Brains for the Zombie Soul (a parody) (10 page)

I’m sorry. If you don’t want to write back, I
understand. It’s creepy.

Forever with love,

Cindy

-----

Dear Cindy,

I know how you feel. You know that flu I had?
Well, I still have it. I’ll probably have it forever, since I’m
already dead too. Supposedly, I passed away quietly one night in my
sleep. Isn’t that the way everyone wants to go? Ha ha.

Not surprisingly, Sharon kicked me out the next
morning. I may never get to see my daughter.

My boss demoted me, but luckily I still have a
job. I’ve met so many people in our situation that were fired
outright. Now I’m spending my free time working on tax returns for
people like us. We are still entitled to benefits too!

The only bright spark in my life has been the
letter from you. I’m so glad we reconnected. Would you like to go
out for dinner sometime?

Love,

Kevin.

---

Dear Kevin,

I would love to. Call me.

Love, Cindy.

(back to
TOC)

****

Grande Caramel Latte

She was a perfectly gorgeous hipster.
Every morning at 7:00, she would come in wearing her skirts and
sweaters, get her drink, and work on her laptop at a table straight
across from the counter. Her brown wavy hair would be brushed back
from her big, bright blue eyes by her huge old school headphones.
She’d bop her head along to the music while she typed away on her
laptop, and her toe would follow along.

She was cute and sassy and funny and everything
I wanted in a girl. Her name was, “Grande Caramel Latte.”

Okay, obviously it wasn’t. I never got up the
nerve to ask her name. I’d make up her drink, set it on the
counter, and call out, “Grande Caramel Latte.” For most customers,
I would turn away and continue with the next drink, but for her, I
would wait. When she approached the counter, I would hold out the
drink to her. She would smile and say, “Thank you,” before skipping
back to her table.

I almost got fired once when I messed up a bunch
of drinks because I was too busy watching her. Eventually I just
learned how to do my job without looking. My coworkers even turned
it into a party trick. On slow days, they’d blindfold me and give
me a complicated order, and I would execute it perfectly. I didn’t
mind, it was all for her.

I got the nerve up to ask her what she was
working on once. It was a slow morning, and I was relentlessly
shining the tables on either side of her. She told me that she was
writing music. I told her I’d like to hear it sometime. She said
sure. I’m sure it was beautiful.

Then one day, she didn’t show up. At 7:15 I got
worried. At 7:30, I started to panic. At 7:45, I considered leaving
early, claiming I was sick. At 7:50, I turned that idea down for
fear she would come in while I was gone. For the rest of the day, I
looked up expectantly at any person who walked through the
door.

That night, I couldn’t get her out of my mind.
What if she was being held hostage by a serial killer, waiting for
a knight in shining armor to come rescue her? What if she was
kidnapped? What if she was stranded on the side of the road
somewhere after a terrible car accident, slowly bleeding to
death?

The only thing keeping me awake at work the next
day was the hope that she would come in. The day passed, and she
wasn’t seen. That night, my waking nightmares continued. If only I
had asked her name, maybe even her number, I could find her and see
if she was okay.

I posted to the Craigslist Missed Connections
forum: “SWM Barista looking for his Hipster Doll. You come in every
day and order a grande caramel latte and write music on your
laptop. I’ve missed you the past couple days, and I hope you’re
okay.”

Apparently, there are a lot of people who go
into coffee shops and order grande caramel lattes and work on
laptops. But none of them were my Grande Caramel Latte.

The next morning when I went into work, my boss
looked at me and said, “You look like hell. Go home and get some
rest.”

“Oh no, I’m fine. I’ll be okay,” I said, and
begun my vigil of staring at the door.

He snapped his fingers in front of my face.
“Didn’t you hear me? I can’t have you making people’s drinks when
you’re sick. Go home.”

Faced with no other choice, I took off my apron.
Before I walked out the door, one of my coworkers handed me a
handful of pills. “Take one of these,” he said, “they’ll help you
sleep.”

“Thanks,” I muttered, and shuffled home. I took
a pill and lay on the couch.

