Vivisepulture (noun): the practice of burying someone alive.
The ghosts are loud tonight. Eric hears them howling around the house in the wind, but mostly inside his own head. If you asked him, Eric would say he doesn’t believe in ghosts. Like a million other folks, he’s far from special in that. He believes in emptiness though. Ask him and he’d tell you that a ghost is just a memory, a vacant lot filled with the debris of dead feelings. Paul said so once, after reading some book or other. And Eric has thought that way ever since Paul passed three years ago, leaving him to wash up alone on the shores of his late forties, clutching the crushed tin can of his heart and wondering, wondering how the hell he’s supposed to start over. Now that the flat stomach of his thirties has become a bowling ball under his shirt. Now his hair is streaked with grey. Now he doesn’t have the ready, fuck-it-all smile that made Paul fall for him all those years ago, that cold sweet year up north. None of which saved Paul John Rodriguez (1979–2024) from the car crash. A coal truck had skewed on ice, flipped and crushed the roof of his Ford. Crushed them both, even though Eric was miles away choosing tiles for the bathroom refit and didn’t know it until the police showed up at his door an hour later.
‘Your husband is dead,’ they said. Just like that. Didn’t even ask if he wanted to sit down first. A faint air of disdain had hung over the porch. They’d have preferred a wife. Normality. It showed in the officers’ faces. Somehow, Paul’s death was less to them. And Eric was less than that. You can forgive Eric for not having a particularly spiritual outlook. Eric knows what it means to be alone.
But tonight the ghosts are loud, he’s weary of TV dinners and his own sorry company, and so he decides to go out. The trouble is it isn’t the house that’s haunted. Maybe a couple of Cuba Libres will silence the noise. He isn’t expecting much. Enough to wash down the taste of processed mac ‘n cheese and Xanax, and send him into sleep where (he thinks) the dead can’t touch him. That’s on his mind when he steps off the subway and, collar up like a cartoon crook, slips into the downtown gay district. To a bar he’s never been before. A bar without memories.
A bar with a name he won’t later recall. Music rumbles, a dirge through the floor. The place reeks of Le Male and cigarettes. There’s a toilet that he reckons stinks worse. Probably a dark room that stinks worse than that. Whenever a guy walks by his booth, Eric sucks in his gut, not that anyone is looking. Most folks are looking at their phones. Eric is invisible. How ironic is that? Haunted and a ghost. He’s forty going on fifty and on the scrap heap along with the rest. The gay living dead. He tells himself it’s a place that Paul would hate and that makes it better somehow. He’ll order another drink, then head on home, he thinks.
He’s thinking it when the guy slides into the booth and sits opposite him.
“Drowning your sorrows?”
The guy makes a joke about the necessity of hooch in a place like this. He’s trying to take the edge off it, but Eric is too in shock to laugh. Noah was hammering nails into wood the last time anyone approached him like this. Even guys in the office only approached him with documents and sales figures and tedious chat about their weekends. Mundane, hetero lives.
He manages to cough out a reply. It isn’t a good one.
“Or myself.”
The guy nods. It’s disarming enough for Eric to take a look at him. The guy doesn’t get up to walk away. Not yet. A second later there’s the fear that this might lead somewhere. Lord, they might even fuck and how the hell is he supposed to remember how to do that? A second after that, he realises that the guy is a corpse.
“I hear drowning isn’t as bad as they say. Try being smashed in the face with a claw hammer.”
He has Eric’s full attention. Eric is sitting bolt upright against faux red leather and choking on his rum. He can see that the guy is his type, sure. Or at least he used to be. His fringe was probably blond once. His denim jacket sings ‘top’, but it’s had its time in the sun. He’s what? Thirty, thirty five? Hard to tell. Pallor mortis is quite the makeover, he thinks like a dick. Bloated lips smile at him, a shade of blue that Eric knows isn’t . . . Uh. That word again. Normal. There’s the noticeable stink of him too, an earthy sweetness that’s far from sweet. When the guy takes a sip of his drink, Eric can see the straw through a hole in his cheek, the hint of tendons and a black tongue. Rot is eating him away. And, like the guy said, half of his face is toast.
