by Noel Merczel
The girls all stared at the woman. The angry pink and purple rash was running wild all over her skin in random patterns, looking far worse up close.
And her eyes! They were a bright angry red right in the middle with a weird milky white color surrounding the red like a bad watercolor painting, harboring an odd lumpy texture like someone had rubbed cottage cheese into them.
They all waited for the woman to respond. But she was just standing there, mute, resembling a deer caught in the headlights.
A very sick deer...
Lisa produced her smart phone and snapped a picture of the woman.
"Lisa, really!" Drew chastised her friend.
"Please, no pictures!" the woman cried, her wide reddish-white lumpy eyes looking shell-shocked. “I wasn't attacked by a dog. I was attacked by some....homeless woman. I was just walking up the street, and she came at me with this...demented expression and started... biting me. Just ripping into my skin! I've never felt pain like that before in my entire life!
I mean, can you even imagine, something eating you alive? And I couldn't fight her off! She had this super human strength......I still feel like I'm in shock.
I mean, I still can't believe this even happened. It seems like a nightmare! And now, I mean yea...there's the pain...but something else is wrong..."
"Did you say a homeless woman?" Lisa asked. "I saw a homeless woman today. Over behind Maybelline’s. What did she look like?"
"Let her sit down!" Andrea cut in. "Geez!"
Andrea let out a huge breath of relieved air. As weird and strange and terrible as all this was, at least it had nothing to do with her fantasizing about this woman's husband.
Lisa led the woman over to the sheet-covered couch. Then Andrea ran upstairs to get the poor woman a can of cold seltzer water and something for the blood.
Something....but what? Andrea wondered, looking around the kitchen.
I don’t think we have a first aid kit, even though I read somewhere that every family should have one, she thought. Are we supposed to apply a tourniquet? What the hell is a tourniquet, anyway?
Andrea's thoughts formed a panicky jumble in her brain.
A homeless woman attacked her? That is so weird.
A woman attacking another woman? How? With a weapon?
No, she said the woman bit her.
Bit her? Like a zombie? Like a dog with rabies?
That is just too weird.
Andrea ended up grabbing two old dish towels that had some holes in them. She felt bad about one of the dish towels because it had a cute picture of a little blue bird on it.
When she came back down the basement stairs, Lisa was exclaiming, "Yea, that's her! That's the same woman I saw behind Maybelline’s! I knew she looked suspicious. I mean, I thought she looked really creepy. Like...... evil, you know? But I never would have guessed she goes around eating people. Is she that hungry? Why doesn't she go to a soup kitchen? Oh wait. I guess because they don't serve human ears at a soup kitchen."
Andrea held out the can of seltzer water and the dish towels for the woman to take. The woman had to stretch her arm way out to reach the items, since Andrea didn't want to get too close.
Then the woman thanked Andrea, which made Andrea feel guilty, yet again, for fantasizing about her husband.
Suddenly, the woman screamed.
"OH MY GOD! WHAT'S ON MY HANDS?" she hollered.
No one knew how to answer.
"I don't know," Andrea admitted. "Um...what's your name?"
"Mimi," the woman replied, still staring at her rash covered hands. "Mimi Gladstone. I live right down this street. Four forty-three Lamplighter. What the hell is wrong with my hands? They weren't this way before! Oh my God! I've never seen anything like this!"
"It's just some kind of rash, like eczema..." Andrea responded, trying to sound like it was "no big deal," even though the rash looked grotesque; like no rash she had ever seen before in her life.
"Or maybe it's an injury,” Drew suggested. “Like a bunch of bruises under your skin. Bruises can make your skin all different colors..."
"Oh my God!" the woman repeated for the third time. "Is there something you're not telling me? Is that why you have those surgical gloves on?"
"We need to report this and you need to get to a hospital before that shit gets infected!" Drew announced, ignoring the woman's questions. "That homeless woman, or whatever she is, needs to be arrested! The only problem is, we can't get through to anywhere."
"You can't?" the woman asked, studying her pinkish purple looking hands. "What about 9-1-1?"
"La-la-la-la!" Patty sang, spinning around in circles in the middle of the floor.
"Don't mind her," Drew told Mimi. "9-1-1 isn't picking up. And neither is information. Andrea, do you guys have a phone book here? I can call my mom and ask for the number of the local police. Maybe we're supposed to just automatically know that number. Does anyone know it?"
No one answered.
"Should I call your husband?" Andrea finally asked Mimi.
Mimi thought about this for a moment before she agreed. Then she gave Andrea her husband's cell number, and Andrea punched the number into her cell phone.
