Hungry For Your Love: An Anthology of Zombie Romance
A Ravenous Romance™ Original Publication
Edited by Lori Perkins
A Ravenous Romance™ Original Publication
Copyright © 2009 by Ravenous Romance
Ravenous Romance™
100 Cummings Center
Suite 123A
Beverly, MA 01915
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review.
ISBN-13: 978-1-60777-308-5
This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Dedication
For the boy and girl zombies of Camp Necon
who said it couldn’t be done
And double dog dared me
Table of Contents
Introduction by Lori Perkins
Romance Ain’t Dead by Jeremy Wagner
Revanants Anonymous by Francesca Lia Block
I Heart Brains by Jaime Saare
Everyone I Love is Dead by Elizabeth Coldwell
Through Death to Love by S.M. Cross
Eye of the Beholder by Stacey Graham
First Love Never Dies by Jan Kozlowski
My Partner the Zombie by R.G. Hart
Undying Love by Regina Riley
Captive Hearts by Brian Keene
Apocalypse as Foreplay by Gina McQueen
Julia Brainchild by Lois Gresh
Kicking the Habit by Steven Saus
Zombified by Isabel Roman
White Knight, Black Horse by Mercy Loomis
Inhuman Resources by Jeanine McAdam
The Magician’s Apprentice by Stacy Brown
Last Times at Ridgemont High by Kilt Kilpatrick
Some New Blood by Vanessa Vaughn
First Date by Dana Fredsti
Later by Michael Marshall Smith
Introduction
They said it couldn’t be done.
And like the undead, I rose to the challenge.
This anthology was born in July 2009 at the 29th Northeastern Writer’s Conference, affectionately known by its regular participants as “Camp Necon.” Every year since its inception, Necon has what we also affectionately call “that damn vampire panel.” But this year, we had a zombie panel instead. The revolution had begun.
As soon as the panel opened, someone brought up the question of whether or not the zombie mythos could possibly have the staying power of the vampire appeal in American pop culture.
And I said yes.
As soon as the words had left my mouth, the audience responded, “but you can’t have zombie romance.”
And I said yes, you could.
As soon as I got back to the Ravenous Romance office, I informed my colleagues that we would be doing a zombie romance anthology. They were emphatically skeptical. We posted the thesis on Facebook and hundreds of readers said they couldn’t imagine romance with rotting corpses.
Oh, ye of little faith.
The zombie mythos is the perfect metaphor for the end of an era, for a society beset with change it doesn’t understand but knows is here.
Vampires were the cultural embodiment of the end of the millennium: seductive immortals with (literally) cutthroat greed. Then came the recession and the end of the Bush boom, and with it came the realization that we were all worker drones paying off our bloated mortgages, bloodsucking corporations and even each other.
We are the dead.
So, in these pages you will find zombie tales that span the possibilities and boggle the brain. Jeremy Wagner’s Love Ain’t Dead and Michael Marshall Smith’s Later are two of the most romantic stories of lost love you will ever read. Dating the undead? Try I Heart Brains by Jaime Saare and Elizabeth Coldwell’s zombie threesome in Everyone I Love is Dead. Love among the dead? Take notes from Francesca Lia Block’s Revenants Anonymous or S.M. Cross’s Through Death to Love.
And what about undead exes? Gina McQueen’s Apocalypse as Foreplay gives you one take you’ll never forget; then there’s Jan Kozlowski’s First Love Never Dies. And leave it to zombie master Brian Keene to show us how we can find love and revenge in the time of the zombie apocalypse in Captive Hearts.
But it’s not all George Romero’s zombie hordes in these pages. Old-fashioned voodoo zombies make their presence known in Isabel Roman’s Zombified and Mercy Loomis’s White Knight, Black Horse.
There’s even a tale of zombie noir in R.G. Hart’s My Partner the Zombie, and some classic paranormal romance in Regina Riley’s Undying Love. And if Lois Gresh’s Julia Brainchild doesn’t make you laugh, well, then you are a zombie.
And just because this is a Ravenous Romance title, we have some zombie smut for you from two of our favorite RR authors. Dana Fredsti lets you know just how hot and bothered you can get from zombie hunting in First Date and Kilt Kilpatrick gives us the unforgettable erotic zombie escapades of a high school senior in Las Times at Ridgemont High.
There’s something for everyone.
Enjoy.
Lori Perkins
October 2009
Romance Ain’t Dead
by Jeremy Wagner
I love my dead wife. Wait, let me re-phrase that. I love my zombie wife. She’s not dead or alive. She’s reanimated, brought back from death after drowning in Lake Michigan this past summer.
I’d better explain.
My wife Sheri and I have been married for twenty years. We’re in our late forties and live in Winnetka on Chicago’s North Shore. We’re quite wealthy. I owe my fortune to major successes in real estate while Sheri’s fortune comes from her deceased parents’ multibillion-dollar medical supply company. Sheri’s an only child and her trust-fund releases and six-figure dividend earnings blast into our joint bank account every quarter. Needless to say, we don’t work day jobs. We enjoy our marriage full time.
