Juan of the Dead Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  About the Author

  More...

  juan of the dead

  The Reanimated World Tour

  Jacalyn Boggs

  JUAN OF THE DEAD

  Copyright © 2020 by Corrugated Sky Publishing, LLC

  Copyright © 2020 by Jacalyn Boggs

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For information contact :

  http://www.corrugatedsky.com

  Cover design by James Rock

  Interior design by Michelle Schad

  First Edition: May 2020

  dedication

  To LJ Idol for inspiring me and

  the FXBG Wrimos who believed in me.

  c

  chapter one

  I never worried about time much, until time caught up with me. How was I to know time would show up looking like a giant Aztec calendar? Cliché, much? Or maybe that was Death taking on the appearance of the calendar? Like I know. You want to talk about putting a cramp in your social schedule, try taking death for a test drive.

  It all started with an innocent cruise to Mexico. How can a girl pass that up?

  Lounging on the deck of a ship working on your tan while pool boys service my every whim? Well, maybe not my every whim, but you know what I mean. I'm no dummy. When something like that was presented to you in your Christmas card from mom and dad it is run, do not walk to get your luggage packed! That's what I did, at least.

  Along with lounging by the aforementioned pool, the cruise line prepared several day trips into Mexican towns and ancient Aztec-type cities. I think history and geography were my worst subjects in school, so I didn’t see the attraction of visiting tiny towns. But, hey – when in Mexico, right?

  Arriving in Chichen Itza, home of the death-dealing calendar, I noticed crumbly ruins and a huge pyramid alongside all the fun tourist-trap spots you could ever want. Take a tour or shop first? Oh, the choices, the choices.

  Please, like that's hard? Crumbly ruins or shopping... DUH! I took my hot little buns in the direction of someplace to give my Amex a workout.

  The main gift shop became the last store I ever entered - alive that is.

  Too busy debating between spoons and shot glasses, all decorated with artistic representations of the Temple outside, I failed to notice the larger than life replica of an Aztec calendar suspended above my head. I picked up a shot glass just as the earthquake hit.

  Maybe if I lived in California, I would know what to do in such an event, but guess what? In Virginia we didn't do earthquakes. Okay, like, there was that one earthquake, but it was a fluke and I wasn't even there for it, so it does not count. We mostly do humid, and there's really just no solution for that. Like any red-blooded American and fashion-conscious girl, I ducked in hopes of protecting my hair, my Coach purse, and my Jimmy Choos.

  So, of course, that's how my life ended: protecting my fashion investments in the middle-of-nowhere, Mexico. Not high on the cool factor, but really, was death ever high on the cool factor? You can't blame a girl for trying. I didn't see the falling calendar but was told the weight of it broke my neck. In just the snap of a finger, dead. That would teach me that protecting my hair with my hands was not the best plan in an earthquake. In my defense, if you knew how long it took me to get my kinky hair to do anything in this humidity, you wouldn't blame me! Why waste all that work?

  And then I was dead. Killed by the Aztec calendar. That was your Age of Aquarius right there. I always hated that sign on the zodiac.

  I would like to tell you that I saw a great white light, or felt some sense of great peace, or whatever other mumbo-jumbo you want to give to the blissful darkness of death. Sorry. Mostly there was a whole lot of nothing. Nothing until I woke up, that is.

  Pearly gates? Saint Peter waiting to assign me to Heaven or to Hell? Angels strumming on harps? Nope, not a one. Not even a glimpse of the other place, either. Unless you counted Mexico.

  What did I see? A tall form, white coat covering a perfectly built body, and wire-rimmed glasses over chocolate eyes. He had shaggy black hair just the right length to run your fingers through and lips plump enough to kiss.

  Mmm, tasty.

  Who was this man leaning over me, and why was his hand on my chest?

  Wait, my chest?

  Now, I’m a modern girl, and no prude, but last I checked there was a serious lack of consent happening. What I had was a serious case of some guy copping a feel of my C-cups. What's with jumping straight to second base? While I was obviously unconscious, even? I don't think so!

  I tried lifting my arm to bat his hand away, but unfortunately for me, his hand worked just fine while mine did not. In fact, nothing wanted to move. Except, of course, my eager little nipple which snapped to attention at the stranger's touch - traitor. Gotta love it when the body calls a mutiny.

  When I caught a glimpse of those lips, all I could think about was kissing them. Forget that this guy could very well be some sort of perverted homicidal maniac; no, my mind jumped to instant romance. I tried to tell him to stop, ask him who he was, say anything really, but all that escaped my mouth was a gurgle.

  Gurgle? Oh, that is absolute hotness right there. Every man’s gonna love that one. Cue immediate hand removal.

  Except, he didn't remove his hand. In fact, I swore his thumb grazed almost absently over that pesky nipple, and I started to feel a warmth in my body. Up until then, my body was completely devoid of feeling, cold even.

