THE TWO SIDES OF A FIRST MEETING

ALICE WENTWORTH in her crypt :


I am hungry. So hungry. I drop the squealing, half-eaten rat.

No good. I am hungry ... for the flesh of man.

And hungrier for something else. Love.

I feel tears bleed from my dead eyes. I will find flesh to tear and rend. I always do.

But love? Never. Never will there be love for the thing that I have become.

My nose prickles. My stomach coils and growls. Flesh.

Tender, moist flesh. It has come to me. I smile. I didn't even have to place a call to pizza delivery.

I frown. I smell ... tears? They are common in my graveyard. But not at night. Who comes in the night to my cemetary to cry?

I sniff. A male human. A boy. I stiffen. Once I had been a girl. What had been my name?

Alice. Though now my name is Death, once it had been Alice.

Once. So very long ago. I smile cruelly. I will punish this fool for reminding me of my heart's lonely prison.

I shall woo him with poetry before I rend his flesh. I flow through the fungus-smeared wall of my crypt.

How will his flesh taste?

***
VICTOR STANDISH, the thirteen year old boy outside Alice's crypt :


I sat with my back pressed against the tomb of Marie Laveau. Midnight was heavy in the humid air. Fingers of black fog weaved around me as if to leech the life from me.

I was not going to cry. I wasn't. I looked up at the dim stars. They blurred and bled down my cheeks. O.K. I lied. I was crying.

After years of scuffling alone on the streets, I had finally found a friend. A creepy friend to be sure. But a friend.

Now, I had screwed up and lost him. Sure, Captain Sam was undead. But who said friends had to be perfect?

I stiffened. Something all misty was oozing out of the tomb in front of me. It slowly took shape. I frowned. What the?

It was a girl. She looked to be my age : thirteen. But she was dressed up in a black Victorian style dress. She was kinda pretty ... if you were into undead girls.

She spoke as if her vocal chords were all rusty :

"Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Nightmare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold."

I jutted my right forefinger at her. "Coleridge! The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner."

She took a step towards me, and leaves crackled under her foot. Uh, oh. She wasn't a ghost. She smiled. Red-smeared sharp teeth. Oh, great. A ghoul.

I smiled. I knew some really bad people -- the Snowman and his bodyguards, Ice and Easy. They had much more meat to them than a scrawny street kid like me.

She brushed back a stray lock of fine-spun gold from her electric blue eyes. "You're aren't afraid?"

"Oh, I'm scared shitless."

She giggled and studied me. "But you see a way out for you, do you?"

I stumbled to my feet, spreading out my hands. "Hey, I'm Victor Standish. I always have a plan."

Those eyes seemed to be suddenly seeing me as more than a meal. "I am ... Alice, Victor. And just what is this plan of yours?"

I winked at her. "How would you like to add drug dealers to your diet, Alice?"

She glided to me faster than I thought she could, looping her arm through my right one. "I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

I patted her cold, cold hand. "I think so, too."

I looked up at the face of shadows in the full moon. I smiled wide. I wasn't alone anymore.

Looking at those blood-smeared teeth, I knew I would never be alone. I'd always have the shivers.
***
Norah Jones sings the song that fits Alice's feelings towards Victor :