RESURRECTED FOR REVENGE

"Uhhh... ahhh... right there, yes… RIGHT THERE!"

 I heard her voice through my bedroom door, high and breathless, begging for more, and I knew before I even pressed my ear to the wood that everything I'd been pretending not to see was happening on the other side.

 "Don't stop… Dexter, please don't stop… oh my god your dick is getting so big, I can feel you, I can feel everything!"

 My shopping bags hit the floor, baby bottles rolling across hardwood, diapers spilling everywhere, but I couldn't move, couldn't breathe, could only stand there six months pregnant with my palm flat against the door listening to my husband fuck another woman in our matrimonial bed.

 "Harder," she gasped, loud, so loud she wanted me to hear, "fuck me harder, make me forget she even exists."

 The bed frame slammed against the wall, rhythmic, relentless, our bed, the one I'd picked out thinking it would be where we raised our family, where we'd grow old together, where I'd been sleeping alone for three weeks because Dexter said my pregnancy insomnia kept him awake.

 "You feel incredible," Dexter groaned, and I remembered when he used to say things like that to me, back when I still believed him, "so much tighter than her, Scylla, I swear… you're perfect."

 Scylla.

 His executive assistant, the woman who'd smiled at me at the Christmas party, who'd touched my arm and said how lucky I was, who'd asked when the baby was due like she actually cared.

 "Say it," she demanded, voice sharp with triumph, "say I'm better than your fat pregnant wife."

 "God yes, you're so much better, you're everything, she's nothing compared to you," Dexter said, and I heard him laugh, he actually laughed while he said it.

 I suddenly couldn't move my leg, I slid down the wall, sat on my hallway floor with my hand on my belly where the baby kicked and kicked like it was trying to tell me to run.

 "Ohhhh fuck, yes… YES, I'm cuming. . I'm cuming, oh god Dexter!" Scylla screamed, and I pressed both hands over my ears but I could still hear it, could still hear everything.

 They went quiet after, just breathing, then I heard the shower start, heard them talking low, couldn't make out words, just the sound of two people who belonged together in a way I never had with him.

 I should have left, should have walked out right then, should have done anything except stay me waiting for them to come out and see me sitting in my own hallway like some pathetic ghost.

 But I stayed, hand on my stomach, whispering to the baby that I was sorry, so sorry for bringing it into this.

 Twenty minutes crawled by, then thirty, the baby kept moving, I kept sitting there, and finally the bedroom door opened.

 Scylla came out first, wearing my robe, the silk one Dexter bought me for our anniversary, hair wet, skin glowing, and when she saw me her smile didn't even flicker.

 "Oh Meliah, you're home early," she said, tying the robe tighter like it was hers, like I was the intruder, "we were just going over the quarterly reports, you know how those meetings can get."

 I stared at her, at this woman who'd just screamed my husband's name loud enough to crack plaster, who was standing in my hallway in my clothes looking at me like I was the problem.

 "The quarterly reports," I repeated, voice completely flat.

 "Mmhmm, very intense stuff," she walked past me toward the stairs, stopped, turned back, "oh and congratulations on the baby, I'm sure it'll be beautiful… Dexter's genes are so strong you know."

 She left, just walked down my stairs, out my door, got in her car and drove away like she owned the place.

 Dexter came out next, dressed for work, hair damp, reeking of her perfume.

 "Meliah," he said, genuinely surprised, like he'd forgotten I existed, "when did you get home?"

 "Just now," I lied from the floor, still sitting there surrounded by spilled baby supplies.

 "Oh," he checked his watch, that expensive thing I'd saved months to buy him, "I've got a meeting, don't wait up."

 He stepped over me, over the groceries, over everything on the floor, and he left.

 I sat there another hour, maybe longer, time stopped meaning anything, eventually I picked up the baby bottles, put away the diapers, made dinner I couldn't eat, went to bed in sheets that smelled like her.

 The baby kicked all night.

