Dead Inside

by Chandler Morrison

“They smell like . . . like a kind of slipping away, I guess. Like something that’s there but is noticeably fading. Like the last whiffs of a dream. It’s . . . a stale smell.”

I’m really not a violent creature by nature, but there’s nothing like a wailing infant to drive me to the brink of contemplating homicide.

Consider this your goddamn trigger warning.

I know that goes without saying, but I like to say it. Dead eggs.

There’s a tattoo on her hip of a flustered-looking rabbit holding a pocket watch in one hand, and a teacup in the other.

She holds the baby as one would hold an overly large hamburger.

“So?” she says, finally raising her eyes to lock with mine. “What do you think it means?” “I’m a security guard,” I tell her. “I don’t specialize in dream interpretation.”

It also stands to be said that fucking a corpse in a coffin provides for a morbid eroticism that is absolutely to die for. Yes, that pun was wholly intended, and yes, I do find myself amusing.

I shrug. “Other people watch porn, but I jack off to Night of the Living Dead.”

“I envy the ease with which you can dismiss things.” “Envy is wasteful and purposeless.”