“Get over it,” the guy says, watching him. “Name’s Bobby. And yes, I’m dead.”
Eric can see that.
Bobby tries to explain. “Some arsehole did it. Six months ago. Bad date or what? Shit, I’m still not over it.”
Murders in downtown aren’t rare. Every day there’s a new smiling face on a milk carton. A woman missing on the news. It’s a running theme in every major city, but Eric has been distracted of late. Paul has kept him busy. The emptiness.
But Eric hasn’t met the dead before.
“You’re a ghost.” Shock prompts him to state the obvious.
Bobby pulls a ‘duh’ face. His wounds squelch a little. He flicks back his hair, a sarcastic punctuation mark. From his left cheek up, he’s all crushed bone with an eye missing. There’s this hole there, crusted by blood. The aftermath of the blow, Eric thinks. A claw hammer, he said. It looks like an open grave.
Then Bobby reaches over and grabs Eric’s hand. His touch is like an icepack.
Eric pulls back but there’s nowhere to go.
“I’m dead and I need your help.”
Eric has seen Horror movies. Who hasn’t? In Horror movies, you run. How the fuck he’s out here on the street with the guy—shit, the corpse—isn’t something he’ll ever be able to put into words. But he knows why. Bobby saw him. Bobby chose him. And Bobby, dead or no, is better to talk to than an old photograph of Paul, the TV or himself.
These are the reasons why Eric doesn’t run: A cold bed waiting. The lack of a cat. No taps on any of the apps he’s cruised like some creepy uncle (not even when he used a profile pic from college). The crushing knowledge that tomorrow will just be an echo of today and him fading along with it. It’s a humdrum cycle. The office. The evening call from Mom and her ever-sad tone. The gazing at the pillow where Paul lay his head. The masturbation. The tears. And the ghosts, of course, howling around the house. His head.
Run? Run where? Bobby, at least, he can see. And besides, a psychotic episode might break up the tedium. It’s clear what’s happening here.
“ . . . any ordinary Friday night,” the dead guy is saying, trudging beside him. “You know how it goes. You’re lonely and horny and looking for some. I’ve met jerks before. Shit, I’ve met more jerks than I have jerked, you know? But this guy was different.”
“Because he murdered you?”
Bobby snorts. It’s meant to sound caustic. The fluids that spray from his nose kind of spoil the effect. He wipes it on denim. Looks sheepish.
“No. I mean he was different in a nice way. A maybe-you’ll-mean-more way. You think I follow every rando out of a club?”
Eric doesn’t answer. He’s painfully aware of the fact that not only has he followed a stranger out of a bar, the stranger stopped breathing months ago. Who’s he to judge?
“Silence speaks volumes.”
“Sorry,” Eric says, offers a smile. “I mean yes. I know what you mean. When I met my husband in Uni, I -”
“Wow. Did I ask about your love life? Go brag somewhere else. I kind of got zeroed here!”
“Sorry,” Eric says again. “That was insensitive.” Then he decides it isn’t and says, “Actually, my husband died too. Three years ago now. Car crash.”
“What was his name?”
“Paul.”
Bobby asks Eric which district.
Eric tells him.
Then Bobby rolls his eyes. Eye. And he snorts some more body fluid and what look like gobbets of clotted blood.
“Jeez, Eric. It’s like you think we all know each other or something.”
Then Bobby laughs, bumps his shoulder (squelch) and leads him to the club.
The last club that Bobby ever went to.
At some nebulous point around forty, a tipping point occurs. The pink portcullis of the scene comes down and the pop songs get muffled behind it. But there are other changes as well. Not just a runaway waistline and hair in the plughole. There’s more to it than that. More than finding yourself short of breath on the stairs or suffering a hangover that lasts all week. Or going to bars and grasping the fact that men no longer notice you. That the noticeable part of your life is over. For the most part, you become invisible. When you’re invisible, the dead can see you though. Or so Bobby tells him. It’s an explanation of sorts.
