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Nastasya stood in her bathroom, bag packed outside the door. She had decided that tonight was the night: she had to get out of here. The old woman in the apartment next door had said the place was 'crawling with Visitors' a few days ago. She wasn't kidding.
FEMA was suffocating. They were on the TV, on the radio, in the streets in big yellow-orange suits, spilling out of vans like ants crawling on dropped food. They took the old woman last night, and that seemed to fill their quota. Nastasya had heard big, boisterous boots thud so close to her door she had to close her eyes to not flinch, and then they stomped away, big rubber-leather hooves on the pale horse of Death, so to speak. She corrected herself for thinking that soon after -- she knew Death, and these hazmat bastards didn't work for her. Death was calm and cool; she was the moist earth of a grave, and the soft blowing of the charred wind, and the heaviness of sleep under a large dark quilt. These men dragged out children by their hair and fired off guns like schoolboys on hunting trips. They were the fury of the sun extended into people. They brought about the dying, sure, but it was a far cry from how death itself felt.
She had to leave. Tonight. If they only just filled their quota at the door next to hers, then that was it. There were fewer and fewer people in the building every day, and she had run out of space between them. Briefly, she had considered pretending she had left already, and just holing up in her closet or under her bed, but that idea was dropped pretty quickly. She had too much left to do to risk losing a game of hide-and-seek with the government. Besides, there wasn't much to stay for, anyway.
The walls had pictures of girls on them. Some were very little, in the arms of fuzzy-photoed mothers, with thin ginger hair tied in clumsy ribbons. Some were a bit older, stood awkwardly next to siblings, smiling wide to show the gaps in their teeth. A few were much older, full grown, with men that had no names anymore. Nastasya recognized them, sure, the way a butterfly knows a caterpillar, but she was nothing like them. Nothing like her. Nastasya, whose house and clothes and body entombed her. Nastasya, whose favorite foundation, the one that had matched perfectly, now looked a bit off under the bathroom lights. Nastasya, whose plants withered from lack of water in her windows.
The other people in the building said it was normal to have intact human memories. They faded over time, they said, or one learned to ignore them if they weren't useful. Some, upon finding out what they were now, mourned what they used to be. They sobbed quietly into scabby, grave-dirty hands; they still wore their favorite clothes even though they had changed far past them. A few pairs, some friends, some lovers, some family, had turned together, or found each other again. Nastasya couldn't tell if there was a bond still there, or if they just stuck together out of habit. Personally, she felt no drive to find anyone that the old Nastasya had hung around with. Most of them were gone, and wherever her siblings were, they were too far to risk it. She'd never make it out, even if the rumors that the trains were still running were true. And what if they weren't? What if the trains funneled people straight into the hands of FEMA?
No. She was leaving. All she was taking from that girl was her name, the clothes on her back, and the body underneath them. A long time ago, she had moved in, and had boxes and boxes of things she brought with her from places before. Mother's recipes and decorations, because holidays weren't the same without them; Father's toolbox, because he 'wouldn't be there to fix the sink if it broke'; a letter from her sister, telling her to come down to her university sometime soon so she could show her the dormitories. Nastasya found them sweet, but not necessary. It was like looking in an antique shop -- sure, the rocking chair with the handmade blanket draped over was nice, but she had no clue who it belonged to, and didn't feel any obligation to take it home for herself.
The memory of waking up was the first one that felt like hers, instead of just a strange and realistic dream. She had blinked herself back to life slowly at first, everything aching and stiff, and her vision was cloudy for several minutes as dry eyelids dragged over them. Then, suddenly, as if her body realized it was supposed to live again, she seized up and choked and gasped and clawed at herself, scrambling to restart every system. Nerves tingled, static pooling in her hands and feet and the side of her face that laid face down on the floor for so long. Dry lungs and mouths and sinuses rewet themselves. Joints cracked and creaked and tendons fought against stretching. She had muttered, "No, no," almost like a reflex -- the last of the real Nastasya's words, echoing out into the empty, dark apartment.
What was pieced together out of that girl stood in the bathroom, bag packed outside the door. There was nothing in it but the necessities -- some food, some water, some toiletries. The makeup, she would toss in later. Right now, she needed to figure out a system, to know what she needed in order to cover up everything that wouldn't go away.
So she played, like she was a little girl again, young and confused and excited. The people in the building said she was pretty, but it meant something different now. A lot of them were twisted by Death, so that the misery leeched out of them like radiation to water. Their bodies warped like wet wood and their faces deformed. Many of them had been so incredibly altered that there was no question about what they were, and they were the ones to go first when FEMA came knocking. Whether out of envy or out of some sort of odd pride, many of them stared as she walked past. It wasn't a leering sort of stare anymore. It was awe.
