Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan(87)

The only thing you can do when the ending looms is roll down the windows, let the wind blow back your hair, and drive your hell-bent, hell-bound ass to where it needs to go. Everything ends. So suck it up and face it with a little dignity already.

***

Gary's engine hums contentedly as we blast down the ghostroads, his radio playing a succession of Top 40 Billboard Hits from the year that I died. Maybe we're in the honeymoon period right now, both of us trying to be worthy of the other, but I honestly don't give a crap. I spent seventy years dead without him, and he spent just as much time living without me. If we want to be sappy and stupidly in love for a little while, that's our business.

I do have to wonder whether Gary really understands what he's managed to get himself into. Having a car is wonderful, but it doesn't change my nature. I'm still a hitcher, still have that need for flesh and contact worked deep into the ghosts of my bones. Eventually, I'll have to drop from the twilight into the daylight, find someone who smells like ashes and empty rooms, and convince him to give me a ride to where he thinks I need to go. I can skip the joyrides, the embodiments just for the sake of cadging a cheeseburger or kissing a stranger, but there are always going to be times when the living world calls me and I have to go. It's what I am. I can't change it, and I don't think I would even if I knew how. The girl who was willing to change everything about herself for love died a long time ago. I still look like her, sweet sixteen forever, but let's face it: I grew up.

Then again, maybe Gary did some growing up, too. He did get old, after all, which usually requires a certain measure of maturity, and he did figure out how to get his soul re-smelted into something that could stay with me. I don't know whether turning yourself into your first girlfriend's car is romantic or creepy, but since we're both dead, I also don't know whether the distinction between those things actually matters.

"Just call me Morticia," I say, hitting the gas a little harder. The radio dial spins without any help from me, and as the theme from The Addams Family blasts through the cabin, I swear it's undercut by the sound of my first, last, and only boyfriend, laughing.

***

We pull into the parking lot of the Last Dance as the eternally twilit sky is fading into another false gloaming, eternally taunting the dead with the thought that someday, the sun might actually rise. There are whole cults devoted to measuring the gloamings, like every little scrap of light has meaning. Personally, I think it just happens because whoever or whatever is in charge of the ghostroads likes fucking with us.

"I'm going to go talk to Emma," I say, getting out of the car and tucking the keys into my pocket. They feel solid there, almost as real as a coat. I've already experimented with changing my clothes, remolding myself to suit my environment. No matter what I do or how I change, the keys travel with me, sometimes in a pocket, sometimes on an elastic band strapped to my wrist, sometimes tucked into the front of my bra. Again, romantic, and marginally creepy.

Gary flashes his headlights once, which I interpret as a gesture of understanding. I mean, I have to interpret it as something, and "Sure, Rose, go take care of your business" is as good an interpretation as any. He doesn't turn himself back on or go all Christine in order to stop me, and so I walk across the parking lot, hearing the gravel crunch beneath my feet. The Last Dance is pretty damn real, no matter what level you're standing on.

I'm almost to the door when the sign flickers, neon shadows shifting from green and gold to a bloody sunrise red. I stop where I am, feeling like the world stops with me. For a moment, everything is frozen in the gloaming, silent except for the soft, insectile buzzing of the neon sign illuminating our night that never ends. I take a step back, tilting my head upward, and look.

Last Chance Diner, says the sign, in that familiar looping cursive. The letters blaze crimson, almost violent in the way they split the darkness. Last chance. Everybody out. The tattoo on my back is abruptly burning like a brand, until it feels like it should set my clothes on fire, burn them right off me, spontaneous after-death combustion.

I don't know what the fuck is going on here, but I do know one thing: Whatever this is, there's not a chance in hell that it's good.

***

"Emma?" There's no one visible in the dining room, which is subtly changed, shifted ever so slightly away from the place where I've spent so many hours over the last sixty years. I couldn't tell you what the changes were if you held a gun to my head—which would probably be a waste of time anyway—but I can tell you that the upholstery is ripped in the wrong places, and the scuffs on the counter spell out a new set of unreadable runes. The jukebox in the corner croons softly to itself, some generic love song from the 1970s. It doesn't matter which one. "Are you here?"