By every measure of logic, between the body and the soul, the body is not the narrator. That is the responsibility of the soul, the storyteller, while the body, the storykeeper, logs it all in scars and nightmares.

This nightmare in particular is long and winding, far more exhausting than the body is used to dealing with. It starts with a birth and ends with a knife, and in between it travels to school and the grocery store and a few sunny beaches. It’s a fairly normal dream, all things considered, nevermind the looming feeling of doom creeping around every corner. On the sidewalk, in the next apartment window over, at a table on the other side of the restaurant, Death watches with its scythe.

Everything is cold when it is awoken, everything inside and out. It is dark, save for a slice of light just out of its view. In its harsh white-blue, the light falls into the small metal space where the body lays, illuminating the clothes it last put on to prepare for the day. Illuminated too is a tag tied to its toe:

Name: Hunter L Monroe

Age: 34

DOB: 03/14/1986

Date of Death: 07/26/2019

Cause of Death: Multiple lacerations to abdomen

A whole life written on a tag, or at least the major parts. There is not much the body knows on its own, but it does know one thing: that tag does not belong there. This body is very much breathing, and it is very much alive. Despite the chilling emptiness in its chest, just next to where the heart should be, it is alive.

The voice that speaks to it, though muffled, is buttery and gentle. “Sorry to have kept you waiting, bud,” the voice says. The light pours fully into the small space and then the body—the bed it is laying on—moves. Its eyes are frozen open as it comes fully into the room, faced by a person wearing a hazmat suit and wearing a respirator. “You deserve better, I know.”

The scent of pickles slams into the nose almost instantly, nearly as overwhelming as the lights overhead. Never has the body been so nauseous as it is now—it rolls off the bed, not realizing until it’s too late that the bed is much higher than it should have been. The knees buckle and it finds itself on the floor as it wretches, though nothing comes out.

At least, nothing comes out of its mouth. But something does slosh from its stomach, and the nausea it felt moments ago pales in comparison to this feeling. The body looks down between the hands holding it up to see several organs on the ground. They are coming from an opening in the stomach in all shades of red and pink. No blood comes with the outpouring of innards. For once, its survival instinct fails to come up with a solution.

How does one survive its insides coming to the outside?

It trembles, down to the fingertips, as it looks up to the person in plastic-looking white protective gear. It inspects the room to see a grid of metal doors in the wall, and two platforms like operating tables in the center of the room. And, for the first time, the body speaks on its own: “This is a morgue.”

The mortician is unfazed. Their face, with its acne scars and its plucked eyebrows, is placid and they examine the body with what seems to be curiosity more than anything. “This is indeed a morgue. And you, my friend, have unfinished business. I think.” They crack a wry smile that nearly masks the tremble in their own voice, their first and only sign of surprise. “You know…when I was in school, they made this sound a lot less common than it actually is.”

Hunter L Monroe. The name brings a slice of comfort, perhaps not from familiarity but from identity. But the name brings no warmth. “What’s going on?” it asks. It is not familiar with using its voice on its own; that is a job for the—

The soul.

The soul, meant to be the warm spot next to its heart, now empty and nearly as cold as this morgue.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” the mortician replies with a shrug. “But if I had to guess, you don’t have everything you need. It’s happened before.” They rub their forehead and blow out a long, slow breath. “God, I need a cigarette.”

“I’m…sorry,” the body says, but it’s not sorry. It’s hardly anything but cold.

“Don’t be.” They won’t take their eyes off of the body, like it’s a predator. Whether the hunted is the body or the mortician, neither are sure. “Like I said: not my first time. But I’ve got all day, and whatever left you can’t have gone far.”

Tiredness drags at its limbs and pulls its eyelids down. It’s nearly impossible to resist. But the mortician is right: the soul can’t have gone far. In the space the soul occupied, the emptiness is like a compass. It spins and spins and spins until the body’s head is spinning along with it. Spinning, until it stops, and it points.

“You have until we close,” the mortician says. “I don’t know what to do with you after that.”

The body looks at its innards, still on the floor, and up to the mortician.

“Good point,” they say. “Let’s get you fixed up.”

***

A half hour, four rolls of gauze, and a few dozen surprisingly painless stitches later, the body is wearing a new set of clothes and is on the streets of Joplin. It’s a small enough town, populated with mortuaries, and the body knows with near certainty where the soul is. Few people even spare a glance for the body as it treads the town’s manicured sidewalks, following its compass.

