SHORT FICTION BY SASCHA SIZEMORE

Rotten Children Don’t Deserve Heaven

The sarcophagus juts up from the Earth like a tumor, ramshackle plywood and drywall anchored to bare concrete slabs. A shudder climbs its way up Nico’s spine, settling across both shoulders as he studies the misshapen excuse for a barricade. No one should be here right now, least of all him. There was a reason this place was locked away to begin with. He’d sworn never to go back, after; let the nightmare die and the past stay dead. He knows better than to unearth something like this and yet—here he is. The others don’t, but they shouldn’t need to. Not when just looking at it has every bone in his body trying to vacate his skin posthaste.

He clenches both palms into fists, breathing on a five count, trying to hold steady. It’s just a building. Just a fucking building. All I’ve gotta do is get us in the door.

The low rumble of an approaching car startles the pile of dead butterflies lodged in Nico’s stomach back to life. Jude’s mop of copper hair glints off the flickering streetlights as they clamber out, followed by…oh, they’d better be joking.

Faye Darnell, plus camera, climbs from the passenger side of Jude’s beat-up Honda in perfect makeup and two-inch heels.

“You brought her?” Nico asks. “Seriously?”

“Play nice,” Jude chides. “I needed a video record, she offered to do it for free as long as it went on her channel. Unlike someone I know.”

“See, there’s this thing called groceries that some of us actually have to worry about.” Nico grins when Jude just offers up a truly impressive eye roll in response.

“Oh my god!” Faye interrupts with the volume and tact of a freight train. “You’re Nico Adler! They found your twin sister’s body here, in the—”

“If you don’t shut up in the next five seconds,” Jude says, “I’m running your camera over with the car.”

She shuts up. Nico shamelessly offers his best friend a fist-bump that they return just as brazenly, grabbing for his hand as he falls into step with Jude, walking as one toward what remains of Jamboree Café.

“I’ll make sure she doesn’t put anything ghoulish in the video,” Jude mutters under their breath the second Faye’s out of earshot. “I’m sorry, I just couldn’t afford anyone else.”

“It’s okay,” he says. Except for the part where if he dies tonight, it is definitely ending up on YouTube. He clenches his jaw until he tastes blood, trying to stay grounded. No one is dying today. Not this time.

Nico notices the music leaking through the door as he draws closer. It’s faint, muffled behind two decade old two-by-fours and drywall, but Nico can still make out snatches of a rhythm if he strains for it. Because that’s really what this night needed: a soundtrack.

“Out of all the fucking things,” he grunts, slamming one booted heel into the edge of the half-rotted doorframe with feeling. “Of course the jukebox still works at this fucking hellhole.”

The door remains shut, because of course it does. Nico ricochets a steel-toed foot into it in retaliation, glaring at the violent rattle. 

“It didn’t have a jukebox.” The rebuttal is equal parts petulant and dismissive. Faye, catching up to them with the supplies.

“Well, whatever they used to play music is still running.” Another blow. “Motherfucker—"

Nico groans in relief as the door finally gives way, only to recoil coughing when two decades of stale, dust-infested air hits his lungs like a body-blow. Jude shoves him, slipping on a respirator mask and offering a spare from a pocket.

 “Dumbass,” they say, voice faintly muffled. Their eyes crinkle into a smile behind the white fabric.

It’s just a building, Nico chants. Jude’s here. Everything’s gonna be fine.

***

Jamboree looks exactly like it did the last time Nico stepped foot inside the place. Which he supposes makes sense, considering the part where the whole building got surrounded by the world’s cheapest tomb and left to rot. If not for the layers of dust caked onto everything, it wouldn’t be absurd to think everyone had just stepped outside for a few seconds.

“Oh, ew,” Jude says, studying a slice of pizza left half-eaten on the table like it’s a dead rat. “Nobody touch that. Don’t touch anything, period.”

Faye immediately starts babbling into her camera, darting around the wide-open space in search of the best lighting like a hummingbird addicted to views rather than sugar water. Jude drops to one knee beside a party table, digging through their backpack for…something. Urban exploring or ghost shit, probably. He didn’t ask for any details about tonight past the time. He couldn’t bring himself to.

The music is clearer, inside. Nico can make out lyrics now, something about rabbits and pills.

