Having emptied her stomach of her last meal, the girl stood up shakily and allowed Jack the Talk Skeleton to pull her through the graveyard. Just beyond the gate was a blurry, dark little town.
"…and we'll get you all situated with living quarters and something to eat and-"
"A change of clothes," said the girl raspily, "and a shower. God I need a shower."
"Of course, whatever you need, we have it all here in Halloweentown-"
"Oh is that where I am?"
She tripped over a half buried tombstone lying cracked on the ground and nearly went down into the corner of an uprooted coffin had Jack the Talking Skeleton not pulled her up by her arm.
"Yes, I'll take you to see the mayor once you're feeling a little more comfortable here and…what's wrong?" The girl stopped walking.
"Marilyn Glass." She said suddenly.
"I'm…sorry?"
"My name is Marilyn Glass, but my daddy called me Punkin."
"Oh, I knew you'd remember. Punkin is it? Welcome to Halloweentown!" he spread his arms widely, Punkin still attached to one of them, as they stepped through the cemetery gate and onto a busy street.
If she wasn't convince that she was dead by the sight of a walk, talking skeleton in a striped suit, she was certain sure when she saw the residents of the town. They lumbered around in grey, tattered clothing, with grey faces and misshapen bodies.
What must have been an actual zombie leered at her from across the street, dripping black goo, possibly his own liquefied organs, out of his grinning mouth. She vaguely remembered reading something about decomposition in a book in high school. The zombie had no hair and only a single, blood-shot eye.
Jack the Talking Skeleton waved to the zombie before dragging her through the uneven streets. The other residents watched them with only a slight surprise. A tiny, grotesquely obese little boy strutted by them. Punkin thought for a second that she saw stitches on his eyelids where his eyes had been sewn shut. The boy turned and watched them disappear around a corner.
"This is Dr. Finkelstein's lab," said Jack, "he's a doctor, he can help. What do you need?"
"Oh that…well, I guess I'm already dead, so I don't need a doctor anymore. I need a mortician." She laughed in a raspy way that hurt her throat. She coughed out some more soil and spit into a garbage can.
"We might want to do something about that," he said, pulling her up by her arm again. The bottom of her dress shirt, her burial shroud actually, lifted, and she saw that crawling from the wood of her coffin had gashed her side nicely. Dirt and mud clung to the open wound.
"Nice," she gasped, and finally wrenched her fingers from his chilling grasp. Poking at the hole in her side, she noticed that though she had cut through the skin, meat, and some fat, it didn't bleed at all. Nor did it hurt. She felt that she could actually tear away that portion of her ribcage and be none the worse for wear.
"This is sick," she stated, pulling her shirt down.
"We can fix it," said the skeleton again.
"Yes we can," Punkin whispered, and let herself be lead up the stairs into the laboratory.
---
"And when I was 13, I threw a lit match at my cat and singled its fur. And when I was 8, I decided to never wear a cross again because I didn't want to scare off any vampire that would sneak into my house at night. Isn't that stupid? I was a stupid kid." She leaned back on the table and twitched as she felt another stab of the needle through her skin. It didn't hurt as much as discomfort of the pulling sensation. Like someone pulling yarn through her fingers swiftly. Punkin hoped she wouldn't catch fire.
"Almost done dearie," said the gimp with the removable skull cap. He had been patiently listening, or ignoring her ranting for the last 20 minutes. The thrill of slowly remembering her life was overwhelming. Jack, meanwhile, was poking around curiously at the weird things stuffed in jars of green liquid all over the counters.
With one final pull, the good doctor snapped the thread with his teeth and wheeled his chair back proudly.
"There you go. Good as new. Better, in fact, if I do say so myself…" she fingered the stitching. It was clean, even, and well done. It left only the slightest ripple under her shirt.
"Splendid!" exclaimed the skeleton. He was loud, cheerful, and lively. Which was a strange personality for a living skeleton.
"Would you care for a mirror, dearie?"
"Kay." She hopped off the table as Finkelstein turned his mechanical chair around and handed her a cracked mirror.
She gasped at the sigh of her face. Her nose was gone, her eyes were yellowed and opaque, and her skin was a dirty, mottled grey-green. Opening her mouth in shock, she noticed that her entire mouth was a slimy black color. Her hair had bleached out into a dusty grey, and lay in strands around her ruined face.
Touching her skin, she dropped the mirror and covered her eyes, biting down on a scream.