  I'm super glad for Mr. Grabby Hands. Insert sarcasm here.

  Now, I could have been grateful that Doctor Feelgood came along to warm me right up, but nuh-uh. I don't do lack of consent. Was it too much to ask for a little wining and dining? Maybe a movie before you start in on a grope-fest?

  If only I could have gotten my mouth to form some words, this jerk would have gotten the tongue lashing of a lifetime. I was just thinking about the many things I'd like to say to this jerk when he leaned down until I could feel his hot breath on my ear as he whispered to me.

  “Just give it time.”

  And then there was his thumb, moving again.

  Time? Time for what?

  I'd show him time. I'd make sure he served time for assault! I thought hard, trying to remember how I got there -wherever ‘there’ was - while trying not to get distracted by that thumb of his.
I needed to start building my case. The last thing I remembered was...

  And then it all flooded back to me. Shopping. Shot glass. Earthquake. Protecting my...

  Oh. My. GOD! My shoes!

  I sat bolt upright, narrowly missing the guy in the white coat as he jumped backwards and looked down at my feet. My bare feet. My toes wiggled as if to say, “Nope, no Choos here.” Good thing he moved away from me.

  This man stole my shoes. He better replace them or pony up some cash. I am on a tight budget since I maxed out my MasterCard last month buying clothing for this cruise. If I killed him for stealing my shoes, could I get off? Some crimes are completely justifiable.

  Now that I had something to look at besides hot-but-creepy guy and a ceiling, I took in my surroundings. The only light came from candles spread throughout a room of stone walls. Come to think of it, the table I sat on was stone as well.

  Who had a stone table? Fred Flintstone? What the hell? Where was I and how did I get here?

  My next effort to talk did not end in a gurgle, but instead a raspy one-word question.

  “How?”

  Well, at least it wasn't 'gurgle’. My brain tried to convince my body to head towards standing, but my body replied ‘no way’. I was too sluggish, like when you just weren't quite awake.

  “Well it's all very complicated. You see, when I unearthed this book...”

  The guy started babbling and I tuned him out. It sounded a lot like ramble, ramble, some kind of digging and Aztec and Mayan ruins, blah, blah.

  Who cares?

  My thoughts were more on the line of ‘where the hell are my Jimmy Choos and Coach purse?’. I knew my priorities, and Geek Speak was at the bottom of the list. Like, six feet under, bottom of the list. Seriously, how hard was it to say something like 'I saw your hotness getting crushed by a giant calendar so I dug you out, gave you mouth to mouth, copped a feel, and now you aren't risking dying.'? See, that wasn’t so hard. His eleventy-hundred-word answer surely had to end with something to that effect, right?

  I had a bad case of the stiffs that I could not shake. I tried stretching and heard the sound of my bones crunching and cracking. Gross. Glad I could move and all but the stiffness thing had to go. I couldn’t be pulling a snap, crackle, and pop every time I moved. That just was not sexy.

  Maybe I just needed a good walk; through a department store. A walk through an expensive department store with a non-maxed out credit card. There was nothing like a good dose of retail therapy to wake up and invigorate a girl.

  My thoughts wandered to the sales at Macy's back home, but around the time my brain entered the imaginary shoe department I noticed the man's ramblings stopped. He looked at me like he expected something. Maybe I should have listened a bit more carefully. I tried to focus, to remember what was said, but all my brain registered was a book. Digging, and a book and... nothing. I decided the blank look might be the best response.

  “Do you see why this is so monumental?” he asked. I could tell he’d repeated himself.

  Great, what was 'so monumental' and why did he look like a kid on Christmas morning?

  I licked my dry lips, noticing just how cracked they were.

  I hate this godforsaken country. I needed to get back to the cruise ship stat for some dire medical attention to my lips.

  The ship store better have something good, none of that cheap drug store garbage.

  I continued my stream of highly intellectual, one-word sentences, “What?”

  “Too much? Maybe I went too fast? I never did this before.” He pushed the glasses further up his nose and leafed through a fat notebook filled with handwritten pages.

  “Where?”

  We needed to move this forward and get right down to the bottom of things. I needed to shake the mental cobwebs, but for now one-word answers might move things along faster.

  I knew where I was. I was in a tourist shop looking at shot glasses. Fast forward to now. Now I was here. My eyes looked again at the dark, stony room around me. I wanted to know where here was, and how I managed to end up on some creepy stone table.

  “Where?” he asked, looking up from his weird notebook. “Oh, where are we? Well, after the earthquake... You see, I saw the replica fall on you. I cleared the debris away, but it was too late. No one would really help, it was chaos, so I brought you here. We're inside the Temple.”

  What the hell? No one noticed this guy carrying a hot babe so far out of his league to some creepy...

  Oh. My. GAWD. I'm inside that nasty Temple that's like a zillion years old? Where some ancient primitive barbarians probably conducted sacrifices?