“Don’t you think that’s weird?” he asks. Jude’s head and Faye’s camera swivel towards him in eerie unison, frozen mid-task. “This place was like, discount fundamentalist Chuck-E-Cheese. Why’s a song about drugs even in here?”

“What?” Jude says, alarmed. They stand and cross the room in seconds, until they’re close enough to touch. “What are you talking about?”

“The song. It’s about drug abuse, got a fake memoir named after it.” Nico shrugs. In the face of two disbelieving stares, he adds, “I listen to a lot of podcasts, okay?”

“Sure,” Faye says, returning her attention back to her camera. “You need better jokes.” Jude is still just staring, expression flickering between confusion and abject horror.

“Oh my fucking—the song, guys! The one playing right now! Drug abuse meets Alice in Wonderland! By a sixties band way too high on psychedelics! Ringing any bells?”

“There’s nothing playing, Nico.” Jude’s usual sea-glass eyes have sharpened into pale knives. “Don’t go looking for it.”

“But—”

“Don’t. Go. Looking,” Jude snarls. “Stay with me from now on.”

“I don’t need a babysitter!” Nico protests. “Jude, come on, stop joking.”

Their gaze darts from boarded-up windows to the door Nico kicked down, one hand twitching like a rabbit in a trap, ready to gnaw their own leg off to break free, damn how fast they’ll bleed out so long as the bleed out free.

“I swear on my life there’s no music,” Jude says. “Something wants your attention. God, this was a bad idea. I knew bringing you back here wouldn’t end well.”

“Delia is not talking to me.” Nico’s voice could’ve cut steel. “Don’t you dare go there. Delia’s dead, ghosts aren’t real, and this isn’t fucking funny. I agreed to be your muscle so you could make rent this month, not look for my sister.”

“I wasn’t talking about Cordelia.”

“Lying isn’t helping your case,” Nico snaps. “Just…fuck. I need some space.”

Jude’s shoulders slump in surrender. “Okay. But don’t go looking for anything. Or anyone.”

Nico stalks off into the murky darkness. Jamboree was never the biggest place—even all the fundie radio show money in the country couldn’t compete with the juggernaut that was modern society, but he knew one place to take a breather. Management had never locked the old storage closet back up during the chaos of…that day. It’s not long until he’s inside, shoving past arcade cabinet parts and toolboxes in search of some sanity.

He never should’ve come back here. Had never wanted to, refused his parents demands and the cops requests all through the investigation, after…just after. Nico had nothing to say to them. Delia was dead and nothing they did would bring her back. That was all he wanted, and he wouldn’t get it, so why rip his heart out again and again in some idiotic pursuit of what, justice? Like taking someone else’s life away would ever be enough to patch the void in his soul.

Nico doesn’t know why he forgot he isn’t welcome here anymore. Maybe he’d thought two decades were enough to scab over that gaping hole, or maybe he’d just been what he’s always been: terminally incapable of staying behind when people he love want to do something stupid.

No matter who bleeds because of it.

“Why did you leave me?”

The voice comes from behind him, nearly sending Nico five feet into the air. He whirls on one heel, ready to chew out Faye or Jude for following him, only to come face to face with his twin sister.

He maybe stumbles, knees threatening to abandon him as his back hits the wall. It’s Cordelia, not a second older than the day she’d died and looking like there isn’t a scratch on her.

“You lied,” she continues. “You said you’d come back for me and you lied.”

“Didn’t think there was anything to go back for,” Nico croaks on autopilot. “You‘re dead, Dels.”

Are. Were. Was cradled in his arms, gasping and bloody—god, there was so much blood; on her, on him, on the ground. She’d reached a trembling hand up to his cheek as she wheezed I don’t want to go, Nico don’t leave me here and he’d promised not to. He’d already known it was hopeless even so young, even with the ambulance coming, but Nico didn’t want her to be scared at the end. He hadn’t wanted to leave her, but she was leaving him with every drop of crimson into the dirt. What harm would one lie be? She’d never know.

“You were pretending,” Delia says and how the fuck. “That’s okay. You won’t go this time. We’ll be together again.”

His dead sister hums along to the music from nowhere as pain like hellfire explodes behind his eyes, sending Nico crumpling to his knees in a mockery of prayer. It’s almost funny. The last time he’d cared about God was the day before He took his twin away.

 In his last moments of hysterical, fevered awareness, Nico screams for Jude. Or at least, he tries to.