It doesn’t know the exact feeling pulling it towards the Red Candle Church, but it’s a short enough walk from Mason-Woodward that it’s not a problem.

The body hears the uproar almost before the doors of the megachurch open. It’s hardly a church, less of a congregation and more of a theater production with a group of maybe a thousand people in the stands. Two screens hang from the ceiling over a stage, and projected onto the screens is something like a lyric sheet that the spectators chant together.

“…Repulse the attacks and deceits of the devil. God arises; His enemies are scattered and those who hate Him flee before Him. As smoke is driven away, so are they driven; as wax melts before the fire, so the wicked perish at the presence of God.”

One voice rises above the rest, that of a man with salt-and-pepper hair and white robes. The golden cross hanging around his neck sparkles under the spotlights, reflecting light out at his rapt audience. His arms are spread wide as he leads his audience in the prayer, and at the end of it all he holds his hands to the sky in a request for silence.

“God,” he says, “we call upon you as your humble servants, requesting your help. A member of your, our, own clergy, Miss Isabella Trinity, has fallen under the attack of Satan. Her family brings her here before you to ask for your help in cleansing her body and her spirit of the devil’s infestation.”

A girl with shoulder-length blonde hair, barely a teenager, sits in a chair. Even from the body’s vantage point in the back of the crowd, it can see the bindings on the girl’s wrists and ankles keeping her from moving. She looks with teary eyes to her family, two adults and a boy younger than she, and nods her head.

She spreads her shoulders and casts her gaze around the crowd. In the same instant her eyes meet the body’s, they glint gold. The woman on stage, presumably her mother, gasps and presses a hand to her chest. “The devil is here,” the mother says, projecting to the crowd like it’s a performance.

The crowd gasps in kind.

Isabella Trinity bares her teeth at the body. “Leave this place.”

A few stray gazes travel backward, full of venom and reproach and fear of God. Most are concerned with the devil speaking through the girl in its feral voice. The body takes a few steps forward, past the casually dressed people in their seats.

She practically snarls, “This is no place for you.”

This attracts the attention of the priest, who casts an arm out to the body. “Who is it that Satan calls to?”

When the eyes of the mother and the father land on the body, they gasp. They scream, they scramble back. The body, for the first time, falters.

***

It was, truly, meant to be helpful. Whatever logical thought Hunter had before, she lost it when she looked into the wrong alleyway after dark. Five figures stood in that alley, barely illuminated by a light flickering overhead. Four people cowered together, with the two shorter figures—one with short blonde hair and one with mud-stained play clothes—cowering behind the two taller ones. The fifth, across from them, wielded a blade that gleamed in the light.

“When you see someone doin’ wrong,” her mama had always told her, in her slight Tennessee drawl, “it’s your job to make it as right as you can. Otherwise, you’re just as bad as the one doin’ it.”

So Hunter had rushed in without thinking and inserted herself into a situation she definitely should not have been a part of. She put herself between the family and the person with the knife and she threw her hands up, and she swallowed the lump in her throat and steadied her trembling legs and lifted her chin.

The aggressor didn’t seem to have a preference regarding who was on the opposite side of the knife. They gestured at Hunter with the knife, dangerously close, and she held her breath. She wasn’t quick enough to be afraid until that moment. “You want to give me your money instead?” they said. “Fine. I don’t care. Hand it over.”

“There’s something better than this,” Hunter said, keeping her hands in plain sight. “You don’t have to do this to them. Truly, you don’t.”

Under the cover of a stranger, the family invited themselves to slip away. She watched them go out of the corner of her eye, and she secretly hoped they’d find a way to report this to a news outlet. How nice it would be to be a hero in a way her mama could see.

Hunter reached one hand towards her pocket, where her wallet always sat. There was nothing there. She couldn’t have been more sure that she’d left her apartment for work today with her wallet right where she always kept it, in the back pocket of her pants. She looked to the entrance of the alley, where the family had already disappeared.

Whatever bravery she’d felt a moment ago evaporated in an instant, and her facade faltered. She stood at knifepoint, with little more than a few weeks of knife training she’d gotten from a monthlong self-defense course led by volunteer police trainees. “So, funny story,” she said, and she watched the man’s eyes darken.

