Get Zombie: 8-Book Set (2 page)

They were
human
.

I made no visible reaction in seeing all of this,
although my innards were complaining.

Before I stepped into the kitchen, I asked if I could
use the restroom. There, I sat on the toilet to stitch together my
thoughts. What was happening? Were these people cannibals? Were they
crazy? Or worse…crazy cannibals?

Barbara was arguing with the woman – I could hear
them throw things made of glass and other heavy objects.

Then…

…
silence…

…
followed by weeping apologies.

They began to laugh and clap their hands. Barbara began
to sing to her.

“
Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday, dear Mommy. Happy birthday to you. Hurray! Yessm!
Blow it out, blow it out! Yessm!”

It was good to hear such happiness.

I sobbed in my hands and then wrapped my arms around my
knees, rocking myself on that cold toilet.

Barbara called after me.

“
Raym! Raym! Eat cake! Yessm!”

I sniffed and cleared my throat.

“
I’ll be out in a second, thank you, ma’am!”

They began clapping and cheering. I wasn’t sure if
it was for me or not.

For
years I always thought my life was speeding towards a dead end, where
I would indisputably crash and burn.

As
I sat on that toilet and stared at a bird chirping on the windowsill,
I realized that life had such wonders to offer – that my
pathetic life was what I made of it. There was a
goal
for every
soul
: A
purpose. No, I wasn’t a churchgoing person (not since my
Catholic School days in the sticks of Greenville, Florida), but I did
and still do believe in a higher power. You can call it God or Vishnu
or Ra or Master. I call it The Universe – the thing that is in
everything and everyone and is always around us. And it wants to help
humans. Wants us to be happy. Wants us to feel like we have a purpose
in life.

Studies have shown that the number one reason most
relationships fail, is because the lover does not feel wanted –
useful
.

Barbara had a purpose. One she felt strongly about.

Her story – her zombie adventures – this
future escapade I was about to undertake – had to be
documented. It was something I was meant to write, even if no one
were ever to read it.

I was doing this for the both of us.

Five.

O
ne of the first
things I had to
learn was self-defense. I had always been fascinated with the martial
arts and was understandably excited. When I asked if it would be
possible for me to learn Wushu, she accused me of making up words and
lying to her. Barbara instead forced me to learn a martial art she
had invented, called
Mouth Masters.

As far as I could gather, it consisted of rabid punching
and kicking and a variety of ways to bite your opponent – to
death
, mind you.

Being
skeptical about this fighting style called Mouth Masters, and due to
her ceaseless taunts, I challenged her to a duel. She accepted and,
to my shame, gnawed me into submission.

There was something to this unorthodox style after all,
and from that night on, in her parrot room, I would never judge her
again.

After saying this to her, she locked me in the parrot
room and exclaimed that she was not used to such words that, as she
said,
ran away from my mouth and kissed her on
the face.
She wanted her parrots to learn
from me – to learn such nice words instead of shrieking at her
all the time, although the birds, as far as I could tell, were always
docile.

As a matter of fact, I had yet to hear them make any
sound whatsoever. I began to question if they were even alive. Upon
further inspection, I found that they were indeed alive. Just fed up.

However, one cage emitted a curious ‘I am dead’
aroma. The parrot inside had died, tiny legs in the air. I feared
telling Barbara, but did anyway because it was her right to know.
When she found out, she held the bird close to her face in an angry
way.

“
Who gave you the nerves to get killed here? What
are you saying to me from beyond the grave, child?”

Barbara closed her eyes and began to channel the bird’s
ghost. She opened her mouth and, without moving her jaw or tongue,
pretty parrot noises came out. I was full of gasps. It was a wonder.
Barbara looked at me and said:

“
Translation! Translation! Translation!”

She closed her eyes and said, while drooling, “Woman,
you with your thick face have hurt my loins. The bird lunches I have
eaten are unhappy in my insides. They make me flatulent, and you did
it.”

I
couldn’t believe what I was seeing/hearing. Somehow, Barbara
had the gift to communicate with deceased animals. I asked if I could
talk to the bird’s soul, and Barbara agreed. It was decided
that I could ask it one question.

I leaned in close to the parrot’s corpse.

“
If you had one wish, dear bird, what would it
be?”

Barbara nodded and closed her eyes, then said…

“
I am damn unsatisfied to be killed in this way.”

Later, we wrapped the corpse in tissue paper and flushed
it down the toilet, out of respect.

Six.

B
arbara next urged
me to learn knife
throwing. I agreed immediately, watching in awe as she opened a box
full of impressive knives of many shapes and sizes. I asked if I
would be throwing these beautiful knives. She said, “Never.”
Instead, she handed me two rusted-brown steak knives. There were
bedbugs on them, which I loathe with a passion of the Christ.

I thanked her for her generosity and clapped my hands in
approval. She bowed and then pointed at me, ordering that I juggle
the knives as best as I could. Apparently, if I couldn’t juggle
knives, I would never be able to throw them.

It was a pathetic sight.

As she had put it, I couldn’t juggle knives to
save the glands which belong to a Russian prostitute.

It was exactly what I was thinking.

And
she was right, of course. If I wanted to be her sidekick, I had to
shape up and put out. If all that she was saying were true, I would
soon enough see an actual zombie. It made me giddy. I giggled each
time I picked up the knives from off the floor. And each time I
giggled, I put my hand over my mouth like a Japanese girl.

