Get Zombie: 8-Book Set (4 page)

Its racist odors insulted my nostrils. I wanted to go
back under the warmth of my blanket, but due to my hatred toward
mysteries, I began trimming its face-hair.

The creature moaned and tried to bite me. I said, “Hush,
child!” and cut some more. Little by little I began to see
something – some kind of face…

There was an eyehole.

I leaned into the hole…and stared as the crickets
around us sang.

Something was moving around inside the eyehole.

Just then Barbara ran out from the tent, screaming,
“THIS IS THE
bestial
MOMENT WHITE ANGELS GASP!”

To my horror a creature flew out from the eyehole and
latched onto my face. I spun around shrieking and clawed at the baby
squirrel. Its hands were like daggers. I tried biting it, but all
that did was anger it more.

Barbara chased after me and pulled on her hair in
confusion while saying loudly, “I’m calling you out! I’m
moving my legs! I’m moving my legs!”

I ran into a tree – on purpose – face first.

When I woke up, the squirrel was halfway in my mouth, a
corpse – the head sticking out from my lips.

I stood up and Barbara pulled the tiny cadaver out.

She said that to
learn
was to
listen
. She
said this over and over again, even when we ate.

I couldn’t stop spitting for the next few hours.

Everything I put in my mouth tasted like bewilderment.

Fourteen.

It was now
my time to extract the zombie sample. Barbara
watched – arms crossed over her clothed breasts. She was
smiling.

The zombie, with its exposed eyehole, growled at me and
hurt my feelings. Barbara wanted its tongue. She was quite adamant
about this – wanted to put it with her other trophies. I
slipped on a pair of latex gloves and gripped my pair of barber
scissors. Barbara clapped.

“
Good! Now approach the beast slowly, but surely.”

“
Shall I hold my breath as well?”

“
Now that’s safe
and
smart.”

I put a finger on the zombie’s chin and it began
biting the air nonstop. I looked to Barbara for assistance, but she
was doing jumping jacks. She said that she was trying to sweat out
her positive aura onto me. I told her that I could feel her aura
traversing through my supple meats and that she shouldn’t stop.

Filled with Barbara’s special spirit-juice, I
pulled off the zombie’s jaw (accidentally) and its tongue
flapped in a berserk manner. The tongue was engorged with dead blood
and seemed bestial at best.

I couldn’t get a good grip on it for it was so
slippery with saliva. I washed my hands with dirt and sprinkled some
dirt onto the zombie-tongue with my pinky raised. It was at this
point that the zombie turned outrageous. It thrashed about and lashed
its head forward over and over.

Barbara got up from doing pushups and stood next to me,
breathless. She said that now was my moment of power, and that
whatever I was going to do I had better do it fast. She also stated
officially that I was putting her in heat. Barbara put her first
finger to my forehead and I was instantly excited, sexually.

I had visions of future fun times.

The
tongue, slowly, reached out and touched my face. I was thoroughly
appalled! My scissors cut through it like an abused sock. The
creature gave no hint of pain. Its mouth shot forth gore and Barbara
put her hands over my face to shield it from the blood shower.

With our sample, I inquired if we were now going home
with the zombie.

Barbara said shut up.

It wasn’t my place to make such decisions, and
just to teach me a lesson, she killed the zombie by putting 7 stakes
through its mouth and said that we were going to go hunting &
hiking some more up the tall mountain to spite me.

I said, “Thank you, ma’am, may I have
another?”

She ripped my shirt off and coughed into it.

Fifteen.

Barbara had her arm around me as she slept. The crickets
wouldn’t stop their incessant singing. I wanted to go out and
eat the crickets and then spit out the crickets so I could see them
cry.

Sometimes I thought I had a cricket in my ear and I’d
stick my finger in there and search for it. But I didn’t have a
cricket in my ear. The only thing I had in my ear was paranoia.
Barbara wasn’t snoring. Was she unconsciously hallucinating
merry dreams? I brushed aside her bangs. Was she dreaming of happy
kisses and wanton wishes?

I wanted to kiss her. It had been so long since I kissed
someone – meaning a girl. But Barbara was different. She was a
woman
. And she loved
me – I knew she did. I could feel it in my heart and her love
was warm in my belly and it felt so good.

I didn’t want to be lonely anymore – wanted
to get my ex out of my mind.

Many nights I found myself crying, hoping for a miracle.
But none ever came.

Maybe tonight would be different.

Would it be wrong if I leaned in and kissed her? Would
it be as bad as kissing a college drunkard? I searched my backpack
and took out a tube of watermelon lip-gloss and put some on, licking
my lips.

I held my breath…and kissed Barbara on the mouth.

She didn’t wake up.

Her lips were cold.

I felt guilty. Jesus’ juice, what have I done!?
What is this disturbing sensation in my stomach??! Why am I
malfunctioning? I don’t want to be cursed…

I went outside and paced back and forth under the moon.
Three pinecones were on the grass. I squatted before them and
arranged them in a row. I had to make sure that each one was
straight. This went on for a good hour. What is the matter with me?
Why can’t I just let things be? Why can’t I stop
scratching myself? Why can’t I stop eating weird things, like
cereal with ice cream and orange juice? Why can’t I stop
worrying about tiny things? Why do I turn the stove off and on
repeatedly? Why can’t I hold a relationship? Why am I a bad
boyfriend? Why are my friends always mad at me? Why am I so skinny?
Why am I so ugly? Why does God have to be so mad all the time?

