Everbody wants to be a Zombie

Everyone thinks they know what zombies are. Flesh-eating, infectious, idiotic once-humans whose power, in numbers, increases exponentially.  Even now, those are almost entirely the things people talk about, and that never really sat well with us, mostly because we end up appearing as what people imagine us to be. 

    As undead, we feed off the thoughts of others, to put it simply. Not their flesh. As others think, we absorb some of their brain powers for ourselves and, in return, our dead bodies can remain happy and healthy. Of course, that doesn’t include the possible side effects such as: losing any and all personality, unexpected changes to your body, and the eventual death that is included in the aftermath of the zombie diet. Luckily, my father and I have avoided that oh so untimely death. As closeted zombies, we suffer very few of those, ‘Oh you’re a zombie! You eat flesh?’ Encounters that lead to the eventual cravings for said flesh.

    No, instead we developed far more interesting mannerisms. 

    We went door to door selling coffins. 

    Every day was a new dawn, another business opportunity, going from neighbor to neighbor, the same shtick with every house. “Hello, I’m Daniel Michael, and this here is my daughter, Jakie. We were wondering if we could interest you in a coffin,” My dad would always say. To the living, we came off as incredibly odd, very few sales came from those folks, but the dead? Now they were something special. Many of them just wanted to evade the fate that came for those who were outed, preferring a natural death over a bullet to the head. Others preferred the thought of embracing the dead lifestyle, no working, no food, no responsibilities, just waiting for their slow, painless starvation to do them in. We never really cared for what people did with the coffins. Well, at least I don’t think we did. 

    It was hard to tell after Jesse Allan and Ryan Tompkins.

My father knocked, and we waited under the brick arch just outside the door. The few moments of silence let us soak in the rest of the desaturated brown building. One of the strangest houses we had seen by far, incredibly compact and square, looking almost like it had come from the mind of a child, knowing nothing of satisfying house design. It was surrounded by dead potted plants and a slightly overgrown front yard.

    “I don’t know if anyone lives here,” I said, looking at my father.

    “No, no, I’m sure I heard some talk of people here from some of our other clients. Plus, they seem like the kind of folks who’d want one of our coffins,” My father said, straightening his posture and brushing off his suit. He had that same confident smile he always did, glowing like nothing was wrong, with the same naive sense comparable to that of a child’s, and he gave off a  warm feeling that everything was going to be alright.

“If you say-” my sentence was cut off. The door had opened. In its doorway stood a man who towered over my father in a way that I didn’t think was humanly possible. 

 “What do you want?” He said, looking us up and down. His voice was painful, like nails on a chalkboard, with the weight of nothing but pure dread behind it.

    “Hello, I’m Daniel Michael, and this here is my daughter, Jakie. We were wondering if we could interest you in a coffin,” my dad said, his childlike wonder having faded a little. I could tell his enthusiasm was this time fake, but it was already too late for us to go. For the first time in a long time, I had hoped that we were told that we needed to go and have a door slammed in our faces.

 The man thought for a moment before extending a hand. “Ryan. Ryan Tompkins, nice to meet you, Daniel,” the man said.

My father took Ryan’s hand and gave him a firm handshake, the kind of handshake that I had seen many times over, but something about this specific handshake felt off. Maybe it was the height difference between Ryan and my father, or the uncomfortable expression on both party’s faces.

    “You two seem hot, would you like to come inside? I can get you some water,” Ryan said. I hadn’t even realized how much I was sweating until he had said that. It was far from warm outside. In fact, one could even argue that it was rather cold outside.

    “Some water would be nice,” my father said, smiling. Ryan stepped out of the way to let us in. My father gave him a friendly nod and walked into the house. I looked around, seeing framed black and white photographs scattered all over a yellowed stripped wallpaper.

    We were walked over to the living room that let off a smell of mothballs and cigarettes. It took all of my power to only breathe through my nose, not wanting to know what wretched taste the air of this house might leave in my mouth. “Feel free to sit down,” Ryan said, motioning his hands to a ragged futon, littered in popped seams and a few loose springs.

    “No, we shouldn’t be here for long, thank you for the offer though,” My father said. He was getting nervous too; I could see it in the way he stood, his feet pointed toward the closest exit.

    Ryan shrugged. “Wait right here, I’ll get the water,” He said, heading off into the kitchen. A yelp came from the floor above. A few thumps followed, something had come tumbling down the stairs behind the futon. A final thud revealed a man who had just fallen to the bottom of the steps. He wasn’t anywhere near as healthy looking as Ryan, his skeleton poked out from his skin at every opportunity, his skin was so pale you’d assume he had never seen the sun, and yet somehow he managed to match Ryan’s tree-like height. The man looked up from his position on the floor, making eye contact with me in the process. 

Ryan came running in, two cups of water in his hand, frantically looking around the room to see the man on the floor.  “Is he a roommate?” I asked, looking at Ryan.