Oh my God, Andrea thought. I'm calling Mr. Sexy Jogger! Only, I can't think of him that way right now.
The phone rang a number of times, but HE...the woman's husband, did not pick up.
"I'll wait a few minutes and try again," Andrea informed the woman. "Do you want me to try your home number?"
"Sure," Mimi replied.
Then she supplied Andrea with her home number.
There was no answer there, either.
"Fuck!" Andrea swore, feeling frustrated.
Then she apologized to Mimi, realizing that some people are offended by swearing.
Andrea walked back over to the computer and sat down at the desk. However, when she tried to go online, she saw that stupid box with the load-up bar that said Internet Explorer has stopped working.
"What the hell?" Andrea complained. "I can’t get online!"
"Why are you guys dressed like surgeons?" Mimi asked, pressing a dish towel against her torn ear.
"Don't take offense," Andrea told her. "But we didn't know if you were contagious or not."
"Contagious?" the woman asked in a incredulous voice, laying down on the couch and wincing. "I was attacked! How would that make me contagious?"
"Well....Andrea said, feeling upset that she had obviously made the woman angry. "You have that weird rash. It's all over your face too, you know. And ....um...what's wrong with your eyes? Can you see okay?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Mimi took a few more swigs of the icy cold seltzer water.
"Show her your mirror, Patty!" Lisa commanded.
Patty stopped spinning in circles and stared at the ceiling.
"The pink leopards have all gone to heaven," she stated, in a solemn voice.
Lisa rolled her eyes and marched over to the desk, extracting a mirror from Patty's oversized Christian Dior tote bag. Then she brought the mirror over to Mimi and handed it over to the sickly woman.
Andrea was attempting to contact the woman's husband, once again.
Why won't he pick up? she wondered.
"Don't freak!" Lisa warned the woman about her reflection. "It's pretty bad. Put it this way. I don't think you'll be applying for America's Next Top Model any time soon."
"God, Lisa!" Andrea sighed, the phone still ringing.
Mr. Sexy Jogger's phone wouldn't even go to voice mail so Andrea couldn't leave a message.
Although...what sort of message would she leave that wouldn't sound absolutely insane?
Uh...sorry to bother you, but your wife is here in my basement looking like a crazed zombie....
"Just a little humor, babe," Lisa snapped. "You should try it sometime."
Mimi took a deep breath and looked into the small mirror. Then she gasped in horror.
After that, she let out a blood curdling scream.
"It's okay," Drew said, trying to calm the woman down. "You'll get better..."
Andrea was just about to hang up when....HE ANSWERED THE PHONE!
Luckily, by that time, Mimi had stopped screaming. Now she was just laying on the couch perfectly still, with a dish towel over her face. It was the dishtowel with the little blue bird on it, which was now a little red bird since it was covered in blood.
"Hello!" Mr. Sexy Jogger barked into the phone. "Who is this!"
God, he sounds so angry, Andrea thought.
This certainly didn't have the same fun feel as one of Andrea's fantasies.
"Um...hi...my name is Andrea Muller?" Andrea said, trying her best to remain calm. "Your wife Mimi is in my basement..."
"MY WIFE?" he yelled, sounding even angrier than before. "YOU HAVE MY WIFE IN YOUR BASEMENT?"
Suddenly, Andrea didn't like this guy very much anymore.
"She was in my backyard,"Andrea explained, feeling shaky.
None of this is my fault! she reminded herself.
"And I think she was, I mean, she said she was attacked by some homeless woman...plus, I think she's really sick or something....."
"I'll be right there!" he stated, sounding a little less angry. "Where do you live?"
"One twenty-two Lamplighter," she told him. "I’m uh...You jog by my house almost every day. I'm the girl out watering the flowers?"
He didn't say anything, at first.
Oh great, Andrea thought. He doesn’t even remember me! Now I really feel stupid.
Finally, he said, "Okay. I know which house you mean."
Wait, Andrea thought. I was wrong! He does remember me!
"I'll be there in about five minutes," he said. "I'm over on Chanticlair. Have you been listening to the news? Do you know what the hell's going on around here?"
"No," Andrea replied.
Drew and Lisa were staring at her. Patty was still staring at the ceiling. Mimi hadn't moved an inch under her bloody dish cloth.
"HA!" Mimi's husband shouted over the phone, with a disgusted snort. "They say it's the damn apocalypse! But you know what it is? It's a bunch of crazies with zombie make-up running around attacking people, and the news media has totally bought into it. They're saying it's some sort of damn virus....."
Andrea couldn't help but think what a weird coincidence this all was, since she had been discussing the possibility of a zombie apocalypse happening just last night after watching the show Dead Heads with Drew.
