The Skull:
A Love Story

Buried beneath a debris of odds and ends - discarded carnival masks, willow patterned tea cups, toothless combs, and mauled little clown dolls - a curve of yellowed ivory, like an old woman's tooth, peeped. Smoothly translucent, surprisingly so, and he wondered if a bit of bleach upon an old toothbrush might not wear off the yellow sheen and convert it to a gleaming alabaster, like a bust of Nefertiti, and indeed there was something of Nefertiti to its cast, something exotic; a slant to the eye socket, perhaps? And he wondered, and pondered, and rubbed the cheekbone (zygomatic process, his mind faintly reminded him) and debated how much such a thing would cost him and if it really were for sale, in this dingy little secondhand shop, and wasn't it beautiful (stopping a passer-by), wasn't it unearthly beautiful?

(The passer-by, not unexpectedly, cast him a glance of befuddled astonishment, and hastily backed away, nodding, into a rack of moth-eaten coats.)

And he clasped it to his chest, and smiled at it, and carried it off to the cashier.

*       *       *

He was an artist, the stereotypical starving sort, a pale young man with a shock of black hair that hid his eyes in brutal streaks like slashes of charcoal across his semi-translucent face. And he liked it that way, for he hated to look others in the face, and hated to see them look back and evaluate his thin and pallid state, wrapped in its oversized thrift store sweatshirts and black baggy jeans, with pen and ink so permanently patterned on the sides of his hands and fingertips that it may as well have been tattooed there. Though his eyes, if you caught a glimpse between the strands of charcoal hair, were a brilliant turquoise, and his mouth was soft and sad, like a kitten's.

*      *       *

"What are you going to do with it?" asked his friend Victor the Junkie, who made beautiful things from scraps of marble, and then destroyed his creations by throwing them down the ventilation shaft half an hour later.

The young artist - our dear charcoal-haired boy - stared speculatively at his newly polished skull upon the table, and shrugged. "Well," he said, mildly distracted by the way the overhead lights reflected from its ivory brow, "I suppose I intended it for a reference. She's nice to look at, anyway."

"She?" posited Victor with a sideways grin.

"See how delicate the structure is?" - And he ran his hand along the contours of bone in illustration of his point. - "Do you suppose if you peeled back the skin on your face it would look half so lovely? And besides, you know my dad was a medical examiner, before…"

And he trailed off, and they both remained silent, for they both knew about the young artist's father, and how after his mum died, the old man had turned into a raging alcoholic and things had been quite dreadful for the artist and his younger sister, until the young artist ran away to New York at sixteen, and his sister ran away to San Francisco, and the last thing he'd heard from her, she was a cokehead and doing poorly, and then she'd slid off the radar, and failed even to send Christmas cards, although it was her favorite holiday.

(He missed her rather a lot, and she had been such a sweet, dear thing that he couldn't help but measure all other women by her standard, though she'd fallen terribly. And none of the women in New York were ever so sweet and dear to him, for they scoffed at his threadbare clothes and pale, drawn face, and took him for another junkie like Victor, though he wasn't.)

And Victor looked at the skull, and back at the expression in the artist's face, and crossed his arms. "Well, dude, it's pretty cool anyway. Sorta want to do things with it myself."

"Hm? Like what?"

"Well, you know, beat it up a bit. Set the shards on a table. Take a photo, like one of those old vanitas pieces, you know, with the skulls and the quills and the books and stuff. Tear the photo into bits, and tape the bits back together, a little off, so it looks like a mismatched jigsaw puzzle. And there you have it. Life in a nutshell."

The artist hugged his prize to his chest and wouldn't let Victor touch it.

*       *        *

It was All Hallow's Eve that she first appeared to him.

Midnight, huddled on his futon with a fleece Harley Quinn blanket from better days and the heat turned off because he couldn't afford to pay for the gas furnace. Shivering, his breath coming in wispy tendrils of steam against the current of air from the cracked window.

And then - pale and perfect - a partially transparent girl in a plain white dress was standing in the hall beside the light switch for the kitchen. Very pretty, he had to observe, in a cattish way, with slanted green eyes and russet-colored hair, and a sea-green sash tied about her waist.

"You've got my head, dear boy," she said, and rather coquettishly, too, for such a peculiar greeting. And she strode to the table, and gave her own skull an impish grin.

The young artist gaped for a moment, then paused, and considered his situation. Ghosts, yes, he could accept that - either that, he supposed, to he'd finally gone daffy, as everyone thought he eventually would - and really, what was the point in acting all stereotypically terrified when it was such a nice dead girl that stood before him, and a pretty one too?

