Page 25 of How (Not) To Raise The Dead

“Suit yourself.” He tears off a piece of pepperoni and dangles it over the edge of the couch. “Here, House-Beast.”

“Malachi, don’t!” I snap, sitting up straighter, the sudden movement lazily tilting the room to the left. “She can’t eat that. It’s full of garlic and salt. You’ll make her sick.”

Vesper scrambles across the room to get to him and snatches the meat from his silver fingers, purring like a diesel engine.

He ignores me, feeding her a piece of crust next. “She seems fine to me. She was fine after I shared my breakfast with her.” He scratches her behind the ears, and she leans into his touch. “She has a robust constitution.”

“Great,” I groan, dropping my head into my hands. “When she gets sick later, you are cleaning the litter box. I’m serious. If there’s a mess, you’re dealing with it.”

“I torture souls for a living,” he says dryly. “I think I can handle a box of sand.”

My phone vibrates in my pocket and I pull it out.

Jesus, she moves fast.

“What?” Malachi asks, watching me over the rim of his soda can.

“I just got a calendar alert,” I mutter, reading the notification before chucking the phone onto the table. “For therapy.”

“Ah. Therapy,” he muses, staring at the ceiling. “The talking cure. Reliving memories is actually a very efficient form of torture in the Pit. Regret works much better than blades and fire—it feels a fuck-of-a-lot hotter and lasts so much longer. We don’t need to invent new agonies for the arrivals; we simply force them to walk through their own worst moments on a loop.”

A chill that has nothing to do with the drafty window runs down my spine.

“So it isn’t… classic torture?” I ask hesitantly. “There isn’t fire? Lakes of lava? What’s it really like there?”

He doesn’t look up from his pizza, but the corner of his mouth twitches.

“You mortals and your obsession with the thermostat,” he sighs, picking a piece of mushroom off the cheese. He flicks the fungus away and finally meets my eyes, the gold reflecting the flickering light of the TV. “Hell is paperwork, Eden. Paperwork, and rules, and endless legislation. It’s the place where your naughty ones go to burn, sure, but mostly? It’s the place where all the rot goes to settle and get kicked up again, over and over. It’s an assembly line of misery that never quite breaks down.”

He takes a massive, unapologetic bite of pepperoni, the cartoon kitten on his chest stretching as he leans forward.

“Though, the screaming can get a bit much on the weekends when you’re on overtime. It’s very ‘Main Character Energy,’ as the ones on that dating show say. Honestly, I miss the peasants. Back in the fourteen-hundreds, a man would die of an infected hangnail, show up at the intake desk, and just say ‘Yeah, fair enough.’ No arguing, no appeals. Just a quiet acceptance that life was mostly mud and then it ended.”

I blink, my brain stalling. “Wait. The fourteen-hundreds. But that’s… that’s six hundred years ago.”

“And that’s what you’re fixated on?” He rolls his eyes, unimpressed. “I’m sitting here explaining the decline of mortal resilience, and you’re stuck on the calendar math. Yes, I’m old. I’ve been stamping forms for six centuries. I have boots older than the concept of hygiene. Now, are you going to eat that crust or can I give it to the House-Beast?”

Every piece of information whirls around my brain dizzyingly quick. I pull my knees up to my chin, wincing as the movement pulls at the skin on my wrist and the nausea returns with a vengeance, a fresh wave of sweat prickling over my spine. I rest my cheek against my knee, my gaze drifting to the urn on the mantelpiece, completely unbidden.

Was he light enough for Upstairs? Or was he dragged down to the basement with the rest of the rot? I need to know. If the Pit is just a bureaucratic nightmare of regret, then surely the alternative has to be... well… better.

“So,” I start, sounding ridiculous against the backdrop of late-night infomercials. “Is Heaven real too? Is it... you know. Pearly gates and all that?”

He snorts, wiping his bottom lip with the back of his hand. “Oh, fuck me. Not the ‘Big Guy’ questions. Is this really where we’re going?” He tosses the crust back into the box with a wet thud and leans back. “Everyone always wants to know about the Upstairs.”

“I just thought⁠—”

“It’s a cult,” he cuts in. “A high-control corporate cult with a terrifying PR department. You think it’s all harps and fluffy clouds? It’s bureaucracy, just like Hell. It’s endless, smiling compliance. Imagine a ‘mandatory fun’ office party that lasts for the rest of eternity, where you’re required to sing the company anthem on loop or face HR—who, by the way, are literal flaming wheels covered in eyes that hide behind ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ signs.”

He shudders, a genuine ripple of distaste crossing his sharp features.

“Now, shut up and tell your stomach to stop its interpretive dance and eat. You’re pissing me off.”

The thought of Matthew being forced into stillness, into a ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ eternity where he isn’t the one making the rules, makes my throat tighten with a fresh ache.

Malachi shifts on the couch, the movement telegraphing through the cushions until I feel the heat of him radiating against my arm. He’s leaning in, invading the six-inch buffer of space I’ve been trying to maintain, dark spice wrapping around me like a shroud.

“You’re very focused on that mantelpiece, little summoner,” he says, voice dropping lower. “You’re so curious about the mechanics of the Afterlife, Eden.” He pauses, breath brushing against my cheek. “It makes me wonder. Is it the Corpse-Boy you’re worried about, or is it you?”