She was lucky, in a sense. She had died quickly, and was left undisturbed. Death had played a bit, as she always did, but there was no clawing out of coffins or bloating under the skin for Nastasya. She was merely alive one minute, and dying the next -- she wasn't even really sure what happened. And then, a day or so later, she went and sat up again, writhing and fighting, but very human looking. Her biggest tell was her eyes: a bit cloudy looking and with some odd colors thrown in. Other than that, it all worked out... as well as it could have.
Letting muscle memory puppet her, she tied her hair back and grabbed a tube of foundation. The purple splotches where the blood had settled, unmoved by her heart, in her skin had gone away as she got up and moving again, leaving very faint marks in most places, except for her face. It could almost be played off as bruising, but there was nothing that could bruise a girl's entire face at once like that without concussing her. It would lead to more questions, and she didn't want to risk talking herself into a corner.
The foundation took away some of her freckles where it blended over her cheekbones. With an eyebrow pencil and a finger to dab some of it away, she put them back. It was like painting, just layering on little details until it all looked right. It probably wasn't necessary to do all this, as her hair was parted funny and the tussled curls would hide it all, but she was almost having fun. Besides, the sun wasn't down yet. No rush.
She let her hair fall back in her face, a bit proud of herself. Just like the pictures on her walls, except for the smile.
A few attempts were made at a natural smile, but any of the things she tried felt equally foreign. At the end of the day, this was Nastasya's face she was working with, and she wasn't sure what her own face was supposed to be, but she didn't feel like it was this one. Between tries, she absentmindedly licked at her tooth gap. That seemed to be one of the little quirks that survived the transfer over.
Eventually, she gave up trying to mimic the photos and tried her own take on it all. Eyes big, cheeks rouged and pulled into little red-apple roundnesses by a timid smile, she gave her best impression of herself.
"Hi! My name is Nastasya. Can I stay with you tonight? I don't have anywhere else to go, and-"
Her face fell, dropping the cute act in an instant. No, no, this wasn't it; innocent and helpless was the wrong way to go. It didn't look right on her, and the puppy dog eyes drew attention to her strange irises. Everyone was doing the innocent and helpless schtick anyway. It didn't work anymore. Being alone and afraid didn't make anyone unique, it just made the homeowners examine them with suspicion.
Sometimes, people were damned if they did and damned if they didn't. Some people were Visitors from a mile away; they wouldn't even get past the doorstep. That's how the so-called Visitor nests formed -- everyone just ended up in one spot, hunkered down to avoid burning. They were miserable, miserable places, where people fought like cats every night, all rotting nails and teeth and madness. Every now and then, though, everyone got together in some common area and shared some shitty food and it almost felt like a house party. Drinks would get passed around and through ghoulish, gaunt, stretched out faces there would come butchered songs falling off key into the air. It was nothing like her memories of a human get-together, but it was sort of soothing. And then, the next day, FEMA would swarm the neighborhood like hornets and half the people there would be gone, snatched away into the wind to be subjected to something far worse than the rest of Death.
She had to survive, if this was surviving. If she was coming back to Death, she was going to do it peacefully, not at the hands of some power-hungry lunatic. She needed something that could get her inside someone's house, something to offer that nobody else could offer anymore. Playing the good girl wouldn't work forever, because everybody was saying they were good. It was tired. It wouldn't hold water.
Humming to herself a bit, she fiddled with her curls and shifted her weight a bit on her hips. She had an idea.
"Heyyy," she drawled, letting her light eyelashes fall over her eyes. "I'm Nastasya."
The name felt awkward in her mouth, but it suited the girl in her reflection. Maybe this was what she used to sound like.
"Do you think you can help me out, baby? Throw me a bone?" She twisted a ginger spiral around her finger, batting her eyelashes. "I'm in real deep, deep trou-"
She broke down giggling. God, this was so stupid. Was this actually going to work? Or was she just going to fry herself in the sun tomorrow morning?
Trying to hold herself together, she kept flirting with the mirror. "Is there room in your house for-" she cracked again, "for one more! I, um -- come on, Nastasya, -- I need a place to stay for the night. Would be an awful shame if I got stuck out here at sunrise, hm?"
She was sure that this would be easier if she was looking at another person. Then, it would be more of a game of reading their expressions and adapting, instead of trying to hold back her laughter while she made goo-goo eyes at herself.
Her odds did not feel good in the slightest, but this plan was the best she had. It was this, or some kind of unimaginable torment the next time someone in a gas mask came knocking. What was better? Giving up and going back into the arms of Death so soon, wasting her second chance? HER first chance, not counting old Nastasya's. Or should she stay there and risk something completely unknowable, that would probably bring her right back where Plan A would, except much more painfully?
She flicked the light off and slung her bag on her back, where it knocked the strap of her tank top over her shoulder. Her hand stopped just short of fixing it. Maybe the disheveled look could work. A sort of, 'I just woke up' look. Casual; disarming. She shook her curls out a little to match it and glanced back in the mirror. Nastasya's drop dead gorgeous ghost looked back.
Yeah. This might work.
It had to.