Get Zombie: 8-Book Set (63 page)

But I didn't have to unmask her. I didn't have to check – to
see
who
it really was.

The head was gone....

I searched around, looking under cars, looked all over that
restaurant....What happened to it? The question nagged at me,
bothered me like a pimple on my brain.
What happened it it? Where
is it? I've looked
everywhere
.
This went on
for days....I once found a gaggle of wild cats munching on a
big-something, but it turned out to be just a duck. I saw that head
everywhere I went. I saw that head covered in that evil-looking, red
mask in cars, staring out at me. I saw it up in trees, behind store
windows, even looking up at me from down them gutters.

Each day, I was finding more and more cannibals. They'd be driving
around in trucks, looking for bodies to eat – alive, dead,
human, animal, didn't matter. One night, as I was looking for that
head, I found myself at a park, and I saw a large group of cannibals
dancing around a fire. They all wore those leather, black and red
masks. They were cooking and eating people...people who
also
wore those masks.

I ran home that night, confused.

When I woke up the next morning, I went looking for the head again,
in the city. I walked by a van, and it looked just like the one that
gangster Pope rode around in. The thing moved – just a little,
but enough for me to open the door and take a look inside. Nothing in
there. Just my imagination.

Someone ran around in a nearby store.

At first, I thought I was just seeing things again, but then, on
closer inspection, I saw that there really was someone in there: A
woman that seemed to be searching for something. I ran to the window
and tapped on the glass, praying that she was no cannibal.

This is it!

A real woman....Someone I can talk to. Someone I can love. She'll
be all mine. We'll talk for hours. It's been so long. Thank you, God.
Thank you for sending me this gift. I get it now. This was all a
test! You wanted to see if I was worthy. Not everyone deserves a
girlfriend. You must prove yourself. Thank you for this gift. She is
beautiful. She won't judge me. She won't leave me....I'll never be
alone again. Thank you. I knew this was all for something. I knew
living through this hell was for something. She's beautiful....She's
beautiful....I'll love her forever. With her, I am complete. I feel
worthy....I can finally live. I am complete.

She shot me a look and ran and jumped through – THROUGH –
the store window. Came at me with her long nails aimed at my face. I
gave her a big punch to her breasts, then we fought – wrestled
around, bit each other, slapped each other around for a minute.

I picked up a long thing of glass, and cut into her belly....

The End

Dedicated
to the island that I love.

Aloha Mannequins

"Aloha
Mannequins is a funny story of eerie,

inner
circles in Hawaii...Great story, great humor!"

-Sterling
Knight, www.macabremenace.com

PART
ONE

“Eye
Nodule”

THE
ORCA KILLS THE SHARK by torpedoing into its belly from underneath,
causing the shark to blow up. When this Gothic fellow opens his
mouth, there is a shark inside. He has four rows of sharp teeth. He
rolls his eyes back white. We all lean over the table with hungry
eyes. He SNAPS his mouth shut and scares us and leans back, laughing
like Santa Claus.

“Hohoho!”

Someone
I don’t know laughs with him to be his friend.

“Heehaw!”

The
place is hot. Moist. Sticky. Dim. Everyone wears black for some
reason, but not in a racist way…at least I hope not. I haven’t
seen anyone yet with blond hair. Strange, dream-like music plays—not
what I expected in a Goth club (I expected hard-core, industrial,
German speed metal. Later, I find out that they DO play it. Just not
on “these” nights). Something invisible and thick hangs
in the air. Something is going to happen, but when? The suspense is a
major thumbs down for me, although I assume these folks get off on
it. The place is dirty – although it’s a strange,
stylized dirtiness: controlled dirtiness. I try to remember the name
of this bleak place: Galaxy or Neutrino or some other sci-fi-ish
word.

Everyone
looks happy – everyone’s having a good time. I see these
people all the time at the mall, loitering outside of Longs Drugs.
Mall security is always waving a finger at them, chasing them here
and there while holding their jiggling belts. Taki hands me a bottle
of something: Looks like a vitamin bottle. It’s small. I
unscrew the cap and drink a taste.

