Love, Lust, and Zombies Read online

  “Jeff, welcome to the show.” Chuck glided over the problem like a true patriot.

  “Um—”

  “The rules are simple, Jeff. Behind this curtain are three lovely prizes, but you only get to choose one. Will it be A, our Brilliant Blonde from Bombay; B, a Budding Brunette from Belfast; or C, the Bad-Assed Auburn from Blackpool!”

  “I—”

  “Each round we’ll reveal one thing about our prizes and you’ll reveal something about yourself until, after three rounds, we hit the sucker-punch, and you give us your verdict, and explain why.

  “And remember, you at home can text, email or phone in to vote who you would pick! One lucky contributor might win this grand prize!”

  The lights bathed center left of the studio as a shiny scarlet Ferrari spun around on an elevated platform, shrouded in dry ice and disco-ball spotlight. I clacked my tongue off my dry mouth, licking my lips in vain. I forced my eyebrows down from their nesting ground somewhere mid-scalp and told myself to stay cool. I grabbed one hand with the other, then clutched my quivering leg, mentally trying to force the shakes away.

  The host seemed to like doing the talking so, as long as I stayed with him, I figured I’d survive. The host rambled on about the car for a bit and asked me a few basics about myself. I answered like a robot, firing off the usuals with barely any mental thought. Name? Jeffrey Feuk. Age? Twenty-seven and counting. Occupation? TBC. Why are you here, Jeff? Good Question.

  “Stay tuned for this commercial break!” Chuck said, and my brain turned back on.

  The lights dimmed and I felt the room dip four or five degrees. A lackey rushed over with a glass of water and I reached out to take it, but Chuck slapped my hand away. “Does that glass have your name on it, kiddo?”

  “Uh—”

  “No. No, it doesn’t, so don’t touch it, you sick pervert.”

  “Wha—”

  “Fucking zombie freaks,” he muttered as he walked away from me.

  I was stunned for about two milliseconds, then realized how apt it was, how fitting, that the host of a zombie love game would hate zombie-lovers. I huffed, hacked and spat a globule of mucus onto the floor, hoping he’d step in it. I waved off another lackey as she tried to dab my face in powder. I crossed, then uncrossed my arms, my legs. I let my limbs hang loose then brought them back to heel. It’s amazing how nerve-wracking it is to try and get comfortable when a camera is watching you.

  “Lights up in five, four, three—”

  “Welcome back. Tonight’s show sees Jeff paired up with three hotties, but which one will he choose? Let’s find out a little more about our cats and kittens. The first question: where do you see yourself in five years’ time? Jeff?”

  “Um, I guess I’ll be here, in this city, I mean. Doing pretty much what I’m doing now.”

  “A real settler, ladies. Nothing says marriage-worthy like a man with a plan.”

  I was still trying to figure out what he meant when he roared “A!” as though I’d just passed quantum physics. He spun to face the curtain, shouting out to the things behind: “Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?”

  A pause ensued before text on a cinema-sized screen behind me began to scribble. I tilted my head around, watching as the scrawl marked its way across.

  A: Well, Chuk, i would luv to work for Paws and Jaws as Im a hughe doggie fan, if Jeff piks me he can style my doggie all night long.

  The audience woo-ed as a neon sign flashed WOO and my eyebrows successfully found their way atop my head again.

  “Strong words, A. What do you think, Jeff?”

  “Uh, the spelling is atrocious…” I said as a metaphorical tumbleweed passed by.

  “But the meaning is crystal clear!” Chuck said without a pause. “Next up is B, B, Be my baby. Where will you be in five years’ time?”

  B: Well, I’m a really laid back kind of person and I try not to plan ahead too much. I like to live in the moment. All you’ll have to do with me is think about tonight!

  Another artificial woo rose from the audience as Chuck let out a big smile. “Well, well! What do you say to that, Jeff?”

  “She didn’t even answer the question!”

  “Who needs answers when you have that, Jeffy?”

  “Don’t call me Jeffy.”

  “Finally, prize C, what can we see?”