I’ve never been in such love with a woman. We met in college. By chance, Sheri happened to be at a bar my friends and I frequented. When I first saw Sheri, I was sucker-punched by Eros. She was amazing to me: short and curly blond hair, toned body with all the right curves, green eyes from another world. I’m eating my heart out just thinking about the first moment we met. When I first saw her, she stood out in vivid, living color while the world around her turned to grayscale. I’ve never seen anyone the same way. Since then, I’ve forgotten every woman I met before her and I’ve never looked back.
Sheri’s my proof of love at first sight. Also, we’ve proven love ain’t dead, even if my better half is considered dearly departed.
Sheri’s demise and return to the world of the living started when we went to the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park. We hunkered down on the grass on a beautiful summer evening with a basket full of cheeses and prosciutto paired with bottles of Laeticia Pinot. We became tipsy while watching and dancing to Tony Bennett. It was a blast.
We returned home at midnight and Sheri wanted to stroll down to the sand of our beachfront property. When we reached the beach, she got the idea to go skinny-dipping. I declined because Lake Michigan is ice-cold year round. Even on the hottest days, this Great Lake is freezing.
Sheri said, “You’re a freaking wimp, Bruce.” She kicked off her heels and her blue Escada dress and undergarments. I laughed and sat on the sand with another bottle of red wine, admiring her sweet backside running toward the water. She squealed and dove under. She came up wet and smiling in the moonlight. She said the chilly dip sobered her up. I waved the bottle of wine at her.
I watched Sheri backstroke farther away from the beach. Then I heard the sound of an engine. Sheri asked me what the sound was and I wasn’t sure.
Minutes later, the sound grew louder and I made out the shape of a yellow speedboat with its lights off, hauling ass in the moonlight. Before I could yell and summon Sheri back toward shore, the boat roared past our beach and nailed my wife in the head. The boat never stopped.
I dropped the wine bottle and ran to the water. I dove in and swam out to Sheri. I found her floating facedown in the water, bleeding from her head. I turned her over, screamed her name, but she never responded. I towed her back to shore and began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She was DOA.
Sheri looked calm and restful in my arms. She didn’t breathe and I couldn’t hear her heartbeat. I assumed the boat killed her on impact or she drowned. Maybe a combo of both did it. Moments later, I rose and picked Sheri up in my arms. I carried her back to our mansion, remembering how I once carried her into our honeymoon suite. The memory was enough to break my heart to pieces.
Inside the dark house, I set Sheri down on a large Westchester leather sofa and covered her with a blanket. The room filled with moonlight. I walked in shock to retrieve my cell phone from the kitchen. I was about to call the cops when I heard the doorbell ring. I glanced at my watch and wondered who was at my front door at this hour. Soaking wet and shaking with cold and loss, I went to the door and flicked on the outside house lights.
To my surprise, I found my next-door neighbor, Doctor Wyclef Moliare, waiting for me. “Wyclef, what’s going on? It’s late.”
“I heard screaming from your beach, Mister Bruce. Everything okay here, mon?”
I studied Wyclef. He wore khaki cargo pants with a bright white T-shirt emblazoned with artwork for a Chicago 5K Run, and no shoes. I always considered him a cool guy. A tall, mahogany-colored man with short dreads and about my age, Wyclef was a purebred Haitian. I remembered him as a real success story, coming to Illinois straight from Port-au-Prince as a teenager, later going to college and becoming a leading brain surgeon.
“Sheri’s dead.” I began crying. I hung my head, helpless to aid my beloved Sheri and helpless to stop sobbing.
“Take it easy, mon.” Wyclef gave me a comforting hug before moving farther into my house with no regard to invite. Without looking at me, he said, “Where’s your wife?”
I sniffled and wiped strings of snot from my cold nose. “She’s...she’s in the living room. On the sofa.”
I watched Wyclef dash for the living room. His speed and attitude alarmed me and I ran after him. In the living room, I found him kneeling next to my wife’s body, checking her pulse and vitals. I felt an odd prickle when he threw the blanket off of her naked corpse. “Hey, Doc. Now, wait—”
“What happened?” Wyclef continued his appraisal of Sheri’s body.
“She got hit by a boat. She was taking a midnight dip and some fucker in a speedboat nailed her.”
“You get the numbers, make of da boat?”
“No.” The thought of the asshole getting away made me crazy. “Whoever it was, was driving fast with lights off and just kept on truckin’. Probably didn’t realize...”
I started crying again, releasing big lost-love sobs as the weight of my soulmate’s death crushed me. Through my tears, I saw Doctor Wyclef nodding and studying Sheri without looking at me. His physical inspection of my dead and nude wife unnerved me. I was thankful when he put the blanket back over her, tucking it around Sheri with a caring touch.
He got to his feet and looked at me. “How long ago this happen? When I hear the screams?”
I nodded and after a minute of wrestling with my overwhelming grief, I mustered coherent words. “Yeah. That was me screaming out there. Tried mouth-to-mouth, but she was gone.”
