ascent back into the light.

***

My body is frail and shaking as I descend in the darkness. I stop and sleep on the stone stairs when exhaustion overtakes me. There is no hope to keep track of time, but I am dehydrated and stumbling when I reach the gate. It is difficult not to see her body hanging from it in my memory. I sit and wait.

The physicians have done their best for me. They stopped the milk leaking from my body, cleaned me with strong astringents and with flame, stitched my skin closed. But the hole is too deep, and the knife that cut me was not clean. An infection has taken hold. And the physicians say there is nothing more for them to do, save poppy or mandrake or henbane.

I do not know where else to go. I still yearn for my beloved. Maybe the ishetim will bury me alongside her. There is despair. And longing.

I hear the soft rattle of chains. A shadow interrupts the light emanating from the cavern. An isheti has come for me. I try to rise. I cannot. It crouches on the other side of the gate, inspecting me. It turns its face to allow the light to shine on it. There is a familiarity to it. It is isheti, hairless, and dark-eyed, and misshapen. It is my beloved. Was. There is a ring at the back of her skull, and a chain.

“You’re alive,” I gasp. There is radiant joy.

She tilts her head, listening. She doesn’t speak.

“The ishetim can resurrect more than once,” I whisper, astonished. “You become one.” I reach through the spires of the iron gate. My fingers caress the fabric of her robes, imagining her smooth warm skin against mine. “Oh, my love, let us be together for always.”

She stands and removes her robe. She is naked before me. She wants me to see. She is much changed. There are ligature marks at her neck. A long, flat, roped scar on one side of her throat. A handful of jagged puncture marks between her ribs. Burn scars covering part of her face, and down one arm. And a delicate blossom of pale scar tissue under her jaw where the iron spike of the gate went through.

“Resurrect me,” I say, pleading.

She looks at me for a very long while. Then she shakes her head, once, very strongly.

She leaves me lying on the stone, in the darkness, outside the gate, to die.

3584 words

Sheila Massie is a speculative fiction writer of fantasy and horror, both dark and hopeful, (though not always in the same story). She enjoys a good sipping tequila, can’t live a day without cheese or tea, and doesn’t like mornings unless it’s of the still awake at 2am variety. She lives with her husband and her two dogs in Victoria, BC, Canada. Her fiction has appeared in Flash Fiction Online, Daily Science Fiction, Augur Magazine and elsewhere. Find out more at sheilamassie.com.

Bluesky: @sheilamassie.bsky.social

Twitter: @writersmassie

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DP FICTION #118B: “Margery Lung Is Unstoppable” by Lisa Cai

edited by Hal Y. Zhang

Content note (click for details)

Content note: anti-Asian racism and misogyny, murder, body horror, gore, pet death.

The first time Margie raised the dead, it was to prove she didn’t eat her dog. As Harold hadn’t been walked around the neighbourhood recently, her classmate Brenda assumed Margie’s family devoured their dog and caught SARS.

Harold was a beloved member of the Lungs. That grey fluffy Pomeranian guarded Margie since she was born. He spent his final months lying limp on his beanie bed, yet he growled and his fur stood on end whenever the doorbell rang.

Margie arose before dawn to bring Harold back. She squeezed between the backyard’s fence and shed to reach his resting place. She flung fistfuls of dirt off the soaked shoebox. Worms and maggots crawled up her wrists at the sudden disturbance; she brushed them off with her hands.

Poh Poh taught her to raise the dead; with brushes dipped in chicken’s blood, they wrote spells on paper, copying from old instruction manuals, and practiced on mangled squirrels and sparrows in the backyard. Those animals stood, brown wings and furry black arms raised, and hopped towards a small ditch as Poh Poh knelt and rang a bell. Their powers were used for undertaking. Why not do other things before the dead were laid to rest?

Margie pulled a yellow talisman from her waistband and punched it through the box. Gas, grit, and flies burst from her force. The cardboard coffin and surrounding dirt trembled and collapsed inward. A high-pitched yelp came from the grave.

