Zombie Versus Fairy Featuring Albinos

by James Marshall

  I moan.

  “What happened?” she interprets. She shrugs. “What always happens?” Suddenly her wings blur into motion, lifting her off the floor. When she’s at precisely the right height to stand, her wings stop. Her feet touch down so gently it’s like they were never off the ground. She walks over to her music player. “Do you like music?” She looks back at me over her shoulder.

  I nod and nod. Zombie music all sounds the same to me. It’s sexual and rhythmic, the way human and supernatural music is, but zombie music is made up entirely of human screams, zombie groans, and the sound of things breaking and I get enough of that at home.

  She turns on a song. At first I think it’s an orchestra of instruments but then I realize it’s a choir of voices. Fairy voices. They sing the wind whispering through spring leaves and gales crashing into winter cliffs. They intone a small fire crackling in dry fall branches and a raging inferno roaring through a hot summer forest. The room resonates with the clicking of stones and the tumbling of boulders. It’s the union of all things. The harmony of the universe. It’s all one big bang, breaking everything apart, perfectly, so it can be alone. Without us. Within us. It’s the sound of the supernatural, which is so natural it can’t be understood or accurately described. It can be reproduced, but why? Why isn’t it good enough as it is? The song Fairy_26 plays for me is the sound of everything people and zombies aren’t. “Do you like it?” she asks, swaying to its beat, turning to me.

  Dumbly, I nod.

  “Dance with me.”

  Awkwardly, I try to get up. She flies over and helps. When I’m standing and I seem steady enough, she lands in front of me. “Okay.” Concentrating on the problem, she puts one hand on the back of her head. She ruffles her green hair. It’s still drying. “How are we going to do this?”

  She moves in such amazing ways. Her elbows work; her knees bend. She curls her toes in the soft moss carpet. She smiles. She tips her head from side to side, cheerfully.

  When she stops playing with her hair, her arms hang loosely at her sides, not rigidly out in front of her. She’s so alive. I try not to stare at the pulse beating in her neck. I try not to think of the blood and meat of her beauty. She’s constantly recycling. It’s such luxury, seemingly beginning again, with every breath.

  I lower my outstretched hands onto her shoulders. She moves closer. I’m so surprised I almost take a step back but I’m slow and awkward and I recover before I have the chance. She comes as close as she can, wrapping her arms around me completely. She holds me tightly. She presses the side of her beautiful face into my undead chest. My arms reach out above her uselessly, touching nothing, pointing nowhere.

  “I’ll help you a little,” she says. Her wings turn invisible, fluttering. She lifts me a few inches off the ground. She begins moving us in time with the music. She knows this song. She knows every bend and curve and dip and swell. She hugs the music as tightly as she hugs me. After I get over the surprise of it all, I can almost feel it. I can almost feel her. I can almost feel the fairy voices and the sound of everything. For a second, I understand the smallest part and the whole and how there’s no difference, just the illusion of difference. Just as the vast majority of humans can’t see the zombie world or the supernatural world, I’ve been unable to see the one thing I ever needed to see and as soon as I look at it, directly, I can’t see it anymore but even when it disappears, I remember what it looks like. I don’t know if I’ll ever see it again but I know I’ll spend every second searching and I won’t forget who showed it to me. It’s so fast but so important. I can’t believe I’m still dancing with Fairy_26. I can’t believe she didn’t stop and say, “You see?” But she doesn’t know I did and I don’t know if she ever has.

  Briefly, I wonder if she slipped me something, some sort of hallucinogen, or if the perfume of her hair is intoxicating me but I don’t care. It doesn’t matter how or why I saw what I saw; I saw it. What am I going to do when I find it again? Will I worship it or destroy it? Is there any difference? No. Just the illusion of difference. I have to remember that. I repeat the words in my head, over and over, while Fairy_26 holds me off the ground and moves me to the music of everything she knows so well.