“You call the police? Ambulance comin’?”
“No. You rang the doorbell before I got to my cell phone.”
Wyclef looked down at me and grabbed my shoulders with his large hands giving me a tight squeeze. His dark brown eyes were wide and serious. “You love your wife, mon?”
“Of course. Christ, Wyclef. What kinda question is that?”
“Forget da hospital and police. They ain’t gonna help this one. You want her back?”
I looked into those fierce Haitian eyes and wondered what the hell he was getting at. “I want her back more than anything. What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, my friend, I got ways to bring your loving wife back from da other side.”
Losing Sheri and hearing my neighbor talk of reviving her from the grave was too much. I felt my legs weaken and Wyclef grabbed me and helped me to a leather chair. I hunched over and put my hands to my face. I breathed deep and regained control. “What in the name of Johnny Freaking Appleseed are you telling me? You sound like a goddamn nut.”
Wyclef stood over me and laughed. It wasn’t a malicious laugh, but it boomed and sounded scary even though the tone was lighthearted. He spoke in an assuring and baritone voice. “I can get her back. But we have to act quick and you got to believe. You believe in Vodou? You know, you call it Voodoo.”
I wasn’t sure how to answer this. Sheri and I are Jewish and never subscribed to any other religions or beliefs. To even consider anything related to witchcraft or being satanic was laughable and absurd to me. “No, Wyclef. I don’t believe in that crap and I’m baffled as to why you’re asking this. Sheri’s dead and with God. I think it’s time to call the cops and find out who the killed her.”
“Wait, mon. Listen.” Wyclef maintained his deep and calm voice. “Before I came to da States, I was a teenage bokor. A witch doctor. That’s what got me interested in medicine and led me down my path as a doctor and surgeon.
“A witch doctor?” I found this funny. I always respected Wyclef. He received hundreds of awards in medicine, escalating his reputation and accolades as one of the nation’s most brilliant brain surgeons. Plus, the guy possessed great taste in food and music. I just couldn’t see him dancing naked around a fire in Haiti, making zombies and shrunken heads. “You gotta be kidding me.”
“I learned many old secrets growing up in Haiti. I learned secrets of the dead. I saw medical science coupled with the spirit world. I’ve made zombies and I’ve raised zombies from dead bodies whose souls have moved on to da other places.”
Again, I couldn’t imagine this. “You’ve got one of the most reputable practices in Chicago. What would happen if your clients or the press knew you practiced black magic?”
Wyclef smiled wide and revealed his large white teeth and the significant gap between his incisors. He didn’t answer my question but said, “Did you know Chicago was founded by a Haitian-born black slave in the early 1700s?”
I shook my head.
“Ya. It’s true, mon. Voodoo is nothing new to da North Shore. Though it’s funny you won’t find as many blacks living in the North Shore today as we once did in the 1700s. Ironic, no?”
I shrugged my shoulders, knowing wealth has a lot to do with the racial diversity being nil in the North Shore communities. I felt compelled to mention Lake Forest was chock full of ebony players in the Bulls and Bears, but I held my tongue.
“I go to my house and come back with what I need.” Wyclef looked serious now. “You let me do my ’ting and you’ll see, Mr. Bruce.”
I thought about it. I had nothing to lose. Either his absurd claim to bring my wife back would happen or it wouldn’t. Then I’d call the cops and start making funeral arrangements. “All right. Get whatever you need. I’m a skeptical man, Wyclef. I’ll try it your way and then I’m calling nine-one-one.”
“I be right back.” Wyclef’s long legs carried him away.
I turned and looked down at Sheri. She looked at peace. With her relaxed features and her damp blond hair, she remained beautiful. I kissed her cold cheek. I told her how much I loved her. I told her how much she meant to me and how the world and my life would never be right without her. I began crying again and held her small body close to mine.
I was still holding Sheri when Wyclef returned. In one of his big arms, he carried a large cardboard box. In his opposite hand, he clutched a wooden cage with a clucking chicken in it. I thought of how the village of Winnetka didn’t allow people to keep farm animals. I wondered where Wyclef got the chicken and where he kept it. Were there others? “Looks like you got your hands full.”
Wyclef set the box and the cage down on the living room floor. He stepped away from his belongings and moved furniture and rugs until part of the hardwood floor was uncovered and bare.
“What’re we doing?” I shivered, trying to imagine what we’d be doing on the floor. “You need anything?”
“Let’s get Sheri on to da floor here.” I laid Sheri down on the couch and stood up. Wyclef said, “I’ll grab her feet and you take her by her top.”
I walked around, knelt and eased my arms under Sheri and grabbed her by her armpits. At the count of three, Wyclef and I lifted my wife from the couch. She was light and easy to move. To my dismay, the blanket fell off her in the move and we placed her naked body on the floor. I was going to grab the blanket for her when Wyclef said, “Leave da blanket be, Mr. Bruce. She gotta be naked to da world right now.”
