by Stevie Kopas
I’m not ashamed to admit that I kept a journal. My medical benefits sucked and I couldn’t afford a therapist or to drown myself in medication like most people. I was a twenty-nine year old man with nothing to show for my years on this earth aside from a fistful of overdue bills. The journal helped me keep my sanity. When I’d come home from work at night I’d log my day – the things that made me feel good, the things that made me feel bad, the people I wish I could get away with murdering. I wouldn’t. No, I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t that type of man then… shit, I still don’t like to consider myself that type of man now, but when you spend nine hours of every day being told you’re less than human because of the job you had to take just to get by, it can lead a man to a sad, sick thought process. When your girlfriend of four years, the woman that’s supposed to stand by your side and support your decisions, sneaks off and fucks your best friend, well, that’s just another route to the same thought process. Catching on yet?
The journal was just a journal, the poor man’s therapy, my only way of hanging on to some semblance of self-worth. Without it, I probably would have jumped off the nearest bridge or swallowed a bullet years ago, but I was always too much of a pussy. Too much of a pussy… until one day I wasn’t.
I came home from the last day I’d ever work and took a long, hard look at myself in the mirror and realized that the world could either make or break a person, and it had finally broken me. I was about to be homeless, probably jobless soon after that. I was single and lonely and full of broken thoughts with no place to mend, and not even the journal could help anymore. My ex, Christie, had actually left something useful behind when she left me for Bryan: a bottle of Xanax.
I didn’t even have anyone to write a suicide note to, so I wrote one to myself. I started off with Dear Trevor but thought that was too lame, so I scratched that out and decided to just say Goodbye Trevor instead. It was final, it was short and to the point, I was all I had left and I didn’t even mean enough to myself to stick around. I downed the bottle with a six pack and before I knew it, I woke up in a puddle of my own piss. I couldn’t even kill myself right.
The fact that when I opened my eyes I was staring at the water-stained ceiling of my shitty apartment infuriated me. What infuriated me even more was the fact that I’d opened my eyes; I’d finally had the guts to take the plunge and yet there I was, lying on my worn-out couch in a pair of dirty basketball shorts. I remember not even having the energy to take a shower, the Xanax hangover was really something else. I made a note to self in my journal: don’t try to overdose on pills ever again, your head feels like shit.
I quickly dressed and decided against checking myself in the mirror. What was the point? I had screwed things up the first time, I had no intentions of looking myself in my own judgmental eyes and chickening out. I’d make sure I did it right the second time around.
***
It was an odd day, the day I decided to kill myself for the second time. There was something about the way the air smelled that made me uneasy, something about how quiet the normally-busy neighborhood was that had me convinced that this was the day that I was going to die. I walked down to the bus stop and waited an hour but the bus never came. Several cars sped by, driving erratically and honking their horns. I chalked it up to them laughing at the only lame-ass at the bus stop on a Sunday morning. I figured it was just the world giving me one more middle finger before I finally checked out. It was then that I decided I was done waiting for a bus that would surely never arrive and began my trek downtown. My destination? The law offices of Nillson, Vance, & Croft, the tallest building in the city.
I knew I could sneak up to the top. The friends I once had, long ago, would oftentimes accompany me to drink beer and smoke pot before we all had apartments of our own, before we stole each other’s girlfriends or stopped calling to ask one another how we were doing. It was funny how friendship seemed to work these days; a meme on a Facebook wall was the equivalent of a phone call or even a text message. As I walked toward my destination, head down, hands stuffed into the pockets of my oversized hoodie, I couldn’t help but chuckle. It would probably be a long time before any of my “friends” learned of my death. For a while I’d probably just be the poor schmuck who jumped off the NV&C building.
It was as I walked, consumed by own melancholy, that I ignored the desperate cries of a woman across the street, that I ignored the screams of several passersby running in the opposite direction. Dozens more cars sped by as I got closer to downtown, horns blaring, occupants hollering. I thought I knew in my mind what it all meant… it was life’s pathetic attempt at trying to change my mind. But no, my mind was made up. I was jumping off that building come hell or high water.
When you’re in such a mental state, you often don’t realize the state of the world around you. What I did notice, though, was the front entrance of the law offices smashed to bits, but I was suddenly so consumed by apathy that the reason behind it just didn’t matter. Sure, it was bizarre that the building was nearly empty, save for a few homeless people gathered around something foul-smelling on the floor, but then again, the foul smell could have been coming from the homeless people themselves. I didn’t know, and let me remind you, I didn’t care.
One of the homeless men looked up at me, his face smeared with what looked like barbecue sauce. He growled and took a bite out of something, making more of a mess than he already had. The strange scene actually made my stomach growl — I hadn’t eaten breakfast — but I knew that I didn’t need any more shame to come from my death. I would die on an empty stomach in an attempt to keep from shitting myself when I hit the pavement. Hell, I’d already pissed myself, why add any more salt to the wound?
I stared at the homeless man for a moment and he stared back, his dark, empty eyes fixed on me, his mouth curled in a curious way. He growled again and I decided to growl back and that’s when he finally looked away. I was sure of it then – I was still nothing to anyone.
