Zombie Versus Fairy Featuring Albinos

by James Marshall

  “My wife.”

  “Yikes.” Fairy_26 flies up right behind me, wraps her arms around me, and pulls me straight up into the night. Beneath us, I see the door to my house open. I see Chi step outside. She looks from side to side. She can’t find me. She gets smaller and smaller as Fairy_26 takes me higher and higher into the eerie orange night. At a certain point in the sky, in Fairy_26’s arms, my wife completely disappears.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  One Is Too Many

  Inside Fairy_26’s tree-branch apartment, I shuffle over to where the structure ends and the sky begins and I look out at Fairyland and all its colours. All the plants here glow soft mint green in the dark. The flowers have closed for the night but the lights are still on inside: red, white, and blue. Fireflies as big as busses drive down invisible streets in the air, carrying supernatural creature passengers on their legs like pollen; their taillights are bright enough to leave tracks on my sightless eyes.

  Fairy_26 walks up beside me. She puts a hand on my back and the side of her head against my arm. I don’t need to look to see her eyes are closed. If time stopped right now and I could forget my wife and the albinos left me alone, I think I could be happy. That’s how ridiculous it is. How many impossible things would have to happen? What’s the use in counting? One is too many.

  I pull away from Fairy_26. I amble over and flop down on her moss-cushioned sofa. I don’t need to see her looking at me. I can feel it. I don’t know how it makes me feel. How do I feel? Somebody, teach me. Please. I don’t know how to feel.

  “What is it, Buck?” asks Fairy_26, lifting her right leg, bending it beneath her, and sitting on it, next to me, on the sofa. She starts pulling bits of garbage from my head.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I confess.

  “You’re not doing anything,” she says, sprinkling something she’s taken from me onto the floor.

  “Whose happiness is most important?” I ask, turning to her.

  “Yours.” She says it like it’s a silly question. She says it like the answer is obvious. She says it staring at my lips.

  “I don’t know.” I turn away from her. “I have responsibilities. Duties.”

  “You’re a zombie,” she admits.

  “I don’t want to want what I want but I can’t help it. I don’t want what I have but I have it.” I turn toward her again. “You know?”

  She smiles sadly. She nods.

  I turn away again. “I don’t even know how much of this is me.” I look at my undead arms: stretched out; reaching out. “I’m not in control of anything. I don’t know why it took albinos for me to realize it. I knew it before. I’m not in control of anything. I’m like one of those plants out there”—I gesture at the hole in the wall—“moving with the wind.”

  “Those plants have roots,” she says, comfortingly.

  “Yeah,” I agree. “But in what?”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  I Know You’re Married And

  You’re A Zombie But I Can’t

  Help The Way I Feel

  To my right, Fairy_26 kneels, facing me, on the sofa. “Do you want to be with me?” she asks. “Because there are ways, Buck.”

  I don’t know how it started. I think that’s the problem. I don’t know how it began. If I knew the initial conditions, maybe I could figure out where it’s headed, but I showed up in the middle, maybe nearer the end, and I can’t understand what’s happening; I don’t have the information.

  “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do,” she assures me. “And I don’t want you to do anything you’ll regret. I just want you to be happy.”

  What would make me happy? I love my wife, don’t I? I don’t want to hurt her, do I? No matter how angry I get with her? No matter how badly she makes me feel? Is it all a memory now? When she could excite me the way Fairy_26 excites me? Is that all gone? If it is, why am I holding onto it? Right now I feel like I’m holding on to something that isn’t there anymore. I say I honour my commitments. I say I’m contractually obligated to remain faithful my wife until someone bashes out our brains but I know infidelity is common among married zombies; I know it’s typical zombie behaviour. But I don’t understand my desires and I’m sick of being mindless. I want there to be a good reason for this feeling. Do I honestly think Fairy_26 could make me happy? If so, for how long?

  Is the need I think I feel for her just a chemical reaction to this situation? How involved are the albinos? Ninety percent? Are the albinos pushing me in a certain direction? Are they guiding me away from Chi? Are they leading me to Fairy_26?

