Song for this chapter: Maybe I'm Just Tired by As Tall As Lions


The town of Coeur d'Coeurs had a secret with many layers. Some of those layers, like a flower, were blossoming out and being discovered by friends and family, and others like roots remained hidden below the surface. The brightest piece of the secret, that it seemed that one day perhaps everyone in the town would know with the way it grew, was the powers that were possessed by one Ned the pie maker. In layers below those remained the secret of the powers that had belonged to his father. Deeper yet, and the least likely it seemed to ever be discovered was the secret of the girl born on the same day, at the same time, but on opposite sides of the ward with an entirely different mother that was strikingly similar to Ned's father. Her name was Collettte but she went by Letty, and much like she had been on the opposite side of the ward her powers fell on the opposite side of the coin.

Ned the pie maker had been blessed with a gift that allowed him to touch what was dead and bring it back to life. He did not learn that he was in possession of this gift until he was nine years twenty-seven weeks six days and three minutes old, or otherwise known as the first moment that he touched something that was dead.

Letty had been given something she was hesitant to call a gift in which she could touch something that was living and make it dead. Letty knew from the moment that she could truly formulate thought that there was something not quite right about her, and in her young life she did in fact make several things stop living without knowing what it was she had done, but it was not until she was nine year twenty-seven weeks six days and three minutes old that she understood that it was the touch of her hand that had made her friend Matti something other than living.

That moment had been traumatic for young Letty, though many adults had assured her that she should not feel such guilt over the sudden and unexpected death of her dear friend. It was in fact the last moment that Letty willingly touched another human being or animal. She hated to see them wither, but it would not be the last time she touched a plant. Sometimes it simply was not possible to avoid stepping in grass or to keep a leaf from blowing off a tree and onto her flesh. Though she made painstaking efforts to keep as much of her flesh covered as possible. She would have taken to wearing some sort of mask over her face to keep others safe, but that did tend to make people nervous.

People themselves made Letty altogether nervous. She was not accustomed to being around them, and her dear mother thought that Letty was just shy. That was not the case however. Letty still had her mother, despite having been touched by her, because of one of the stipulations that came with her gift. If Letty waited longer than sixty seconds to touch something she had made no longer alive it would stay dead, but if she were to touch that same person or thing again they would come back to life and they would stay alive forever. Letty had only recently begun to suspect that it also suspended the aging process. As her mother did not appear to have aged a single day and yet Letty had aged by eighteen years at her side.

You see Letty's mother had in fact died the same day that Letty had been born. Somehow the dear woman had been protected from her daughters gift during gestation and birth, but when she was allowed to hold her child after giving birth she immediately capitulated to the circumstances and fell dead right there in her hospital bed. This caused newly born Letty to slip from her mother's arms and fall to her lap, and had it not been for the way she fell upon her mother's hand the woman would have stayed not alive, but Letty inadvertently touched her for a second time and brought her mother back to life forever. Anyone watching thought the weary mother had temporarily given in to her exhaustion and rushed to collect the squalling child, and luck for them they were gloves.

Letty's father had not had such a lucky fate. Later that evening he had gone to pick Letty up from the little plastic basinet that had been wheeled into her mother's hospital room and he had quickly fallen to the floor. The doctors told his distraught wife that her husband had died of natural causes, and she put on a brave face as she took her tiny child home with her.

Letty and her mother had been in for an adventure from the very first as it appeared that she was allergic to every food that her mother could think of. Letty had come to know in time that she could not tolerate the food her mother was giving her because it began to die the moment she placed it in her mouth, but for years it just seemed that she was the fussiest eater with the worlds most sensitive stomach. Letty was taken to many doctors to try and discover what was wrong with her and her sensitive digestive tract, and she was spared the trauma of numerous doctors falling dead around her by their propensity to wear gloves whenever they interacted with their patients.