The entire day passed while I was sleeping. When
I woke up, I took another pill and fell asleep again. I had the
next day off work, so I continued to sleep through that day as
well. By the time I emerged from my self-induced coma, I realized
that Grande Caramel Latte probably had just moved away, closer to
another coffee shop, and it was my fault that I would never see her
again.

My head hung down the next day at work. I
focused on my job and didn’t look up at the customers. Then at
7-o-clock on the dot, I got an order for a Grande Caramel Latte.
Talking myself down, I set the coffee on the counter and called out
for her.

And there she was, looking as gorgeous as usual,
if a little worse for wear. Her sweater was fraying. Her skirt was
covered in blood. Her leggings were torn. Her hair was matted. Yet
still, she smiled a small smile up at me and said, “Thank you.”

I reached out and pulled the drink back before
she could grab it. She looked up at me with tears in her big blue
eyes. I said, “What’s your name?”

“Carrie.”

“Carrie, can I have your number? Would you like
to go out sometime?”

A tear rolled down her face. “You don’t want to
go out with me now.”

I was astonished. “I can’t see why any guy
wouldn’t want to go out with you.”

“But I’m a zombie,” she cried.

“So.” I shrugged, and handed her a napkin.

She wiped her face and blew her nose.
“Really?”

“Yeah. So what about it? Would you like to go
out sometime?”

She pulled the marker off of my apron and wrote
a telephone number on a cup and handed them both back to me. “Sure.
Call me sometime.”

Carrie. Her name was Carrie. Carrie Grande
Caramel Latte.

(back to
TOC)

****

Sweet Justice

I
was walking home from work after a particularly hard shift. The
Sunny Side Up Cafe was an all-night diner, filled with greasy eggs
and bacon. Even the toast was soggy. The customers were a mix of
creepy truckers, drunks who had been kicked out of the bar, and
fairly nice but tired people on the way to or from work. Usually I
worked second shift, but I agreed to trade with Darla so she could
go out with her boyfriend that night.

Also, usually my boyfriend Rick would come to
pick me up. He’d come in about an hour before my shift ended, sit
at the counter, and eat some soggy but burnt pumpkin pie. He’d
always tell Lucy that her pie was the best. She knew he was lying,
but appreciated the compliment.

But tonight, Rick didn’t show. I tried calling
his phone, but he sent me to voicemail. I knew he’d rejected my
call, because it would ring once, then transfer to voicemail. Once
he accidentally answered it, then hung up right away.

I was pissed. I mean, fine, we’d had our rough
spots recently, but if he was going to dump me, he should at least
have the balls to tell me.

But I was also sad. Not returning my calls like
that wasn’t like him. I was sure I wasn’t dating a douchebag. So as
I walked, I texted him.

“baby, r u ok?”

No answer.

“r u mad at me?”

No answer.

“I <3 you. Let’s talk.”

I was still waiting on his reply when I reached
my apartment an hour later. I lived in one of those old houses that
was converted into apartments, and my door was around back through
the alley. “Damn,” I said to myself as I walked through the yard,
completely ignoring the cracked and rotting path put in years ago.
I had forgotten to turn on the porch light. It was always a pain
trying to find the right key and fit it into the hole while in the
dark.

That night, no one at all had turned their
lights on in the alley, so it was particularly dark. I reached out
for the door handle and stubbed my toe on the step. Luckily, my
hand grasped the door handle in time for me to catch my fall.
Surprisingly, the handle turned under my grip. Apparently I had
forgotten to lock the door as well.

I composed myself, stepped inside the door, and
flipped the light switch. The living room lights didn’t come on as
expected. Replaying the walk home, I was trying to remember if
there were any lights on in the house. Perhaps the power was
out.

Sleepiness was catching up with me, and I
decided to just crash on the couch instead of trying to trip my way
through to the bedroom. I shuffled across the carpet to avoid
stepping on my cat.

In fact, Kibbles wasn’t even bugging me for
dinner. Usually she would start meowing before I even got in the
door. When I kicked something furry, she didn’t even meow. She
didn’t even move. I was getting worried, so I abandoned my plan to
get to the couch and replaced it with a plan to find a light
source.