“Does your wife know where the fuck you are right now?” I blurted this without thinking, not meaning to inject such a hard tone in my delivery.
Wyclef smiled and placed his reassuring hands on my shoulders. “Mister Bruce, my wife knows where I be. She praying for Sheri. She sends good vibes here to help your wife come back.”
I dropped my head, feeling bad and sad about all of this. “Sorry.”
“No worries, mon.”
He walked over to his box of tricks and his pet chicken. I watched him dig through his box. He returned with several large black candles and a mason jar full of dead flower petals. He set these items down and moved Sheri around on the floor, spreading her arms and legs wide, splaying her out on her back. I no longer felt weird or overprotective about what he was doing.
Wyclef placed the candles in specific spots all around Sheri’s body. He lit the candles and soon the moonlit room filled with candlelight. I watched the doctor open the jar and sprinkle dead flower petals all over Sheri’s naked body. He placed the empty jar on the floor and turned to me. “Mister Bruce, I want you to sit and hold her head in your hands.”
Before I could ask why, he turned away to retrieve his caged chicken. I did as instructed and sat between two candles with my legs crossed and looked down at the top of Sheri’s head and her upside-down face. With a loving touch, I cupped the back and sides of Sheri’s head with my hands and stroked her beautiful face with my thumbs.
Wyclef returned and set the cage on the floor next to me. The chicken inside clucked away, cocking its head in every direction. I watched him remove his shirt. His ripped upper torso shined in the candlelight. He opened the cage and removed the chicken. Then he said something to the bird in a foreign language. I watched with disgust as he gripped the chicken’s neck with his large fist before snapping his arm and decapitating it.
“Jesus Christ, Doc. What the hell are you doing?”
Wyclef ignored me. He seemed to be in his own world.
I continued holding Sheri’s head while watching Wyclef with morbid curiosity. He dropped the chicken head to the hard wood floor and held the chicken’s body as it jerked in his grip. I watched him chant and pour chicken blood on his face and down his chest and stomach. Then he squatted down, chanting away while moving Sheri’s body and the candles around like a crab. He set the now-motionless chicken carcass on the floor and picked up the head. Before I could object, he dabbed Sheri’s forehead, cheeks and lips with blood from the torn chicken neck. He raked her bare belly with chicken claws before dabbing his own face with chicken blood.
“Start saying Sheri’s name, Mister Bruce. I want you to say her name again and again like a mantra.” Wyclef pulled out two sticks of incense and lit them on a candle flame. He held a stick in each hand, waving them back and forth as he continued squatting over my wife. “Here we go, mon.”
My mind filled with a few questions. What are we doing here? Are we going to jail after this? I already knew what we were doing and why. I began speaking Sheri’s name out loud over and over again.
Wyclef continued to squat and crab-shuffle over Sheri’s dead body while waving incense smoke and chanting in some foreign tongue. I continued the mantra of my beloved’s name while watching everything. Wyclef’s eyes rolled back and his baritone voice grew louder while his movements became more wild and intense. He stomped with heavy feet and started yelling. He made it hard for me to concentrate on my repetitive speaking. The volume and dark tone of Wyclef’s voice mixed with strange words he shouted and enforced with violent and frenzied motions. It felt most unsettling.
Wyclef reached a vocal crescendo and uttered, “Jumbie...nzambi...da Bantu!”
On his last word, I was looking down into Sheri’s face while caressing it and speaking her name. Her chest gave an unexpected heave and her eyelids flew open to reveal milky white eyeballs staring straight into my own. Then all the candles blew out from an unseen blast of netherworld wind and left us in the dark.
“Wyclef! She’s moving!” I knew I sounded hysterical. I was creeped out, sitting in the dark living room with my deceased better half squirming beneath me. “What’s going on, Doc?”
“Relax, mon.”
My eyes focused in the dark. I watched Wyclef sit on Sheri’s stomach. He fumbled for something, then lit up what looked like a hellacious-sized doobie. He locked his lips on Sheri’s mouth and blew a giant puff of smoke into her.
“Shit!” I jumped when Sheri began coughing and making odd gurgling sounds. “What did you do?”
“She’s back, Mister Bruce. I blew spirit protection into her so’s no udder folk try hitching a ride with her from da udder side.”
I raised an eyebrow at this spooky little comment. “Uh, right. I’m not worried about ghosts. You heard her. She coughed. It’s a goddamn miracle.” I felt an immediate need to got to a local synagogue to pray and give thanks.
“She coughed, but dat was just da release of spirit smoke. It kick-started her animation. She’s not breathing, Mister Bruce. She never will again.”
This was something I didn’t want to hear. I felt an urgency to see. I didn’t like being in the dark. “Can we get some real light in here? We gotta see what’s going on.”
Wyclef got to his feet and pulled my wife with him. I remained seated, watching with unbelieving eyes as Sheri stood on her own, naked and in the dwindling moonlight of the living room. She looked beautiful.
“Get the lights, mon.”
