Zombie Versus Fairy Featuring Albinos (10 page)

Chi goes nuts when I insist I never wanted Francis Bacon. She loses her mindless mind. She screams at me, soundlessly. Telepathically, she floods me with curses and castigations. She rants that I’m not a real zombie; a real zombie doesn’t cry; I’m clean; I think; the only thing I’m destroying is our marriage.

I can’t take it. I go into the Screaming Room and close the door. I lean back against it in case Chi tries to push it. The bare bulb in a metal cage flicks on and glows dull yellow.

The plump woman sees me and starts screaming, hoarsely, scrambling backwards into a corner. The catatonic girl wakes, gently, and stares at me with something closer to pity than disgust. Flies swirl around the light like little bits of dark.

I don’t know what makes me think of it; what makes me remember: the package of butterflies Fairy_26 gave me; the butterflies I can use to call her. I reach into my pocket and get it. It’s such a delicate operation. I don’t know if I can do it. I fall to my knees in wordless prayer, to beg for life.

For the first time, the catatonic girl seems interested. I try to wipe a clean spot on the filthy floor. It doesn’t work. I can only spread the mess around. Realizing it isn’t going to get any better, I set down the package. I open it. As carefully as I can, I withdraw a perfectly flat butterfly. Is it asleep or dormant? I don’t know. It’s such a beautiful and fragile thing. It reminds me of Fairy_26. It’s so peaceful. I search for it and search for it. There’s no safe place to set it down. Cautiously, the catatonic girl crawls toward me. When she’s within arms’ reach, she kneels, wipes her hands on her legs, on her breasts, on her hair, everywhere and anywhere she can think of, trying to get them clean; not immaculate; just clean enough. In a gesture beyond my comprehension, ultimately, she licks them. She does it with her eyes closed and her face scrunched. She licks off blood, excrement, desperate sex, and sick. She licks off everything human and afraid. She gags but doesn’t stop. When she thinks she has it, she opens her eyes. Satisfied, she waves them in the foul air, drying them. She rubs them together. Then she holds them open to me and nods. I set the butterfly on her palms. I just stare at it for a minute; its patterns: spots, blotches, streaks, and serrations; its colors: orange, black, yellow, and white.

Why would nature do something like this? Chance? Luck? Why would God? Cruelty? I pick up the other package. I open it. Carefully, I tip and tap it. Dust sprinkles onto the butterfly. Immediately, it begins opening and closing its wings, testing them. Its antennae move around. Staring at the amazing creature, the catatonic girl smiles and says, “Good morning, Painted Lady.”

Suddenly the butterfly lifts off the catatonic girl’s hand and flutters around the room. I didn’t realize it when it happened but now I notice the plump woman has stopped screaming. She’s staring at the butterfly, flitting around the room and her eyes, like she must be dreaming.

The catatonic girl waves her hand in front of my face, getting my attention. She gestures toward the door. I understand: open it.

Awkwardly, I get to my feet. I amble to the door. I open it and look back over my shoulder. The catatonic girl is going back to where she was before, physically and mentally. I watch her leave. The plump woman isn’t looking at the butterfly anymore. She’s seeing something in her mind: a question she knows she’ll never answer. I don’t know how I know I don’t need to look after the butterfly now but I do. It wings its way out of the Screaming Room before I can close the door.

Seeing it, Chi starts yelling at the top of her telepathic lungs. She stumbles away from it, in horror. It terrifies her.

“Kill it!” she yells. “Buck, for God’s sakes. This isn’t funny. You know I’m scared of butterflies.” She drops to her knees and crawls under the table. “Kill it, Buck! Kill it!”

I open the front door. The butterfly flits out into the orange streetlight dark. I watch it for as long as I can.

“All right. It’s gone. Thank heavens. Buck? Buck, what are you doing? Close the door! Close it! You’re going to let out the rats!”

Five minutes after I let out the butterfly, there’s a knock at the door. It’s a soft knock, a sacred, scared knock; fairy knuckles on a zombie’s door. She’s on one side; I’m on the other. Is she thinking and feeling about me the same way I’m feeling and thinking about her? Can fairies be as excited, confused, and scared as zombies?

