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Burning Desire

Mike Rader

    I’d never got into bed with a corpse. But today, when I yawned, stretched out a groggy hand in the darkness, I felt flesh.
    Cold flesh.
    My mind was ragged, thoughts coming like broken glass. To the best of my fogged memory I’d been alone all night. But no denying it, I wasn’t alone anymore. So who had decided to enter my bed during the night?
    I decided to touch whoever it was again.
    The person beside me wasn’t a person.
    It was a thing. A thing that didn’t move.
    And when I gently prodded it, some of it came away in my hand.
    Now I was awake! I flicked on the bedside light, tossed off the cover, and the scream born in my lungs came bursting out of my mouth.
    The charred corpse was right beside me —
    Burned to a blackened crisp —
    And powdery ash covered the sheet.
    I’d broken off an arm at the elbow. I was still holding it. I dropped it, shuddering, babbling insanely to myself. Cold sweat laced my forehead. Terror punched its way up my throat.
    The corpse had wisps of matted hair streaming across the pillow from its skull. And the remnants of a burned dress wrapped around it like a shroud. I stared. A woman’s body. Her face incinerated beyond recognition.
    How the hell did the charred corpse of a woman get into my bed?
    Who’d put it there?
    I was trapped in a freeze frame. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Then I snapped back to life, to the cold sweat of reality. I knew I needed help. Now. Police. Anyone. I glanced around for my cell phone. Started punching in the emergency number. Heard a sound. But not from the phone. It seemed to come from inside the burnt body. Like a moan.
    My phone call forgotten, I backed away from the bed, my gaze riveted on what was left of the scarred mouth.
    The seared lips were starting to move.
    “Hello, my dearÉ”
    The words were a bruised sound, with a scratchy edge, from fire-blackened lungs.
    My fingers were pinched hard around my phone, so hard I could have snapped it in two. I wasn’t in the habit of talking to the dead. I breathed, “Who are you?”
    “The woman your grandfather murdered. Burned me alive in my house.”
    I pushed aside confusion, searched my mind for facts, for words. I saw my grandfather’s image float before my gaze, a gentle face, a friendly patient man who doted on me as a kid.
    “That doesn’t make sense,” I accused her. “My grandfather never killed anyone.”
    “He did. Me.” The blackened lips smiled. “Our affair got too hot for him.”
    “You’re lying!” I tried punching in the emergency number again. My fingers wouldn’t work. Their tips were melting.
    “I came back to see his kin. I have unfinished business.”
    I stared at my melting flesh. My vision was clouding. I heard myself say, “But you’re dead!”
    “Of course I am. And you’re coming to join me. Just like your father, and his father before him.”
    I became aware of the crackling sound. And smelled the smoke. My apartment was on fire. And that’s also when I remembered how both men had died. My dad in a fiery car crash, my grandfather in a factory blaze.
    I lunged for the corpse —
    Had to destroy it —
    Break the chain of evil —
    But it fell apart in my hands.
    A cloud of ash rose as body parts disintegrated.
    That’s when the fire reached me, licking up my back, igniting my pajamas. Choking, I stumbled to the door, my arms and legs thrashing as I became a ball of flame. I hauled the door open, ran into the corridor, screaming. Neighbors stared, laughed. I looked back. My apartment was quiet, not a wisp of smoke, not a flicker of flame. Just a strange snowfall of fine white ash that was slowly settling over everything inside.

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