Dead Romantic by C. J. Skuse

upstairs every time I come home. Running straight outfirst thing. I’m sure they’re beginning to smell a rat. Or a dog.’
    Louis laughed.
    â€˜I’m going to keep him though. They can’t stop me.’
    â€˜Good for you,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t dare with my dad. Talking of which, we’d better . . . um, I’ll just go and . . .’ Louis chucked his keys down on the coffee table and disappeared into an office next door, mumbling about his phone.
    Zoe popped up from behind a sofa. I clasped my hand over my mouth to stop from screaming.
    â€˜What are you doing?’ she whispered. ‘Why the hell’s he here?’
    â€˜He came back for his phone. I didn’t know what to do so I pretended I was all upset over Luke the Lifeguard. He’s let me in so I can see the body. A last time before the funeral, kind of thing.’
    Zoe sniffed. ‘Well, boys’ll do anything if you cry hard enough, I suppose.’
    â€˜Or maybe he’s just being nice?’ I snipped.
    â€˜Just hurry up and get rid of him,’ she said, getting up. Behind her back, she was holding a large, scary-looking meat cleaver. She ducked down again.
    Louis came back into the reception area, waving his phone to show he’d found it. ‘We can go in,’ he said. ‘I’ve switched it all on. You can leave the potatoes here if you like.’
    He led me along a small corridor to an unmarked door, opened it for me and I went in. The room was small and red and dimly lit by large candles. It smelled sweet, likesummer pudding, and in the corner was a little CD player softly playing the theme tune to Baywatch . A large object painted orange and shaped to look like a dinghy stood on a stand right in the middle. I guessed it was a type of coffin. Inside it lay a man with his hands clasped over his chest. He was dressed in a wet suit and over his legs was draped a blue Chelsea flag.
    â€˜I’m going to back to the restaurant for a bit, okay? Otherwise Dad’ll wonder where I’ve got to.’ Louis whispered. I nodded. ‘I reckon I could give you about ten minutes. Then I’ll make some excuse and come back and let you out.’ I thought he was going to clasp my shoulder in sympathy, but at the last minute he itched his nose instead.
    â€˜Thank you.’
    He closed the door behind him. I heard his footsteps down the hallway and the front door closing. Then nothing.
    Zoe appeared from behind a red curtain. ‘About time.’
    I stepped closer to the body in the coffin. It was weird how it still looked like Luke the Lifeguard, but not quite. Like Mrs Cleak had, except not old and wrinkly. His skin wasn’t pink any more, it was sort of bleached. There was no expression on his face at all. Like a doll. Tucked into the sides of the dinghy coffin were some car magazines, a bottle of super-strength lager and a photograph of a group of sunburnt men with their tops off and pints in their hands.
    â€˜People always say they look peaceful, like they’re asleep, but he doesn’t look peaceful. He just looks dead.’
    â€˜Just as well,’ said Zoe, pulling the meat cleaver from her waistband. ‘He won’t feel this then.’
    And before I even had time to look away, she swung the cleaver high into the air and down again, hard onto his thick, pulse-less neck.
    Kerrrrrrrr-chunnnnnnnk!

 
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Rest in Pieces
    A head on its own was pretty disgusting – so disgusting, it was almost funny. It was a bit like something you would see in the window of a butcher’s shop, all bright red and cleanly cut and stinking of meat, until you remembered that it was not just some pig or some cow’s head – it was a human head. A human head I’d been flirting with all last summer. A head that had laughed and cried and fallen in love and blown out candles on birthday cakes.
    â€˜I don’t know how you can be so . . . fine