On my way to the elevator, a towering security guard stood staring at the panel on the wall. I guess the idiot didn’t realize that elevators don’t work unless you press the button. I stepped up beside him and that familiar foul stench greeted me. I covered my nose with the sleeve of my hoodie and pressed the button on the wall; the elevator made a sound and the doors parted, welcoming me inside. The security guard wheezed beside me. He turned and bumped into me in response to the elevator’s chime, his body weight knocking me slightly off balance. He didn’t even apologize, but I didn’t acknowledge him. On a normal day I probably would have shoved him back, but that day I just didn’t have the energy.
I checked that my journal was still tucked under my arm and stepped into the car, ignoring the clumsy guard. The interior of the elevator was filthy, brown smears all over the floor and walls. Perhaps somebody had beaten me to shitting themselves because the stench was only stronger in there. I pressed the button for the top floor and finally looked up at the guard’s face as the doors were closing; he had the same dark, empty eyes as the homeless man, the same curious look about his mouth. He showed me his teeth and growled at me, just as the homeless man had. As the elevator doors closed and the car began its ascent, I couldn’t help but wonder when a growl had become an acceptable greeting.
I ignored my reflection in the dirty mirrors on either side of me; I couldn’t bear to look myself in the eye. There was always that small ounce of doubt in my gut that might force me to take the car back down to the ground floor. I was doing this, there couldn’t be any going back. There was nothing to go back to anyway.
The elevator chimed and I stepped off onto the top floor. I followed the route from my pot-smoking days of teenage delinquency and found the door to the roof waiting for me. Up on the roof, the wind was harsh and I hugged my journal into my chest. Approaching the ledge, I felt an eerie calm. It was almost as if I belonged up there as I took a seat and dangled my feet one hundred feet above the city. I looked down and was surprised that I could make everyt
hing out so well from up here. I sat for a few moments, watching the people scurry about, appearing as though they were chasing one another. Smoke billowed in the distance and I could smell the different structures as they burned. It was then that the sirens and car alarms finally invaded my ears and I allowed the rest of the city to come to the forefront of my consciousness.
Something wasn’t right.
I observed for quite some time the happenings in the streets below; cars piled up in the distance on the freeway, people scattered quickly in different directions, their screams floating up to me on the wind. While I’d been completely consumed by my own self-pity, I’d totally missed the fact that the city was falling apart for some fucked up reason. I watched as several attacks took place. Were people killing each other right in the streets? Where were the police? Miscellaneous gunfire sounded from all around me, and it was then, in that moment, captivated by the complete and utter chaos unfolding right before my eyes, that hell or high water had surely arrived.
I looked down at my beat-up journal and flipped through the pages over and over. Listening to the sounds that it made, I considered what had been building up in those pages over the last few years and something clicked.
I would not be jumping from the building. Not that day.
***
When I left the roof of the Law Offices of Nillson, Vance, & Croft I saw things with a new set of eyes. The reeking brown means in the elevator were not, in fact, feces. I should have been so lucky. The stains were dried blood, and when I came face to face with the weird security guard once more, I realized that while he was up and walking around, he was no more alive than my grandmother had been on the day of her funeral. The only difference was that grandma was resting peacefully in her grave. He was not.
The homeless people on the lobby floor were gone, but I was finally able to see what they’d previously been hovering around — a freshly mutilated corpse of a man or woman. It was human, that’s about all I could figure out. What I couldn’t figure out, though, was why they’d been so keen on eating whoever lie in a pile of gristle on the floor and not me. Why had the security guard simply snarled and exposed his funky teeth instead of lunging and ripping my throat out? I shrugged. Better to not know and use it to my advantage, I suppose.
As I was walking around the blood-soaked lobby, I noticed that the guard kept watching my every move, so I said hello. My greeting seemed to interest him as he placed one unsure foot in front of the other and stopped just a few feet in front of me. We stared at each other for a few minutes, and as I was about to start wondering what the hell was going on, I realized that it didn’t matter. The dead were clearly up and walking around, who cared why. I patted my journal and got back to the task at hand, leading the unnaturally tall guard along, speaking in a tone as one would address a dog.
I found a simple enough looking office and sat down at the desk, inviting the guard in behind me. He stood staring, his empty eyes fixed on me, and I sat there staring back at him, looking him up and down. That’s when the best idea I’d ever had popped into my head.
I carried on a one sided conversation with the guard as I flipped through the journal, and began explaining why I was making a list when there were zombies ravaging my city.
If the world was, in fact, going to shit and everyone outside these office walls were eating each other, then surely my day of reckoning had come. No more bills. No more debt. Who was going to kick me out of my apartment now? I could probably stroll up to a car lot and drive off in a Ferrari if I so chose. No more bitching and complaining from people who thought I was the equivalent of the dirt on their soles. The end of the world was pretty much the only scenario in which my shitty life made any sense, and I was prepared to take full advantage of it. I can’t believe I was about to throw myself off the roof; my Golden Ticket had fallen into my lap just in the nick of time.