“Who’s that?”

“It’s for me,” I say, stumbling away from Chi. I trip over a corpse and fall. Clumsily, I get back up. “I forgot to tell you. I’m going out.” I take off my jacket and throw it on the floor. “I have to go out. I’m sorry.”

“What do you mean? You’re going out? You can’t go out.” She staggers after me. “We need to talk.” Chi’s evening gown has become her: a thing of stiffness, rigidity, stains, and holes: pieces are missing but not missed; they’re just currently, quite possibly forever, unavailable; through no act of will, just happenstance of assembly, the material, or what’s left of it, remains whole but it doesn’t move in the air she stirs.

“No. You need to talk. And I don’t want to listen.” I jerk off my tie and whip it at the wall.

“Buck, I don’t like this. Who’s out there? What’s going on? You’re getting all dressed up. What are you doing?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing, Chi. Stop following me.” I yank open the door, step out, and slam it behind me. Then I pull on it, keeping it closed.

Behind me, Fairy_26 hovers a few feet off the ground. “What’s going on?” She’s wearing skimpy bedtime clothes—a backless white T-shirt and short tight pink boy-shorts—like the butterfly woke her, and she raced right over. “What are you doing?” She says the same things as my wife. She uses the same words. It sounds so different coming from Fairy_26. Will it always be like this? Or will I get sick of her voice like I’m sick of my wife’s?

“I don’t know,” I groan, still holding the door shut. “I don’t even know if I’m the one doing it. It might be the albinos in my head. Why am I even talking to you? The pill wore off. You can’t understand me.”

“I made another one,” says Fairy_26. Behind me, she paces in mid-air, flying back and forth, nervously. “It probably won’t last as long as the first one and the next one won’t last as long as this but I made another one. It’s interesting. The formula is a song that sounds great at first but, after a while, you wonder why you ever liked it. “Anyway. I figured I might as well make another pill. When I felt your butterfly, I took it. I probably should’ve waited until I was sure it was really important but I didn’t think you’d call unless it was really important so I took it. I’m talking a lot, aren’t I? I’m scared. I don’t know why I’m scared. Why are holding the door closed? Who’s pulling on the other side?”

“My wife.”

“Yikes.” Fairy_26 flies up right behind me, wraps her arms around me, and pulls me straight up into the night. Beneath us, I see the door to my house open. I see Chi step outside. She looks from side to side. She can’t find me. She gets smaller and smaller as Fairy_26 takes me higher and higher into the eerie orange night. At a certain point in the sky, in Fairy_26’s arms, my wife completely disappears.

Inside Fairy_26’s tree-branch apartment, I shuffle over to where the structure ends and the sky begins and I look out at Fairyland and all its colours. All the plants here glow soft mint green in the dark. The flowers have closed for the night but the lights are still on inside: red, white, and blue. Fireflies as big as busses drive down invisible streets in the air, carrying supernatural creature passengers on their legs like pollen; their taillights are bright enough to leave tracks on my sightless eyes.

Fairy_26 walks up beside me. She puts a hand on my back and the side of her head against my arm. I don’t need to look to see her eyes are closed. If time stopped right now and I could forget my wife and the albinos left me alone, I think I could be happy. That’s how ridiculous it is. How many impossible things would have to happen? What’s the use in counting? One is too many.

I pull away from Fairy_26. I amble over and flop down on her moss-cushioned sofa. I don’t need to see her looking at me. I can feel it. I don’t know how it makes me feel. How do I feel? Somebody, teach me. Please. I don’t know how to feel.

“What is it, Buck?” asks Fairy_26, lifting her right leg, bending it beneath her, and sitting on it, next to me, on the sofa. She starts pulling bits of garbage from my head.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I confess.

“You’re not doing anything,” she says, sprinkling something she’s taken from me onto the floor.

“Whose happiness is most important?” I ask, turning to her.

“Yours.” She says it like it’s a silly question. She says it like the answer is obvious. She says it staring at my lips.

“I don’t know.” I turn away from her. “I have responsibilities. Duties.”

“You’re a zombie,” she admits.

“I don’t want to want what I want but I can’t help it. I don’t want what I have but I have it.” I turn toward her again. “You know?”

