“Pretty Dead Girl Takes a Break”: A Short Story -The Toast

“Pretty Dead Girl Takes a Break”: A Short Story

ByHelen McClory

on March 12, 2014 in Writing

She peels back the plastic and gets out of the water, a little clumsy with her limbs not moving right and her blue-black blood slow shot through them. She hasn’t even opened her eyes yet, they’ve been closed that long she has to pry them with thick fingers, prop them open a while, practice her blinks. Her eyes see well, and if there were anyone here, they’d see eyes of a glorious brightness, clear like something raised on fish and chilled glacial water. God, she needs a cigarette. Clothes first.

She climbs out of the TV into an unoccupied room with a battered tartan sofa covered in pillows, a TV table sprawled with sweet wrappers and old bills. She leaves the room for the hall, for the bathroom and a big old towel for her body and one for her blonde hair. She should probably take a shower and rinse it clean of scum from the lake, but you can have enough contact with water, you know? In the little bedroom she finds a drawer full of plaid shirts and another with sweats. She gets into the clothes and, if she can’t really feel warm, being dead, she at least feels something new, more going on than ‘body’, ‘dead’, ‘girl’.

The dead girl makes herself a coffee in the wood-panelled kitchenette and stirs four teaspoons of sugar in, plus cream, and it’s the best thing she’s ever tasted and she licks the lid of the cream pot before putting it back on. There’s a packet of cigarettes on the table under a cable bill, but it’s not a brand she likes and there’s no lighter. Well, whatever. She lights it on the stove and comes back to the sofa with her coffee and her smoke.

What’s on the TV? Two detectives in a car, two men, eloquently snarling at each other. Countryside rolls past, low and humid and green, like a summer dying from oversaturation, or it’s a City-side bleak in February. Her death is always about things other than her death. The girl puffs on her cigarette, slurps her coffee. Not long now. She mashes the butt on the table. There’s the sugarcane field. There’s the alley. She gets out of her clothes. Always naked. She flicks her hair back from her eyes. Takes a drag and holds her breath, which she can hold forever. Back into the TV. Here’s nothing but a wide desolate space, green or stony. She picks her way shoeless across the ground, arms bound at her back. Against her throat a delicate bruise. He’s killed her already, so at least there’s that. And there’s the spot where she’s been left, right up against that tree. Right behind that wall. There’s the spot where she’ll be found.

Car engine in the distance. Those men, talking already. They don’t ever shut up. She lies down and faces the sky, letting out one last long mouthful of smoke.

Helen McClory is a writer from Scotland. All her flash and longer fiction is this strange and concerned with the inner lives of girls, dead or otherwise.

Comments (26)

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+14 Vote up Vote down

caragreenham 111p · 577 weeks ago

Oh WOW! This is terrifying and beautiful.

+5 Vote up Vote down

anachronistique 115p · 577 weeks ago

Absolutely perfect.

+7 Vote up Vote down

tjdubya 93p · 577 weeks ago

LOVE. THIS. Well said.

+12 Vote up Vote down

wallofillusion 127p · 577 weeks ago

I want everyone in the world to read this.
Wow.

+19 Vote up Vote down

ArsenioB_Ham 125p · 577 weeks ago

This is genius. Such an awesome premise and very well-executed.

(This? "[S]he licks the lid of the cream pot before putting it back on"? This reached me on a primal, bone-shuddering level. NO MORE CREAM FOR ME, THANKS.)

3 replies · active 577 weeks ago

+14 Vote up Vote down

malloryelis 142p · 577 weeks ago

cream comes in pots???

+31 Vote up Vote down

NicoleCliffe 145p · 577 weeks ago

The author is SCOTTISH. They know from hard-boiled crime drama!

+5 Vote up Vote down

littlehuntingcreek 135p · 577 weeks ago

It does in some places- Italy too-the cutest little glass pots ever, and the cream is so good you want to lick the spoon

+42 Vote up Vote down

malloryelis 142p · 577 weeks ago

ALSO THIS SHOULD BE A TV SHOW

4 replies · active 577 weeks ago

+3 Vote up Vote down

literaltrousersnake · 577 weeks ago

This should be a TV show, this is _great_.

+3 Vote up Vote down

tjdubya 93p · 577 weeks ago

Yup yup yup.

+5 Vote up Vote down

thelyesmith 107p · 577 weeks ago

... Isn't it? I thought this was about True Detective.

+17 Vote up Vote down

quietest 107p · 577 weeks ago

I don't remember the pretty dead girls getting up again in True Detective.

+72 Vote up Vote down

CurrerBelle · 577 weeks ago

"Her death is always about things other than her death."

Does it go without saying that my favorite part of this piece is how, in this fictional show, an otherwise ambiguous-nude-female-as-prop-character suddenly gets a voice and personality and a preference for cream and sugar in her coffee? Perhaps, but this was lovely, and I wanted to stop by to say so.

+37 Vote up Vote down

anninyn 124p · 577 weeks ago

"Her death is always about things other than her death."

Wow.

I loved this so much. PLEASE publish more like this.

+21 Vote up Vote down

littlehuntingcreek 135p · 577 weeks ago

Send this to the men who say there is no war on women.

+2 Vote up Vote down

Arnon Clark · 577 weeks ago

Start charging. Really. Thank you for that.

1 reply · active 577 weeks ago

+19 Vote up Vote down

NicoleCliffe 145p · 577 weeks ago

We paid her enough for several cups of coffee with cream.

+28 Vote up Vote down

ehmgeebee 122p · 577 weeks ago

This is it EXACTLY. This plus Mallory's "No Woman's Body Found Today" cover a version of sad exhaustion that I've never been able to put into words. Thank you, thank you, Helen!

+1 Vote up Vote down

Emm · 577 weeks ago

Holy fuck. This is incredible and now all the hairs on my body are standing up. Beautiful piece.

+34 Vote up Vote down

thebellewitch 122p · 577 weeks ago

This is perfection.

Tangential, but since the movie's coming out this weekend - About the only show where I can stomach the beautiful dead girl plot device is Veronica Mars. Because Lily is a person (and she gets to take her own breaks from being dead to be a hallucination sometimes). Also maybe because Veronica is not two male detectives.

1 reply · active 577 weeks ago

+6 Vote up Vote down

moxycrimefighter · 577 weeks ago

Also, on Pretty Little Liars, where Alison is larger-than-life, even when she's dead.

+1 Vote up Vote down

Alison · 577 weeks ago

Yes. What everybody else here said.
Thank you for this!

+3 Vote up Vote down

Abanthis 108p · 577 weeks ago

Beautiful. Perfect. Write more for us please?

+1 Vote up Vote down

elsamac 121p · 577 weeks ago

Shattering.

+11 Vote up Vote down

mirandawmeyer 110p · 577 weeks ago

OH MY GOD. I want to print out fifty copies of this and roll in them on the floor.

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