She had somehow crossed the room while he sat considering, and seated herself with remarkable firmness upon the futon next to him. "Oh, but you know, I really don't mind," she said pleasantly. "It's so much nicer than having it at that dreadful old dusty store. There was no one to talk to there, terribly dull and all. And you're quite cute, all things considered. I'm sure my poor old noggin could have found a rather worse home than this." She pressed close, suddenly, growing more opaque with every motion. "And you will talk with me, won't you?" she inquired, clutching at the edge of his blanket. "It's been such a long time…"

So they talked the night away, the artist and the dead girl, and he told her about his father, and his younger sister and how very much he missed her, and she told him about her life those many years ago, and how she had been lured into a tryst with a beautiful sailor who had murdered her before his ship left port, and abandoned her body in a tree hollow in the woods - "But it wasn't so bad," she commented, "for I got to see a number of little creatures enjoy what was left of me, and it made them happier than you can imagine if you haven't been in such circumstances" - and how her bones had eventually been found and buried in an unmarked grave with an angel atop it, somewhere along the coast of New York state, until a grave robber stole her engagement ring (fat lot of good it had done her anyway) and her head and sold the latter to a poet, who tragically died in the midst of his greatest work, and whose belongings had ended up in the secondhand shop, herself included.

"And that," she finished, "is how my head came to be upon your table. I must say, you couldn't have made a finer choice, young sir, to take home from all that rubbish, for I can keep you far more entertained than any willow patterned tea cup."

The artist, of course, was very much inclined to agree, for he couldn't help but notice, as the night drew on, how thoroughly amused by and attracted he was to this charming young ghost. He was very sad indeed when the first threads of light began to play with the dust motes in the air, and the girl declared that she must go before the sun was properly risen. They bid one another farewell, and agreed to speak again, and the dead girl left him with a kiss on the cheek and a strange and fluttering anticipation in his chest.

*       *       *

She did not come the next night, or the night after, and the weeks began to pass, and still there was no sign of her. And all the while, the young artist sketched her face and form, over and over, until he began to trace her lineaments upon his futon while he slept.

*       *       *

Time passed and still she did not return, and soon it was winter.

The artist held a small exhibition, but it was a failure, and in his despair he turned to Victor for comfort, which was, as expected, a terrible idea. Victor was a good friend to bounce ideas off of, but one never took his advice; one treated him as an oddly interactive wall. Victor was of the charmed sort who could do whatever he pleased, and pass through it all unscathed, but he had an unfortunate habit of dragging others into his ways, and those who followed him did not always fare so well as he.

Until now, our beautiful little artist had refused to touch anything of a harder sort than the occasional drink, the periodic cigarette. With what his father had been and what his sister presumably still was, he knew he ran a severe risk of going too far into a place he didn't want to be.  But after the exhibition he found himself caring less and less. Every tribute he had ever composed to her - the sketches based upon the skull, and those derived from the memory of her face against the fabric of the futon - had been rejected, cast aside by a harsh world of critics and petty passers-by who gave him a compliment here and there but didn't care enough to buy anything and actually support him. And so when Victor pulled out his stash and offered a bit and even began to bind up his arm with a spare leather belt, our dear little artist made no move to stop him, but offered only a faint, "Mmkay…" and a murmured, "…if you think it will help…"

*       *       *

In spring, the young artist was evicted from his studio apartment in SoHo and moved in with Victor the Junkie, who always seemed to have enough money for rent, although no one quite knew how. Our charcoal-haired boy suspected he dealt a bit on the side, perhaps, but figured it hardly circumspect to ask. And besides, what did it matter? With Victor he had a home, and a share of the dope, and a place for his beloved skull.

But in August, Victor disappeared and nothing was seen of him for three weeks, until police found his body down on Long Island, half-gnawed by stray dogs in the alleyway. Even cats run out of their nine lives someday.

*       *       *

He sold caricatures in the park when fall hit to stave off the withdrawals. He'd never meant to get so into it, but God, how much better those numb quiet hours felt than the nights spent dreaming of fathers and sisters and friends and skull-less girls in his living room. He learned to ignore the scornful looks when he sat shooting up in dark corners, and the hisses of "Junkie!" and "Failure!" that his own mind spat back at him.

*       *       *

And then, before he knew it, it was Hallowe'en again, and he was awakened in the night by a faint rapping at his apartment door.

"Oh, do open," muttered a soft feminine voice. "I'm trying ever so hard to be polite, but if you don't oblige me, I shall be forced to materialize beside you whether you like it or not."

