The push forward is both voluntary and inevitable. I imagine if given the illusion of choice to press on I’d take it. Even if I didn’t want to claw my way up the stairs of this shitty eight-story walk-up, I would have been compelled up them; swept headlong by an unrelenting tide of meat and teeth.
I remember going through something like this once, about five years ago. They announced over the radio that Pearl Jam was doing a free concert at The Arena. Tickets would be available in one hour at the venue – first come, first served. The entire fucking city converged on the site. It was bedlam. People trampled one another to get a better place in line. The crush of bodies was suffocating. Honestly, it’s a miracle no one died.
Not a problem these days. We’re all dead now. Shambling and hungry and incapable of doing anything about it but eat the living. There aren’t many of those left, though. The ones who haven’t been turned into one of us fled the city long ago. Now, when we do get our hands on the living, we leave nothing to turn. Dwindling stock means we devour everything. We’d boil their bones for soup if we remembered how. Instead, we crack them open and scoop out the marrow like disappointing melons. Besides, the desire and intent to cook food is far outstripped by the desire and intent to eat it. Now.
Wait. Did I leave the gas on? I hope not. Do I even know what it means to leave the gas on? I don’t think I do. I just know that it’s bad to do it. Memory is a different animal when you’re dead. It’s like… you recognize impulses without context and then just let what’s left of your brain make connections. For instance, I remember that rush for Pearl Jam tickets because, at this moment, my body is mercilessly trampling other dead comrades in this stairway as we all vie for the last morsels of living flesh in this city. But I can’t remember the concert. Was it good? Did I go? I hope so.
I remember the last thing I was doing was returning a tape but I don’t remember my name.
Don’t even remember what the movie was. Doesn’t matter, though. I’ve got this movie. My body just ‘does’ and there’s no stopping it. It’s the first thing I learned after I died. This body is going to do horrible, terrible things – but it’s not me. I’m just along for the ride. I’m in the most uncomfortable seat in the theater, but I’m still at the movies. This shit isn’t me. I’m just watching.
It sucks, though. A lot. I’d rather death was oblivion than- I DID GO! Oh shit! I just remembered that I went to that Pearl Jam concert! It WAS good. I remember Eddie disappearing off-stage for a moment. He then came back onstage with a bottle of Jack Daniels, took a long pull from it and then the band started playing “Alive”.
I remember this because the guy whose torso I just opened like a pea pod was wearing a Jack Daniels t-shirt. Weird! Memory is weird. Also, this guy has a funky head. His face came off in one piece and he had another face under it. His first face wasn’t any good. His second face is delicious.
I met Daisy at that concert. That was a good night. I mean, this is a good night, too. I got a proper piece of face before the tide of teeth and meat prodded me along. I don’t blame them. Besides, there’s more living flesh upstairs. We can smell it. But did she leave the gas on? That night, though. The night of that concert. That was special to me when I was alive and not eating face – and Daisy had something to do with it.
But we’re close. The flesh is behind a door. And that door has a pretty good barricade. I don’t know why the living keep piling shit in front of entryways that only they take. I’d think they’d learn that any surface can have a hole in it. And through that hole we come. Looks like this time we’re going through the ceiling. Let’s fucking do this.
I remember sausage.
I remember camping and waking up to my brother sitting on my chest with my sleeping bag wrapped claustrophobically around my paralyzed and still slumbering form.
I remember cigarettes. And stepping away from Pearl Jam for a smoke. And asking a cute girl if she had a match. And her responding, “Your face and my ass, fucko,” before snapping a Zippo alight with one fluid motion.
I’m being squeezed by the tide through an old, drafty central-heating system like toothpaste.
Which means I also remember toothpaste.
And when I fall into the barricaded apartment, I do so without most of my left arm. Not my favorite arm, but it had its uses. My descent is softened by the broken corpses of dead who preceded me. Through their rotting stench, I catch a scent. The kind you mark when you step into someone else’s home. The kind of scent you can only associate with that person.
But this one is familiar.
It’s mine.
This is my apartment. I can smell it. But over that, I smell something else.
“Hey fucko,” I hear over the thuds and moans of the rest of the tide falling behind me. The voice is muffled and muted by the high-pitched squeal of pressurized gas escaping a busted pipe. What’s left of my body turns toward the voice to find a bad, inedible face like the one the Jack Daniels flesh had on. Before she doffs the gas mask, I know exactly how this movie ends.
For the first time since I died, I see something beautiful. Then it says, “Your face and my ass,” before snapping a Zippo alight with one fluid motion.
Inspired by My Zombie Body, by Mario Lurig. Great story. Give it a read.
http://mariolurig.com/myzombiebody/
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