I made it to the kitchen, which was faintly lit
by the glow of the clock on the microwave. I should’ve realized
something was wrong then, since if I didn’t have electricity, the
clock wouldn’t be on either. I found the junk drawer, rummaged
around, and finally found an old book of matches.

I finally got the third match lit and made my
way to the bathroom holding the tiny little stick in front of me.
By time I got to the bathroom, I was burning my fingers, and threw
the match into the bathtub. Before trying to light another match, I
thought I would just feel around to find the candles I sometimes
lit for my baths.

Suddenly, the door to the bathroom slammed shut.
In a part of my mind, I knew I should panic. Instead, I calmly
found the candles and lit them. I wasn’t surprised to find the door
locked, but I wasn’t worried, since the lock was broken when I
moved in. I jiggled the handle to the left, and the door popped
open.

The kitchen light was on, and sitting at the
table with my long filet knife sat a man I didn’t know. He was
short, with dark hair and a distinct widow’s peak. His surprised
eyes were dark, and he was wearing a raincoat. But he reacted fast,
came at my throat with the knife, and the last thing I saw was the
tiles on my drop ceiling.

I woke up on the couch, thinking that perhaps I
had made it to the couch after all, and the rest was just a dream.
I called out for Kibbles. When she didn’t come, I looked down at
the approximate spot that I thought I had kicked her the night
before.

Now I was assured that it was not Kibbles that I
had kicked.

Rick lay on the floor, soaking in a pool of
blood. My taupe carpet was ruined. His neck had been slashed open,
and it appeared he was still lying right where he had fallen. Next
to his body was his cell phone, covered with bloody
fingerprints.

I picked it up. It said, “5 missed calls. 5
unread messages.” He had never even known that I had called.

Desolation flooded over me. I had likely been
mad at him for getting killed, in my apartment, while I waited for
him at the diner. Why was I still alive? It was unfair.

I went back into the bathroom, now flooded with
the morning light coming in through the windows, and grabbed every
pill bottle I could find in the cabinet. I turned on the faucet,
took a drink of water straight from the tap, and proceeded to take
every single pill I had.

I lay on the floor next to my love and willed
myself to fall asleep. Minutes later, a wave of nausea came over
me, and I rushed back into the bathroom and vomited into the
bathtub. I was able to compose myself long enough to go for the
toilet the next time. I continued to spew until nothing but blood
came out. With my head in the toilet, that is where I died.

I know this, because 3 hours later, that is
where I woke up. Man, I couldn’t even die correctly.

I went into the kitchen, now more determined
than depressed. In the knife block, the filet knife was missing.
Now I understood why the killer chose that knife, it would have
slit my wrists like butter. Remembering the knife at my neck, I
finally looked down at my own clothes. I was covered in brown,
dried blood. My hands found the gaping slash in my neck.

Back in the bathroom, with the lights on, I
inspected myself in the mirror. I looked like death warmed over.
Literally, I looked dead. I seemed to have lost most of my blood,
and not only was I pale, I was starting to take on a
green/yellowish hue.

At that point I realized, oh my god, I’m a
zombie.

After I got over the shock, I went back into the
living room and stared at Rick’s body on the floor. How could I
have been resurrected and not him? It wasn’t fair.

I picked up his phone again and dialed 9-1-and
stopped. What would the police think of a zombie calling about a
murder? If they didn’t just laugh at me, I’d surely be blamed for
it.

Another wave of despair came over me. Usually in
situations like this, I would call Rick. My eyes found their way to
his limp, rotting form on the floor. Wait, since I’m a zombie now,
wasn’t I supposed to want his brains? The idea made my stomach
churn, and I would’ve vomited if I had anything left to expel. It
gave, “puking your guts out,” a new meaning.

No, the thing to do now is find out who did
this. I had to find the man who took my Rick away from me. In his
phone, I scrolled down past my calls and messages to find who
called him last. Someone named Debby. Who the fuck was Debby? I
called the number.