Annie of the Undead Read Online Free Page A

up your demands, or
are you only good for boning other peoples’ girls, Roger?”
    His face got as hard as a face like his could,
which wasn’t very, but Anjelah grabbed his arm, trying to pull him
away from me.
    “Don’t! She’s a boxer, Rog, and she hangs out
with some very bad people. Just let her go. Go on!” she said to me
like I was a rat with the rabies, to be shooed out of the garage
but not approached, “Get out of here, and don’t ever come
back.”
    Roger, reluctant to back down from a girl and in
front of his girl, but equally reluctant to find out if whatever
Anjelah had told him about me was true, settled on a different
solution.
    “I’m going to call the police,” he said,
pointing a finger at me resolutely, “Right now.”
    Just then, a car honked its horn out in the
street. There was the sound of squealing brakes and then a cry,
high and strangled, like a small thing dying in agony.
    I walked to the front door, opened it, and stood
in the threshold. I figured I ought to hold up my end of the deal
I’d made with Anjelah. Or maybe I just did because it was fun to
say.
    “Better go scrape up your cat.”
    Okay, so right about now, you’re thinking,
Anjelah was right. Annie, you are a bitch. And I say in
answer: Ya think? But let me just correct a small but integral
detail of that statement: I was a bitch. But things have
since happened to me –supernatural things that sort of changed my
view of humanity and the world. When you are confronted with
terrifying and unnatural things, like, say, politicians or
vampires, you gain a little perspective –perspective that, as in my
case, can help you become a better human being.
    But becoming a better human still had a ways to
go that night. The debacle resulting from going to get Chris’s
stuff wasn’t quite over yet, because the person I would have least
wanted to see in all the world –less than my drug-dealing ex, less
than the rich patron who had put me in the boxing ring and then
tried to put me (at gunpoint if necessary) into his bed, less even
than those tools of Satan who call themselves Nickelback –the one
person who had the ability to make me lose even my appetite for
fried chicken (and God knows how I always loved me my fried
chicken) at the mere thought of her, happened to be driving the
Acura that had squashed the cat.
    “What in fresh hell are you doing here,
Mother?”
    The witch herself got out of the car, careful to
avoid the blood smear the cat had left on the pavement with her
prissy little peg-heel shoes.
    The very first thing she said to me was: “You
look like you’ve gained thirty pounds.”
    “You look like you’ve aged thirty years.”
    She pretended my comment was beneath her
notice.
    “I went to meet you outside the jail,” she said,
oblivious to Anjelah, who ran past her down the drive, screaming
hysterically at the little orange corpse partly tucked beneath the
rear tire. “But they must have released you early. I’ve been
driving all over town looking for you. I almost didn’t try here. I
didn’t think you would come, but then you’ve never quite gotten it
through your head that Chris isn’t here anymore.”
    She looked around at the little cul-de-sac like
it was some third-world outhouse. Amazing, how quickly people from
meager backgrounds can become snobbish after marrying into a little
money.
    I said, “I know where he is. Chris is in the
ground. Been to see your son lately?”
    “I have a service put flowers on his grave every
month.”
    “Why are you here, Mother?”
    “To take you home,” she said peevishly. “To
extract you from this dangerous life you’ve chosen. To give you a
fresh start.”
    “Isn’t that interesting?”
    I didn’t buy that load of sow shit for a second.
It wasn’t natural for me to be near the top of my mom’s priority
list. I took a draft of my smoke and glanced around, checking for
cops. They couldn’t be here this quick if Roger was calling them,
but they could be