She smiles sadly. She nods.

I turn away again. “I don’t even know how much of this is me.” I look at my undead arms: stretched out; reaching out. “I’m not in control of anything. I don’t know why it took albinos for me to realize it. I knew it before. I’m not in control of anything. I’m like one of those plants out there”—I gesture at the hole in the wall—“moving with the wind.”

“Those plants have roots,” she says, comfortingly.

“Yeah,” I agree. “But in what?”

To my right, Fairy_26 kneels, facing me, on the sofa. “Do you want to be with me?” she asks. “Because there are ways, Buck.”

I don’t know how it started. I think that’s the problem. I don’t know how it began. If I knew the initial conditions, maybe I could figure out where it’s headed, but I showed up in the middle, maybe nearer the end, and I can’t understand what’s happening; I don’t have the information.

“I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do,” she assures me. “And I don’t want you to do anything you’ll regret. I just want you to be happy.”

What would make me happy? I love my wife, don’t I? I don’t want to hurt her, do I? No matter how angry I get with her? No matter how badly she makes me feel? Is it all a memory now? When she could excite me the way Fairy_26 excites me? Is that all gone? If it is, why am I holding onto it? Right now I feel like I’m holding on to something that isn’t there anymore. I
say
I honour my commitments. I say I’m contractually obligated to remain faithful my wife until someone bashes out our brains but I
know
infidelity is common among married zombies; I
know
it’s typical zombie behaviour. But I don’t understand my desires and I’m sick of being mindless. I want there to be a good reason for this feeling. Do I honestly think Fairy_26 could make me happy? If so, for how long?

Is the
need
I
think
I
feel
for her just a chemical reaction to this situation? How involved are the albinos? Ninety percent? Are the albinos pushing me in a certain direction? Are they guiding me away from Chi? Are they leading me to Fairy_26?

“I don’t want to do anything the albinos want me to do,” I confess.

“What do the albinos want you to do?”

“I don’t know.”

Fairy_26 puts both hands on the sides of my face and turns me to face her. “If they’re in your head and they can make you
feel
whatever they want you to feel and they can make you
think
whatever they want to think, how can you
ever
know you’re not doing what the albinos want you to do?”

“I don’t know.”

Why do I keep going home? Why don’t I just leave? Why don’t I just pick a direction and go that way until I get somewhere? That’s just it. How can I pick a direction when I’m so aimless? And how will I ever know I’ve gotten somewhere? How long will it take to find out? What if I’m wrong? That’s why I go home. It’s easy. I don’t have to think about it. I just have to dread it.

“Buck Burger, where on God’s zombie-infested dystopia have you
been
? I’ve been standing here with my arms outstretched . . .”

It starts as soon as I open the door. It’s a barrage. An assault. Recriminations and accusations fill my brain. I only catch chewed off bits and bloody pieces. “ . . . and of all the miserable clean things you’ve ever done . . .”

Irritated, realizing I’m being mentally shelled from offshore and there’s nothing I can do, I throw my keys outside among the skeletons and partly consumed corpses on the front lawn.

“Oh, so
now
you throw your keys, huh?” she says, sarcastically.

She’s dressed for war, all in black: black high heels, black leggings, a knee-length, stretchy, black sweater dress. The blood on her dress is drying and pulling the knit in new directions; it bunches the fabric toward it; the material is a zombie, drawn to the wet, warm, sticky red. She almost looks good. Even though she’s dead and rotting; unfeeling and thoughtless. She almost looks good, covered in black and blood. Neither her dress nor her leggings have tears or holes; no openings through which I can see her. She’s so upset she’s letting herself go. Good. I like her when I can’t see her. I smash my briefcase against the wall. The briefcase bursts. In the air, papers shoot out like trapped butterflies escaping. The empty briefcase falls to the floor. The papers follow, slower, more gracefully. There’s a new hole in the wall.

“
Now
you smash your briefcase against the wall.” She says it in the same mocking tone.

I never liked the look of her body, of her skin, even when she was alive. I loved her and I was passionate about her and I’d undress her with an anger, a fury with her, for getting dressed, for keeping her skin from me, for slowing me down, even if it was only a matter of moments but then, after we had sex, I was always upset with myself for being overtaken by the living human animal in me, by giving in to it, by becoming it, and having my fill.