It had taken years of experimentation and frankly just giving in on the part of Letty's mother to come up with a diet that at least kept her partially satisfied. Letty could stomach water, though frankly she thought it tasted awful and made her stomach a bit sour after she had consumed it, but it at least did not make her violently ill. She much preferred sodas, that comprised almost entirely of sugar and synthetic chemicals could not give her much trouble while working it's way through her system. Food was something more difficult for her. She could handle straight sugar, and some candies that really didn't contain much else other than sugar. She could eat cheese whiz as it seemed to be nothing but chemical, but not that crackers that other people seemed to enjoy with it. There were a few things on the menu at the local fast food restaurant that she could at least keep down even if they did taste a bit musty and make her stomach cramp. There was one other thing that Letty could eat, though she did not share it with her mother, and that was bugs.

Needless to say Letty was a very small girl who was never completely full and who had what was likely an unhealthy relationship with toothpaste. Both Letty and her mother were very concerned that her diet of primarily sugar would rot her teeth right out of her head, especially since she could not drink milk to help make her strong, so Letty brushed her teeth after anything passed through her lips. She did like the minty taste of the paste enough to tolerate the stale and musky taste of water on her tongue. She wondered for years if water tasted like that to everyone, but after the incident with Matti she was sure it didn't.

Letty did not make friends after Matti and kept to herself at any time that she was not with her mother. It was troublesome to her mother. First she thought her child had been emotionally damaged by the death of her father. Then she thought her daughter had a serious eating disorder and perhaps other psychological issues that made her unable to live life. Her mother stayed faithfully by her side right up until the moment that Letty graduated high school, then she could take her daughter's strangeness no longer and she left her.

The day after she walked in cap and gown Letty woke to an empty house with a note on the table informing her that the house was paid for and that Letty could call it her own, but that she would need a job to pay for everything else she needed. It told her that her mother just did not feel like a mother and that she had to go away and she did not believe she would ever be able to come back. She wished Letty well and told her that there was a brand new box of cola in the fridge for her. That note had marked the beginning of many things for her, but it also marked the end of one thing for Letty. Touch. Her mother had kissed her forehead after she received her diploma at the age of eighteen years seven months three weeks three days and twelve minutes and that was the last time that she could remember being touched or touching another.

In order to cope with the sudden and striking change in her life Letty developed a tightly wound system to make her life work. She wore enough clothing to keep her covered, from long socks to a wide array of gloves to thick scarves the only part of her left uncovered was her face. She did not leave the house unless it was absolutely necessary. She used an online service to order her limited array of groceries, and to find a job as a funeral home assistant.

It had seemed to be a brilliant idea at the time, and she managed to put in many years of service at the local funeral parlor for a man named Lawrence Shatz without incident. She remained below the floors, working in the funeral homes preparation room with the recently deceased. These were the only bodies that Letty could touch without consequence, and while it was a relief to touch something without killing it, she took no comfort from their companionship as she prepared them to be put even further below the ground than they were when they were with her.

She had cultivated a wide distance between herself and the living world. She did not speak with others other than a quick nod when her employer brought her a new body to prepare for a funeral. She did not operate under hours that would put her in close proximity with living people as she left for work early in the morning and stayed late into the night leaving her out on the street when there were very few people about. Her payment from her employer, her banking, and her payment of any fees for utilities or groceries were all handled digitally. Any issues were typically solved by a phone call. The system worked for her right up until the day her employer, who frankly she knew nothing about, had inexplicably fallen dead before the funeral of a young woman that Letty had known only long enough to curl her hair and apply makeup to her eternally resting face.

Because of his death Letty was thrown into the very uncomfortable position of having to speak with his grieving family and gather the information of how they wished for him to be prepared for death herself, a task that had always been done for her. It had been agreed upon that seeing the mortician would be upsetting to the family by both Letty and Lawrence, so she was shocked to be confronted by a situation where she had to speak to his mother about how to prepare him for his own funeral. She had been even less prepared to deal with the sudden upswing in the woman's grief that had caused her to reach out and hug Letty. It had been terribly lucky that she'd had so many layers on, and that she had managed to move her face away from the woman so quickly or the dear woman would have gone the way of her son rather quickly. So that unexpected touch that took place when she was twenty-eight years two months one week and sixteen days old was her very last, and it was the reason that she walked away from being a mortician and opened her own business that was fulfilled primarily by mail order services though she did have a shop front downtown with an apartment just above it that she began to reside in.