Vodka.
A vodka and vitamin C shot. It’s good, but one is definitely
not enough. He opens his backpack and pulls out 3 more bottles and
sets them on the table, almost as if they were trophies. He examines
the empty bottle and I can barely make out his eyes behind his
vampire-shades. He leans in:

“Did
you drink all of this?”

“I
thought that was what you wanted me to do.”

He
laughs and continues unpacking his goods while bobbing and swaying to
the music.

It’s
so hot in here. My skin feels sticky. I sit alone on a couch (I hope
nothing dead is under these cushions), in a corner that has been
painted a thick black: The floor makes a sick, sticky sound when
people walk past. That’s the key word for tonight, sticky.
There’s a black-light, which means that passing white shoes
glow. People in black trench coats and black tights walk about,
aimlessly, showing off their threads to onlookers, doing that thing
where they look over their shoulder at you and wink. Everyone has a
bottle of water. You can’t bring water in a place like this…you
must buy water at the front. But you can bring in all the alcohol you
want. Huzzah!

A
shortie and some tall white boy sit next to me. I don’t know
how, but I start chatting with this girl. It’s very unlike me,
due to my crippling shyness, so I assume those vitamin shots are
kicking in. She’s not beautiful, by my ignorant standards, but
she looks nice, and she is very friendly. She starts talking about
her folks in Russia and the music in the current, local Goth scene.
She asks where I’m from and I lie to seem more interesting.

“Russia.
I’m from Russia,” I scream over the loud music.

After
awhile, the man with the shark teeth arrives again and seems to be
passing me odd glances. He’s thin, tall, and has long,
blue-streaked hair. Lucky for me, he finds a friend to speak to
before throwing his attention at me. I mean, what the hell are we
going to talk about? The fluid dynamics of sharks? I’m a 1st
time visitor to this small, black place with the yellow painted
nuclear power sign out front. I don’t know the language. Yet.

I
can feel the dizziness coming on hard, and I start getting the dread.
I underestimated those deceitful shots. Someone walks by in the
distance. I hope it’s not who I think it is.

My
memory rewinds: It was.

Great.

It
was her, and I immediately feel depressed, and ugly, and
insignificant.

One
Hour Earlier...

EXT.
DOLE MOVIE THEATER – NIGHT

With
friends. Just finished seeing Cowboy Bebop. Great film – in
parts, anyway. See ex-girlfriend talking with movie promoter.
Feelings of depression, uselessness, suicide, guilt, and major
ugliness. Taki seems to notice, tries to make me feel better by
complimenting my horrendous, shorty-short haircut.

“You
need to go out and find someone to fuck.”

And
I say out of pre-panic attack: “Yessm.”

We
pick up his two female friends – dressed in black dresses, of
course (I feel out of place and uncool with my glasses and blue
jeans) – in downtown at something like 11pm, and speed away
into the night. I don’t speak to them. Or is it, they don’t
speak to me.

Stop
near Hawaii Culture Center and park on some dark, side road. The
night streets are busy. People jaywalk. I’m excited. This is
crazy goodness. I can’t wait to enter another universe. Maybe
even a place where people understand me and share my mental poop.

Taki
crosses the busy street towing two large, plastic Safeway bags of
liquor as a trolley honks. The driver shakes a mean fist, tourists
snapping bright pictures. The club’s entrance fee is a tad high
for our wallets and there’s some discussion about my lack of
cash. I’m too out of my mind to really be following any of
this: Mind plagued by noisy images from the annoying past. It turns
out that everything’s going to be okay somehow and we move
ahead.

Taki
says with a smile – smiling to maybe soften the blow:

“Hey
look who it is...”

I
see who it is and my stomach punches me. I should’ve known.
Taki and her have similar tastes in clubs. Why didn’t I connect
the dots earlier! If he’s going to a club tonight, surely would
she.

I
back up.

“Er...”

“Aw
come on, man, don’t be like that.”

“I’ll
just wait for you guys back at the car.”

“No,
no, you’re going to come inside and hang loose. And then we’re
going to find you some hot chick and get laid in spades.”

“I
didn’t realize it was that easy! But no.”

All
I hear as he yaps is her voice, saying over and over again, You’re
a loser; call me when you grow up.

I
imagine the sweet taste of alcohol and say: “Fine. Good.”
I’ll be fine so long as I stay low and hide in some dark
corner, on a suspiciously soft couch.