  “I don’t want to do anything the albinos want me to do,” I confess.

  “What do the albinos want you to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Fairy_26 puts both hands on the sides of my face and turns me to face her. “If they’re in your head and they can make you feel whatever they want you to feel and they can make you think whatever they want to think, how can you ever know you’re not doing what the albinos want you to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-TWO

  Buck Burger, Where On God’s

  Zombie-Infested Dystopia Have

  You Been?

  Why do I keep going home? Why don’t I just leave? Why don’t I just pick a direction and go that way until I get somewhere? That’s just it. How can I pick a direction when I’m so aimless? And how will I ever know I’ve gotten somewhere? How long will it take to find out? What if I’m wrong? That’s why I go home. It’s easy. I don’t have to think about it. I just have to dread it.

  “Buck Burger, where on God’s zombie-infested dystopia have you been? I’ve been standing here with my arms outstretched . . .”

  It starts as soon as I open the door. It’s a barrage. An assault. Recriminations and accusations fill my brain. I only catch chewed off bits and bloody pieces. “ . . . and of all the miserable clean things you’ve ever done . . .”

  Irritated, realizing I’m being mentally shelled from offshore and there’s nothing I can do, I throw my keys outside among the skeletons and partly consumed corpses on the front lawn.

  “Oh, so now you throw your keys, huh?” she says, sarcastically.

  She’s dressed for war, all in black: black high heels, black leggings, a knee-length, stretchy, black sweater dress. The blood on her dress is drying and pulling the knit in new directions; it bunches the fabric toward it; the material is a zombie, drawn to the wet, warm, sticky red. She almost looks good. Even though she’s dead and rotting; unfeeling and thoughtless. She almost looks good, covered in black and blood. Neither her dress nor her leggings have tears or holes; no openings through which I can see her. She’s so upset she’s letting herself go. Good. I like her when I can’t see her. I smash my briefcase against the wall. The briefcase bursts. In the air, papers shoot out like trapped butterflies escaping. The empty briefcase falls to the floor. The papers follow, slower, more gracefully. There’s a new hole in the wall.

  “Now you smash your briefcase against the wall.” She says it in the same mocking tone.

  I never liked the look of her body, of her skin, even when she was alive. I loved her and I was passionate about her and I’d undress her with an anger, a fury with her, for getting dressed, for keeping her skin from me, for slowing me down, even if it was only a matter of moments but then, after we had sex, I was always upset with myself for being overtaken by the living human animal in me, by giving in to it, by becoming it, and having my fill.

  I was always disgusted by the act for which I’d been so hungry and thirsty only minutes earlier and although I never let it show—I was tender and kind—and I pretended I was still enchanted by her physical self and I held her and whispered love words afterwards because I thought it was what she wanted, I would’ve been happier if she’d just left and returned the next time I want
ed her like that. I’d see her get up and walk to the bathroom naked and I’d wonder how I could ever desire that. When I wasn’t taking her or having her, I liked her better when she was dressed. When her body was left to my imagination, it was ideal. In my mind, she was someone she could never really be. How could I call it love when I felt this coldly about her body? That was it. It was just her body. Her body wasn’t what I loved. I had sex with her body and that’s what was so frustrating about it. She wasn’t, and no one could ever be, as wonderful in the flesh as she was in my mind. With so many plans, dreams, and exciting ideas, with a different take on everything, including everything about me, she was my best friend. The universe wasn’t enough for us to discuss. We had to invent new ones. Sometimes it seemed we only ever did things apart so we’d have something to dissect, analyze, and laugh about later. Now I just let her vent. She rants and rails. I haven’t even closed the door; I’ve just opened it, walked inside the entryway, and let her furious words splash over me like so much gushing life becoming death. I remember when I used to care, when I’d listen, when I’d say her name every time she paused. “Chi,” I’d say; “Chi, please.” Now I just let her go. She’s one of those dolls with a string that’s been pulled. You can try to reason with it but it’s just going to keep talking until it’s said everything it has to say. You might as well just wait. I walk into the non-living room. On the sofa, there’s an open-mouthed flesh-covered male head from which the brains have been eaten. Looks like Chi had a snack before I got home. Probably thought she needed her strength. I roll the head off onto the floor. I collapse on the spot where the brainless male head had been.