I didn’t normally have thoughts of harming others, it was usually of harming myself, but something got into me that morning. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but boy, when I’d finally completed that list, I realized I felt more alive in that moment than I had in years.
My eyes went up and down the paper, over and over. I was impressed. I’d made short work of a long history of entries and narrowed everything down to one, neat kill list. There was no way I’d be able to take my revenge on literally everyone who’d ever wronged me, but there were quite a few that I knew needed to get what was coming to them. And I’d be the one to make sure they got what they deserved.
I looked back up at my new dead friend and wondered if he’d be ready to eat what I put in front of him instead of staring at it like a dumb-shit like he’d been doing with me. There was only one way to find out.
“Come on, buddy,” I said to the guard.
He groaned, but followed behind. I looked back and finally took note of his name badge. Tim. How delightfully plain.
***
It was just as I’d expected once ol’ Timmy and I hit the streets. We trudged along at a snail’s pace toward the nearest dealership and the streets were swarming with the dead. To my surprise, there were still quite a few of the living running around and it took more than a few scoldings from me to keep Tim from running off in pursuit of a hot meal. None of the dead took notice of me and the mere sight of me walking alongside Tim made whatever living human we ran into scream bloody murder and haul ass the other way. It was amusing, to say the least. Almost two hours ago I’d made up my mind that jumping off a building was a great idea and now here I was, strolling along with my new zombie pal on a mission of vengeance. When I look back at it now, it was almost poetic. The rest of the living were running for their lives, consumed by terror, but there I was, embracing the apocalypse. This was the world I’d always belonged in. Responsibility out the window and a sense of calm that I hadn’t felt in years. No more waking up anxious, wondering how I’d afford lunch or if I’d lose my job the next time someone called me a loser.
Nope.
Just a nice sense of calm that I really felt like I deserved.
Tim and I picked out a badass truck and, after a good bit of coaxing, I was able to get him into the passenger seat. He was such an oaf, but he was really starting to grow on me. We sped down the streets toward my former place of employment with the windows down and the wind in our hair. When we arrived, it was no surprise that nobody had shown up to work that day, but it was a blessing that the power was still on and the internet, for the time being, was still working.
Tim followed me inside and I logged on to one of the computers up front. As usual, the thing took forever to start up. You’d think a multi-billion dollar corporation would be able to get its shit straight and supply its employees with better technology. I signed in to the database and began searching customer information, jotting down the addresses of those on my list. There were two addresses in particular that I didn’t need to write down, though. I knew them by heart and I wanted to save them for last. It was my number one priority to cut down the self-entitled bitches and bastards that had given me the most hell throughout the years. The customer would be right this time. Just the right meal for my new friend Tim.
***
We pulled up to the first address on the list, a stunning townhome in the heart of the city that, miraculously, hadn’t been invaded by zombies. The stars continued to be aligned as I spotted the red BMW sitting in the driveway and I couldn’t help the smile from spreading across my face. He was home.
“Come on, Tim.” I patted him on the shoulder and reached across, popping his door open for him.
He groaned and nearly toppled out of the truck, then patiently waited for me to come around to his side. I whistled and he followed me up the steps to the front door. I knocked, thinking it was only right to be polite. When no one answered, I rang the bell several times and noticed a curtain move off to the right of the door.
“I know you’re in there!” I hollered. “Mr. Brance, open up!”
I heard hushed whi
spers from inside and I asked Tim what he thought we should do. His eyes seemed to light up and he grunted a few times, raising his fists and banging on the door. Tim was really starting to get aggressive, it was the liveliest I’d seen him behave all day. With one final blow of his large fist, he broke one of the glass panes in the door and let out an angry wail. I didn’t want him to cut himself, so I pulled his arm out and reached in, unlocking the door.
Someone screamed from inside the house and I heard Mr. Brance shout for whoever it was to lock themselves in the bedroom upstairs.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Brance,” I called out as I let myself into the townhome. “We’re not here for her.”
Mr. Brance stood at the opposite end of the hall with a fire poker raised, ready to attack. I held Tim back as best I could, but I wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to restrain him.
“What the fuck!” Mr. Brance shouted, recoiling back a bit further, terror in his eyes. “What the fuck do you want?”
“I want you to apologize.”
“For what? Who the hell are you?”
I was almost hurt that he didn’t recognize me, but it honestly further proved my point that these self-entitled assholes didn’t give a shit about who they stepped on in their miserable lives. They were all about themselves.
“For calling me a loser, Mr. Brance. For telling me I was worthless and uneducated, even though I’m forty-thousand dollars in debt from getting my Bachelor’s and my ‘pathetic retail job,’ as you have many times referred to it, was the only job I could find when I got out of school.”
Mr. Brance’s bottom lip began to quiver and, for every menacing step that Tim and I took forward, he took a cowardly one back.
“I’m sorry! Fine! Is that what you want? Get out of my house! Jesus Christ, don’t you see what’s happening out there?” he hollered at us as we got closer, and he began to sob as he realized we’d backed him into a corner.