I jumped to my feet and flicked on the living room lights. Wyclef helped Sheri to the couch, sat her down and wrapped the blanket around her once again. I took a seat on the other side of her and hugged her tight.
My new mantra was, “I love you, baby.” I said this nonstop, wanting Sheri to know I was here. I began weeping again. I rocked my wife and kept bawling her name, but she offered no verbal response. I looked at her with tears flowing down my face and was startled at what I saw.
“Hey, Doc.” I spoke and my voice hitched with cracking words. “What’s wrong with her eyes?”
I looked into Sheri’s blank and pale face. Her features were slack and wooden. She didn’t look like she was breathing but I knew she was on this side of the grave because she sat up with her eyes open. Her eyes troubled me the most—they moved but were lifeless. They held no light and no twinkle. The once-beautiful green was replaced by the ghostlike, milky-gray color of a ripe corpse.
“Sheri’s zombified, Mister Bruce. When she departed from dis place she go to da udder place. When she comes back to you, she lose part of her spirit and some of da mortal traits she once had.”
“Well, what the fuck, Doc?” I felt anger and distress at this bit of news. “I wanted Sheri back. I wanted my wife back one hundred percent. That’s why I went through with this crazy Voodoo shit. I didn’t want a zombie.”
“Guess we shoulda talked about dis.”
“Shoulda? What in the name of Johnny Freaking Appleseed were you thinking? You asked if I wanted my wife back. I said yes. Now Sheri’s a vegetable. I love my wife, but I woulda left her dead if I knew this would happen.”
“Let me tell ya about zombies, Mister Bruce. Sometimes dey come around with some qualities dey once had. Sometimes dey recognize you.” Wyclef offered a smile but lost it to a frown. “I won’t lie. Sheri’s not gonna be da same like before. She won’t be talking or. She’s a zombie, mon, and she got part of a soul but no real life in her. She just here to be with you and that’s it.”
These new facts brought many questions to my mind. “How does she stay animated?”
“She doesn’t need food. Some zombies, dey try and eat human flesh, but those are da ones who come from the bad side. Ones who go away too long and get corrupted, dey from a horror movie, mon. You don’t want one coming back.”
“So, she can’t breathe and doesn’t need food. Hopefully won’t eat me. What else should I know?”
“Her periods are over for good.”
“Guess she won’t need a gynecologist.” I stared at Sheri and felt my heart pang. I didn’t want my baby to be a lost soul. Mixed feelings filled me as I considered a future with a zombie wife. “She’s got nothing to say about any of this, Wyclef. Maybe she doesn’t want to be like this. She’s not gonna live a normal life.”
“She’s not living a life, Mister Bruce. She’s dead.”
“Thanks, I needed that.”
“Mister Bruce, my neighbor, I consider you a friend. I can tell you’re finding this hard to accept. All of dis. But you trust me, no?”
I thought about it. I wondered if maybe I jumped the gun in my panic and traumatized sadness when I allowed Wyclef to do his black magic on Sheri. Though a real consultation would have been nice, I trusted the man. I guess you don’t get second opinions with witch doctors. “I trust you, Doc. I’m sure this ain’t your first rodeo.”
“That’s right, mon. I grew up in Haiti with Voodoo being a normal part of life. Have faith in my words when I tell you dat even though Sheri’s reanimated and zombified, she can feel your love, and she can take comfort in your company. Your wife can keep you company for the rest of your life. It’s all about love and how much her companionship means to you.”
I felt doubt at this. Though I accepted the implausible fact of Sheri dying and returning from the dead, I couldn’t choke down how a walking corpse felt any emotions. “You sure? How do you know?”
“I’ve seen zombies absorb true love into their stock-still hearts, mon. I’ve seen zombies reach out and grab a lover’s hand and even embrace another.” Wyclef turned grim. “Then again, I seen a zombie bite the cheek off of her husband in Haiti. But dat was one of da bad ones, Mister Bruce.”
“I’m not getting a warm fuzzy feeling. What bothers me is that Sheri’s personality is gone. We won’t be sharing ideas about movies or music. She won’t tell me she wants to go to a museum or a farmer’s market. Her spark is gone. I basically have a Real Doll on my hands. I should just get a dog to talk to and play with.”
Wyclef remained grim. “Don’t go getting pets, Mister Bruce. Dogs and cats go crazy around zombies. Dey know when someone’s dead and walking and dey don’t like it.”
“Great. Parks and nice neighborhood walks with my zombie wife are out of the question.”
“Don’t let this bother you a bit.” Wyclef smiled. “You gonna have plenty to do together.”
“What about the long term?” I wondered what would happen to Sheri if I died and she remained on Earth. “If I pass on and she’s still a zombie, then what’s gonna happen to her? Our retirement funds ain’t gonna do her any good.”
Wyclef began laughing and slapped me on the shoulder. “Mister Bruce, you gave her mouth-to-mouth, no?”
“That’s right.”
“You blew your mortal breath into her, mon. She’s got a piece of your life inside her. She gonna die with you when you go to the udder side. That’s how it works.”
