Some nights, he wishes he could dream. Most nights, he wishes he could sleep at all.
But that's silly, of course. The Dead do not sleep. Maybe periods of unconsciousness, sure, but they hardly hold the significance of rest-healing, rejuvenating-those are all luxuries restricted to a world of beating hearts, chests that rise and fall in slumber, blood that flows through veins that thrive and pulse. He'll never be like them again, and he knows that.
Robbie tries not to let it get to him. He tries to put this off as just another trait of his personality-something that makes him the person he is, if he could even call himself that. He repeats it in his head-My name is Robbie V, I'm 16, I have blue eyes, I'm a Cancer, I am undead.
Nights like this, though. When he's curled up in his covers, hiding in his hoodie, unenthusiastically convincing his grandparents that he's sleeping by keeping quiet until he hears their footsteps trudge up the mansion's winding staircase; nights like this, he wishes just for a moment, that he could fall into slumber and forget it all. Everything hurts, he becomes painfully aware with each passing moment. It starts in the pit of his stomach and spreads until he feels it everywhere at once, and he doesn't want to move, but his head is pounding and his jaw is clenching and if he doesn't, if he doesn't-
Suddenly he doesn't care about waking his grandparents, or the punishment he won't face (slap on the wrist and a smile and a new iPhone, that's always how it is with them) or how dangerous he'd be driving a car at this point. He doesn't care, he just jumps from his bed and trudges toward the door, crouched in a predatory hunch that makes him feel far too stereotypical for his tastes. His legs have a mind of their own, at this point, and he knows what he's doing and where he's going but he pretends, just for a second, that he's naive and this is all new. He wishes.
The engine of his van gives off a shallow death rattle and the gravel road that goes for half a mile doesn't help to quell the dread in his still-breathing conscience. But he's not sure, where in his mind he is-where the real Robbie is trapped amongst that barely significant gray matter, and why he is such a weakling that he's speeding down a road at 3 am to a town far over for some sort of salvation, like the coward he is.
In more bright bursts of streetlights he's suddenly in a forest he doesn't recognize, but there's life energy somewhere deep within the evergreen shelter, and it hits him like a truck and in a flash the boy is sprinting through the growth. He runs, he runs until it burns the back of his nostrils with it's euphoric intensity, until the sensory orgasm is almost too much-and then he pushes further, until he's face to face with the source.
He's a man in his late thirties, if that, with blonde hair so shaggy that the young boy wonders how on earth he could get a decent job. He settles for the solution of a deadbeat working minimum wage to support no one but himself.
Robbie liked to do that. Make up pathetic backstories before he finished the job, convince himself that the lives he was taking to sustain what little he had weren't anything worth saving in the first place. He'd hope the girl he killed last week was a serial murderer, that the young teenager he devoured in desperation was headed to juvvie for beating his girlfriend, that the blood running down his chin belonged to someone bathed in misanthropy, who didn't give a shit about the world outside of his own existence.
Robbie understood that the things he did were cowardly, and he didn't exactly have the excuse that he didn't choose things to be this way. Still, he had grown less and less of a tolerance to the screams that reverberated from the Living as he cracked their heads on the pavement, and he was starting to wonder what was wrong with him.
There wasn't time to have a conscience when hunger reigned over his husk of a body, though, and so he carried on his ministrations and drank the crimson like an aged wine; ripped out the victim's warm, pink matter like it was taffy, and took long, slow bites, breathing in the chemical nectar.
Any inner voice he had always disappeared in those moments. Some things were stronger than hope, and reason, and emotion-desperation brings out the most vicious of human instincts, and Dead or Living-Robbie was human.
When he'd gnawed through every major artery he could find, satiated himself of flesh and muscle and cells, he breathed in a couple dusty, useless breaths and let a relieved shudder pass through his spine. The teen pulled himself to his feet, wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his hoodie, and left the way he came, taking no leftovers.
Robbie wished, often, that he could dream-because this reality was not something he looked forward to, and he wondered how long he could starve himself before he died for good.
The way things always go, he'd go back to his house, pull slowly into the driveway, and take showers until the water ran cold. He'd wash his clothes until the graphics were long faded and he reeked of fabric softener, wishing this wasn't the kind of dirty that could never be cleansed. The blood sunk so much deeper than just his clothes, or his skin-it merged into his cells, replacing what he didn't have in his veins, reminding him that he was different, and he was a selfish murderer.
He'd wake up after spacing out for hours, bathe himself in chemicals, fountain his body in cologne and pile on the heavy shirts in the middle of summer hoping no one would ever have to see the way his rotting skin barely clung to him beneath dark threads, or how he'd go to drink a soda and it'd seep out through the holes in his torso. Over the years, the precautions became easier, but he never got less nervous, especially not when she came into the picture.
Robbie never remembered the tiny light inside his undead head before Wendy came along. He never remembered despairing over feeding, or holding back. He wasn't sure if he was trying to avoid hurting her, or if he was just scared that some day she'd find out and be ashamed knowing he killed to satisfy his own needs. Maybe some day he'd tell her. Maybe she wouldn't leave him.
She'd lay in his lap, and her hair would curtain her like a campfire. Robbie would sit there, thankful that he couldn't blush and knowing that if he could, he would never stop around her. She would tell him all her little secrets and stories and he would listen because she was so interesting, so fantastic, so lovely, and he just wished that he could be her.
"Why are you so cold?" She'd always say.
"Dude, are you ever gonna learn the wonders of vitamin D? You're a ghost, Robbie." She'd tease.
"How come you barely eat anything besides sugar?" She'd inquire.
"Robbie, you always seem sick at the beginning of the week, are you gonna be okay, man?" He could hear the sound of her worried voice in his mind, never leaving.
He just wanted to tell her that he had some unheard of disease and it affected his daily life a lot, because in the end, that wasn't a lie.
But all that ever came out was a shrug, and then he'd turn the other way and blow strands of shaggy black hair out of his eyes.
Those moments, however, when his calm slipped and he couldn't help but curl up into a ball on his bed, she would grab his barely sunken cheeks and kiss him-even though his lips were cold and chapped, she'd always smile into it. He'd thank the heavens on those days that the infection couldn't travel through softness-he knew that so long as he walked the earth, he wouldn't let a soul hurt Wendy.
She'd given him something to be grateful for, in the end, the power to protect her-from any of the fucked up paranormal that went after them-he'd feel her life energy swirl around him and it would stir sensations in him that never told him to cause her pain, only tempted him to keep on fighting. Robbie acknowledged that he was a lot of things-he was 16, and had blue eyes, and was a Cancer, and was most definitely a zombie in the most blunt of definitions. He didn't mind being Dead, though, because this girl was very worth living for.
Somewhere in that catacombed heart, deep inside his grey and decaying chest, he felt something gently awaken.