“Ow… ow… ow! Watch it!”

“Sit still, Mal! I can’t sew you shut if you keep squirming!”

“Why don’t you stitch your no-good brother back up, ‘stead of sitting here putting me back together like some goddamn turkey roast?!” Mal sat on a chair backwards, straddling the backrest and leaning forward as Eric stood behind him, stitching together the wound on his shoulder with a needle and thread.

“’Cause I heal fast, dude.” Victor sat on one cot, his head resting against the wall, the blood stains on his clothing and a tired expression on his face the only signs that he had been hurt at all. “You don’t.”

“I still don’t get why you’re the one doin’ this,” Mal grumbled over his shoulder.

“I’m the only one here with any medical experience.” Eric pressed a ball of cotton against a section of the wound as he slipped the needle through one section of skin, and pulling it through another like he was mending a tear in a pair of pants. “And Isaac… you don’t want Isaac’s help.”

“Dicking around with some toasters and stitching them to your ass doesn’t count as medical experience.”

“More than you have.”

“Yeah, well-“

Muse wondered if every time she went looking she was going to find them arguing. It had been a few hours since they had come back from the sky-scraper, and Muse had gone off to think about what had just happened. She watched a man fall to his death, and it was… wrong. Just wrong. She was still debating if it was her fault. She could have saved him, and yet it hadn’t occurred to her to try. She tried to blame it on her fear of falling and how quickly it all happened - but she wasn’t sure. She could have helped him. She decided it was a better idea to try and find answers to her questions instead of debating her own assistance in the evening and what it meant. She had wanted to talk in the hearse, but everyone was either not in the mood, or weren’t conscious at the time.

Muse watched as Eric and Mal shot insults back and forth at each other, Victor sitting by a wall and laughing tiredly at the scene. Muse could have left, and gone to ask Isaac what she needed to know, but she quickly decided against it. He wasn’t exactly what you would call approachable. Instead, she decided to try and talk to the more mouthy contingent of men in the house. Muse floated over by Victor and took form sitting next to him.

“Aughk!” Victor yelped. “Muse! You gotta warn us or something’.”

“Sorry, I forget,” Muse watched the other two bicker, wondering if they had even noticed she was there. She doubted it. She looked over at the vampire and down at his leg where he had gotten hit. “How’re you doing? That looked like it hurt…”

“Yeah, but I bounce back. Vampires do that,” he smiled down at her. “Mal got it worse than me. He doesn’t patch himself up nearly as fast as I do, and he’s got Eric as a surgeon.” Victor snorted and poked at the hole in his shirt. “The worst thing is, I liked this shirt.”

“Everything with you’s about style, isn’t it?”

“Hey, it takes work to look this good.”

Muse had to laugh. She had a hard time figuring out if he was serious or being ironic. It struck her that his hair, which always seemed so perfectly maintained, was now just pushed back away from his face in tired apathy. The vampire looked the worse for wear, but to be honest, nobody in the room looked that great. They were all sporting various assortments of bruises, open wounds or burns. In fact, the only one that looked the same was her.

Probably because she always looked the same.

She never changed. Fishnets, tank-top, pants, boots. Every day. No matter what.

She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her legs around them, lost in the unpleasant thought. Finally, she remembered what she had come here to ask in the first place. “Hey, Vic - who the hell were those guys?”

“Michael and Azrael? Oh right… you don’t know,” Victor’s voice got serious, the usual playful glee in his face fading. “They’re Crusaders. There’re seven of them, I think - the Vatican’s ‘special forces’ team. They’re trained and designed to exterminate ‘problem subjects.’ We’re on the list.” Victor scratched at the wound on his right leg, now only a barely-visible yet obviously annoying red rash. “We haven’t seen ‘em in a while though. Azrael’s a real bitch to deal with, Michael’s a real douche…”

“Well, at least Michael’s not a problem anymore, huh?”

“I wish we were so - ow - lucky,” Mal chimed in, finally becoming aware of the conversation after telling Eric that if he didn’t ease up, he’d deposit some medical supplies into his body using a very impolite method.

“What do you mean?” Muse blinked, confused. She looked over at Mal and was glad she wouldn’t ever need to be stitched back together, but that didn’t stop her from feeling nauseous as she watched Eric push the needle through Mal’s skin.

“It’s a long story. You’ll figure it out soon enough. Hey Muse, I gotta question.” Mal turned his head as much as he could to look at her.

“… Yeah?” Muse asked warily, although she wasn’t exactly excited to hear what he was going to say. She had an idea what he was about to ask, and if she was right, this was going to be awkward.

“How come you took that sword gettin’ buried into ya and didn’t even flinch? You just that hardcore, or don’t you feel pain?”

“No, I don’t,” she said. The room sat in silence for a moment as she fixated on her boots, not wanting to look up.

“You don’t feel pain? That’s a neat trick… can you just like… turn it off?” Eric asked, not looking up from where his attentions were focused.

