Chapter 1 Chapter 2
Her
name was Lilly Belle, and she was about as beautiful a woman as I have ever
seen. She had tar black hair running
down the middle of her back and she had these big bushy eyebrows like Brooke
Shields. She had a mole above her lip
that reminded me of Marilyn Monroe. I
ran into her in at The Brass Monkey after about twenty bottles of Dixie
beer. “Hey there, Honey,” I said in my
suave voice. “They call me the Love
Zombie.”
She
looked at me like I’d just asked her to French kiss a porcupine. “Does that line ever work?”
“It
works on the kind of girls who will sleep with a guy like me.”
“Those
aren’t ladies.”
She
had a point. As I was quickly finding
out, it wasn’t like it was in the old days when all you had to do was walk into
a bar, scan the room a bit until something pretty looked your way. Ever since I died things have become a little
more complicated. It ain’t like the
stories you read in books or see on TV or in the movies.
Take
all those vampire stories for instance.
In Fantasy Land, being dead appears exotic. All these chickadees wetting their panties
over these pale dead monsters. The real
world is nothing like that. Pale guys
have nothing on a man with a tan. Pale
means you don’t get out much. It
suggests anemia, and anemia is not a turn-on.
I can’t emphasize that enough.
And I can’t tell you how many women walk away from me in bars once they
notice my skin color is not a result of poor lighting.
And
that’s nothing compared to when they find out I don’t have a heartbeat. You can forget it. In vampire stories, sleeping with some sexy
dead dude seems exotic. In the real
world, there’s a thing called
necrophilia--vampire novelists should look it up.
Here’s
what a vampire personals ad would look like in the real: Single paranormal,
cold and stiff seeks sexy necrophiliac to keep me warm at night. Must be OK with cannibalism.
Now,
how many women do you think that would attract?
Well,
maybe a few. There’s always a few who
are into the weird stuff. Just like
there are always a few who are into a guy like me. I tell you though, it takes a special kind of
lady to hook up with a zombie.
Lilly
Belle was not that kind of lady. She
left me at the bar, sucking on an empty beer bottle. I would have ordered another but I was tapped
out, so I threw a handful of peanuts into my mouth, and swiveled around to
check out what was left of the scenery.
To tell you the truth, there wasn’t all that much to look at. It was getting near closing time, and most of
the patrons had skedaddled. Earnestine
and Willy had gone home a good fifteen beers earlier. I saw a few good-lookin’ ladies mingling
about, but they was all paired up with dudes.
Then I looked down at one of the tables near the bandstand--the band was
long gone, and that area was all dark and deserted except for this one lone
figure dressed in black. She had curly
blonde hair and she had her head down on the table like she was asleep. I took one last sip off my bottle, and found
one last swallow of foam, before I slipped off my bar stool and headed in for
the kill.
“What’s
the matter pretty lady? Your boyfriend
leave you all alone?”
She
looked up at me with these big sad eyes, like at first she couldn’t see me, but
then her expression changed--like a flicker of curiosity passed through her
mind--and she lifted her head off the table.
“Who are you?”
I
thought about calling myself the Love Zombie again, but my previous results had
been less than satisfactory, and I didn’t know if this chick knew Lilly Belle,
and I couldn’t stand the thought of those two birds yapping about my cheesy line,
so I just told her my name was Bo.
“Hey
Bo, you wanna buy me a beer?”
I
was just trying to piece together how I was going to either a) buy this little
girl a brewskie with approximately twenty cents in my pocket or b) convince her
that she didn’t really want a beer when the lights came on and the bartender
cried out, “OK folks, you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
“I
didn’t even hear last call,” she said.
“What’s
your name?” I asked, but damned if I can remember what she said. She gave me a smile. As we shuffled toward the door, I regaled her
with the tale of my recent demise and resurrection. Long story short, we took a little walk out
into the parking lot, and that’s when I remembered I didn’t have a ride back to
Skwerly’s shack. Earnestine and Willy
had gone home in the pickup but I had been certain in my abilities to find a
nice girl to drive me home.
Unfortunately, she never had the chance.
As
we were going out, Skwerly was going in, or at least trying to, he was in the
midst of arguing with the bouncer.
“What
choo mean, you close at two a.m.?” He asked the hulk standing before him. He looked at his watch, a big homemade piece
a junk that looked like it came out of a 50s sci-fi movie. “It ain’t but one fifty nine!”
No
doubt Skwerly would have argued for the remainder of that minute had he not
spotted me trying to sneak by.
“Hey,
who dat over dere? Is dat my
zombie?” He forgot about the bouncer and
wandered over.
“Hey
Skwerly.”
“Who
dis pretty lady?”
As
I had forgotten the girl’s name, an awkward silence followed. The girl swayed and smiled. I said, “This here’s Skwerly,” and she said
hey.
All
the while, Skwerly’s just staring at her like a Doberman stares at a piece of steak. “You show is pretty,” he said, which was,
like I said previously, a bit of a stretch.
