She Loves Me For My Brains

A Valentine's Day gift for Martin -- a short story I wrote about zombies . . .

She Loves Me for My Brains

For Martin

“Use your head; cut off theirs.”

~ Max Brooks, The Zombie Survival Guide

            When my girlfriend first became a zombie, I didn’t mind it.  In fact, I kinda liked it.  Jenn taught the first grade at an urban school for Metro Nashville, so I didn’t think anything about it when she came home complaining that one of the little bastards had bitten her.  It wasn’t surprising.  Some kid was always arguing with her, or puking on her, or pissing his pants. But after a day or so, the wound became discolored and bleedy and pretty fucking disgusting.  Being as frugal as she was, though, she didn’t think she needed to see a doctor.

            “Don’t you think you need a rabies shot or something, babe?”

            “I think I would’ve noticed if the kid was foaming at the mouth, James.”

            “It looks gross.  Maybe a tetanus shot, at least?”

            “Thank you.  That eases my mind so much,” she said, and stormed off to the kitchen before calling back to me.  “And you only need a tetanus shot every decade, dumbass!”

Jenn started to change, but it wasn’t the overnight, immediate change you see in the movies.  It was weeks before my girl seemed to be suffering from a serious case of waking deadness. 

            Everything was cool on the front end.  The nagging kindergarten teacher in her went away.  I drank. I went out. I watched the game and the highlights.  She never complained once about my lack of responsibility, the bad influence my friends had on me, or the hours of NBA we watched.   Jenn was pretty apathetic all around, and spent half the time staring through the TV rather than at it.  She wanted to go out more, drank beer, and ate barely-cooked, monster-sized hamburgers – even though she’d debated about going vegan.  My girlfriend gawked at other women, less discreetly than I did, and it took me awhile to realize that she, too, was measuring them up.  While I was committing those measurements to memory for later, Jenn was sizing up her future meal on a whole other level. 

            I made a mistake before it all dawned on me that my girlfriend was a zombie.  I have to confess, she slept like the dead before she was dead, and I’d taken advantage of that in the past.  She got what she wanted (sleep) and I got what I wanted (not sleep), and it worked for us. One Sunday night was no different, but Monday I finally got a clue.  It was dollar draft night at Hooter’s and Jenn lunged, gnashed and flailed as if the server was wheeling an all-you-can-eat chicken buffet through a fat camp.  That night, I snatched Jenn up, threw her in the truck my car and worried the whole way home about three things:

1.     If the cops pulled me over and found her in the truck, I’d go to jail for kidnapping/assault or for murder when my girlfriend ate the boys in blue.

2.     If  I told anyone what I suspected, I’d be in a straightjacket before I could say ‘zombie’ and

3.     I was going to Google the rules about zombies and zombie sex as soon as I got home and locked her in the bedroom closet.

Unfortunately, there’s no guidebook or precedent about sex with zombies.  It bothered me a little.  I didn’t know she was a zombie at the time, so was I off the hook?  Was she truly dead, or did being undead change the rules?  Like sex with the vampires in that movie where the gay British vampire glitters . . . Or was it considered necrophilia, like I’d dug up someone’s body?

It took me awhile to figure out how to get rid of her, too.  Sure, she was a pain in the ass sometimes, even most of the time, but I still loved her.  I didn’t know if zombies felt pain, if she was coherent at all (maybe like a coma patient) or if she could be cured or reasoned with.  I debated on how to kill her and how to dispose of her body so that her death wouldn’t come back on me.  Knowing my luck, someone would find her rotting corpse – or the dog would dig her up – and there’d be no way for me to explain why Jenn was pushing up daises in our backyard.  People would ask where she’d gone, and they’d know she was too practical to kill herself or run off without telling someone her detailed, OCD plan.

More than anything, I feared she was like some kind of rotting Terminator, unstoppable, unflinching and cruel to a fault.  I worried I’d wake up one morning, see that she’d eaten the dog’s stomach out, and turn to run just to find myself face-to-face with the deadliest bitch on the planet.  I had nightmares all week, imagining her blocking the front door, drooling and decrepit.  Our now-zombie dog growling at her fleshless feet.  Jenn’s sweet school teacher voice morphed into some kind of raspy, Freddy Krueger-like sound.  That she’d say something trite straight from a scary movie script like, “I don’t love you for your body, James.  I love you for your brains.”  And then, she’d lunge at me and everything would fade to black. 

I guess what I’m asking is for your help.  Jenny’s still in the trunk of my car, thrashing. 

You might hear her screaming now.  In her current state, she’s gotten much better at feigning interest and crafting a lie.  She likes to pretend that she’s not what she is.  She’ll claim that she’s afraid in there, alone in the dark.  I know what she’ll tell you. She’s not a zombie.  But I know what she is.  I know what I have to do.

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