She sold her mother's house and used it to pay for the training she needed to become a taxidermist, to purchase her shop space and apartment, and to set up her new life where she truly became a shut in. Occasionally she would receive a hunter or an owner of a recently deceased pet that came in to the shop to speak with her before she set to work preserving the lost animal but it was rare, and attempts to hug her became nonexistent. There was something offsetting about a person that pieced dead things back together and she was ever so grateful for that because it allowed her to cultivate a much larger gap between her and other people who might unwisely attempt to touch her and suddenly end their own lives inadvertently. So she took mail orders and she stayed inside.

Safely tucked away from the potential for danger she allowed herself to cultivate other things in her life. She developed a love of gardening, and though she had to be tediously careful, and don her gloves once more, she managed to keep all of her plants alive. She loved to be surrounded by living things, even if it meant that she could not go near her own windows without first putting on layers of protective elements to do so. She also began to allow herself one small comfort in which she left her home without worry of hurting another. When it was late and the world had gone to sleep she would go outside, and without gloves or a scarf she would soak in the moon light and allow herself to stretch out and occupy the full amount of space that her small body should fill rather than scrunching in on herself and attempting to make herself small.

Those small freedoms did not mean that she suddenly wore clothing that exposed her arms and the threat that came with them. They didn't mean that she was going to run out in the middle of the day because her hungry stomach was begging her for something more substantial than the sugary things she kept in her house. No those weakened runs for processed fast food meat patties still happened late at night with gloves firmly in place, but she did not feel choked by her own existence because of those little pleasures she allowed herself.

Her life was carefully planned, and though it was not an unhappy life, she admittedly did not smile much. There were not unexpected occurrences in her life because she did not leave room for them. Everything was tightly wound so as not to leave room for surprises. She had the things in her world that she knew everything about, and the things outside of her life that she never thought on or questioned.

One of those things outside of her life that she did not know of was wound just as tightly. It was Ned the pie maker who in fact lived just a few hundred feet from her across the street and above a shop called the Pie Hole that she had never had reason to visit, much like he had never had reason to visit the shop front with plain black font labeling it as Professional Taxidermy Services.

Ned's life had crossed very closely to hers when he used his own gift to bring back the girl with the curled hair and the subtle makeup in trade of the life of her former employer but they had managed not to meet. Through his adventures with the girl that should be dead but was known as Chuck he continued not to meet Letty. The two did not cross paths when Chuck and Ned went through adventures with their detective friend named Emerson. They did not meet while Olive the waitress pursued him, and they did not meet when Ned brought back Chuck's father.

They likely should have met the night that Chuck decided to follow her father wherever the spoon fell and left Ned behind with his pie shop and the waitress that he did not want, but they did not. Instead they stood in the snow, on the same street, late in the night, but they did not meet one another. Ned had been beside his shop, letting the show fall down on him as he lamented the loss of the woman he loved to the man he had once killed, and Letty had stood in the snow with her hands exposed and feeling the precious flakes fall into them while she enjoyed the quiet of the night and the feeling of freedom that came with the idea that she was entirely alone out in the open. She'd lost that feeling when she had caught a glimpse of the pie maker out of the corner of her eye, but she did not meet him, no she fled back to her home to protect him from the threat she considered herself to be.


Letty and Ned managed to go thirty years four months two weeks and one day without meeting, but then they did. They met under sad circumstances, as was usually the case when someone brought Letty a pet, but something felt different to her when this tall yet somehow small man brought her a small covered body that she suspected would turn out to be a dog.

"Hello sir," she said quietly, not at all surprised by how soft her voice had become in disuse. She wasn't sure the last time she had spoken out loud, last week perhaps? "How might I help you today?"

"I feel silly even coming here," he said in a sad voice as he pushed the little cart with the covered body over to her. "I've never been one to consider taxidermy for a pet. In fact I have a friend who does taxidermy and I ridiculed him for the way he preserved his own golden retriever in a garish and inappropriate pose with a guitar no less. But Digby… well Digby has been with me for so many years. He's been my only companion, and I can't seem to just let him go."