“Shoulda checked yourself before you decided to play hero,” the man growled.

“I have cash back at my apartment—”

And then there was a knife in her stomach. She didn’t know if the knife hurt more going in or coming out, but then she got another chance to choose. And another, and another, until it was a feeling so overwhelming she couldn’t remember what it was she was supposed to decide. Blood dripped down her front, onto the pair of ankle boots she’d just bought herself a few days ago.

When her knees decided to stop supporting her, the man stopped stabbing. Hunter’s vision tunneled. The pain faded. She didn’t even see him walk away, just as she didn’t feel her head hit the pavement.

***

The body regains its footing, despite the way its sutures ache. “It is me that Satan calls to,” it says, “and I am calling back.” It has practiced, over and over, speaking like poetry. It was one of the soul’s favorite habits.

Nobody moves to stop the body as it descends the stairs to the stage, where the family can’t get away fast enough. With each step it takes towards the holder of its soul, the body grows more weary. Its feet are heavy, its breaths labored, its vision clouded. The soul screams at it to stay away, and still it walks forward. I’m tired, it calls out to its own soul. Come home.

“That is no home,” Isabella Trinity shrieks. She thrashes against her restraints.

The body steps onto the stage, and just as quickly the priest is blocking its way. “We are in the middle of an important process,” he says, “one that cannot be interrupted. Please, be seated.”

“Please,” the body says, “get out of my way.”

The boy cowers behind his father, but the mother goes to Isabella. She stands beside her daughter, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Why are you here?” she asks, almost taking the spotlight herself. “We hold no ill will against you. We’re glad to see you made it out alright.”

There are no words, not from the people on stage, not from the audience, as the body reaches to unbutton its shirt. It reveals its own bound chest and the layers of gauze, which it unravels strip by strip. Stitches track from its sternum to below its waistband, sloppy enough to have clearly been done in a rush.

The mother covers her mouth; the father turns away entirely. Isabella Trinity stares with an unmatchable hatred in her eyes. In an instant, her point of focus has changed. She glares at her family and hisses, “This was your doing. You did this to me.”

“To you?” her mother asks, stepping now between the body and her daughter. “What did you do to my daughter?”

From somewhere in the audience, a lone voice shouts. “The devil is under this roof!”

Similar cries arise from various places in the crowd. The body is too tired to listen to all of them individually. It needs to rest.

In one swift motion, the body breaks the sutures. They pop out easily, and its organs once again fall out, onto the floor of the megachurch. People scream. In the corner of its vision, people rush for the exit. The priest’s face pales.

“Come home,” the body says again, walking forward. It pushes the mother easily out of the way and, without any real logic, places its hand on Isabella Trinity’s forehead.

She struggles more against her restraints, screaming, until the body touches her. Then, she goes still. The body’s chest fills once again with warmth, the same it craved upon waking. When it removes its hand, the girl’s head slumps forward.

The body turns away and leaves, with its organs distributed across the stage of the megachurch.

***

The mortician holds a smoking cigarette in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other when the body returns, this time with its soul. They glance at their watch and back up. “Cutting it close, you know that?”

“I had some things to attend to,” the soul answers curtly. The body is glad that it is back to being just a vessel, not having to worry about making decisions or speaking on its own. How exhausting that was.

They take a long drag on their cigarette. “You’ve made history,” they say, “as the first and only…thing…weird enough to make me put in my two weeks. So…good job, I guess.”

“Whatever,” the soul snaps. The entire walk to the morgue, it’s been burning with a mixture of hatred and failure. “They were going to get what was theirs.”

Nobody has anything to say in return.

The mortician puts out their cigarette, stamping it into the pavement, and then the body takes over on movement. It follows them back into the morgue, back into the same room. The mortician opens up the same not-bed that the body woke in and pulls out the platform.

The soul is screaming as they sit, then lay down.

“You’d better actually be dead next time I open this up,” the mortician warns. The body nods for them both as the soul quiets.

The platform slides into its place, and the door latches shut. In the silence and the darkness, finally, the body rests.

Abby Sundeen is a writer and a linguist from Buffalo, New York. She didn't anticipate that writing would become such a huge part of her life when she wrote a silly story about squirrels in the third grade, at least not until her English teachers encouraged her budding passion. Fiction helped her through the stresses of middle and high school, and then college, and now is a core part of her life. She writes to escape, to create, and to imagine.