“Where ya’ll going?”
The
girl looked at me, and as I had no good answer at the ready, I just shrugged.
“I
know where ya’ll going. Ya’ll going home
wit me.”
That’s
how we ended up riding home in Skwerly’s Dodge Dart. There was a great big old hole in the
dashboard where the radio was supposed to be, Skwerly having taken it out for
one of his science projects, but that didn’t stop him from swaying back and
forth and singing at the top of his lungs, “Oh, girls jus wanna have
fu-un. Yeah girls just wanna have fun.”
We
was all three crammed into the front seat, with the girl in the middle, and I
could tell by the way he turned and sang to her, that he was putting on his
best moves, like he was serenading her or somethin’. He nuzzled his face into her neck, and I had
to reach over and grab the wheel to keep us from steering into a ditch. I knew I’d have to find a way to shake him
loose.
Well
we get back to the shack and Skwerly puts on a CD and as the Bangles start to
sing, he goes to pop open a box of wine.
I take the opportunity to slow dance with the girl to “Walk Like an
Egyptian.”
She’s
putting her body up against mine and grinding her pelvis into my dick bone, and
I start to think maybe this girl’s into me after all, but then here comes Skwerly
carrying the box and three coffee mugs full of pink wine.
“Woo-eee,
look at dem love birds,” Skwerly says, only coming out of Skwerly’s mouth the
last word sounds like boyds. “Look at
dem love boyds. Lemme get some of dat
action.” And the girl turns and looks at
him in a way that causes me some concern, like maybe she’s into it.
Skwerly
dances his way into our huddle and passes off the wine mugs only I have to
reach off to the side for mine, while he moves in real close to the girl with
hers, and whispers something into her ear, and all of a sudden they’re the ones
slow dancing and I’m a third wheel, the odd man out. The girl giggles at whatever it is Skwerly
said, kind of a fake shocked kind of laugh, like he said something bawdy that
she hadn’t heard and done a thousand times before, but then again maybe she
can’t understand him. I know I can’t
understand him half the time, and sometimes I laugh to try and cover up my
ignorance.
I
stand there for a second, sippin’ on cheap wine and staring at Skwerly,
wondering how in the hell I’m gonna ditch this cock blockin’ sum bitch poaching
my tail. I abide by the age-old adage
of finders keepers. I drained my mug and
danced in on the girl, trying to ease old Skwerly out. Damned if doesn’t move to her backside and
grind her ass like she’s the meat in our sandwich.
The
girl is starting to register the effects of the wine, and I’m a little worried
she’ll pass the point of no return. I
may be a scumbag, but I don’t abide screwing a drunk girl (not too drunk a girl
anyways), and I ain’t gonna let Skwerly do it neither.
“Say
there Skwerly. It looks like the lady
needs a refill,” if only to buy myself some time. When he takes her cup I say, “Oh, and I need
one too.”
“Well
shit,” says Skwerly, like I’m the one bustin’ in on his groove and not the
other way around. “Da Wine is right deh.”
He pointed to the box on the table, but I play it cool.
I
get up close to his ear and say, “We can’t serve this honey Boone’s Farm, Skwerly.”
“Why
not? I likes it.”
The
girl’s not listening to any of this; by this time, she’s just swayin’ to Bananarama.
“I
hid a bottle of vodka in the back of the freezer. Why don’t you mix up a batch with some cherry
Kool-Aid."
At
this, the life returns to the girl’s eyes, and even though I can tell by his
squint that Skwerly don’t trust a word I’m sayin’, the girl only has to repeat
the word, “vodka,” and his expression changes.
“You
want some dem tater spirits, Baby?”
The
girl just looks at him all blank-like, but all the while she’s swayin’ to the
music, she starts hiking her skirt up above her thighs.
Well,
Skwerly’s eyes bug out of his head, and I
must admit my eyebrows are climbing up my forehead.
“Look
at dem, Boy,” Skwerly says, slapping me across the chest. Then to the girl, he says, “Show us yo
poo-nanny,” and damned if she doesn’t lift that skirt up to her waist.
“She
ain’t got on no pannies!” Skwerly cries out, wild as a loon. Sure enough, she’s showing us a rough little
patch of Velcro, and you don’t even have to squint to see the vertical
sliver--the entryway to the magic kingdom.
Well,
Skwerly reaches out his hand for a stroke, but I slap it down. He looks at me like I just punched his
favorite dog.
“First
the vodka,” I say, and for once the girl backs me up. She’s still wearing a big smile on her face,
but she lowers her skirt to hide her glory, and waves a no-no finger at
him. “Vodka,” she says again.
Skwerly
starts nodding his head like a jackhammer, and he has a big dumb grin plastered
across his face, and he tells her he’ll be right back.