This idea made me smile. I found it...romantic. Sheri expiring at the moment of my own death reminded me a bit of the tragic Romeo and Juliet, though Sheri and I were never “star-cross’d” lovers, but rather soulmates meant to be together—even under zombified circumstances.
“I go now.” Wyclef picked up his candles and chicken parts and boxed them up. “Where’s your cleaning supplies? I’ll get this blood and feathers off da floor.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll handle it. Just get home to your wife. Please shower first.”
Wyclef let loose a booming laugh. “Okay, Mister Bruce. I’ll do dat.”
Questions filled my head again. I looked at Sheri and I loved her more than ever now. I turned to my neighbor as he collected his things. “One last question, Doc.”
Wyclef wiped chicken blood of his face and torso with his shirt and threw it in the box with his other items. “Yes?”
“What about rot? I mean—”
“Don’t worry. She gonna stay fresh. But you need to wash her, Mister Bruce. Don’t let her get too nappy.”
“Right.” I thought tending to Sheri like an invalid, but I pushed the negatives away. I watched Wyclef with box in hand heading for the door. “Need a hand?”
“No.” He reached the door and opened it. He turned and said, “You gonna be fine, Mister Bruce. You got lots on da brain and you be thinking how unnatural all dis is. But don’t despair, it all works out and you’ll find your way. I seen dis many times.”
“Okay.” I breathed easier though my chest and heart felt heavy. “What am I gonna tell people?”
“Don’t worry, mon. It’ll work out. Plus, I got your back.”
Wyclef blasted me with one last smile and was out the door. I turned to my beautiful Sheri, my zombie wife and kissed her cold cheek. “Let’s go to bed, love.”
* * * *
Sure enough, Wyclef had my back. He assisted and gave Sheri an official Doctor Wyclef Moliare physical and mental evaluation. He provided substantial paperwork supporting his diagnosis that my wife suffered massive head trauma and remained catatonic. Catatonia: another word for zombie, I guessed.
In the following months, there was much explaining to do and a lot of changes made in my marriage.
My parents came up from Arkansas and saw Sheri once since her return to the living. I explained how she experienced a debilitating head injury and how her speech and motor skills were impaired. My parents believed me. They comforted me, hugged and kissed Sheri and conveyed their sympathies and advised me to be strong.
Sheri’s few friends were told about her accident with the boat and I reiterated how she’d suffered a terrible head injury and would never be the same. I used Wyclef’s medical records and word to endorse all the bullshit I told everyone.
After the first six months passed, I didn’t hear from Sheri’s friends outside of holiday cards and an occasional e-mail wishing us well.
Despite my reservations, Wyclef assured me I could be intimate with Sheri without being a deviant or doing anything illegal since my wife was “technically” alive in an animated state. But this was the same guy who said she was dead and a zombie. The words dead or zombie doesn’t help my libido any, but I got past it and I make love to Sheri often.
Sheri’s been wrapping her arms around me on her own. She once nibbled on my ear and I jumped, thinking it was Dawn of the Dead time. It turned out to be innocent and unexpected in a delightful, yet macabre way. Perhaps she has a flicker of loving inside her? I don’t know, but I hope.
I’ve taken the liberty of placing green contacts into her eyes in order to lose the undead gray and bring back the sweet color of her gaze. I bathe Sheri every day in her favorite bubble bath and scrub her with her favorite body wash while whispering sweet nothings to her. I also dress her in her favorite outfits, spray her with her favorite perfume, and I play her favorite bands on the iPod dock every day just to give her a sense of herself and the things she left behind when I lost her in Lake Michigan.
That’s true love in my book.
I love my dead wife. Again, let me re-phrase that. I love my zombie wife. I love Sheri more than anything in the world and we’re together and living life—well, one of us is. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. She’s my soulmate, the love of my life and she owns my heart. I believe our love will outlast time itself, even after the physical marriage is dust.
’Til death do us part? It didn’t work out that way.
Revenants Anonymous
by Francesca Lia Block
I saw him at the Revenants Anonymous meeting I had started attending. I heard he was going to be the speaker the following week so that night I managed to pull myself together enough to put on a cute outfit of tight black jeans, high-heeled black boots, and a white shirt that still smelled faintly of bleach. I had even put on makeup so I wouldn’t look so pale, and flat-ironed my black bob. Around my neck I wore a giant silver heart-shaped watch on a thick silver chain, as if to imitate what I no longer had inside my chest. I was pretending to be un-dead (meaning not dead, rather than one of the undead) because my sponsor, Rachel, had told me to act “as if.” It had worked for her. She was now successfully employed and had a nice, if somewhat clumsy, boyfriend who took her on vacations and told her she was beautiful and that he cherished her. I, on the other hand, couldn’t sell a story to save my life (pun intended), in spite of having won the big screenwriting contest just out of college, and I hadn’t kissed anyone for two years since Brian left.