  “Have you ever heard of Guy Boy Man?” she asks.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  Farm-Raised Humans Don’t Taste

  As Good As Free-Range

  My zombie wife, Chi, and I are at the grocery store. I’m pushing the cart. It has a waist-high horizontal handlebar. It has four wheels. It has a metal cage into which you stuff the bodies of living people. The cage is six feet by six feet. It has locking gates on either side for your convenience. There’s also a smaller, easily accessible, non-locking cage on top for smaller items such as fresh brains, saliva for your wife’s coffee, and that kind of thing.

  The fact that I’d never heard of Guy Boy Man excited Fairy_26 so much we had to leave her tree branch apartment right away. Holding me by the hands, she flew me from downtown Fairyland, over fields of flowers too beautiful to dream: irises, poppies, peonies, and violets. Laughing, she swooped down right above them and dropped me into them. They were enormous. Each flower was as big as a large room. I’d slide down the silky petals. I’d bounce down the velvety ones. I’d land in the soft centre. Awkwardly, I’d stand among pistils and stamens that were taller than I. The colours of the flower were so bright and sharp it hurt to look at them directly. I could see them with my eyes closed.

  In the middle of a tulip, Fairy_26 showed me Guy Boy Man on the inside of bright whiteness that stretched up and curved over us, like it was protecting us. Guy Boy Man was ecstatic, brandishing the Pope’s hat, waving it at us, like we were the Pope or he knew the Pope would be watching and he kept saying, over and over, “I have your hat!” Fairy_26 explained to me who Guy Boy Man is. I guess he’s a real superstar in the supernatural world. Guy Boy Man is a sixteen-year-old pirate and spiritual leader who may have, inadvertently, caused a global financial crisis in the process of becoming unspeakably wealthy. He actually likes to talk about it but it turns out not many people want to hear about it.

  Anyway, Guy Boy Man is one of the very few humans who can see zombies for what they are. With his vast resources, he’s managed to expose a number of zombie banks and zombie institutions. Currently, he’s in the process of rallying others to his cause, which is to end human suffering. Fairy_26 explained Guy Boy Man’s odd clothing choices. To reflect his role as spiritual leader, he wears a shiny, high-tech, white, plastic ceremonial robe. To indicate he’s a pirate, he wears a pirate hat. Apparently, Guy Boy Man pirated the Pope’s pirate hat—the tall gold and white one—and now it’s Guy Boy Man’s pirate hat.

  In the tulip petal, Guy Boy Man wielded the Pope’s hat like a weapon and said, “It costs ten percent of your weekly salary to belong to the Pope’s religion. For a limited time only, if you go to www.howtoendhumansuffering.com, you can join my religion at the low cost of nine percent of your weekly salary. “That’s a savings of one percent every single week! There are fifty-two weeks in the year. It’s simple mathematics. Just by switching from the Pope’s religion to mine, you’ll save fifty-two percent a year!”

  In the grocery store, my wife and the mother of my son is tearing up the list she made. She’s knocking items off shelves and down onto the floor. “I do the best I can, Buck,” she says. “I don’t know what else to say. I love you with all my heart. I look after you and our son. Are you happy? No. You’re depressed.”

  “It’s not your fault, Chi. It’s a chemical imbalance.”

  The aisles are wide enough to permit two carts to pass each other going in opposite directions.

  “It’s a chemical imbalance,” she scoffs. “I know that. You know that. But that’s not what zombies are going to think. You know what zombies are going to think? Zombies are going to think there’s something wrong with me.” She mocks, “‘If Buck is depressed, things must be great at home. His
wife probably keeps the house too tidy. I bet she cooks. Maybe she’s lousy at having sex in human blood and filth in front of horrified people she and Buck haven’t eaten yet.’ Oh God.” She turns to me, scared. “Is there something wrong with me, Buck? You’d tell me if there was something wrong with me, wouldn’t you? Is there something I do that you don’t like? Is there something I could do that you would like? I’m not talking about cleaning the house, taking a bath, or washing my clothes, Buck. Because that’s not happening. Okay? That’s just me. If you don’t like it, well, I don’t know what to tell you. Too bad. Tough luck. Be depressed.”