I was always disgusted by the act for which I’d been so hungry and thirsty only minutes earlier and although I never let it show—I was tender and kind—and I pretended I was still enchanted by her physical self and I held her and whispered love words afterwards because I thought it was what she wanted, I would’ve been happier if she’d just left and returned the next time I wanted her like that. I’d see her get up and walk to the bathroom naked and I’d wonder how I could ever desire that. When I wasn’t taking her or having her, I liked her better when she was dressed. When her body was left to my imagination, it was ideal. In my mind, she was someone she could never really be. How could I call it love when I felt this coldly about her body? That was it. It was just her body. Her body wasn’t what I loved. I had sex with her body and that’s what was so frustrating about it. She wasn’t, and no one could ever be, as wonderful in the flesh as she was in my mind. With so many plans, dreams, and exciting ideas, with a different take on everything, including everything about me, she was my best friend. The universe wasn’t enough for us to discuss. We had to invent new ones. Sometimes it seemed we only ever did things apart so we’d have something to dissect, analyze, and laugh about later. Now I just let her vent. She rants and rails. I haven’t even closed the door; I’ve just opened it, walked inside the entryway, and let her furious words splash over me like so much gushing life becoming death. I remember when I used to care, when I’d listen, when I’d say her name every time she paused. “Chi,” I’d say; “Chi, please.” Now I just let her go. She’s one of those dolls with a string that’s been pulled. You can try to reason with it but it’s just going to keep talking until it’s said everything it has to say. You might as well just wait. I walk into the non-living room. On the sofa, there’s an open-mouthed flesh-covered male head from which the brains have been eaten. Looks like Chi had a snack before I got home. Probably thought she needed her strength. I roll the head off onto the floor. I collapse on the spot where the brainless male head had been.

“Do you have anything you want to tell me?” she asks, glaring at me with her sightless white eyes.

I don’t say, “I have a lot of things I want to tell you.” I don’t say, “I have so many things I want to tell you I don’t know where to start so I don’t start anywhere.” Instead I say, calmly, “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so or you know you don’t?”

“Just get it over with, Chi, okay? I’m tired.”

“You’re tired?” Chi is incredulous. “You’re tired? Really? Me too. I got up early to make lunch for Francis Bacon. When he woke, I had a long talk with him about how you accidentally let out Constance, his cat, and now she’s missing. He’s going to have a great day at school, isn’t he? Get lots of learning done, I’m sure. Yeah, so, I told your unwanted son that you were really upset because it’s your stupid fault Constance is gone. I assured him the only reason you, his loving father, were unable to be here to help comfort him during this difficult time is because you’re out looking for Constance. In fact, you didn’t come home at all last night. You were so sorry for what you’d done, you spent all night searching.”

“Oh,” I say. “That.”

“Yeah. That.”

“I’m sorry, Chi. I’m going through some things.”

“Depression,” says Chi. “I wish I’d never made that doctor’s appointment for you. I wonder what sort of excuse you’d dream up for this if the doctor hadn’t given you an excuse.”

“I have a prescription,” I remind her.

“Are you taking your pills as prescribed?”

“No,” I admit. “But I got the prescription filled. I thought that was pretty good. I mean, I didn’t even feel like doing that.”

“Great, Buck. Congratulations. It sounds like you’re really on the road to recovery. No. Actually, it sounds like you
were
on the road to recovery but then you stopped and you got hit by a car.” In our minds, in disgust, she shakes her head. “A big car. Going very quickly.”

“Is that it?” Clumsily, I start trying to get up from the sofa.

“No, Buck. That’s not it.”

I fall back down into the sofa’s soft cushions. The cushions are covered by beige fabric covered with blood that’s dried red-brown and started to break into little flakes.

“What else?”

“Deepah called,” says Chi. “Barry says you got promoted. Did you get promoted, Buck?”

“Yes,” I admit. “But it’s not that bad.” I assure her. “Not all our friends will start treating us like pariahs.”

“Why’d you get promoted, Buck?” she whines.