    He nodded, setting the cups down on a side table near the futon. “That’s Jesse, he’s my fiance,” he said, heading over to the stairs, offering Jesse a hand. Jesse frowned, turning away from Ryan. He sat up and made himself comfortable on the carpeted bottom step.

    “Come on Jesse, we have people over, “ Ryan said, giving Jesse a very warm grin, an expression that could only be described as uncanny, a smile that would send shivers down anyone’s spine. For the first time in quite a while, I felt a nervous tugging on my chest, an instinctive feeling that something was wrong, and whatever twisted expression was on his face was the thing setting off all those red flags. 

    “Where’s your bathroom?” I asked. I flinched as soon as Ryan turned to me. His grin had faded back into his cold and stern glower. I needed to get out. My Father could fend for himself, he’d probably make it out, but me? I needed an escape. Ryan tensed up when I asked, pausing for a moment to think about what he needed to say. “Down the hallway, straight back at the end,” he said, gesturing to a hall toward the back of the house.

    “Thank you.” I went down the hall, slowly walking so I could peak into the bedroom, study, and linen closet; The rooms didn’t have anything useful, just chaotic messes of papers and dishes that were thrown about. I knew looking through those rooms was going to be a waste of time so I continued down the hall to the bathroom. 

The bathroom had dirty mustard yellow walls, with a smell to match. I closed the door, being careful as to not touch the splash of sticky liquid on it. I wasn’t about to take chances. I grabbed some toilet paper squares. I didn’t want to leave any fingerprints. I searched through the pile of items haphazardly thrown on the counter with the sink. Toothbrushes, broken combs, half-emptied bottles of toothpaste, used Band-aid wrappers, and various other pieces of junk, all covering the item I was looking for. A pair of scissors. I tossed the scissors into the sink. I turned to the toilet, flushing it, and threw the used toilet paper squares down the swirling vortex. I turned on the sink and washed off the scissors as well as my hands, letting soap and warm water get off any nasty poisons that bathroom may have left on me or the scissors. I dried the scissors and my hands off on my jeans and tucked the scissors into my pocket. They’d help me achieve my goal.

    Or at least, what I thought my goal was at the time. I stared at the doorknob, rethinking what I was doing. Why did I need scissors? I’m wasn’t aiming to kill anyone or anything. 

    Unless I was.

    They were humans. Dangerous ones too. My father and I needed to leave as soon as possible, there was no telling what either of those people thought about us to lead me to the bathroom looking for a weapon. I quickly gathered my thoughts and left the bathroom, taking long strides to return to my father. I doubted that he had figured it out, but when I turned the corner I could tell that he had. He had lost his usual composer and was slumping lightly. His conversation was littered with uncomfortable chuckles, and he began to shift in place.

    “So just sign here and you’ll have the coffin sent to us later this week?” Ryan asked from his seat on the couch where he was now hugging Jesse. 

My father nodded, handing Ryan a pen. “Yep, and we’ll be out of your hair,” my father said, doing his best to give the couple a friendly smile.

    Ryan took the pen and signed the bottom of the paper. My father’s foot tapped impatiently; I couldn’t help but wonder what thoughts may have been dancing through his mind. Did he have an escape route? What was his plan of attack for when things got worse? If things did come to the point would we run home and risk being tracked, or stay the night someplace else? I shook my head to clear my mind. Ryan handed the clipboard back to my father, who was quite eager to get it back. “Thank you,” my father said, tucking the pen back into the pant pocket it had come from.

    A brief silence swept over the room. “What’s that in your pocket, Jackie?” Ryan asked. 

I froze up a little. “What’s what?” I responded, moving my hand away from my pocket.

    His eyes narrowed like that of a cat’s, his nose bunching up, all into a scowl I would not soon forget. His grip on Jesse tightened. “You need to leave. Now,” he said, his tone firm and threatening.

    My father looked at me a little shocked. “You know, Dad, he’s right, we’ve got other clients,” I said. My father seemed hesitant to respond. 

“You’re right, I guess we’ll be going,” he said.

I walked over to the door, moving as fast as I could without going into a sprint. My father was close behind, although I could tell he wasn’t entirely sure as to what just transpired. I quickly came to the end of the hall, taking a breath to calm myself in front of the door. I opened the door and a cool breeze swept over my face. It was so refreshing, so freeing, like whatever had been crushing my soul before had just let go and set me free. My father seemed just as relieved, although still a little confused. He pulled out his phone and searched for something.

    I attempted to peek over his shoulder, but all I could see was a blur. “What’re you looking for? A hotel?” I asked. My father nodded. He pointed to a hotel that had a fairly nice rating and was quite far away.

“That one looks good,” I said. We started off in that direction, my hand in the pocket where I had the scissors.

    You never know what might pop out of the alleys. I wanted to be ready, just in case.