One
Hour Later...

This
couch is getting soft; I think I’m sinking into it. I take hold
of the glass vodka bottle with my wee, skinny hands and take a swig.
I remember then why I hate vodka. The stuff went down with a fight –
it wanted to come back up, the furnishings of my stomach too poor for
its liking. To be nice, I offer some to a girl that walks by. I don’t
say anything of course, I just hold up the bottle and smile. She
smiles back through those black-painted lips and says, “No
thank you, kind sir. Vodka gives me the toots.” I nod and she
walks off, vanishing into the dark.

I’m
determined to hold the alcohol down. I hate to waste anything. I
might as well be vomiting Taki’s money: Then what kind of a
friend would I be?

I
lean back.

That
couple is still here, chatting with Sharkman. A screwball kid with a
sledgehammer walks up to the table, which is actually a giant,
upturned wooden spool for industrial wire. He pounds his sledgehammer
on the table, rattling empty beer bottles. It’s obvious to me
that he does this for attention. His smile looks mean. No one cares,
so he does it again, smiling brightly. Someone says Hello and the kid
moves on.

Taki
calls me and we head outside.

It’s
noisy outside. Large groups of tall, white people lean against their
cars, giving me the stiff one-eye as we walk past. The music inside
the club tries desperately to free itself through the walls, sounding
muffled. A lot of people have on contact lenses: Red ones, white
ones, sometimes both. The glowing eyes are interesting. I feel so out
of place. I keep my eyes down as we walk.

What’s
a tiny white boy with glasses doing in a place where everyone wants
to be a vampire? Besides, I like mummies better.

Taki
walks me into an alleyway and we kneel between the front of a car and
a length of dangling chain that’s blocking off a parking lot. A
swinging sign on the chain reads DO NOT ENTER.

Taki
reaches into his waist-cut, Matrix-looking, pleather jacket and pulls
out what looks to me like a large, glass kazoo filled with The
Buddha, aka marijuana. I’m shocked. That’s a lot of
green. The whole thing is filled. More of who I assume to be Taki’s
friends pop up…so many eventually, that there’s enough
of us to make a cute circle. Odd how no one even makes on effort to
introduce themselves. There’s something unsettling about that –
there’s something unsettling about Taki’s buddies in
particular: As if they just don’t give a damn about anything,
even if they got run over by a truck-load of Hawaiian pigs.

All
they want to do is smoke The Thigh and be lost in their little,
tripped-out world.

There
are some girls with us. All not very attractive. They seem rather
dirty and lost. I like what they’re wearing, though: Gothic,
black dresses…I’m reminded of Interview with the Vampire
for some reason. I wonder if these people work at Taco Bell or Dip N’
Dots.

Everyone
seems to be dazed out of their minds, and we haven’t even
tongued the dung yet, if you catch my drift. Taki’s young, male
friend (a brown-skinned chubby, showing off an Iron Maiden shirt)
puts the glass tube to his lips and sticks a lighter down the grassy
hole. He inhales, eyes growing huge, and the grass filaments light up
like electrical wires. He passes it down the line – the girls
try – another tries (are these people magically materializing?)
– a heavy girl tries – and then it comes to me. I don’t
want to look like a goof, so I try (other tries have ended in pity
and shame. It’s no fun when the people you’re doing it
with are trying their damndest NOT to feel the effects). I do the
motions right, but for some reason Taki’s friend says that I’m
doing it wrong, and helps me. I’m grateful, but boy do I feel
the eyes on me. I assume that they all think I’m some kind of
Narc.

One
of the girls says:

“Oh
Taki, you look just like Jesus!”

Taki,
ever the cool one, cleaning the pipe, just mumbles something to the
effect of: “Womp…womp,” smiling.

But
the girl isn’t done yet:

“I’d
like to kiss Taki on the mouth and suck his chicken.”

Everyone
laughs. It was a joke, of course, just for attention. I’m
disgusted. I look around to see everyone a bit more talkative and
weird. At this point, abortions are a joke. Time escapes me. My limbs
have no feeling. I start to wonder what would happen if a cop caught
us. These yahoos probably wouldn’t even care.