Letty saw that there was such sadness in his gaze when he spoke of Digby, and in fact something that she thought looked a lot like guilt. She wondered how Digby had passed but she was hesitant to ask any questions when he seemed so distressed. She drew a quiet breath when she knew she would have to ask him the pertinent questions.

"So you have decided that you'd like to preserve him," she said with a nod and a soft smile. "Did his passing leave him in disrepair?"

"No he's in fairly good condition all things considered," Ned said, his eyes lingering on the off white sheet that covered Digby. "It would appear to be natural causes."

Again she noticed how sad he sounded about that, but she was distracted from further thought on that by him pulling the sheet away to reveal the golden retriever that looked as if it were sleeping on the cart and large dog bed it had been placed on. He obviously loved his dog very much and Letty found herself very sad by the prospect of this dog being dead.

"So we will want to put him in a respectable pose of course," she said quietly as she came around her desk, careful to keep a large distance between herself and the customer while she drew closer to the dog. "There are a few options, but I wonder what you would like best."

She waited, to see if he would tell her what he wanted. If he knew what he wanted. She waited a full thirty seconds but he said nothing, only stared at his dead dog with a face that broke her heart with surprising efficiency.

"I could pose him so he appears to sit and look up at you," she suggested. "Or lying as dogs are wont to do at the feet of their person? Or perhaps I ought to pose him as if he were asleep so it would seem the most natural of all. Do you know what you'd like?"

He met her gaze then and his eyes seemed tortured. For the first time since her mother had left her she actually found that she wanted to touch someone. Not for her own comfort but for his. She wanted to draw his hands out of where they were stowed in his pockets and lean into his hunched frame as she offered a comforting hug, but that was not something she could ever do. Instead she quickly slid gloves onto her exposed hands incase he reached out for any reason, and then she reached down to brush her fingers lightly over the ear of the dog that really could be sleeping for how he looked.

"You don't seem at all bothered with the prospect of touching something that has died," he said so quietly she almost couldn't hear him. "I should have expected it really, but even Randy hesitates when he first encounters a new animal."

"Death is a natural part of the human condition," she said, voicing the one sentence that could comfort her when she thought of her friend Matti or wondered if she had been the cause of her own father's death. "I'm sorry if my lack of hesitance made me seem uncaring. I am very sorry for your loss sir. I just want to do right by you and Digby."

Their eyes met again. Hers were contrite, and his were pained. She didn't like the way his brows drew together and it looked like he might cry, though his eyes remained dry. She found herself staring at those blue eyes, and that was probably why she didn't notice that he seemed fascinated by her dark brown eyes looking at him in such an open way. She wasn't aware that her amazement at actually feeling a human connection for the first time in years was written all over her face. She couldn't know that her open face that lacked any artifice or judgment was exactly what Ned had needed in that moment.

"Would you pose him so it looks like he has curled up and gone to sleep?" he asked finally, his voice sure despite his emotional face.

"Yes of course," she said with a polite nod as she stood back and put distance between herself and the dog just in time to avoid him reaching out to scratch behind the ear she had been touching just seconds before. "Would you like me to call you when I have finished… or would you like me to ship the finished project to you?"

"I'm just across the street at the Pie Hole," he said as he stood and backed away from the dog as well. "It should be easiest to just place a phone call and I will come over to pay you for your services and retrieve Digby."

"Oh, okay," she said somewhat dumbly wondering if this was the man she had caught a glimpse of out of the corner of her eye nearly a year ago when she'd been out enjoying her time in the snow. "It shouldn't take me more than a week."

"I suppose I'll hear from you soon then," he said with a succinct nod before he turned on the heel of his Chuck Taylors and swept out of the room, closing the door behind him.

Letty was left wondering how a man so tall as he could appear to occupy such a small amount of space and wondered if that was the impression she would give other people as well… if she were to allow herself to be around people of course. In reality that short conversation was the most social interaction she'd had in ages and it both invigorated and exhausted her. She took a seat with a tired plop and stared at the dog in front of her, wondering if it was going to bring trouble to her carefully constructed world.