  “Do you have anything you want to tell me?” she asks, glaring at me with her sightless white eyes.

  I don’t say, “I have a lot of things I want to tell you.” I don’t say, “I have so many things I want to tell you I don’t know where to start so I don’t start anywhere.” Instead I say, calmly, “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so or you know you don’t?”

  “Just get it over with, Chi, okay? I’m tired.”

  “You’re tired?” Chi is incredulous. “You’re tired? Really? Me too. I got up early to make lunch for Francis Bacon. When he woke, I had a long talk with him about how you accidentally let out Constance, his cat, and now she’s missing. He’s going to have a great day at school, isn’t he? Get lots of learning done, I’m sure. Yeah, so, I told your unwanted son that you were really upset because it’s your stupid fault Constance is gone. I assured him the only reason you, his loving father, were unable to be here to help comfort him during this difficult time is because you’re out looking for Constance. In fact, you didn’t come home at all last night. You were so sorry for what you’d done, you spent all night searching.”

  “Oh,” I say. “That.”

  “Yeah. That.”

  “I’m sorry, Chi. I’m going through some things.”

  “Depression,” says Chi. “I wish I’d never made that doctor’s appointment for you. I wonder what sort of excuse you’d dream up for this if the doctor hadn’t given you an excuse.”

  “I have a prescription,” I remind her.

  “Are you taking your pills as prescribed?”

  “No,” I admit. “But I got the prescription filled. I thought that was pretty good. I mean, I didn’t even feel like doing that.”

  “Great, Buck. Congratulations. It sounds like you’re really on the road to recovery. No. Actually, it sounds like you were on the road to recovery but then you stopped and you got hit by a car.” In our minds, in disgust, she shakes her head. “A big car. Going very quickly.”

  “Is that it?” Clumsily, I start trying to get up from the sofa.

  “No, Buck. That’s not it.”

  I fall back down into the sofa’s soft cushions. The cushions are covered by beige fabric covered with blood that’s dried red-brown and started to break into little flakes.

  “What else?”

  “Deepah called,” says Chi. “Barry says you got promoted. Did you get promoted, Buck?”

  “Yes,” I admit. “But it’s not that bad.” I assure her. “Not all our friends will start treating us like pariahs.”

  “Why’d you get promoted, Buck?” she whines.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t want to get promoted.”

  “You’re an executive, Buck! An executive!”

  “I’m sorry, Chi. I never wanted this to happen. I thought I was keeping my head down.”

  “Do you have stock options? Be honest with me! Do you have stock options?”

  “Yes,” I sigh.

  “What else?” she demands.

  I don’t answer right away. I go through the list in my mind, picking a few things that don’t seem that bad. “A car and driver. Access to the company jet.” I pretend I’m still trying to remember. “I think that’s it.”

  “A raise? Are you getting a raise, too?”

  “Wait. No, yeah. They might have said something about a raise,” I admit, embarrassed.

  “Buck Burger, don’t tell me you have an expense account!” she warns, pointing at me in our minds. “Don’t tell me you have an expense account now! Don’t do it!”

  “I’m sorry!” I cry. “I’m sure it’ll be audited! I won’t be able to get away with much!”

  “Did they tell you it was going to be audited?”

  “Not directly.”

  “I can’t believe this!” She turns, staggers away a few steps, and turns back. “You’re ruining our non-life! What are we going to do with all that money? Do you know how hard it’s been to keep this place even mildly squalid with the two incomes we already had?”

  “We’ll find a way, Chi,” I reassure. “We’ll make it work.”