  C: Jeff, pick me and we can live out our days together, forever. One year, five years, twenty years; as long as you want me.

  The final woo arrived on time, perfectly synchronized with my rolling eyes.

  “Yikes, bit quick for that, yeah?” I said, jumping the gun on Chuck who was momentarily distracted, wiping snot from his shoe.

  “Tough love from our hard-to-please Fweker,” Chuck said through gnashed teeth. “Stay tuned for round two, and keep those votes coming in!”

  The lights dimmed again and Chuck rounded on me.

  “Try to be a little more professional, kid.” He stormed off just as his lackey stormed on, casting his head around to see his boss/master.

  “Any chance of a donut?” I asked, but it seemed too much to compute for the poor intern as he merely inhaled sharply and ran off again.

  I sniggered and realized that, for all my qualms and worries, I was starting to enjoy myself. Not because the show was good, but rather because it was so bad. I was beginning to see why people watched this crap, but I reminded myself I had two rounds left to go and I was still in the running to date a limbless zombie man-whore.

  “And live in five, four, three—”

  “Welcome, welcome, welcome. The polls are up and down, the votes are piling in, but who will ultimately win a date with Jeff? Why don’t we find out a little more about our contestant tonight?

  “Jeff,” he said, spinning to face me. “We talked a little bit about work, but what is it you actually do for a living?”

  “Well, on weekends I like to sit around playing games and on weekdays I do the same.”

  “So you don’t work?”

  “Maintaining my kill-death ratio is pretty hard work.”

  “But you don’t earn any money?”

  “I earn…respect…”

  “From?”

  “Fellow…teammates? Look, I don’t really go in for the whole work thing anymore.”

  “Oh really, why?”

  “An aunt died a few years back. Actually she returned with the Rising, but of course by then the money was mine and… yeah, I sorta have enough to live on.”

  “A wealthy man, ladies and gents; we all love to have a bit of cash to splash. What about our prizes, let’s find out what they do. A?”

  A: I’m teh no-holes-barred type who’ll do anythin, Chuk.

  “Ho, ho!” said Chuck from the bottom of his empty soul. “B?”

  B: I do everything. Over and over and over.

  “Work it! And C?”

  C: I used to just work part-time, but together, all I’d want to do is work at making you happy.

  “Some great professions there, but what does our contestant think?”

  “Well,” I said, pausing to think straight in a topsy-turvy world. “A sounds like she’s either grossly misunderstood the meaning of her words or is an absolute bimbo. I guess she, and it must be a she, can’t be a zombie ’cos they ate brains for a while and this one clearly has none!”

  The audience laughed, genuinely this time, as I started to warm up.

  “B makes it seem like she or he is a prostitute, and I’m starting to think it’s a he… And C, well, C seems a bit needy. First we’re together forever, now you’re working to make me happy? Thanks, but I already have an ego-stroker, and he goes by the name of Brian, my best friend!” I winked to Brian offstage as the audience guffawed.

  “Wise words from our in-house psychologist!” Chuck said, feeding off my good vibes. “Why don’t we see where the votes are at?”

  The screen’s text was replaced by three bars: one red for A, one blue for B and one yellow for C. The bars ran
up and down the screen while some technobabble occurred before they leveled off with A coming in slightly ahead of the others.

  “No holes barred, no votes lost! A is in the lead with a slight majority, but it’s anyone’s game right now as we enter the final round. Don’t go away!”

  The lights dimmed once more and Chuck walked off without a word, which was a vast improvement. Brian rushed over to me to pat me on the back and gave me a rigid thumbs-up before being bullied offstage again by three macho-men and a zombie with two heads.

  The shaky intern came around with a box of donuts but saw Chuck coming back and darted off as I reached out, grabbing air.

  “Five, four, three—”

  “Tonight on ‘So You Want To Date a Zombie?’ our stud Jeff lines his pockets while he mulls over our three prizes, but which will he choose? The needy number threesy? The ‘I’ll do you’ two, whose passions include fucking and sex? Or audience favorite numero unero, the lots of fun number one? Find out in our final round!