Now,
I know right then I have to act fast, lest by date for the evening ends up on
the floor getting plowed by a deranged redneck, so I grab her by the waist with
one hand and pull her up to my chest, and with the other hand I work up the
backside of her skirt. I say, “You and
me need to get out of here."
She
shows me a little twinkle in her eyes.
“You don’t want to share me, Baby?”
I
think about this for a second. It’s true
I have no desire to have Skwerly’s penis in my immediate vicinity, or to put my
own appendage into close proximity with his, but at the same time I notice in
her face a slight resemblance to a certain barnyard animal, a lengthening of
the jaw reminiscent of a horse, or perhaps a sheep, and for one brief instant I
am not sure if my heart is all into the night’s entertainment, but then again,
she is here, and she is waiting for an answer.
“That’s
right, Darlin’,” I say, and I take her hand and drag her out the back door, but
not before I scoop the keys to Skwerly’s Dodge of the coffee spool.
She
walks limp through the flood lights protruding from the back yard, and I can
tell the girl don’t really care where she goes.
It’s a warm night, not too hot, and less humid than usual. No sooner than we hit the darkness of the tree
line, I hear Skwerly calling out for us on the other side of the house. As I suspected, he noticed his keys missing,
and goes out the front to stop us from stealing his car, while unbeknownst to
him, we are snaking our way down a grown-over trail, heading down to another
property I know that’s not far away. As
we venture out into the woods, with only a half-eaten path and the moon to
guide us, I can still make out Skwerly yelling, “Hey Where’d ya’ll go? I want me some poo-nanny!” At this, the girl
and I both laugh.
There’s
this little tree stand I know of that will mark the perfect end to this the
first day of my Zombie Life. I tell the
girl my friend Charlie and I used to come to this spot to poach deer. Technically, it’s Charlie’s granddaddy’s
land, but he sold the hunting rights, so technically Charlie has to ask permission from a stranger to hunt
on his own land. “Fuck that noise,” he
always said, and these are the words ringing through my head as we climb up into
that tree, and as I lay the girl down on an old blanket stored for just such an
occasion. I strip off the girl’s blouse
and look down at her pale naked titties, hanging loose in the moonlight. I know what Skwerly would say. “You ain’t wearing no bra!” I say in my fake
Skwerly accent, and the girl giggles, causin’ her titties to bounce side to
side.
I
won’t tell you the rest of what happened.
I may be a zombie, but I am also a gentleman.
Later
that morning, I woke up and the girl was gone.
When I got back to the shack, I found out that Skwerly’s car was gone
too. I thought maybe Skwerly had done got
some action after all, and then maybe took her home, until I went inside and found
him sitting in his ripped-up recliner, Red-eyed and drunk as piss.
“Hey
there, Skwerly. What’s shakin’?”
“What’s
shakin’? What’s shakin’? You an ashhole, that’s what’s shakin’?”
“How’s
that, Skwerly?”
“You
took away the skank!”
I
wondered if he knew about his car being stolen.
“Oh yeah. Sorry about that
Skwerly. She had to go meet up with her
sister.”
Skwerly’s
eyes narrowed down to slits. I could tell he wassn’t buy
what I was selling.
“You
know sumpin’ deh zombie boy? You gonna
need another dose of Formula real soon!”
“How’s
that, Skwerly?” I was still new to life
among the undead. Until then I didn’t
know about the Formula; all I knew was that I had once been dead, but now I was alive,
and I saw reason to question how or why.
“What are you gettin’ at?” I asked in an annoyed voice.
“What
I’s gettin’ at is you need my Formula to stay alive.”
Now
it started to dawn on me that I was at the mercy of a crazy sum bitch, and I
had just given that sum bitch all the reason in the world to hate my guts 'til his dying day.
“You
know that Formula, it ain’t cheap,” Skwerly said, matter of fact.
“It
ain’t?”
“No
suh. It ain’t.”
I
had no idea of whether or not he was telling the truth or not, but I made a vow
to myself right then and there to find out more about it. “How much does it cost?”
“It
gonna cost you two hundred dollah!”
“Two
hundred?” I let out a whistle. “I ain’t
got that kinda money.”
“Well
you better got it, else you gonna die all over again, and this time I ain’t
gonna be so nice to bring you back.”
“Well
shit,” I said, “How much time do I have?”
“You
pay me on Fridays.”
“Days?”
I asked. It was Tuesday.
“Every
Friday. Two hundred dollahs,” Skwerly
said, “or you is gone to the sweet hereafter.”
“That’s
kind of steep, ain’t it?”
“You
don’t like it, take yo’ self to the hospital.
See what they charge you."
“Do
they have the Formula?”
Skwerly
let out screeching cackle. “Hell no, day
ain’t got no Formula. Day ain’t gonna
save ya. They’s gonna charge you about
six thousand dollah to tell you you is already dead.” He cackled again.
It
was kind of hard to argue with his logic.
“Well
shit,” I said again. It was all I could
think of to say.