Harold poked his head out of the ground. He licked his pointed nose. His beady black eyes widened staring up at her. He yipped a greeting and wiggled his whole form to shake the insects off and out of him.

“Morning, Harold.” She pulled him by the paws to get him to stand on all fours. Harold wagged his short tail with vigour and smiled with his tongue out. He was so excited to see her and have his strength back! “Wanna walk?”

Harold limped towards her; the surgery he had on his hip last year never fully healed.

Margie retrieved the black leash from her pocket and attached it to his collar. When her parents buried him, they left his collar around his neck because he was irreplaceable.

Margie led them out the backyard. Harold hopped once, twice, then kept to it to follow by her side. The talisman on his back flapped up and down with each bounce. No matter how stiff, goeng-si could always jump.

Based on the dark sky and bright streetlights, it was around six a.m. Brenda’s dad jogged wearing a Walkman, fanny pack, and tracksuit with orange neon stripes. If Margie found him and showed him her dog, he could tell his daughter nobody devoured Harold and he died of old age.

Cedarvale Park’s entrance opened with a misty paved path flanked by tall trees. Leaves crunched under Margie’s slippers. Harold panted. Drool dripped out his mouth and onto the sidewalk.

“Are you tired?” She couldn’t wait for Harold to adjust to his new state; her family wouldn’t understand her motives. They ran a funeral home to send the dead away, not bring them back. Or, at least, they didn’t anymore. They ended the whole leading-the-dead business generations ago.

Her parents and older sister, Evelyn, told her it was disrespectful to revive the dead. How did they know? They never asked goeng-si what they thought. In movies, they usually went on rampages until they were subdued by someone. Margie wanted to sit one down and ask why they came back with bloodthirst.

“Margie, stop!” Evelyn pounded towards Margie in her pajamas.

Harold’s tail wagged and he yipped in greeting.

Margie was going to get an earful from Evelyn. Margie snatched Harold into her arms and charged into the park, dashing up a slope with tall grass. Evelyn, chasing her sister, tripped and slipped into the dirt. Margie reached the top. A man with a racket in the nearby tennis court turned to her. Harold bared his fangs and snarled at the stranger.

“What’s wrong with your dog?”

Nothing’s wrong with him. Margie ran around fencing and hid behind a tree, leaning against the trunk and panting. She’d never find Brenda’s dad now. She had to try one last thing. She held Harold up, so their dark eyes stared straight into the other’s.

“Find Brenda’s Baba!” She had the image of a middle-aged skinny jogger in her mind and burned her gaze into Harold.

He stared at her in concentration. She was trying to teach him a trick and he couldn’t decipher the action he had to perform to get a treat.

Evelyn yanked Margie by her shirt collar. Harold dropped to the ground. Margie kicked and shrieked as her sister gripped her by the waist, but she wouldn’t let go.

“Do you know how much trouble you’re in?”

***

Harold barked and barked at the sisters. They were a pack; infighting like this was never allowed! Sometimes, the two of them argued, but it never got this physical.

Margie’s mouth released a long high-pitched cry. Tears streaked her face. She wailed like that when she was a puppy, spending her days sleeping and feeding. One day, she’d be as big as the other humans because he protected her. Why he had been buried in a box in the backyard was a mystery, but he could bark and follow Margie again.

Margie collapsed onto the ground and he ran up to her. Evelyn yanked the paper off his back and the world went black.

***

The second time Margie raised the dead, it was to extend a long life that should’ve gone longer.

Poh Poh chose to die at home. She didn’t want to be tended to by strangers in a hospice and have instruments run on her. She lay on her wide bed with several layers of blankets. Her cheeks had grown sallow and the outlines of her neck and collarbone creased her skin as she lost weight. A black beanie covered her head as her white hair was styled short.

Mama raised a spoon of congee to Poh Poh’s lips. “Eat.”

Poh Poh parted her lips, took a small sip, and turned her face away. Margie stayed by her grandma’s side, scribbling in a notebook, as relatives entered and left checking in on Poh Poh.