  “You’re not doing anything wrong, Chi.”

  The Pope and spiritual leaders of other organized religions are among the most important human beings with whom zombies have alliances.

  The busiest and noisiest section of the grocery store is the “Fresh Meat” section.

  When Fairy_26 and I left the tulip, I considered, mindlessly, how upsetting the Pope might upset the zombie hierarchy. I’d never knowingly encountered anyone from the upper echelons of the zombie world but I always assumed there was an upper echelon and it kept things going. Fairy_26 flew me to a stream where we landed on a twig that floated on the surface tension while the clear water below became a clear picture of Guy Boy Man ranting:

  “Zombies ruin the environment and they want us to fix it? Forget it. Not me. I turn on all the taps and I leave them on. I buy regular light bulbs, not those dim little compact fluorescent pieces of crap and I turn them on and leave them on, day and night and I don’t have a smart car. I have a big, dumb-ass American bulldozer. And I leave my big, dumb-ass American bulldozer idling all the time even when I go to bed at night and in the morning, I get up and I don’t need to turn on any lights because they’re already on and I shave, shower, and brush my teeth but I don’t need to turn on the water because it’s already pouring.

  “I get dressed in cheap clothes made by sweatshop kids because sweatshop kids need money too and I go out to my big, dumb-ass American bulldozer, get in and I don’t have to turn it on because it’s already running and I drive it uneconomically—speeding up to red lights and peeling out when they turn green—to the gas station and I fill ’er up.

  One day, when the tank is full, I’m going to keep pumping. I’m going to pump until gasoline rivers run down all the streets in the world. Then I’m going to light those rivers on fire because fire is awesome. I’m going to watch the flames dance and the black smoke fill the sky and I’m going to laugh and laugh and laugh . . .”

  Right now, Chi and I are in the “Frozen Foods” section where a zombie can get a TV dinner consisting of an unidentifiable cut of human flesh along with a dollop of artificial mashed potatoes and a rather pathetic looking serving of vegetables. There are also rows of frozen human legs and arms hanging on hooks behind glass doors that hiss a little when you open them, and spill out a cold wind over your lower undead extremities. The corners of the glass are usually covered with frost. Behind other glass doors, there are hands and feet sitting on shelves. For budget-conscious zombies, there are whole frozen torsos available that you can take home, thaw, and de-bone yourself. For those with a little more money to burn, individual frozen cuts are available: lungs, livers, kidneys, hearts. Nobody buys frozen brains. It just isn’t done. Sure, you could probably ask the butcher and, I suppose, he’d go along with it if you gave him a long explanation of why you want a frozen brain but who would? You want your brain fresh. Aisle Four.

  Chi pulls a couple of human arms from the freezer. “I know you don’t want to hear this, Buck,” she says, sticking the arms into our cart. “But we need marriage counselling.”

  “You need marriage counselling,” I say. “I don’t need marriage counselling.”

  “Buck, all our friends are going to marriage counselling.”

  After we left the stream, Fairy_26 brought me to a tree that filled the sky. It had more leaves than I could see and we landed a long way from it. Fairy_26 told me it was as close as we could get. She said it was as close as anyone or anything could get. It was an important tree. I wanted to get closer. I needed to get closer. Fairy_26 knew it. She picked me up and flew me toward it and even though the rest of the world sped by in a blur, the tree stayed the same distance away. Was it retreating? Were we just not advancing? On the leaves of that tree, I could see Guy Boy Man and in my mindless mind, I could hear his words:

  “I want to make a brief point about the futility of everything. I know that sounds like it’s going to be depressing but it’s not. Really.” He paused, thinking about it, looking up at his own eyebrows. “Okay it’s going to be a little depressing,” he admitted, finally.