Was it she? -

And he raced to the door and flung it open to find the ghost girl standing there with her green eyes and russet hair and white dress the same as before, and he threw his arms about her and very nearly dragged her across the room to Victor's ratty old couch.

"Where have you been? Oh my God, where have you been?" he cried repeatedly, and pinned her to the cushions, kissing her pale ghost neck desperately.

"Dreadful sorry I'm late," she said when she could get a word in edgewise, "but I was looking for your sister and I found her."

And she explained how she had traced his sister's trail from San Francisco to Los Angeles that very evening, and then in a strange arching curve up to Portland, and planted in her dreams a memory of her beloved brother and a hint of where he lived, a street number to be remembered upon waking. "But I'm afraid that leaves us very little time together," she ended, looking sadly down at the threadbare carpet.

"But where have you been for a year?" he asked plaintively, burying his face in her hair, and wondering how a dead girl could still smell so sweetly of rose petals.

"Oh, but I thought I explained…"

"No, no, you said you'd speak with me again, and then you disappeared and never came back…"

The ghost girl gave a tired sigh (like the air being let out of a down-filled cushion) and explained that All Hallow's was the only day that the living might mingle freely with the dead, unless some sort of medium were involved (oh yes, the silly creatures did sometimes have some special abilities, but they were far too pretentious about it on the whole), and even then it was a bit iffy.

"But then…I can only talk to you once a year?"

"Appears so, my dear boy," - and she ruffled his hair affectionately to reveal those brilliant turquoise eyes of his, wide and childlike - "so let's make the most of it, shall we?"

*       *       *

A week later, there came another rap at his door, more tentative this time, and a different feminine voice than before inquired shakily -

"Hello? Is anyone there?"

It was the boy's sister, of course, standing in a neon green trench coat, her umbrella dripping, and her hair dyed a vibrant pink. She began to explain how she had had the strangest dream the other night…

*       *       *

They got an apartment together in November, in a nice area, for the sister had become a rather successful cyberpunk model in recent months. She had cleaned up her ways some time the year before; re-evaluated her life and decided the way to go was bright colors, fishnet stockings, and perfectly matched gas masks. It suited her - she had always before been such a pale, dim creature, confined to corners with the comfortable timidity of a practiced wallflower. But now she shone, in vibrant hues, and the world understood for the first time that she was unfathomably beautiful.

The boy she placed briefly in a rehab program that allowed him to stay home, and the day came when he no longer cared that the syringes were gone from his kitchen counter, and that Ziploc bags were intended for sandwiches and not hits.

He grew happier, with the passage of weeks, but in time the old sense of futility returned, and by October of the following year he pined for her so fervently that he began smoking cigarettes, not for the nicotine, but for the brief rush he got pressing the hot end to his curled palm when no one was looking.

*       *       *

"I wasn't meant for life," he told her that Hallowe'en. "It's altogether too much work, too much caring, and no one cares in return, so what's the point?"

"I care," said the ghost girl, twisting his dark hair around her index finger and nibbling lightly at his left ear.

"You're dead."

"Your sister cares."

He paused at that. "But do I?"

*       *       *

He lived another year just staring at her skull on his nightstand. He took it with him to see Repo!, and his sister shook her head and asked him if was ever going to start painting again, and he looked back slowly with his turquoise eyes and kitten lips, and asked her if she wanted some popcorn.

*       *       *

He started painting again, black splotchy things not unlike the inkings of Ralph Steadman. They sold oddly well, and with his earnings he bought a glorious Italian stiletto with a filigreed silver handle and a blade like the thin sliver of a fern.

*       *       *

Hallowe'en.

He took a Greyhound to the New York coast, and found the little cemetery where she had said her body lay their first night together. It was quite a pretty place; one of those old Victorian affairs, with weathered granite and marble and elm trees sprawled across the lawn in gold and orange, with here and there a streak of flaming red like a fox's tail in the distance.

The unmarked graves were huddled together by the mausoleum, a gray and battered little bunch interspersed with Christ statues in compensation. He felt sorry for them somehow, excluded as they were from the known dead, and wondered if anyone ever bothered to leave flowers, and he wished quietly to himself that he has brought a bouquet along with the skull that rested teeth-latched about his quivering thumb.

Her grave was closest to the marked ones, a piece fairly plain in itself, but surmounted by an intricate seraph, eyes closed and wings outraised to a span of some three feet. Why such attention had been devoted to the interment of her remains, he could not even guess, but he was not about to complain; above anyone, she deserved it.

And there he sat in the dusking light, waiting for midnight and staring at his knife, and pondering his choice until it was made and she came at last.