Cocktails and cadaverine, that’s how it starts. A few drinks under neon that speed up and ripple with each gulp (you better believe that Eric is drinking). That and the faint, ever-present reek of his . . . date. Can he call Bobby that? After all, they’re out on the scene. Their secondary world. A postmodern Narnia complete with bears and otters and queens. They don’t belong anywhere else. Society has made sure of that.
Desperation perfumes the air. Perspiration, gum and cologne. And something else. The rot. Eric looks around and he sees them like headstones in the crowd. Pale faces. Blue lips. Hollow eyes. Can the living see them too, he wonders? The truly alive. The ones under thirty, anyway. The slick jocks with the fuck-off eyes. The anxious looking twinks at the bar. The drag queen who slips and shrieks on the floor, heels high, wig askew. Men make out in the shadows. Men stare like a wall. No one stares at Eric though. Everyone here has an emptiness, he knows. Everyone has a want. It comes with the territory. But no. Tonight, it’s Eric alone who can see the dead.
Again, he didn’t note the name of the place. Who gives a shit? Time has become a shutter in blacklight. One minute he’s downing shots with the rancid Bobby (sambuca dribbles from a hole in his chin). The next he’s ordering another round. The last time Eric did this, the first birds were crawling out of the Jurassic mud, having evolved from dinosaurs. And here he is two hundred million years later, flirting with a corpse.
It’s inevitable. The two of them take to the dance floor. Their hips sway. Rum splashes their shoes. Lady Gaga beseeches folks to stop telephoning her as the club throbs and spins. They’re up close, the corpse and him. Bobby. Their groins all but brush. It’s only when their lips do that Eric snaps out of it. Worms on the guy’s breath. And Eric realises then that he’s thinking about it. How it might feel. A cold nipple on his lips. A blue tongue in his hole. Does the blood still pump, turgid and black? Can the guy even . . . get hard? There’s more than zombification at play, surely. Bobby, by his own admission, is a ghost. And no ghost has been louder than this. Will Eric take his pleasure here, down in the disco of the dead? There’s a word for that too, he remembers. A long one beginning with N. And what does that make him, exactly? He thinks he’s going to be sick.
He’s fortysomething and more than tired. Eric forces his way to the bar. Then the quietest corner of it, which is far from quiet.
“Why . . . why do you look like that?” he roars in Bobby’s ear. He should push him away. Leave. But he can’t. TV dinners tell him he can’t. So does an old photograph.
“Like what?”
“You know. Like . . . ” Eric flaps a hand.
Bobby takes his meaning. Shrugs. He’s a little hurt though. Eric can tell.
“It’s how I remember myself. It’s how I am now . . . Somewhere.”
Somewhere.
“I thought . . . Well.”
“That I’d float from the ceiling in some glowing white form? Uh uh. Not in the rules.”
“There are rules?”
“You don’t think being born and dying is a rule?”
Eric considers. It’s a fair point.
“Bobby, why are we here?”
“Another rule, hombre. We have to retrace my steps. If we want to get there.”
“Where?”
“Through the wardrobe door. To Oz. Stop asking stupid questions.”
Ice closes around Eric’s hand. Bobby leads him towards some steps. He wants to correct him, but doesn’t. Oz. There’s nowhere to go, so he follows.
Over the threshold if not the rainbow.
Where do they go, the gay living dead? The ones with widening waistlines, thinning hair and no fuckbuddy or husband. The ones whose runway has run out and plunged them headlong into the swamp. Where do they go when Narnia has closed her doors to them? Do they gather on some island, druid style, and sacrifice Prada shirts that no longer fit and try to muster up the long lost names of all those they’ve fucked and ghosted, mournful under the moon?
No. Eric knows where. They kind of fade into the background. They bask in the light of flickering TV screens. They feast on lukewarm microwave meals. Every night is a ritual of phone calls from elderly mothers and every morning means waking up in a bed like an ache, half of it forever pristine. A space that was never filled. An emptiness. Eric knows that emptiness. And he knows that when you finally see it, when you realise that the emptiness is all you’ll ever know from now on, then you become invisible. When you’re invisible, then the dead might come for you. Why waste any more time?