  “Jeff, the question on everyone’s lips is: what would be your ideal date?”

  I paused to wonder whose lips this question was on and why they were asking it before I thought of three hundred and twenty eight days previously. I felt the weight of the audience watching me. The show was funny, granted, but out of nowhere I was deadly serious. Just thinking back made me sad, made me want to turn off the cameras and the lights and go home, crawl under my duvet and cry into my pillow.

  But I wasn’t home. I was on TV, on a game show where I might get the chance to be with someone superficial for a few hours. So I mustered the courage and, for the first time in the history of the show, I acted like a real person.

  “My perfect date, Chuck? My perfect date is a really simple one. It starts with jam and toast, a cup of coffee and my morning paper. We do the crossword together and she dances to the radio. Later we have a long shower and spend way too long getting dressed before going for a walk by the river. She picks buttercups and checks if I like butter, and then I…I…”

  I began to choke up, thinking of it. The audience was dead silent, not least because half of them were actually technically dead. Chuck put a clammy hand on my shoulder and, in his best funeral voice said, “A beautiful, simplistic date. One befitting the most…complex, of individuals. What do you have to say in return? Why don’t we go with audience fave A first.”

  A: That’s soooo sweat Jeff, I nearly cryed. But I don’t have any eyes left, so I can’t. All i can say is the perfect date fr me would be to see you happy. Xxx

  B: Jeff, my perfect date would be to make you forget about all those sad thoughts and force you to be the happiest guy on earth!

  C: Jeff… And you’d pick Daisies and tell me you love me, and this time I won’t fall in the river and drown. I promise.

  A gasp came from the audience. The neon lights flickered to SHOCK. Chuck’s mouth dropped and my eyebrows hit the stratosphere. There was no way. Literally no way.

  But of course, it had to happen like this and suddenly I realized how much of a fool I was. The zombies, they all came back to life. Anyone who died in the last five years whose body was able enough to exist came back. That means dead enemies, dead friends, dead aunts and, yes, dead girlfriends.

  So there I was, sitting on a small blue stool with a million crying eyes watching me as my ex came back from the dead. I felt hot tears stream down, the salty tinge as they struck my tongue. I literally sobbed as she stepped forward and then I realized why I had never thought of her, why I never looked for her. Why after a year I hadn’t thought to go after her: because she’s a mother-fucking zombie.

  My Zombie and I

  First class flights with champagne, five-star hotel for four nights at a ski lodge, complimentary breakfast, lunch and dinner, free bar tab, hampers and our very own chauffeur to hang on our every need. The company paid for it all. They said the ratings were at an all-time high thanks to us: the magical, interspecies, love-never-dies couple. There was talk of a movie coming out: he loses everything, she brings it all back from the dead.

  I probably won’t go and see it.

  Everyone had been calling and texting and emailing, congratulating us on finally finding each other again. People cried. It’s always pretty awkward watching other people cry when all you want to do is shrug your shoulders and walk away.

  Of course, it wasn’t like that to start.

  When she stepped out from behind that curtain, I ran for her. I was blinded by the euphoria, the adrenaline, the rush of love coming back from a dark place. It seemed perfect, the girl I’d pined for for a year ending up on the game show I was participating in. Perfect. Like two tangential lines that take a wrong turn and find each other, forming a perfect circle. Narrative gold.

  But I instantly knew something was wrong. Something had changed. She was still my girl, still my Daisy, but now…she was Daisy the Zombie.

  The first revelation was the skin tone. Where before she had been milk-bottle white in winter and lightly tanned in summer, now she was a sort of off-blue. I wondered what that would look like after a few hours on a beach without the lotion. The second was the smell. We embraced aptly, and she clung to me, crying into my shoulder, saying my name over and over. I gagged and tried to push her away, but she’d lost me once and wasn’t letting go again. Then came the third revelation. Her once-slim body had bloated out and her speech made a gurgling sound every now and then. As I tried to push her away I struggled to find a bit of flesh that wouldn’t move around every time my hand pressed into it. Of course, drowning is a hard way to die. The water would have filled her; the fish would have nipped at her; the weeds would have tangled her. Slowly, ever so slowly, her body became what it was. And then she arose.