In the afternoon, her chest went still. With her eyes closed and face laxed, she appeared to be sleeping. Once an aunt noticed Poh Poh wasn’t breathing, she called for everyone to gather in the bedroom. Among the crowd, several sniffled or covered their teary eyes. Murmurs about what to do next circulated through the room. Margie knelt in the corner and put her hands over her ears.

Harold’s body rotted behind the shed years ago and was unretrievable, but Margie wouldn’t let Poh Poh leave, not until she was ready. They were supposed to grow bitter melons together in the backyard, as they did every summer. The seeds in the aluminum dishes they set on a windowsill had germinated with tiny white roots sprouting. The crops’ yellow flowers sometimes moved in the direction of the sun. Their leaves shriveled as the nights grew colder. Who was going to look after them with Margie?

Life wasn’t fair. Death was unfair. Why just stay here and accept death? Who was Margie, other than someone who could redefine what being alive meant?

Margie dashed to her bedroom and rummaged through her drawer. Poh Poh was illiterate, but she taught Margie how to write and copy spells. If she had regrets or things left unsaid in this life, Margie would give her one last chance before moving on.

“Get out of the way!” Margie waved the talisman above her and charged into Poh Poh’s room.

“Ah-Margie, stop!” Mama grabbed her daughter’s arm, but Margie jerked away as her mother’s nails left long pale scratches along her skin. She slapped the talisman on her grandma’s forehead. Poh Poh’s eyes popped open and she sprang sitting up.

A cousin screamed at the back. How could Margie use her powers on their matriarch?

“Poh Poh!” Margie grabbed her grandma by the sleeve and shook her. “Say something!”

She passed away ten minutes ago. If she needed to speak, she could do it now, before it was too late. Relatives yanked Margie back. She cried out and stretched her hands out to Poh Poh. She couldn’t be the only one who wanted Poh Poh to stay with them. Who didn’t want their grandma to live forever?

***

Poh Poh observed wrinkles and spots on her adult children and pimples and braces on her grandchildren; her sight had never been better in years. Everyone yelled at each other in the room. All their words meant nothing, travelling jumbled in a circle.

The yellow talisman fluttered up and down Poh Poh’s face. Ah-Margie did that. She was brought back to life minutes after death. Was it worth it? It had been generations since their powers were needed to lead the dead home. She wanted to be buried here, in Canada, beside her husband; she had no intention of returning to her birth village.

Ah-Margie’s eyes were round and focused on Poh Poh even as she was pressed down on the floor by relatives. Poh Poh’s false teeth gleamed between her lips as she smiled. Her laugh was dry and hoarse as her chest expanded with air. She was right to pass on her knowledge of raising the dead. Ah-Margie could, would grow and guide the dead to a dignified final journey. That was all Poh Poh wanted.

She yanked the talisman off, lay back, and resumed being dead.

***

The third time Margie raised the dead, she didn’t have any other choice.

No matter the trauma, body bags were supposed to be still. The zipped white pouch was motionless on the table, yet something beat within Winona’s body.

Margie rubbed her blurry eyes. The back of her head buzzed. Was she imagining things? She had stayed late at the funeral home browsing online.

When Winona was found dead, stabbed outside Spadina Station, a media circus broke out. Editorials discussed how this was related to the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, or how it wasn’t. Authorities investigated it as a random incident; the killer was unknown, so there was no evidence she was targeted because of her race or gender.

On social media, people declared this sort of thing didn’t happen in Canada. Others posted proof to the contrary: the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Vancouver anti-Asian riots, internment camps, the head tax and Chinese Exclusion Act, border controls, carding, the bamboo ceiling—that was their Canada. What did people do when faced with this? What could someone do?

Winona was named after the area her family immigrated to in Toronto. Margie lived nearby, walked through it, and went to school there. They might have encountered each other in a convenience store selecting candy, browsing through an aisle of books in a library, or waiting at a bus stop.

The body bag expanded and deflated; Winona breathed.

Margie’s hand twitched. This corpse needed to be controlled before it arose and sought vengeance. Anger was the fluid that brought her back to life. Margie was supposed to quell goeng-si from rampaging by placing a talisman on their forehead and leading them to their resting place.