  If she were alive, she’d be crying now. She’d be sobbing. As it is though, she just stares at me through disgusting white eyes. “What am I supposed to tell my friends, Buck? Huh? What am I supposed to tell my friends?”

  “It’s not my fault!” I yell.

  “Because you’re depressed?”

  “Yeah! Because I’m depressed!” I gesture at my head, stiffly. “It’s neuro-chemical.” I think about the albinos in my mind and, still rigidly pointing at my brain, I insist, “There are forces at work beyond my control!”

  “Can you do anything now, Buck? Can you do whatever you want? Do you live in a world free of consequences because you’re depressed?”

  “I don’t know about free of consequences, Chi, but it’s pretty free of happiness, okay?”

  “And I’m sure this argument isn’t helping anything. Right? I’m contributing to your unhappiness? Your depression?” Furious, Chi ambles off, into our bedroom.

  Trying and failing to get up from the sofa, I call after her: “Look. I’m sure the other executives have this same problem. I’ll ask them about it, okay? And I know what you’re saying. You’re right. We probably won’t keep all the friends we already have because they won’t want to be around nicer broken things in more elegant blood-splattered, feces- and sick-covered rooms and they probably won’t want to eat glamorous people and that’s sad but maybe we’ll make new friends. Executive friends. They must socialize, right?”

  “You’ll probably want me to buy a new dress,” Chi calls from the bedroom. “An expensive one.”

  “You can tear it and stain it as soon as you get it just like you do with the new dresses you get now.” I can’t get up from this stupid sofa! My gnarled senseless grey hands sink deep into the foam cushions! My stiff legs won’t bend far enough for me to roll forward up onto them!

  After a long pause from Chi, she says, “You think I ever buy new dresses?”

  Now I pause for a while. “Don’t you?”

  “Of course not! God, Buck! I take them from the women I kill and eat in the street!”

  “I’m sorry! Okay? I just assumed!”

  “Sometimes it feels we
don’t know each other at all!”

  I don’t say, “I wish I knew the feeling.” Instead I say, “I’m sorry, Chi! Jeez! I wasn’t implying anything!”

  She stumbles out of the bedroom, carrying a suitcase full of soiled clothes and fresh human body-parts. “I’m going to stay with Deepah and Barry.”

  “That’s right,” I say, fighting to stand up, for, I don’t know, something I don’t understand, myself. “Run off to your boyfriend, Barry.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend, Buck,” she snorts. “He’s my best friend’s husband. Nothing has, or will, ever happen between Barry and me.”

  “What about Francis Bacon?” I ask, stopping my struggle. “Huh? What about your son?”

  “He should be home from school soon,” she says, stomping on, cracking, and breaking bones on her way to the front door. Reaching the front door, she opens it. “Tell him I’m at Deepah and Barry’s, if he needs me.” Before she leaves, she turns and looks at me. “If he needs you, tell him you’re depressed!” She slams the door behind her.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  Everything Seems To Happen Now

  Time seems to stop, waiting for Francis Bacon to get home from school. I don’t know what time does. I don’t know how it works. Everything seems to happen now. It rushes in from both sides. It smothers me. I don’t know what to tell Francis Bacon. Not the truth. I can’t tell him the truth. That’s probably the thing that’s surprised me most about being a father: how rarely I tell my son the truth. Everything is a lie aimed at turning him into something I’m not. I’m not sure the lies work because they didn’t for me but the truth is so terrible. How could I ever tell anyone the truth? I spend most of my time trying not to admit it to myself.

  Francis Bacon is a good-looking young man. I don’t think he has a girlfriend but I don’t know. I don’t think he has a boyfriend, either, but I don’t know. If he has a group of friends at school, that’s where he keeps them. He doesn’t get many phone calls here. He doesn’t go out often. He keeps to himself, even in the family. He’s pleasant and polite. Sure, he and I get into fights. He doesn’t have his music loud enough. He doesn’t drink or smoke enough. We never walk in on him having sex with some girl. It’s regular family stuff. “Francis Bacon, are the cops ever going to come looking for you?” You know. That sort of thing.