  He paced back and forth but the leaves always showed his face or the side of his face and there were times I knew he was gesturing with his hands even though I couldn’t see. “Here’s my brief point about the futility of everything: it’s not for us. All the work we’re doing: the sky we’re scraping; the inroads we’re supposedly making. It’s for other people. People we’ve been told, lead to believe, convinced, will be around after us. We’re actually trying to make the world easier and better for people we’ll never even know. And we’ll never be done. And we’ll all die trying. To do something we don’t understand. For people we don’t know. And all that’ll be left of us, any of us, when we’re dead and gone, will be a pyramid, in one form or another, a testament to nothing and no one, a monument proving only our slavishness, ironically, to something which never had any real power, a shrine to the suffering we never needed to endure, but for which we volunteered ourselves, and worse, our children.”

  “Fine,” I volunteer. “If it’ll make you happy, we can go to marriage counselling.”

  “Really, Buck?” says Chi, guiding the front of the cart into the chaotic “Fresh Meats” section while I push it. “Do you really mean it? You’re not just saying that? Because I think we really need marriage counselling. I think we’re going to discover we have a lot of problems.”

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  Unhappiness

  Here in “Fresh Meats,” you have your choice of free-range or farm-raised people. The free-range put up a fight and they’re delicious. That’s what most zombies want. So, of course, free-range people cost more. Farm-raised humans are annoyingly docile and they lack that free-range flavour. That’s the general consensus. Some zombies prefer the milder taste of the farm-raised people but most zombies want the free-range zest and tang. Of course, almost all zombies derive sexual pleasure from the fight put up by the free-range ones but it’s rarely discussed in polite society and zombie society is, if nothing else, polite.

  “Pardon me.”

  “Not at all. Entirely my fault.”

  “You’re too kind.”

  “I’m so glad we’re going to marriage counselling,” says Chi, directing the front of our cart into the path of an oncoming cart. We collide. “It’s the right thing to do. Everyone will agree. Your depression is a symptom of an underlying problem. You and I need to root around in all our pent-up resentment and unspoken bitterness until we figure out what’s wrong. Resurrecting all our petty arguments, reanimating the problems we never solved, giving new life to our differences and how incompatible we are is key.”

  “I feel better already.”

  “Oh yeah. We’re going to talk about your sarcasm a lot.”

  The zombie into whose cart Chi directed ours has pulled hers back. She stands there for a moment, not thinking. Then she starts ramming her cart into ours, over and over, mindlessly. She wears a heavily stained tailored black pantsuit with no blouse. Her exposed skin is mottled grey-white. Her unbuttoned jacket reveals her bare breasts every once in a while when her cart crashes into ours. Her dirty blond hair is stuck up with every kind of filth unimaginable. Her white eyes see nothing. Everything is infuriating in them.

  When she withdraws her cart to slam it into ours again, I move our cart to t
he side, safely out of the way, while she’s out of position. She propels her cart forward as if nothing has changed. When she fails to collide with anything and, instead, her cart moves forward easily, she loses her grip on it and it goes rattling away. She falls to the floor.

  Chi and I move on.

  Here in the “Fresh Meats” section, they, the naked free-range human beings, shake their cages and howl with animal rage. They curse and spit. They fornicate. To entertain themselves. They try to urinate on you and defecate on you. Like zombies care. Filth and wounds are signs of zombie prestige. In any event, when you pick a person you want to eat, you open their cage, reach in with the store-provided taser and you shock them.

  When they’re incapacitated, you reach in, grab them with both hands, and pull them into your open cart. You close and lock the cage from which you got them, along with the gate on your cart. Then you move on. It doesn’t take long at all. Without the taser, it’d be hours of sweaty, bloody, screaming work, pulling out the free-range ones. The farm-raised ones, on the other hand, just climb into your cart when you open their cage. You can shock them if you want but there isn’t much point. It’s easier to just let them walk into your cart. If you shock them, you have to drag them into your cart. Some zombies shock them, wait for them to recover, shock them again, wait for them to recover again, over and over, mindlessly, and they wind up blocking the aisle.