When Margie brought the dead back, she was supposed to guide them towards peace. She had done things backwards with Harold and Poh Poh; they had no reason to come back as they lived long, fulfilled lives and were cared for at death. Winona had none of that. She wouldn’t leave for the afterlife until she got revenge. All Margie needed was a talisman written with chicken blood to give Winona peace. What was the point of having powers if you didn’t use them to fight for a good cause?

The body bag trembled and drummed against the table. Winona extended her limbs and clawed and kicked the pouch like a creature emerging from a womb. Margie unzipped it.

***

Winona had to escape. In the dark, she swiped and punched. Her heels banged the solid surface behind her as the world shook. She tore at her back and dug nails into her wounds. He stabbed her there so many times, when would he stop?

White light beamed on her. Was this a trick of her assailant? Winona extended her fangs and claws to counter whatever came at her.

Her forehead was slapped and vision obscured in white and black by a strip of paper. Her body froze. The world was now dark blue. A small stream flowed over mud and stone. On each side of the water were trees with yellow and orange leaves. Cedarvale Park: she had jogged through there, years ago. Why was she seeing this?

“You’re safe in my family’s morgue,” a woman spoke.

What was she doing here? She was fending herself off from an attacker after leaving Spadina Station. She wanted to grab a book from Robarts Library; classes were finally happening on campus again. The students in her tutorial expected to discuss the professor’s assigned readings. She had to grade papers, edit her thesis, and grab groceries for herself and her fiancé. She couldn’t be dead.

Why was this happening to her? Why did she live to learn about her own death? Winona uttered a cry; something hoarse and hollow emerged from her mouth. Had her body decomposed so far that she was without speech?

A hand stroked her hair. “I’m here to help.”

What could this stranger do for her? She couldn’t return to what her life was.

“Winona.” The woman clasped her hands, claws, and flesh. “They haven’t found your killer, but you can. You’re both connected, whether you like it or not.”

Winona gripped the hands that were offered to her. Her pointy nails dug into the other’s skin. Warm droplets of blood rolled down her wrists. If Winona did nothing, he’d get away with murder.

“I’m from the same place as you, Winona. Men honked at you from cars since you were a teen too, right? You’ve been followed and asked where you’re from. No, where’re you really from?”

It wasn’t just strangers. Her classmates, acquaintances, and exes grabbed her, insulted her, hit her. She was punished for just existing. She always kept her head down and fled in silence. What else could she do? She was helpless, until she died.

“You’ve thought about getting back at all those assholes, haven’t you? We all have.”

Her killer was like all the others who wronged her. He’d continue hurting and targeting others if she didn’t stop him. Winona ground her fangs. Her sharp teeth could crunch down on her killer’s bones and reduce them to bits. She’d render him small for her consumption by tearing up his flesh with her bare hands. She defied heaven and hell to return here; she was the strongest being alive.

She’d thoroughly disrespect him. Her feet could stomp and crush all his organs. She’d splatter blood over his home’s walls and ceiling with the force of her fists. He’d never find closure to his violent end.

“You have a few hours before you have to come back here.” The woman let go of Winona.

***

As the blue-haired VTuber hit the high note at the end of her song, clapping hand emojis flooded the chat. Margie watched the singing streamer on her phone as she waited in the kitchen. She sent several messages with heart icons.

Margie grabbed a dampened cloth and lifted her wok’s lid. Steam puffed up in a cloud, as did the aroma of shrimp, eggs, and chives. The stirred eggs in the tin dish solidified into yellow and white, with a bubbly surface spotted with chopped green onions and mini shrimp. Their tiny black eyes dotted the surface. This was how Poh Poh made it. Margie set it on a coaster and cut it apart in quarters. As she lifted a slice up, the ends of glass noodles hung out.

Her apartment door creaked open. The footsteps were heavy with every stomp and hop.

“Oh, you’re here? Are you hungry?” Margie set up two bowls on her table with steamed eggs and rice. Margie held a spoon; if Winona needed to be fed, she’d help.