  In the middle of all the celebration, as my heart tore itself between ecstasy and revulsion, I felt a new and peculiar feeling, one I had never associated with Daisy before: pity. Her hair had fallen out so she wore this unsightly wig, this vivid red thing that perched on top where her blonde locks had been. Her clothes were baggy and sopping; she was still getting water pumped out of her. Her teeth were yellow; some had fallen out. She was deformed; I was ashamed, and yet there we were in the middle of a stage, confetti floating around us, hands clapping, people whooping. Brian was actually crying backstage. I saw a stagehand shush him and Brian punch back.

  Every ounce of my being wanted to walk away. To run away. To sprint a marathon away. She kissed me smack on the lips and I swear I tasted seaweed. The host announced our big prize trip for two and I scraped a smile onto my face. Somewhere in the back of my mind as all these revelations about the girl I’d once loved came to the fore, something else kept repeating: she’s still Daisy.

  “So, what was it like?” I asked over dinner on our third night together.

  “The steak?”

  “No, not the steak…”

  “The veg?”

  “No…”

  “The…?”

  “The…you know…the…”

  “Spit it out, Jeff.”

  “Oh, come on, don’t make me say it.”

  “You’re the one who wants to know.”

  “Yeah, but don’t make me say it.”

  “Coward.”

  “Bitch.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I’d love to, but I hear you can get done for fucking corpses in this state.”

  “Oh, go to hell.”

  “Is it nice there?”

  Yep, same old Daisy. Same old shit. I’d missed her so long I’d forgotten how much of a bitch she could be. Three nights sleeping as far away as one can from someone else on the other side of a bed. Three nights watching the girl I’d fantasized all year about devour up a dog, paws and all. Three nights of tense, awkward, skirting-around-the-edges conversations and I’d had enough.

  The fourth night was our last paid night away. The ski resort was nice, though Daisy said she wasn’t up for the hot tub as she had developed a strange fear of water. I sunk myself into
the steamy bubbles and prepared myself.

  I needed to confront the facts: I simply wasn’t prepared to go quite that far for love. After all, she was a zombie, an undead, a living nightmare.

  Then again it had been a year.… A year of joyless, sexlessness. Three hundred and sixty-five long nights with my five-fingered amigo and Google’s incognito mode. Heck, I’d even watched some zombie-human porn; it was the fastest growing niche in online porn.

  The door to our cabin loomed. I stood outside freezing my nuts off, wondering if I was able to do it. My hand raised itself and knocked.

  “Come in.”

  I entered, stepping gingerly on the cloud-nine carpet and feeling the fluff itch between my toes. She was standing by the mirror, her back turned to me, brushing her garish wig.

  “How was the hot tub?”

  “Fine.”

  I inched closer, every step seeming harder to take. My feet cemented to the floor, like they didn’t want to move on. “Did you go down the slope?”

  “No…”

  Online, there’s a trick called the Widower. The man fucks a zombie girl till she’s about to fall apart, then she snaps back and munches on his brain. It’s pretty gruesome stuff and has only been done once. I wonder though, if, after getting it on with a zombie, that wouldn’t be better?

  I reached out a hand, mere inches away. My fingers trembled and the towel I wore after the sauna slipped away, falling deftly to the floor. I tried to swallow, but my throat was like an ashtray.

  “You should have. I went down earlier and it was great. So fast, I think I lost some ear though.”

  I gently touched her shoulder with the tips of my fingers, rubbing the rough skin that had once been so smooth. I held my hand there, my grip firm, and turned her around to face me. She paused and stared, one eyebrow raised questioningly. I stepped closer, pressing myself to her. It had been so long since I’d felt the touch of another body on my own. Even one so hideous, so meticulously messed up. But then there was something beautiful about the state of decay. I began to think of her like a piece of art, something Tim Burton-esque. I stared into her yellowed, bloodshot eyes, ran a hand over the edge of her jaw, feeling the blood clots under the skin. She raised her hands to my flesh, touching me.