Fate Worse Than Death

Jeffrey sits tensely at the head of Diana’s table, uneasily knowing his weight causes the angular old chair beneath him to bite into the soft undersides of his thighs, but his incorporeal nature leaving him unable to feel it until Diana returns, and with it, her unnerving touch. He watches the broad shouldered woman as she busies herself about her kitchen, tactfully rifling through her tightly packed freezer, smiling in her amicable, goonish way Jeffrey has already come to loathe. At home, and not wearing any of her hunting gear, Jeffrey can see her exposed arms, rippling with the kind of muscle one might expect on a Wrestlemania broadcast back in the 80’s, and in the dingy light pouring through her dirty window, he can see her tan skin is interlaced with thin white scars down her imposing tree trunk arms. He stares her down hatefully as she works, ears pricking in distaste as she hums a stupid off kilter tune, his empty brown eyes shooting daggers at her.

“Here we are!” Diana announces, her deep, scratchy voice aggravatingly cheerful.

She turns to Jeffrey triumphantly, in her big hand she clasps two plastic packed Drumstick ice cream cones, their royal blue casing gleaming. He raises a slender eyebrow, and sizes her up.

“What? What do you expect me to do with that?” he asks sharply, leaning forward onto the table, and pressing his chubby cheek into its cool surface.

Since meeting Diana, if one could call it that, the physical sensations Jeffrey is missing have become unbearable, as he is now painfully aware when he isn’t getting them. The cool wood, sharp edges, hell, even the strain of his too-tight waistband chewing into him is missed. He didn’t even remember, for ten years, that he died in pants that didn’t fit, as he hadn’t done the laundry before he killed himself.

“You’re going to eat one,” Diana holds out the small offering, but doesn’t actually place it in reach of Jeffrey until she has rounded him, deftly using her spare hand to pull the chair next to Jeffrey close enough to be, well, annoyingly close, and sits down beside him.

Jeffrey grimaces, brow furrowing. His desperation is betrayed by his pouty upper lip twitching. He falters, and then fails, giving into an unfightable instinct, his lower eyelids draw up miserably, eyes growing big and wet at this prospect, making him look like a scowling, begging puppy.

“I can do that?” Jeffrey’s hollow voice wavers, lending it a sad, human inflection that he resents as it springs up, but can’t force back.

He hasn’t eaten anything either, since the last time he donned his ill fitting khakis, and died. But he doesn’t want to give Diana the satisfaction of doing anything for him, he’d rather suffer in emptiness than risk letting that beast of a woman experience even an inkling of righteousness for trapping him with her. Jeffrey knows on some level his stomach is churning hungrily in a Pavlovian sense - he isn’t actually hungry, he doesn’t even need to eat anymore, and he hasn’t done so in years. But he begins shifting eagerly despite himself, trying to fight back a primal urge to feel happiness and eat food, beginning to salivate a little, the wetness beading at the pink corners of his mouth at the thought of tasting something sweet after a decade’s long fast.

“Of course you can,” Diana’s tone is too assuring and steady now than Jeffrey feels comfortable with, as he is more than certain that this gift is in some way a trap of some sort even if he isn’t exactly sure how, though the kind, understanding way the exorcist speaks makes him second guess himself “Here.”

Diana puts down one of the plastic wrapped ice cream cones, and places her large hand firmly but gently on Jeffrey’s shoulder, and puts the other ice cream into his shaking, outstretched hand that he just then realized he was grasping with. This embarrassing realization causes Jeffrey’s face to contort with appallment and turn pink, but quickly, with an equally doglike, greedy lack of control, Jeffrey begins to feverishly unwrap the treat, genuinely careful for once not to jostle Diana’s grip from him. For a moment, he lets the scent of milk chocolate and cream and chopped nuts hit and wash over him, his eyes going lazily half lidded for a moment as he registers pleasure for the first time in recent memory. His face is still hot and flushed, and Jeffrey hates himself in this moment - this weakness, this hunger, and most of all his reliance on fucking Diana to experience any of this.

Then, no longer able to wait and mill over the rage deep seated in his chest, mouth brimming with excited drool in a way that pin prickles and almost hurts, Jeffrey sets upon the cold dessert, tearing it apart wolfishly with his teeth, almost knocked back by its sheer cold, but pressing onwards unflinchingly, stimulated by the sweetness of it. It’s almost as rewarding as it is terrifying when memories wash over him, the first of which being the bitter recall of jeers from his former classmates over the manner he eats. Admittedly nowhere near as barbarically as he’s eating now, but he had a shy, chipmunk-like habit that was spurned by being worried about eating too fast, and so to compensate for large bites of food, he’d hold it in his cheeks for a moment. He knows he looked silly. But moderation didn’t come easy to him, and he still wishes people would just shut up about it.

Diana rubs Jeffrey’s shoulder as he eats, cold tears streaming down his face, watching silently as he chokes down the ice cream as fast as he can, shuddering and whimpering a little. The chair claws at the back of his legs as he trembles, each little movement Jeffrey makes causing the unsmoothed corner to nip at him again, but after so long of feeling nothing at all, he almost loves it as much as he hates it. He doesn’t realize quite what a spectacle he’s making, sobbing quietly and taking monstrous bites of a Drumstick, but pressingly he can feel Diana’s touch, the comforting way she is massaging the tension from his upper back, and he is almost, for a moment, happier about this than the ice cream cone.

He hasn’t felt anything like this since long before his death. Much longer ago than the last time he had ice cream. Perhaps no one had ever rubbed his back before, but the immediate relief it brings, its neededness, making him aware of a painful strain he’s been carrying with him just as it disappears under Diana’s care is intoxicating. He lets out a low, unintended moan, some mix of pain, and exhaustion, and pleasure, just as he swallows his last, sticky bite, and then the horror of the situation hits him all at once.

His red, tear streaked face, his pathetic shivering, the smears of chocolate and cream around his otherwise pretty lips. His throat contracts with a sudden onset of nauseous fear, the tight and jarring constriction forcing a muffled retching noise from Jeffrey, and his head whips to face Diana, instinctively searching her expression with his horror-widened eyes for signs of trickery or disgust. She just stares patiently back, dark eyes glimmering and her mouth just barely drifting up at the corners in a subdued smile, letting Jeffrey know she got some kind of presumably sick enjoyment out of watching him degrade himself for food like that, but must be trying not to let that on. He gulps, his face once again deathly pale, eyes still as big as dinner plates.

“Was that good?” Diana’s question is so redundant it almost gives Jeffrey whiplash, but her hand maintaining its position, now rubbing the sore back of his neck, not willing to deprive him of his earthly sensations, makes him realize for the first time there is genuinity in her kindness. If there wasn’t, she would have taken her hand back, and with it his means to experience the world, once she had gotten what she wanted.

Jeffrey wipes his face sullenly, pausing in lapses to lick the sugary substances from his fingers so as to not further smudge his face, and tries to force back sniffles as the moment beats him bloody over the head with his revelations. His lower lip now quivers dramatically, and thick, salty tears threaten once again to slide piteously from where they are gathering in the basin of his eyelids. Jeffrey almost wants to hug Diana. Almost.