“Not exactly… I uh… I can’t feel pain. Ever. Well, no, that’s not true. Electricity hurts. I don’t know why. But besides that...” She decided just to fess up. It would be better if she did. She took in a deep breath, held it, and ripped off the proverbial band-aid. In one rush of air, she blurted out the next sentence. “I can’t feel anything, actually.”

Victor poked her in the shoulder. “You can’t feel that?”

“No.”

“You can’t feel anything? Ever? Why didn’t you say that earlier?” Victor asked.

“I dunno… I don’t like to think about it, okay? Being dead sucks enough without having to be reminded of it. I can’t feel things. I can’t taste them. I can’t smell them.” Muse couldn’t stand the way that Victor was looking at her, so she vanished, causing him to jump.

“Touchy subject?” Mal asked, then snorted with his stupid pun. As the room sat in silence, he let out a deep sigh. “Wrong joke, wrong time. Sorry, Blue.”

Muse didn’t respond, drifting her way up through the floors. She just wanted to get away from everyone. Pushing her way through empty air, wood, and pipes, she went back up to the attic. Spreading herself out, she settled herself down on the floor in the middle of the room.

Time could blink away in an instant when you were dead. Zoning out, one could literally watch grass grow. Sulking, she was unaware of how much time passed before she suddenly realized she was being stood - not on - but in.

“Wha-aah!” Victor screamed as he leaped sidewards as it suddenly felt like static electricity was crackling along his feet from the ankles down.

Muse made a similar noise as she floated away and appeared sitting on the table. “Don’t do that, I hate that!”

“What the hell? What’d I do?” Victor jumped from foot to foot.

“You stood in me.”

“I did what?”

“You stood…” she slowed it down, hoping it’d help. She wasn’t sure how else to describe it. “-In me.”

Victor stood there and looked at her blankly for a long moment before the figurative lightbulb went off. “Oh, crud, girl, sorry. Didn’t know you were there…” Victor watched as Muse shrugged morosely. “Hey, Muse - you mad at us?”

“Huh?” It was her turn to be confused. She was surprised he thought she would be.

“Y’know about the… Mal’s stupid joke, and us… I don’t know.”

She shifted where she sat as she tried to put her finger on exactly what caused her reaction. “No, I’m not. The whole thing is just uncomfortable for me to talk about. I’m not used to it, this is really the first time since I died that anybody’s ever asked me questions about it.”

“Oh.” Victor walked over and sat down on a bunch of boxes across from her, and shifted awkwardly as he tried to think of what to say. Muse was too busy trying to sort out her own emotions to really notice the silence. He finally spoke up. “That makes sense. Sorry, we’re not used to having a ghost around either. Hey… Can… can I ask you some questions?”

“I guess.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, how long’ve you been dead?”

“Twenty years or so. I don’t know when I ‘woke up.’ I don’t know how instant a transition it was.” If Muse was good at anything, it was changing the subject. “How ‘bout you? How long have you been dead?”

“Eeeh, I’m not really dead-dead. Just un-living.” Victor paused to debate the vocabulary silently in his head. “But anyway, only about… damn… fifteen years now. It was shortly after the Retribution started - when the Vatican started up their war against the undead, I was a soldier for them. Eric hated the idea-”

“You fought with the Vatican during the Retribution?”

“Yeah, well, whatever, I was young and stupid. It seemed like the thing to do, what with all the propaganda and everything. I was scared, hell, we all were. It was about eight years into the war, and, well anyway, I was - how’d you put it - captured behind enemy lines? This vampire chick turned me, and well - I changed my mind on a few things,” he said with a laugh.

“I bet she changed your mind. A little hot vampire sex’ll do that to you.” Muse chuckled and winked at him playfully.

“Bah,” Victor pouted. “But, oh, yeah. She was smoking’.” Victor let out a whistle and, using his pointer fingers, traced out an hourglass shape in the air in front of him. Muse laughed and shook her head.

“So how does Eric take this whole situation?”

The light in his green eyes faded as she asked. “He’s… he wasn’t thrilled when I got turned. I mean… I’ll basically watch him age and die. But I guess that’s the way of things... Nothing I can do to change it now.”

“I guess not.”

They sat in silence for a moment, both lost in thought about their own particular fates. Victor was the first to break the silence. “Okay, screw this doom-and-gloom shit!” He stood up and walked up to her, and ruffled her hair with both hands. “C’mon, Shorty, let’s go downstairs and play some foosball or something’.”

“Okay, but I’m surprised you don’t have some hot date you’re late for.” She let herself get tugged out of the room and down the stairs.

Victor flashed his traffic-stopping smile, despite how tired he obviously was. “Naah, I don’t like getting stabbed and screwed in the same night.”

You’re dead. Fine, you can deal with that. You can’t feel things. Fine, you can deal with that. You’re probably going to exist for centuries and then blink out in a puff into oblivion, unloved and forgotten. Fine, you can deal with that. But no - oh no - this is the true torture.