“I don’t know. I didn’t want to get promoted.”

“You’re an executive, Buck! An executive!”

“I’m sorry, Chi. I never wanted this to happen. I thought I was keeping my head down.”

“Do you have stock options? Be honest with me! Do you have stock options?”

“Yes,” I sigh.

“What else?” she demands.

I don’t answer right away. I go through the list in my mind, picking a few things that don’t seem that bad. “A car and driver. Access to the company jet.” I pretend I’m still trying to remember. “I think that’s it.”

“A raise? Are you getting a raise, too?”

“Wait. No, yeah. They might have said something about a raise,” I admit, embarrassed.

“Buck Burger, don’t tell me you have an expense account!” she warns, pointing at me in our minds. “Don’t tell me you have an expense account now! Don’t do it!”

“I’m sorry!” I cry. “I’m sure it’ll be audited! I won’t be able to get away with much!”

“Did they tell you it was going to be audited?”

“Not directly.”

“I can’t believe this!” She turns, staggers away a few steps, and turns back. “You’re ruining our non-life! What are we going to do with all that money? Do you know how hard it’s been to keep this place even mildly squalid with the two incomes we already had?”

“We’ll find a way, Chi,” I reassure. “We’ll make it work.”

If she were alive, she’d be crying now. She’d be sobbing. As it is though, she just stares at me through disgusting white eyes. “What am I supposed to tell my friends, Buck? Huh? What am I supposed to tell my friends?”

“It’s not my fault!” I yell.

“Because you’re depressed?”

“Yeah! Because I’m depressed!” I gesture at my head, stiffly. “It’s neuro-chemical.” I think about the albinos in my mind and, still rigidly pointing at my brain, I insist, “There are forces at work beyond my control!”

“Can you do anything now, Buck? Can you do whatever you want? Do you live in a world free of consequences because you’re depressed?”

“I don’t know about free of consequences, Chi, but it’s pretty free of happiness, okay?”

“And I’m sure this argument isn’t helping anything. Right? I’m contributing to your unhappiness? Your depression?” Furious, Chi ambles off, into our bedroom.

Trying and failing to get up from the sofa, I call after her: “Look. I’m sure the other executives have this same problem. I’ll ask them about it, okay? And I know what you’re saying. You’re right. We probably won’t keep all the friends we already have because they won’t want to be around nicer broken things in more elegant blood-splattered, feces- and sick-covered rooms and they probably won’t want to eat glamorous people and that’s sad but maybe we’ll make new friends. Executive friends. They must socialize, right?”

“You’ll probably want me to buy a new dress,” Chi calls from the bedroom. “An expensive one.”

“You can tear it and stain it as soon as you get it just like you do with the new dresses you get now.” I can’t get up from this stupid sofa! My gnarled senseless grey hands sink deep into the foam cushions! My stiff legs won’t bend far enough for me to roll forward up onto them!

After a long pause from Chi, she says, “You think I
ever
buy new dresses?”

Now I pause for a while. “Don’t you?”

“Of course not! God, Buck! I take them from the women I kill and eat in the street!”

“I’m sorry! Okay? I just assumed!”

“Sometimes it feels we don’t know each other at all!”

I don’t say, “I wish I knew the feeling.” Instead I say, “I’m sorry, Chi! Jeez! I wasn’t implying anything!”

She stumbles out of the bedroom, carrying a suitcase full of soiled clothes and fresh human body-parts. “I’m going to stay with Deepah and Barry.”

“That’s right,” I say, fighting to stand up, for, I don’t know, something I don’t understand, myself. “Run off to your boyfriend, Barry.”

“He’s not my boyfriend, Buck,” she snorts. “He’s my best friend’s husband. Nothing has, or will, ever happen between Barry and me.”

“What about Francis Bacon?” I ask, stopping my struggle. “Huh? What about your son?”

“He should be home from school soon,” she says, stomping on, cracking, and breaking bones on her way to the front door. Reaching the front door, she opens it. “Tell him I’m at Deepah and Barry’s, if he needs me.” Before she leaves, she turns and looks at me. “If he needs you, tell him you’re depressed!” She slams the door behind her.