Papá Muerte

By Hannah Carter

Ah, Día de los Muertos. A day we set aside to honor our family members. To spend time with the living. To remember our dead.

Except they’re kind of hard to forget when their skeletons are staring at you from across the table.

“Well, Finny! Have you decided to follow in your pop’s footsteps yet?” Grandpa’s skull rattled as he reached for another tamale.

“No, I don’t think I will,” I said dryly.

“And why not? Your father has a very respectable position!” Dad’s girlfriend Catrina added. Her sugar-candy teeth clacked against each other. “And the job stability is fantastic.”

The man himself swung open the kitchen door. Up-tempo mariachi music poured in from the other room—Dad had recently hired  some poor undead musicians to play each time he wanted to make a grand entrance.

“That’s right!” Dad effused. “People never stop dying. You could be Grim Reaper, Jr. for all eternity!”

“Call me crazy, but I’d prefer that the stench of rotting flesh not follow me everywhere I go.”

All the guests groaned in a series of clicking jawbones along with cries of, “Finn.”

“What do you expect when you adopt a living being?” I shrugged my bony—yet still flesh-covered—shoulders.

The Grim Reaper—Daddy Dearest—settled beside me and wrapped his skeletal arm around me. “Why don’t you go out with me tonight? A little father-son holiday bonding time?”

“I don’t—”

“Excellent!” Catrina clapped her hands together. “Oh, you boys go have fun!”

“Sure. Killing people is loads of fun,” I muttered.

“That’s the Día de los Muertos spirit!” Dad cheered.

“I was being sarcastic!”

Dad and I floated down the road, invisible to the mortal revelers. Growing up, being weightless and utterly dependent on Dad terrified me. Now, I huddled close inside his cloak.

I sniffed. “Wow. No rotting flesh smell today. Did you wash it?”

“Yep—lavender-scented detergent!” Dad patted my shoulder. “Now, Finn. I know you think your old man’s job is uncool and all—”

“No, Dad. A businessman has an uncool job. Yours is murderous.”

“—but I think that’s because you don’t know exactly what I do.”

I snorted, but my sarcastic reply stuck in my gullet when I noticed where we stopped. “Dad.”

“What?”

Panic clawed into my stomach. “Why are we at Sofi’s house?”

Dad waved the words away. “She lives in the suburbs. Every house here looks the same. I’m sure you’re mistaken.”

“Dad!” I shrieked. “I know my best friend’s house—how can you not remember? You’ve dropped me off here for everything from Pee-Wee soccer games to movie nights.”

Dad tilted his head. “Oh.”

He drifted closer to the family room window. A candle from Sofi’s ofrenda had been knocked over somehow, and the flames were spreading to the couch. She slumbered right by it, sleeping pills scattered on the table beside her.

Dad clucked his tongue. “Oh, well. Hey, maybe you can invite her over for the next holiday, since she’ll be dead.”

“No! We have to help her.”

“What are you going to do? She’s destined to die tonight.”

I glared at him. “I’m going to help her—like you should.”

“I can’t help them all.” Dad cupped my cheek with his bony hand. “I’ve only tried once before. When I was supposed to take a little two-year-old boy in a car crash. I used up my only Resurrection amulet to stop his death.”

Dad tapped the medallion hanging around my neck.

Hot tears burned in my eyes. “You can’t have Sofi. Maybe you can’t help her, but I’m not the Grim Reaper.”

I ripped away from his embrace and staggered to the window, now visible to mortals.

“Sofi!” I pounded on the window. “Wake up!”

Flames licked at the couch. Sofi’s family must have been out celebrating without her; she’d complained about being sick and needing sleep earlier.

I didn’t think she’d like to sleep with the fishes, though.

I threw my weight against the window. It crashed, and I toppled onto the floor. Shards of glass bit into my exposed palms.

Sofi yawned, her eyes hazy. “F… Finn?” She wiped at the sides of her mouth, but her eyelids drooped half-mast again.

I coughed as the smoke burned my throat and eyes. The blaze had already consumed the ofrenda pictures of Sofi’s ancestors and would claim her, too, if I couldn’t get her out.

“Come on. I got you.” Adrenaline helped me hoist Sofi up. Her head lolled onto my shoulder as she wheezed. She’d definitely taken too much medicine; she was dead weight.

A burning table collapsed right in front of the window.

I staggered back, dizzy from the heat. Flames danced around me on all sides and crept closer. The fire blazed to the ceiling and blocked off the living room door behind me.

“Dad!” I yelled, my voice hoarse. If Dad answered, I couldn’t hear it over the roar of the flames. “Help!”

Funny, relying on Death to circumvent himself.

Dad phased through the window, his cloak billowing behind him. He latched onto me and Sofi. Silent, cool, relief greeted me as we entered the spiritual plane, away from the flames.

“You know, as much as I love my job,” Dad began. It probably would have hurt his reputation for anyone else to hear the depth of emotion oozing from his words. “I love being your dad more.”

He pulled us back into the real world and deposited us outside. I held Sofi in my trembling arms and hacked ash and smoke from my throat.

Dad patted my head. “Good job, Finn.”

I spit a few times to rid my mouth of the acrid taste. “Will you get in trouble since I defied death?”

Dad chuckled. “Nah. You saved her, not me. Besides—it’s nice when love is stronger than death.” He kissed my temple, the faint strands of a mariachi band in the air. “Happy Día de los Muertos, kiddo.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hannah Carter is just a girl who loves to dream and write, and still wakes up every day hoping this will be the day she figures out she’s secretly a mermaid. She currently has two published novellas, Amir and the Moon and Seashells. She has had over a dozen devotionals published in various magazines. She also won a competition with her short story “Lara.”

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