  Did I wake up just moments before this guy tried to sacrifice me? Was he some sort of wanna-be nerd that thought if he recreated something from history that he'd be cool? And gross, was that table actually used for sacrifices? I was laying on it! My hair touched it!

  The thought of centuries-old blood cooties did away with whatever stiffness still held me back. I leapt from the table in disgust. It rocked, and shifted about three inches, but I barely gave it notice. I was way too focused on the chance of blood creepiness possibly making its way to my personage. The whole thing managed to fix my speech impediment, too.

  “You not gonna slice and dice me!”

  Okay, the English was bad. Apparently, my speech still needed some work. I'd rather speak in broken English than in one-word questions.

  “What? No! I wanted to save you. It’s why I brought you here,” he said as he waved his hands in front of him while shaking his head like some flappy chicken. A cute flappy chicken. “You’re safe! I swear.”

  I had to admit, the guy looked like a puppy dog in trouble for knocking over the trash can. I guess that's what happened when you’re a beta male faced with an obvious, nine-point-five alpha gal such as myself. My heart softened. He was so pathetic it was cute. Maybe he didn't mean any ill while dragging me to Castle Creepy.

  “Where's my purse? And my shoes? What the hell happened?”

  I understood this guy seemed to think he was pulling a knight in shining armor. Save the girl from the fallen Aztec calendar. Fantabulous! How about saving the girl's Coach purse? Those things don't grow on trees.

  He took a few steps back. “I'm so sorry. I didn't think to grab... I mean... I just wanted to save you. It might still be there. Under all that rubble. There was a second quake, after I got you out. And...”

  Great. I went on some supposedly-fantastic trip out of the country and land in the middle of earthquake central. Just my luck. But, must I really sacrifice my Coach purse and everything inside.

  Oh cripes, my Amex and Visa were in that thing. How's a girl supposed to survive without plastic? Impossible!

  I stepped towards him and he stepped backwards, keeping the gap between us constant. I attempted to keep my voice even. “What are you saying?”

  “Um, uh, that is...” His back hit the wall behind him. There was no escape, so I moved closer. “It... You see... the roof... it collapsed... and...”

  “My purse is gone? Forever?” My purse, my credit cards, my makeup, that really gorgeous necklace I bought from some cute five-year-old girl near the docks. It was almost too much to bear. “And my shoes?”

  “I removed those. I had to. For the ceremony. I told you that.”

  Hope! I might be out a necklace and whatever else was in my purse, but that could be replaced. One quick call to the bank and new cards would merrily wait in my mailbox for my return to civilization. And the cruise company better believe that ’they’d be doling out some major moolah for the loss of my purse and all this other craziness.

  “What is this ceremony?”

  Maybe I should have paid better attention when he rambled before, but if I found out he did some kind of wacky take-off-the-girl’s-shoes-and- now-we-are-married garbage I was not going to be happy. A guy should at least take a girl out and maybe be on a first name (any name?) basis with her before engaging in some kind of ancient, ritualistic and insane marriag
e ceremony without any consent on her part. Call me old fashioned.

  “Well, I told you,” he continued. I noticed him licking his lips and fidgeting with his hands. A few more steps and I was right in front of him, nearly eye to eye. “I brought you back.”

  “Back from what?” I tried to be annoyed, but was it wrong that I wanted to kiss this guy? Something in me stirred, but I squashed it. Too weird. I couldn't give in to some sort of wacky attraction when there were too many questions in my muddled head. Annoyance.

  Remember... Coach!

  “From the dead. I reanimated you using this book I found while on a dig about twenty clicks from here.”

  And that's it. How my life began after my death. I was one of the Reanimated Ones, though most might call us zombies. Just forget all that garbage from Hollywood about shuffling, drooling, brain-obsessed, homicidal corpses. Maybe that was how zombies rolled in the 1970's, but need I remind you that people also thought polyester was a good fashion statement? You cannot trust anything from those misguided times.

  Besides, have you ever tried to remove dried brains out from underneath your fingernails? It's no fun and your manicurist really does not like it.

  c

  chapter two

  Over the next few hours, my inner Libra weighed the changes between my old life and my new un-life. For example: as a newly dead woman, would my credit cards go into instant lock-down, denying me access to all things Prada, Gucci, and Chanel? Hmmm, hidden in there might be a well-dressed law firm that I might consider putting on retainer. Perhaps I could convince some jury to award me hefty reparations for this nightmare.

  The scales of my zodiac sign groaned from the strain as my list grew, in an effort to find some sort of balance. I wanted only to ensure my continued existence in the manner I was accustomed to. Namely keeping myself stylishly dressed and on the VIP lists for all the great parties. Should it matter that I was dead? I could walk, I could talk, I could look great in Givenchy. Who could ask for anything more?