Tonight, the dead have come for Eric.
The two of them walk past the bars, the takeaways and taxi stops. Where the hell are they going now? Eric doesn’t kid himself that this is a normal date with a normal guy. Normal. Nothing is normal! The night isn’t going to end with clumsy sex and false promises. Even if they fucked then Bobby would probably fall to pieces on him. The thought returns his hand to his side and widens a distance between them. When they reach the corner, Bobby’s face lent colour by the streetlights, the guy stops and looks embarrassed. Then he points between the buildings at the dark end of the street. At first, Eric only sees shadow. Then he makes it out. A vacant lot. His flesh crawls as the penny drops.
This is where it happened.
“This is where it happened,” Bobby tells him.
Ah, but there’s a resonance here.
“A ghost is just a memory, a vacant lot,” he murmurs.
“Excuse me?”
“Something Paul said once. Ignore me. I’m drunk.”
“I miss getting drunk,” Bobby sighs. Then nods at the dark end of the street. “I was drunk the night he brought me here. Joe or Jack or Jonathan. This was his idea of a romantic spot. How dumb am I?”
But Eric knows that dumbness too. Hell, he pictured the guy sticking his dick inside him like an ice pole. It hardly makes him a saint.
“Show me,” he says. At this point, he wants to see. He wants to understand. Plus, grim as it is, the last time he had company, the formation of basic elements was taking place in the wake of the Big Bang.
He bet the truck made a bang when it flipped and landed on top of Paul.
Eric winces. Regrets the last shot.
The ghosts laugh in silence.
There’s nothing remarkable about the lot. There’s the hole in the fence you’d expect to find. The same ripple of worn-out concrete. The same weeds creeping through the cracks. The same litter. At the back of the lot there’s an area that nature has conquered, all brambles and wires and earth. A patch where the streetlights can’t penetrate. A place where men like Bobby could penetrate, however, and go their separate ways. One Friday night six months ago, Bobby found himself penetrated by a hammer to the face.
“I thought he liked me,” Bobby says. “Even as I knelt in this dump and unzipped him, I thought that. And I guess he did.”
“You think so, huh?”
Bobby eyes him in surprise. “Sure, as a trophy. A spirit fuck or whatever. Because that’s what I am now. Just hanging around. Until . . . ”
“Bobby?”
“It’s dark, but there are blood stains here. Right where we’re standing.”
Eric shivers. Suddenly the night is cold. The rum is running out. He’s a coward at heart. Paul said that once too, during some row or other.
Oh, Paul.
“And shards of bone. The eye I guess he took with him.”
“Too much information.”
Bobby grins (squelch), but it’s a sad one.
“Look, you didn’t have to come.”
“No.”
“I’ll tell you one thing. It hurt like hell.”
And despite the smell, Eric holds him. There’s probably all kinds of muck dripping onto his shoulder, but Eric doesn’t care. Somewhere out there, there’s a mother and a father waiting for a son. Friends who’ll never see him again. A future of roads never taken. And Eric wants the comfort. The last time Eric hugged someone . . . Well, you get the picture.
“Eric.” After a while, Bobby sniffles, collecting his deceased self. “Why did you come?”
Because you saw me. Because you chose me. Because there is nothing waiting.
Eric doesn’t say any of that. It doesn’t matter that Bobby is dead, it’s still awkward.
“You know why,” he says.
It’s everything that Eric imagined. Bobby is like an ice block inside him, the question about the blood answered. Or there’s a memory of blood. Bobby brought a condom and lube, still in date where Bobby is not. To add to the irony, Eric is bent over a rusty refrigerator, but the smell of the trash is better than the smell of Bobby and he thinks that makes it OK. Cold or not, his body answers like it never forgot. There’s the pain, sure. Then the butterflies, snow-coated in his belly, up his spine. Nerve endings rejoice and sing. At last! At fucking last! He grits his teeth. Closes his eyes. Imagines it’s Paul on their third date, that cold sweet year up north. He pushes down the morality of it. Fuck that. It isn’t the long word beginning with N. Bobby is a ghost, not a—oh! Oh. For a minute or so all thought scatters. His ring clenches around frozen flesh. All the butterflies go up in flames. Then Bobby gives a grunt, savage in the dark. For a few fleeting moments, Eric goes with it. For a few fleeting moments, feels loved.
