A Cadaver Has Many Uses.

It has been so long since I've written anything close to narrative. It feels good. I don't know where all this came from, but I think it's kind of nice.

Melanie was sleeping in a shack, covered in red leaves. One of them, oak, lightly browned, flickered back and forth across her nose. The stalk had gotten stuck in her mouth during a bout of sleep-talk and now it lightly buffeted her face every time the wind picked up enough to penetrate the wet wood walls. She would never admit it, but the events of the last week had impacted her more than she, or anyone for that matter, had expected. Least of all Ged. In her weaker moments, she doubted whether Ged was the right person to ask for help when it came to these sorts of things. She had no idea anyone with such a preposterous and flamboyant personality was so well versed in thaumaturgy of any form, least of all something so repugnant and generally reviled. But along with being a notorious fop, he was well-known for being damnably efficient and ruthless when it came to business matters.

The amiable poet-artiste traipsed over to the tiny hovel from his own splendorous abode with all the grace of one who makes a living twirling through high society like a dreidel. His contemporaries always said that one day he'd run out of balance and fall through the floor, and no amount of fashionable proclivities and pomposity would save him. The care with which he threw open the door was lacking considering Melanie's unconscious state. The gust of wind threw his wool scarf and overcoat into a dramatic shuffle, making his entrance all the more imposing, had anyone been watching. 

"Come now, dear, wakey-wakey, rise and shine, all that. You can't sleep your entire life away, er, death, rather." He dusted off his hands, and looked around. "My word, I can't imagine how you'd manage a nice night's rest in this kind of place, my word, indeed. I feel myself becoming a junkie just by looking at the walls, oh, fetch me a syringe would you, dear?" He cackled.

Melanie awoke to his rambling, but she didn't want to betray the fact. She had long since decided that the last thing Ged needed was someone to indulge his linguistic affects. Ged straightened himself up, putting on a frank and more serious air.

"I'd give it approximately another week before the need for sleep fades away entirely. Lucky you," his speech quickened back to it's normal frenetic pace, "but don't think that means you can sleep the next few days away in this... abysmal place. You've got people to meet, contacts to make, old ties to cut and new ones to forge. It's a whole new world of running the line that separates you from us poor living folk, a daring balancing act, perched on the edge of unlife she makes a daring escape from the brutish-"

"Alright! Shut up! For God's sake, I'll get up and go to your stupid party. Fuck." Melanie rose to her feet swiftly, much to Ged's surprise. The retrospective knowledge that Melanie had been listening the whole time and had not answered unnerved him. Newly changed were supposed to be less willful. "I asked you to make the change, do the hocus-pocus, you're not obliged to introduce me into one of your stupid high society whore circles, bloody hell." She rubbed her stomach instinctively. One of her fingers accidentally slipped into the relatively recent stab wound in her gut.

Ged's eyes narrowed as he leaned in to inspect the bloody gorge in the soft white flesh. His voice dropped a few tones to a smoky lull, trying to seem bored by the whole ordeal of cadavers. Which, of course, he was. "Ah, yes, I should probably do something about that nasty business." Wind rushed in from behind Ged's navy overcoat as his eyes went black. Melanie winced to feel the rotting and necrotic flesh slowly stitch itself back together. She looked down to observe the process, and promptly cursed the fact that she was now physically unable to vomit.

She shot a glare at Ged, who now stood looking rather smug in the doorway, the black draining from his eyes. He smiled. "Just because that body you've pilfered is dead doesn't mean it can't look lovely. You'll need to for the party, after all."

"I didn't know you could do that," she was incredulous and caustic, "healing's not your bit, is it?"

"Darling, you're a walking corpse, I can do anything with those. And frequently do." He giggled and turned to leave. "Now come along, people are going to wonder what happened to lovely little Beatrice. That was her name, just by the way. She was quite charming, put up quite the fight, which is why I had to resort to methods so barbaric as..." he gestured in the direction of the former wound and sighed in mock irritation. "That."

A gasp escaped Melanie's cold lips; bodily functions ceased after death, but the muscles in her diaphragm were still operational. "Godfuck! Ged! I thought you were going to get something from the underground, not source it yourself! Fuck! What if someone comes looking for the little bitch? Putting an innocent girl's fucking mind into a corpse is bad enough, but into a fresh murder victim? Holy godfucking hell, Ged!" She again was livid to find she couldn't vomit in disgust. She collapsed onto the ground in sudden horror, racked by uncontrollable shakes, cursing into the air, and at Ged, repeatedly.

A hand placed itself on Melanie's shivering head, gently fingering the deep red hair that now belonged to her. Ged, the flimsy perfumed wordsmith now loomed over her like the tallest redwood in the forest. His white hair matched the colour of the rising moon glimpsed through the shoddy carpentry of the roof. He looked almost benevolent with the stars at his back. The hand impatiently tightened around a few locks of the matted red cloth, which Ged later assured her would look wonderful after a brush, and pulled the horrified Melanie up to meet his emptily smiling face. If she was stupid enough to give him the satisfaction she'd have hidden her face and whimpered in acquiescence.

"My, my, my. And here I was thinking you might be grateful to the man who facilitated your escape from that hideous hunk of flesh you used to call home. Melanie. Mel. Beatrice, even," he cooed patronisingly, "we're going to go to a party. This girl I've got you is quite high up I'll have you know, someone will come looking for her. There's no doubt about that. But rest assured, my sweet little angel," Ged poked a finger into the site of the wound he had so graciously healed, Melanie almost felt as if it were still there, "in such a case, I'll be the one on the block. So let's go to this delightful little gathering, and let everyone know about Beatrice's great ambition to travel the world and never see any one of her beloved upper class friends again." He dropped her. Melanie fell to the floor like a sack of severed heads. "And then you'll be free to do whatever it is you want with that lovely new body of yours."

With a deep, meditative inhalation, the towering, unwavering Ged was replaced by the bouncy bubble of his usual public face. "Sorry about that. But, someone has to pick up the slack, and I know you've had such an awfully hard time adjusting, it boggles the mind, it really does." Melanie was picking herself up. "You'll find you won't bruise. Your heart shouldn't even beat if I've done my job properly, and I always do," he winked knowingly and grinned, "come along then, let's get you dressed and ready to mingle!" Without another thought he flounced out the door, sashaying into the early hours of the night.

Post change, Melanie was in no state to be disagreeing with such a forceful suggestion. She limply pulled herself together. The weight of the last few days was finally catching up with her, and despite all her defiance, she couldn't go up against someone like Ged. Not now, not ever as far as she was aware. She just needed to wait it out until she was free to do what she would. Let Ged have his fun, she did owe him that much.

She stumbled out the door to tail her benefactor and apparent keeper. Of all the functions of the living she was now cut away from, Melanie wished most that she could cry.