All Chapters of Where the Dead go to Die: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

WELCOME ABOARD“The dead roam those halls.”At first, Emily assumed the voice was her own, an echo bouncing off the building’s façade. She continued toward the entrance nonetheless, brushing the cliché away as though it were just another snowflake caught on her coat. Every one of her steps ushered the cinderblock structure closer until it loomed overhead, and as she passed into its shadow, Emily found herself admiring how the building managed to be both nondescript and foreboding at the same time, a balancing act of utilitarian blandness that screamed government institution!The voice spoke again. No, not just spoke. It came at her.“That place belongs to the dead.”She paused. The speaker wasn’t in her head, rather somewhere to her right: an old woman with wild gray hair, dressed in black. Emily knew she shouldn’t be unsettled—that she was above all the theatrical bullshit that came with this territory—yet she felt her stomach knotting anyway.“The dead roam those halls.” Repeat

SMOKE BREAK WITH MAMA METCALFEmily met Mama Metcalf her third day on the job.Three hours in and overdue for her first break, Emily sought refuge in the courtyard accessible through the break room. Although ‘courtyard’ seemed too fancy a description for the space, which she could tell from peering through the staffroom window was empty except for a weathered picnic table and the woman sitting at it. Emily gripped her fourth coffee of the morning in one hand and gripped the handle with the other.She closed her eyes and in the dark imagined warmer weather greeting her. Sunshine on her face. The smell of wafting barbeque. Yes, the outdoor setting might even pass as halfway inviting mid-year, so long as she ignored the enclosing nine-foot wall, the one fringed with bales of razor-wire.Ignored the dead pigeon snagged in the barbs.The door creaked open. As expected, the day was bitter, but Emily found the frigid air preferable to the antiseptic foulness she was leaving behind, if on

INTERLUDE TWOUsing the creases you have made, bring the top three corners of the paper to the bottom. Flatten. After this, fold the top triangular wings into the center and unfold. Finish this set by folding the top of the square downward, and crease. Unfold.“Did you grab the card, babe?” Jordan asked.The look Emily gave her husband said it all: Why of course she’d forgotten to grab the card. It was inside on the study desk where she’d stopped to write the inscription, thinking, So do I make this out to Kevin or his parents? It’s not like a three-year-old is going to read it anyway. He’ll just throw it aside as he rips off the wrapping. Emily couldn’t blame him for that. Lucette, who was the same age, had done a similar thing at her birthday party the month before. And although they often pretended otherwise, adults weren’t so different—everyone knew cards were an overpriced pit stop on the road to the good stuff. But formalities were important.They help trick us into thinking

THE LAST ORPHANEmily watched Robby breathe.She became conscious of the easy, natural rise and fall of her own chest, so unlike that of the boy’s, whose rib cage fluttered and hitched beneath the sheets. He’d been sleeping so much since the pneumonia had taken hold, a blessing were it not for the nightmares playing out behind those eyes.He twitched. Clenched.Robby’s phlegmy snore filled the room, reminding Emily of the way the generator on her parents’ property sounded after a season of disuse, the rumbling groan as it kicked into gear. The sound used to frighten her as a kid, though she endured it because there was light at the other end. Only the abandoned machine of meat and ambition before her wasn’t starting up. It was winding down. And the only thing Robby would soon know? Darkness.She hoped.Nobody knew if there was consciousness after the climax. Just theories and speculation. She prayed the infected slid into nothingness, an entreaty that left her kneeling at the alt

SWEARWORDS AND PEANUT BUTTER CUPSLucette sat on the edge of the bed with her hands in her lap, dressed for the day. There had been a time—and not so long ago it seemed—when she did this and her feet didn’t touch the floor. Now they did. This made her sad. Not sad in the way some cartoons did, or like the time the only real friend she’d had, Imogen, moved to New York with her parents. This sadness was new, different from those difficult-to-define barbs she thought of as memories of her father. Lucette missed the way her legs used to swing back and forth, and being unable to do so made her feel older than she wanted to be. She was sad because nobody had asked if she wanted to grow up in the first place.If Mom is anything to go by, being an adult doesn’t look like fun. Getting old means you have to yell a lot and be angry over every little thing.Every fucking thing.Lucette glanced about the room, half expecting the walls of their apartment to split apart, revealing a network of ea