When the guy walked in to the church basement where the meeting took place, I grabbed the heart locket and held on tight. The guy was very tall and wore his (dyed?) black hair in a low pompadour with thick sideburns. His eyes were strikingly blue with long eyelashes that made him look a little stunned. He had large, masculine features, a high forehead with some frown lines carved into it, high cheekbones, and a full mouth. I had heard on a talk show once that very masculine-looking men have extra testosterone that can make them more likely to behave like players. I wonder if that applied to revenants as well, since we really didn’t have testosterone. He was wearing black jeans, a white shirt, black motorcycle boots, and a white T-shirt. Twins, I thought. (To be fair, he had worn the same thing the week before and I was imitating him.)
His eyes slid over me briefly and he went to take a seat. We said the Serenity Prayer and then he began.
“I’m Ed and I’m a revenant,” he said.
“Hi, Ed,” everyone droned.
“I’ve been coming to these meetings for ten years now. When I first came, I literally had pieces of flesh hanging off my body. You could see the bones poking through here,” he pulled down the neck of his T-shirt to reveal his clavicle, “and here.” He pulled up his T-shirt to reveal a prominent hipbone above the line of his jeans. There was black hair on his chest and stomach.
“The way it started, I’d given up on my music. I was working the bar at a strip club and doing it with every sally I could find and getting drunk off my ass every night. Then I met this one girl, this stripper. She treated me like shit. I couldn’t get enough of her. I had to go out of town for a few weeks to visit my dad who was dying and when I came back she had broken up with me. So I just went ape shit. I followed her around begging her to come back. I drank twice as much and started snorting blow. I served alcohol to one too many drunks and he had a car crash that night and died.”
The audience grimaced collectively, sympathetically. Ed went on.
“I went back home to see my dad. He had cancer and it was eating away at him from the inside out. I sat at his bedside but I really didn’t feel that much and I didn’t understand why. When he finally died, I didn’t feel anything. Then I started having these dreams where he was touching me. Then I stopped dreaming at all. By then I was officially one of us.”
I thought, Boy, do I wish I’d met him when I was alive, before my heart got so fucked with. I’d rather have him kill it than all those shits that did.
“And then I found these rooms,” Ed was saying. “Like I said, I was literally dripping skin. I was craving the meat.”
A low groan went up from the room.
“I had lost my job and all my friends. Since then I’ve started recording music again and I’ve started a business so I don’t have to bartend. It’s other people’s music, I’m engineering. It’s not my stuff, but it’s a start. And I’m taking care of myself. I’m showing up to meetings, even on days when I have to drag myself off my corpse ass and shamble in. I have a sponsor and a sponsee. I don’t think about the meat. I’ve started talking to women again. When I feel really dead, I do something like pet a dog. I know it sounds lame but I pet a dog. Or I take a walk in nature. I never thought I’d be saying that in front of a room full of people before, but whatever, it’s true. I even do yoga now. And I can listen to music now, not just for work. It used to be impossible because it reminded me of how I used to just be able to hear the first chords of certain songs and start crying and how now I can’t cry but I listen anyway. So all I want to say is, even though I’m still a revenant, I’ll always be a revenant, that’s what the big book teaches, but there’s hope. There’s hope, man. Thanks for letting me share.”
He stepped down and there was some slow, heavy-handed applause. I tried to catch his eye but he kept his head lowered as he took his seat. The guy next to him, Malcolm, the secretary, used what looked like tremendous effort to high-five him.
We went around the circle and when it came to me I said, “Hi. I’m Casey and I’m a revenant.”
“Hi, Casey,” they all said, including Ed—I wasn’t looking but I could distinguish his deep voice.
“I just want to thank the speaker for sharing,” I began, still not looking at him. “It’s very inspiring to hear that. I’ve only just started coming to these meetings. The last relationship I was in was two years ago. It screwed me up really bad. My mom had just died and I kind of glommed onto this guy but he felt suffocated and split. I couldn’t eat or sleep. And I couldn’t write anymore.” I thought about making the joke about not being able to write to save my life, but I didn’t know if it was in bad taste, and besides, it wasn’t all that funny. “Anyway, that’s when it happened. Now I’m doing computer sales from home. I don’t like to go out. I have to stay away from the meat.” Everyone hummed. I stopped. “Anyway, thanks for letting me share.”
When I finally looked up, Ed was watching me. I thought I felt my face get hot but that couldn’t be. I must have been imagining it.
When the meeting was over Malcolm invited everyone to his home in Silverlake for a party. The house was a broad-beamed green wooden Craftsman with a big porch overlooking the lights of Sunset Boulevard. Malcolm built a fire in the fire pit and we stood around under the cold stars. Like most revenant gatherings, no one said much. A few were making a pathetic attempt at dancing, but it was really just shuffling their feet and occasionally nodding their heads. Still, it was better than what I could do.
I was gripping an empty glass—sometimes it helped me feel human to have something in my hand—when Ed came up to me.
“I enjoyed your share,” he said. “Casey, right?”
I nodded.
“I’m Ed.”
I shook his hand. It was huge, with silver rings.