 Three days passed, three days of pretending everything was fine, three days of Dexter coming home late or not at all, three days of me taking my prenatal vitamins like a good wife, swallowing them with orange juice, keeping the baby healthy because at least I could do that right.

 Except on the fourth morning, the vitamins tasted different, bitter, and chemical, I frowned but swallowed them anyway because what else was I going to do?

 By noon, my hands were shaking.

 By two, I couldn't stand without holding furniture.

 By four, I was on the bathroom floor watching my blood spread across white tiles, wondering why everything hurt so much, why the baby stopped moving, why Dexter wasn't answering my calls.

 "Dexter," I tried to yell but it came out as a whisper, "Dexter please, something's wrong… the baby… please!"

 My phone was in the bedroom, might as well have been on the moon, I couldn't move, couldn't reach it, could only lie there while my vision went black.

 I pressed my hands to my stomach, felt nothing, no kicks, no movement, just stillness where life used to be.

 "No," I whispered, "no please… not the baby, please god almighty… not my baby."

 But prayers don't work when you're dying alone in a bathroom and the person who poisoned you is probably with his mistress celebrating your death.

 The blood kept spreading, my eyes stopped working right, everything went from color to gray to black, and the last thing I thought about was the baby's name, the one I'd picked, the one nobody would ever say now.

 Then nothing.

 Just dark, so dark I thought maybe this was hell, thought maybe I deserved it for being stupid enough to love someone who never loved me back.

 Then a voice cut through, cold, bored, completely uninterested in my suffering.

 "Breathe."

 I tried, choked, and gasped.

 "Slower," the voice said, clinical, detached, "your body's been dead three days, give it time."

 My eyes opened, light rushed in, too bright, I tried to turn away but my neck wouldn't cooperate, everything felt disconnected.

 A man stood over me, silver hair, pale skin, eyes so blue they looked fake, and he wasn't smiling, wasn't frowning, just watching me like I was a math problem.

 "What!!!" my voice came out destroyed, barely human, "where am I?"

 "My facility," he said, hands in his pockets, completely casual, "I'm Zephyr Arcanis, I brought you back, you were dead seventy-two hours before I found you in the city morgue with a falsified death certificate."

 I tried to sit up, my body obeyed this time, muscles responding in ways they shouldn't after being dead, and I looked down at my stomach.

 Flat.

 Empty.

 The baby was gone.

 I screamed, not words, just sound, raw and broken, everything I couldn't say while I was dying, everything I'd held back while my baby stopped moving.

 Zephyr didn't try to stop me, didn't touch me, he didn't even do anything except from standing.

 When I finally went quiet, I looked at him with tears all over my face, he bent his head.

 "The child was deceased when I found you," he said, matter of fact, like discussing weather, "I can resurrect the recently dead, I can't reverse decomposition, I'm sorry for your loss."

 He didn't sound sorry.

 "Why?" I managed, voice wrecked, "why bring me back if you couldn't save my baby?"

 "Experiment," he said simply, pulled something from his pocket, handed it to me, a phone, "I've been perfecting resurrection for two hundred years, you're my first human subject, I needed to know if it worked."

 I stared at the phone in my hand, stared at this impossible man with his silver hair and his complete absence of human feeling.

 "It worked," I said.

 "Yes," he said, "congratulations, you're alive, you have three years before the resurrection degrades and you die permanently, I suggest using the time wisely."

 Three years.

 Three years and then I'd die for real, no coming back, no second chances.

 I looked at him, at this stranger who gave me back my life but not my baby, at my flat empty stomach, at the phone in my hand.

 "My husband did this," I said, voice coming out differently now, harder, "him and his mistress, they poisoned me, they wanted me dead."

 "I know," Zephyr said, "I read the

autopsy before I stole your body, fairly obvious murder actually."

 "Can you help me destroy them?"

 He smiled for the first time, sharp and empty and just as cold as everything else about him.

 "Yes."