In my intense concentration, I hadn’t noticed that
Barbara had tied herself to a wall via lamp cords. Some of the lamps
were still plugged in.

She wanted me to throw the knives at her – to
stick them around her head. This, of course, sickened me. I vomited a
little onto my shirt. She laughed and then wept, saying that she
trusted me and
had put all her love into
my
love and then put it into her morning soup and then ate the soup. I
was inside of her now: Me and my love. She trusted me…wholeheartedly.

I was shaking. I could barely hold onto the knives. I
dropped them at least fifteen times, over and over again.

Barbara was asleep.

When I dropped the knife for the last time, Barbara’s
eyes sprung open and she exclaimed, “He throws the knife that
deflates the kidney stones in my heart!”

Shocked, I threw both knives, shrieking.

Realizing what I had done, I tried to run after the
knives to catch them, but it was no good.

One of the knives was in the side of her neck. The other
knife? Vanished.

Barbara opened her mouth.

Nothing came out for a long time…when suddenly,
she said:

“
The knife inside is hot. Why do I feel so cold?”

As I walked toward her, I felt a sharp pain in my right
foot. It was the knife. It was inside
me
.
I pulled it out quickly and cried. Barbara shut her eyes tight and
gave out a mighty roar and pulled the knife out from her neck. No
blood came out.

She went on her back and urinated on her wound somehow.
I didn’t watch. She walked up to me and put her hands on my
shoulders, explaining that it was a good way to disinfect the wound.
I said that I didn’t believe her.

She shrugged and urinated on my foot.

Seven.

When
Barbara opened
her tool kit – or backpack kit –
a rat flew out and attacked me in the face. And then it ran away and
disappeared somewhere in the apartment.

I only shrieked after it had ran off.

Barbara
said that I was so brave, then dumped the backpack’s contents
onto the floor while smiling at me.

The old, sloppy remnants of a rather large wedding cake
toppled out.

The stench was bewildering.

My nose imploded.

Something was wrong with my eyes. I couldn’t stop
my REM (rapid eye movements) and my tongue had collapsed.

Barbara was doing no better.

She gripped her throat and proceeded to gurgle, then
looked at me and gurgled. There was such sadness behind those
bloodshot eyes.

There were roaches in the bits of cake. They were in
heat and flew around the room in flapping blurs, banging into the
walls and getting lost in our hair. A roach dove into my back and ran
around under my shirt. I squealed like a crazy person and instantly
collapsed.

When I woke up, Barbara had attacked many roaches,
mercilessly. She had hung some of the corpses on tiny gallows –
all lined up in five rows. A roach crawled across her face. She
reached into her pocket and showed me a miniature guillotine, then
sat on the floor and cut the remaining roaches at the neck.

I nodded whenever she looked over her shoulder and
smiled at me in a wrong way.

I approved.

Eight.

Barbara wanted
to dress me. Whenever I slept over at her
apartment, on the floor, I could
always sense her
standing over me, watching me, taking notes and jotting down those
notes in a spiral notebook, noisily. Once, I got up to use the
restroom and she tried to follow me inside while still taking down
notes.

When I asked her why she was trying to follow me into
the bathroom, she came to the expert conclusion that I looked like a
dignified hooker and that I had no right being so full of dignity.
This did not insult me, for she was the zombie hunter and knew what
was best.

We
went to Ala Moana Shopping Center and stopped at SEARS, against my
many futile requests.

I did not wish to see my fellow co-workers from the ISS
department, or In-Store Support. All we did was put up pricing-signs
on all the products. It was a lackluster job and I’d usually
find myself falling asleep in the many restroom locations –
even the women’s. My coworkers hated me because I acted like
how they
wanted
to
act.

I was too small to fit in anything in Men’s or
Teen’s. Every pair of pants I wore dragged at least two feet
behind me and it always seemed like my legs were melting away.

She took me to the 3
^rd
floor, where the baby and children clothes were.Barbara asked the
CSM, or Customer Service Manager, where we could find pants that
would fit me. I ducked behind a rack of Canyon River Blues cargo
pants. Barbara yanked me from my hiding place. I waved to the CSM, a
pretty, young Japanese girl, who pointed us in the right direction.

Barbara handed me a pair of tight black jeans.

Each
time I tried something on, Barbara would want me to parade myself in
front of her while she took photographs. I felt wrong inside and even
told her so.

“
You’re a liar,” she said. “You’re
a liar vampire.”

I went into the dressing room and looked at myself in
the mirror. I was surprised that the clothes did
indeed
fit me – pleasantly surprised, in fact. Barbara had, once
again, proved herself a genius in yet another area.

She was the Mozart of Clothing.

I noticed a drawing on her arm – of a woman
holding her own severed head. She said that it was a simple tattoo
that all zombie hunters had.

We then went to Sephora and GAP Kids and Longs Drugs. I
dreaded walking past the black wall – that displayed plant life
and a mini waterfall – in-between SEARS and Longs Drugs.

Gotho’s and Depresso’s always hung around
there, judging you with their eyes. I invented a name for them.

Wallers
.

As we walked past, my ex girlfriend’s ex boyfriend
stopped me and spat in my face. Barbara grabbed him by the lapels of
his black shirt and threw him straight up into the sky. He screeched
and clawed at the air like a cat and even landed on his feet like a
cat. The boy apologized, bowed, and ran off crying into his hands.