The house was empty of people. Well, mostly. She was sure Isaac was around somewhere. Mal was out with some lady-friend. Ezekiel was talking to a coat-rack - who was apparently named Roger - and didn’t seem to notice she was there. Victor had gone to ‘eat’ - he had asked if she wanted to go along, but she declined. As oddly fascinating as it would probably be for her to watch him bite someone, she really didn’t know if wanted to be a tag-along.

The true torture?

Muse was bored.

One person didn’t seem to be missing, but couldn’t be found - the other brother. Eric’s carefully maintained ‘baby’ - a 1968 Pontiac GTO - was still sitting in the garage. She had been informed that if she ever, ever, touched his car, he would find a way to kill her as he put it, ‘twice dead.’ The weirdest thing was that no matter how many rooms she checked, she couldn’t find where he was. Finally, after twenty minutes, she found him in the basement. As she popped through the wall she felt an awkward buzz rush her system.

“Damnit!” she heard him growl. He walked over to a weird pile of wires and strange metal boxes with dials on them and started whacking his fist on the top of the monitor as the picture on the screen was overcome with static. Poking around to the other side, she saw it was reading out a series of numbers. Muse tried to no avail to make sense of what they meant.

Turning her attention to the room and snickered quietly to herself. The room was probably at one point huge, but the walls, ceilings, and every available surface were overcome with wires, pipes, motors and other little gadgets that made little sense to her. It made the room feel exceedingly cramped and crowded. On one wall hung an array of bizarre looking guns, weird flat metal disks and something that looked like a harpoon.

The other side of the room was crowded with what looked like half-finished creations. A large lizard-esque looking creature with wings sat against the wall, hunched over. Its chest cavity was empty, wires hanging out down over its legs.

She looked back towards Eric. He was standing at a desk, his back to her - his pair of thick blast goggles down over his eyes. Sparks flew out from in front of him and to both sides in a bright shower of slag metal.

“Hey, Eric.” She took form standing in the center of the room.

Eric jumped nearly a foot in the air and whirled, the small welding gun in his hand pointed at her. “Shit!” he yelled. “Woman! Don’t do that!”

“Sorry,” she snickered at the gun and sarcastically threw her arms up as if she were being robbed. “Oh no! Are you going to weld me?”

“Oh, shut up. You startled me.” He turned around and put the gun down, picked up a small screwdriver and began to tinker with the pile of metal and wires that sat in front of him. He lifted his head thoughtfully, and let out a small ‘huh’ noise from the back of his throat. “You’re the reason the monitor went haywire. Hey, do me a favor - if you can help it, could you not pass through my equipment?”

“Why?”

“As I figured,” he began and pushed the goggles up onto his head. “You’re comprised mostly of electromagnetic and other radio wavelengths.”

“Okay? Um… was that an insult or a compliment?”

“Neither,” Eric snickered. “Just means that if you walk through anything electrical, you’re likely to mess it up.”“I knew that. I’ve told you as much. So that explains the buzz.”

“Huh?”

“When I walk through electrical crap I get a buzz.”

“Interesting… I’m probably right then.”“Right… to be honest, I’m not sure exactly what ‘electromagnetic wavelengths’ actually really means in relation to me.”

“It means please don’t walk through any of my crap,” Eric said through another chuckle.

“I’ll try,” Muse walked up next to him and peered over his shoulder. “What’re you working on? It looks like an arm…”

“That’s ‘cause it’s an arm,” Eric muttered as he kept working, biting down on the tip of his tongue as he carefully started plugging wires into different sections of the hunk of metal. The arm had its forearm panel flipped open, exposing weird tubing and other things that Muse didn’t understand. It looked like a left arm, going all the way up to the shoulder joint.

“Why’re you building an arm?”

“Because you never know when you’re going to need an extra one.”

Muse opened her mouth to retort but found she couldn’t come up with one. “Touché.” Muse moved over to an empty spot on the table and hopped up onto it. “I’m sorry about the other night. I wasn’t mad, it’s just weird to talk about.”

“No biggie.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re in good company to have a screwed up life.” Eric lowered the blast goggles onto his eyes again, twisted the dial on the side and went back to plugging in wires. “We all got more stuff in our closets... Hell, I think the only one who hasn’t got some crazy ass secret they’re hiding is Zeek, probably because he can’t remember any of them.”

“How nuts is that guy, anyway?”

“Not sure, but-“ he pulled his hand away quickly as a spark jumped between the metal hand and his own. Waving his own to dull the pain, he put the screwdriver back down and kept working. “He’s harmless. I didn’t know him before he worked for Isaac. He’s been here longer than any of us. When he starts making sense, though, that’s when you really gotta worry.”

“Huh.” Muse wanted to ask more questions, ask about Isaac, about their jobs, about how all of them got into killing people for a living, but she didn’t want to pester him. It was clear that he was busy, covered in wires, soot, oil, and smoke. Wait. Smoke. “Um. Eric?”

“Yeah?”

“I think you’re on fire.”