“What’s this?” he pointed to my heart watch.
I suddenly wished I hadn’t worn it; it seemed desperate, like something a revenant that wanted to be human too badly would wear. A poseur revenant. “Oh, nothing.”
“It’s nice. Too many people stopped wearing watches with the cell phones.” He held out his broad, bony wrist. He wore an old-fashioned silver watch. “It was my dad’s.”
“But I thought…” I began and stopped myself. I didn’t want to be rude.
“I know. I think my dad fucked with me when I was a kid. But he was my dad. He didn’t know what he was doing. This helps me to remember to forgive him.”
I nodded. I thought about the silver engagement ring Brian had given me. It was a really cool ring, engraved with tiny leaves and flowers. Sometimes I wanted to wear it but I couldn’t because it reminded me of how much I hated him and then chunks of flesh would start peeling off my face and shit. I wondered if I could learn to forgive him.
“So your mom died recently?” Ed asked. His voice had a tender quality that I couldn’t recall hearing in another revenant.
“Yes. She had cancer, too.” My voice, on the other hand, was dry and flat.
“It’s a motherfucker.”
I nodded.
“And you’re young to lose a mom.” There was the tenderness in his voice again.
“Not that young,” I said. “I was twenty-five when this happened two years ago.”
“You mean when you went revenant? That’s young to be one of us.”
“What about you?” I asked.
“Well, I was thirty, so I’m technically forty now.”
“You look good,” I managed to say.
He winked. He actually winked. I’d never seen a revenant wink before, at least not in a sincere way, but more of in a spastic way like they were trying to imitate a human. Ed actually looked human. “You, too.”
The flames of the fire pit were heating up my face to the point where I had to back away. That was a surprise—I was never hot anymore. I must have been imagining it. Then I felt Ed’s hand touch my wrist and I imagined a flaming up there, too.
“Would you like to grab a ‘tea’ some time?” He made quote marks around the word tea—we really didn’t drink it.
I nodded without thinking and he took out his cell and programmed in my phone number.
“I’ll call you, Casey,” he said and I wondered if he was really one of us at all. Just like there were revenant poseurs, there were some humans who posed as us because it was trendy and seemed cool to them. God knows why.
* * * *
He told me to meet at the L.A. County Museum. I was a little nervous to be out in such a public place with all the meat walking around but I said the Serenity Prayer over and over as I drove west along Wilshire. I was wearing a black sundress and wedgies and I’d put on extra lotion to keep the skin from peeling on my shoulders and arms. I got there first and watched Ed walk up the wide, low stairs under the portico toward me. He had flat mirrored shades on so I couldn’t see his eyes. His shoulders were broad and his arms were a little too long for the white button-down shirt he wore. His legs, in jeans, were long, too. I felt really short, even in my high shoes.
“You look nice,” he said, kissing my cheek.
“So do you,” I replied. Rachel had said that if I felt uncomfortable making conversation. I could just sort of repeat what the other person said with a twist. I wondered if that would get me in trouble somehow.
“Do you want to see the exhibit?”
“Do you want to see the exhibit?” I replied.
“Yes I do.”
“I do.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
“Casey,” he asked gently. “Can I ask you something? Are you nervous?”
“Are you nervous?”
He cocked his head at me. “No. I’m fine. I thought you seemed interesting at the meeting. I’d like to hear about your writing and whatever. You don’t have to be nervous with me.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”
He took my hand and led me toward the ticket booth. It was startling to have him touch me. Most of us didn’t ever touch.
We went to the Pompeii exhibit. I wondered what it must have been like for the archeologists to find that stuff under the earth, under the ash. What it must have been like to dig up a marble god, a whole fresco of a garden with fountains and birds and flowers painted in pale shades of blue and green. You couldn’t feel dead when you saw that.
We circled around a statue of a satyr playing lasciviously with a beautiful nude girl. She had her fingers in his face and was twisting her torso as if to get away from them but they were both laughing. When Ed and I got closer we saw that the girl was a hermaphrodite, with breasts and a small erect penis. I felt something move through my body and I hardly knew what it was because it had been so long.
“Roman kink,” Ed said, and we laughed.
I hadn’t heard my laugh in so long that I didn’t recognize it at first. It sounded kind of nice, though.
There were some giant horse heads on pedestals. Ed looked into their eyes but I had to stare up into their noses.
“You have a better view,” I said. “All I see are nostrils. But I’m used to that, being so short.” I realized I had actually made a joke—a shitty joke, but a joke—aloud.
“Oh, now I’m embarrassed, “ he said, coyly, covering his nose and we laughed again.
Toward the end of the exhibit I wandered away from him over to an alcove where a giant statue of Aphrodite carved in white marble stood with her arms outstretched. I stood under her and closed my eyes.
When I opened them, Ed was beside me. “Whatcha doin’?”
“She’s beautiful, huh?” I said softly.
“But do you think love looks like that?” he asked, staring up at her perfect white curves. “Or do you think it’s much more dangerous looking?”