The goeng-si turned the corner into view. Winona kept a hand on the wall to support herself. Her palm left streaks of blood on the white wall. Her head tilted right, along with the talisman on her forehead. Margie’d scrub up the blood soon.

Winona stared at Margie. The rank pungent smell of human flesh and blood wafted throughout the kitchen as she exhaled; it was stronger than when corpses were drained of blood for embalming. Winona’s clothes were soaked red. They dripped a dark trail on the floor. She had eaten well.

Margie doubled the portions for nothing. She’d stretch her rice and eggs for lunch and dinner, maybe save some for tomorrow.

“Sit down, at least.” Winona was going to continue hopping as she stiffened and returned to death. Margie retrieved a dark hoodie from her bedroom. She stood by a seated Winona and held the garment up.

“Wear this and we can go back to the funeral home.” Did Winona understand the implications? Her family wanted an open casket viewing. Her face needed to be patched up with wax, clay, and makeup to hide the cuts and bruises.

Winona turned her head up to Margie. Her glassy eyes were spotted red, brown, and black.

“You killed him, right?” Margie said. “Is there anything else you need to do?”

Her head bobbed back, then forward as a nod to her first question, then her head swayed left and right for no. The talisman followed her movements. Margie couldn’t peer into the goeng-si’s mind. If she could, she would’ve asked Harold if he appreciated her placing blankets on him as he slept on his beanie bed and questioned Poh Poh about her adventures subduing the undead.

Margie covered Winona’s head and arms with the hoodie. From a distance, the blood was unnoticeable. The bandages around Margie’s hands pressed against the other person.

In the morgue, the goeng-si’s nails dug deep into Margie’s skin. One way to become a goeng-si was through infection. Tomorrow, she’d unwrap her bandages. If the punctures were coloured anything like a corpse’s, she’d consult the old manuals for antidotes to remove her poison; if that didn’t work, Evelyn would have to subdue her by slapping a talisman on Margie. As tempted as Margie was to prepare comebacks for her sister’s scolding, she had to deal with Winona first.

“Can you run for thirty minutes? That’s all we need.” If Winona jumped from roof to roof as Margie jogged on the sidewalk, they could travel without raising suspicion.

“Y-s….” Winona’s legs trembled as she stood. Margie held Winona by the arm to help her stand.

Her parents would have arrived at the funeral home about now and they’d have to let her in. They sensed when corpses arose. This time, they were too far away to control her. What could they do? Turn her in to authorities and expose their powers? They were forced into silence now. In the end, Margery Lung was unstoppable.

Margie patted Winona’s shoulder as she headed to the front door. According to Poh Poh, their ancestors, for a fee, may have marched the dead from cities back to their birth villages at night by using talismans. They rattled bells to warn people to stay away from them.

She rang her handbell to begin the final command.

3288 words

Author’s Note:

The story’s setting is close to home; I live, work, and play near the Oakwood Village area in Toronto, where Winona Drive is. While Canada likes to prop itself up as a welcoming and multicultural place, it is not without its flaws. I wanted to highlight the historical, cyclical, and systemic violence Asian people, especially Asian women, are subjected to. Using the goeng-si, I wanted a victim of such violence to get revenge.

Goeng-si (also called jiāngshī) are hopping vampires or zombie-like creatures from Chinese folklore. They’re usually depicted wearing Qing dynasty official outfits with talismans clinging to their foreheads. A human may turn into one due to things such as getting attacked and infected by a goeng-si, a bad death (i.e. murder, suicide), or a Taoist priest needing to transport the deceased. Goeng-si genre films experienced breakthrough success in the 1980s with franchises like Mr. Vampire, a Cantonese language series produced in Hong Kong.

Lisa Cai is from Toronto, Canada. She has been published in The Dark, Polar Borealis Magazine, and others. When not reading or writing, she is probably wrangling with IT at a university, watching anime, taking a long walk, or solving crimes in Among Us. Her socials are listed at https://linktr.ee/lisacai.

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