Orpheus - Haunting the Dead.pdf - Dice

HAUNTING THE DEAD
SETH LINDBERG
thing with sausage, grease, eggs, and preferably some
toast. Chow down before it all congeals.
But this time he felt different, he didn’t know if he
could manage the effort required for even the minimal
amount of politeness you needed in one of those places.
Best to hit a convenience store, keep his head low, grab
a six-pack and some of those disgusting make-yourown
nachos. Man, what a guilty pleasure. Yeah, that’s
what he’d do.
The place was mostly empty. He spent far too long
shuffling between the small aisles, grabbing the beer,
making a what-the-hell buy of some kind of cheesy
crackers, finally hitting the nacho and hot dog area. He
stared at the hot dogs. They looked so tasty, so forbidden.
They’d obviously spent more than the allotted
time slowly rolling under heat lamps. Processed meat
baked, frozen and baked again until blistered.
The woman behind the counter read some tabloid
and chewed gum. Loudly. A television was set to some
glitzy celebrity profile show, revealing some rock star’s
expensive and overindulgent house. Some older woman
prowled the tiny aisles in some set pattern. A guy with
a white hat pulled backwards stood by the beer fridge
and peered at it like all of life’s mysteries were somehow
arranged inside.
The television flickered. The guy in the hat looked
up, then stared back at the beer fridge. Anders rather
hesitantly began to siphon out nacho cheese-food from
a pump at the condiments bar.
The television flickered again, and Anders heard a
voice from the television set say something like
“…ovize.” He looked up at the set, blinking. The static
faded to show a wall of gold records on the show, then
with a flicker the image disappeared again. Behind the
counter, the woman sighed and got off the chair with
some difficulty, grabbing a broom. She walked over and
looked up, then began to tap the set roughly on its side.
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