Not long after, they sprawl on their backs in the dirt, staring up at the photopollution. Up at the lack of stars. The emptiness behind them.
“That was better than . . . you know. The night with the other guy.”
It’s a bad joke and Eric pulls a face. A face that Bobby doesn’t see, but nonetheless conveys the fact that he knows this isn’t love.
But it isn’t a TV dinner either.
Night of the gay living dead. They’re walking again. Drifting. A little closer, if not holding hands. Eric thinks he’s getting used to the smell. Wonders what that means. He could ask Bobby if there’s a heaven or a hell, but he doubts the guy knows. There’s not much difference between them, he thinks. One having stepped beyond. The other bored in the waiting room. Both invisible. A thin sheet between them. Spring ice on a lake. Not much.
They walk and Eric looks in the windows. At couples. Families. Kids. Once he’d had a taste of that, what it felt like. To come home to something other than ghosts. To cook for someone. To bounce stupid ideas around. Memories. Plans. To curl up on a couch too small for them and watch movies while one or the other snores. To hug. To fuck. To share the bills. To take out their worst childhood traumas on each other. To fight. To fuck again. It was hard, at times. But it wasn’t empty. It held the emptiness at bay.
“This is it. The end of the story.”
But it isn’t, not quite. The final scene is the cut of a railway track that runs behind the houses, through the litter-strewn bushes and thorns. There’s a slope. The glitter of broken glass. Enough barbwire to put off the most reckless of teens. And there’s the risk of the trains, of course, slicing through the bland, smug heart of suburbia. Not even the dogs shit down there, Eric thinks. It’s an overlooked place. Invisible. A good place to hide a body.
“This is where he put you,” he says.
“Yup. Rolled up in an old carpet from his van. Not that I knew he had a van. Or a hammer for that matter.”
Bobby laughs, a wet sound. A comedian he’s not.
And Eric gets it. He does. He’s seen Horror movies. He’s read spooky stories. There’s no point stating the obvious.
“There’s evidence down there. DNA, maybe. Under your fingernails. Is that it?”
That’s why you brought me here.
Bobby frowns. Then he understands. Typically, he shrugs.
“I don’t give a shit about that, man. I just want what we all want.”
“Right.”
To be found. To be seen.
“Guess this is the part where you tell me about the rules again,” Eric goes on. “They find you and you’re at peace, right? You can move on elsewhere.” Heaven. Hell. Nirvana. The Big Gay Orgy in the Sky. “That’s why you came looking for me.”
“Yes.”
“Specifically me?”
“I . . . think so. I think you only get one. It isn’t as if there’s a guidebook.”
Eric nods. Chews it over. It’s no big deal to dial 911 and report a body in the briar. He can do so anonymously, he thinks. The police are duty bound to respond. He remembers the officers on his porch that night and yeah, he has a doubt about that, but he can always keep calling. Persist. He could send an email to the papers too. Give no details. No one has to know it’s him. Somewhere, a mother and a father are waiting for a son. Somewhere, friends are hurting.
But tonight, for once, the ghosts are quiet.
Tonight, Eric has drank and danced and even fucked. And maybe Paul was right about him, after all.
“Hey!” It’s Bobby, calling out behind him. “Where the fuck are you going?”
Despite the awkwardness of it, Eric finds himself on the move. His blood and bones—still warm, yes—are taking him back up the street. Back towards the city and the bars. The light. And he can’t believe he’s smiling. His smile quickens his steps.
Sure, he’s down among the dead. But there’ll be no emptiness tomorrow.
Bobby, having come, must follow him.