My legs gave in from squatting so much that I fell back.

…
The moon was full…

…
Beautiful…

I inhaled, held it, and then exhaled.

It was all in my head.
All in my
head.
I had to learn self-control. I had to
stop indulging without thinking first. And I hate thinking. I believe
that it kills the imagination – slaughters the right side of
the brain.

I felt something standing behind me.

Barbara’s shadow was standing in the tent –
or rather, because our tent was quite tiny, Barbara’s shadow
was hunched over.

Was she searching for something?

Was she okay?

I got up, smiling, and pulled back the plastic flap.

IT WAS A ZOMBIE!

And it was about to eat Barbara.

I screamed in a rising, high-pitched voice, “Barbara,
zombie time!” and she woke up, jumping to her feet and doing a
spinning kick, hitting the zombie woman in the chest, sending it
sailing through the tent. The entire structure crumpled.

We both swam through the sea of plastic and rolled
around on the dirt, leaping to our feet and striking a karate pose.

The zombie woman was enjoying nudity.

She was obese, but the fat stopped exactly at the hips.
Her legs…dear God…her legs were as thin as pool sticks.
The sight of her at the same time concerned me and revolted me. I
kept imagining hairs in my mouth. It was maddening, I tell you!

Her legs reminded me of my entire image.

I was staring at
myself.

I turned to Barbara.

“
Dear, Barbara, shall thou do me but one favor?”

She picked up a tree branch and kicked it in half,
producing a sharp end.

“
Commandeth.”

I picked up the other end of the stick.

“
ACTION!”

“
Yarrrrrghhhh!”

We charged the beast and ran our stakes through its eyes
and then ran away screaming so as not to get blood on our clean
clothes.

Minutes later we ran back screaming to find the zombie
dead, standing in a pool of its own filth with the stakes still in
its eyes.

We looked at each other…

…
and kissed.

Sixteen.

We
chopped the zombie into tiny bits and buried her with our portable
bags of concrete. Barbara didn’t touch me when we slept that
night. It had taken us four hours to reset the tent. I assumed that
she was just tired, but when I asked her if she was tired, she
responded with, “No, I’m not tired, I just don’t
want to touch you. Now go to sleep, Janeen.”

“
Raym.”

“
That’s what I said. Goodnight, my lady.”

At
first I thought she was just joking, or possibly dreaming. I even
giggled for a while. But when she didn’t giggle back, I
realized then that she wasn’t joking and probably really did
wish my name was Janeen. Or worse…that I was someone else
entirely.

I remember seeing a picture of Toshiba in her photo
album. The name on the bottom of the picture read,
Janeen
Toshiba, Rest In Peace.

That night I had a dream. I was falling…then I
was flying…then I was standing in something wet. There were
dead things inside. There were tongues that slipped between my toes
and gave birth to tiny baby tongues that dug into the pores of my
skin.

When I opened my eyes, I was on my side, staring at the
shadows of swaying tree branches on the tent wall. It sounded like
the ocean.

Something cold was at my neck, licking.

It was Barbara. She was flirting with me. I didn’t
want to turn around. I enjoyed her lips at my neck. I closed my eyes
and rolled over yawning, pretending to be asleep. I wanted to hold
her, but I was too afraid that she’d stop if she knew that I
was really awake.

I decided to pretend that I was having a nightmare and
tried to touch her stomach – possibly even pull her down next
to me and hold onto her as if I was also dreaming of sweet
lovemaking. Would she rape me in my sleep? One would hope so.

I yawned again and blindly reached out for her stomach.

My hand shot into something cool and wet.

I felt around.

It seemed like my hand was in an open bag of cold
spaghetti. And it smelt like Barbara hadn’t changed her socks
in quite some time.

Then she screamed something.

“
Why am I a fool?!”

Did she suddenly feel guilty for touching me in my
sleep? I laughed and sat up hugging her, opening my eyes.

Oh god it was the head of the obese zombie tasting my
FACE!

It was smiling. My hand was in its severed belly.

Squatting, I leapfrogged through the tent, mumbling
loudly as the whole place fell around me. Barbara wrapped me in the
tent and picked me up and threw me to safety against a tree.

I heard the unmistakable sounds of a serious beat-down
as I tried desperately to climb my way out of the tent’s skin.
When I was free and whipped the plastic away from my eyes, it was
raining heavily. Against the giant moon, Barbara held the zombie’s
head high above her and kicked it far into the distance, into the
Honolulu city lights.

The head was silent as it sailed.

I nodded to Barbara in respect.

She-was-a-maz-ing.

The zombie belly was burned.

“
This here be zombie country, ma’am,”
I whispered to myself as she walked off into the bushes. “This
here be zombie country and ye be the farmer who farms. My wanton body
is your lustful tractor. Amen.”

Seventeen.

In the morning, I smelt something cooking. I got out and
stretched and saw that Barbara had created a tiny fire and was
boiling a tiny pot. I walked over, rubbing my stomach to signal that
I was hungry.

She said that she was boiling the zombie’s
shoulder. On hearing this, I instantly regurgitated onto my shirt for
a 2
^nd
time.
Barbara threw her head back and laughed, and then threw her head
forward and snarled. She stirred the pot with a tree branch that I
can only assume to have been cleaned.

Barbara explained that the human body needed food to
run.

“
It is exactly like being an automobile that needs
gasoline. We are cars that eat meat. That is the best analogy you
shall ever hear. And today we shall eat that of a zombie – for
this be walking dead meat!”