"Are you serious?" Andrea asked. "This is on the news? The real news?"
"Yea! More than one channel, too!" he confirmed. "Just be careful. If she starts acting.....threatening just get away from her. Go lock yourself in a room. I'm heading up Lamplighter now. Get ready for me. Don't let anyone else in!"
Then he hung up.
Threatening? Andrea thought, confused by the woman's husband's choice of words. It was like he knew something....was warning her in some way.....
Andrea dropped her cell phone onto the table and said one word.
"Zombies."
Mimi tore the dishtowel off her face.
"What are you talking about, Andrea?" Drew asked.
"Your husband," Andrea told Mimi. "He says this is on the news. You know that homeless woman? She was pretending to be a zombie. That's why she attacked you."
"WHAAAAT?" Lisa screamed. "Oh, that is too funny!"
"It's not funny, Lisa!" Andrea exclaimed. "This shit is really happening!"
"Yea, think about it," Drew said. "If enough people go around pretending to be zombies and killing people, that's almost as dangerous as the real thing! Or wait...maybe even more dangerous, because they would have regular brains and zombies just have dumb zombie brains."
Just then, the girls heard a gunshot outside.
"It might just be a truck backfiring," Andrea ventured, remembering what Mimi's husband had said about people attacking other people, and that it was even on the news.
Nobody was buying the truck backfiring idea, including Andrea, herself.
“It sounds like my husband’s shotgun,” Mimi suddenly said.
"Your husband will be here soon," Andrea told her, trying to sound soothing. "He's coming up the street, right now."
Then everyone in the room was silent, thinking the same exact thought.
If that was indeed her husband's shotgun... who (or what) was he shooting at and why?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
My husband, ha! Mimi thought. My husband is probably busy thinking of that stupid smiling slut from his office right now. My husband would probably look at you and secretly fantasize about fucking the hell out of you, the disgusting pig of a man!
Mimi's milky white eyes tracked the girl with the thick honey blonde hair. The girl was wearing one of those summer dresses all the young girls were wearing these days.
The dress was virginal white with a high waste, and the bottom was all poofy, like a tutu. It was made out of delicate eyelet material and looked like the sort of dress a five year old would wear to a birthday party.
What the hell is with all these young girls these days? Mimi wondered, angrily. They all want to look like children. What happened to girls wanting to look sophisticated and mature? What’s with the stupid little girl act? Is it so they don’t make men feel threatened?
They either want to look like little girls or porn sluts, like that other girl with the skin-tight top. It all goes along with their dumb round faces and the stupid doll hair and big fat lips.
Mimi was born in 1984. Back when Mimi was growing up, girls were proud to be called women.
Now, fifty year old women were clipping fake hair to their heads, having their lips artificially plumped up, and going around calling themselves girls instead of woman.
When did the word "women" become synonymous with "old woman?"
Nobody calls a fifty year old man a "boy."
Stupid girls....stupid women...
Oh God, I feel like I’m going to throw-up! Mimi thought. I’ve never felt such horrible nausea in my life! I have to tell one of these dumb sluts to bring me a bucket.
This is so embarrassing! To be at their mercy...
Mimi tried to tell the stupid girl with the virginal white dress to get her a bucket, but the words wouldn't come out right.
“Booo,” she said. “Boooodit?”
Suddenly, everything in the room looked like it had a white film over it. Mimi blinked, thinking she had something in her eyes. But the white film remained.
The picture of the kitten wearing the frog hat on the computer was laughing at her from behind the white film.
Laughing at me! Mimi thought, indignantly. How rude!
Then, mysteriously, the nausea just disappeared... replaced by an overwhelming gnawing hunger.
Why am I so ravenous? Mimi wondered. I feel like I haven’t eaten in weeks.
Why is everything so filmy? Why is the cat on the computer laughing at me, with its sharp little kitten teeth sticking out in such a mean way?
Mimi always liked cats. But this cat was not to be trusted.
Mimi shook her head.
Why am I having these strange thoughts? she thought. Where are they coming from?
I’m hungry. So hungry. This is almost worse than the nausea! I want to sink my teeth into some delicious soft flesh.
Flesh...it’s all around me....fresh meat...fresh...so good....it smells so good....looks so tantalizing....
"Hey, Andrea....um......something's not right..." the skinny girl with the straight blonde hair was saying.
"What do you...." the girl with the thick honey colored hair started to respond.
Mimi was now sitting up. She had removed the bloody dish towel from her face.
She was smiling, anticipating sinking her teeth into fresh raw bloody dripping meat.
Mimi's sickly milk
y white eyes tracked the pudgy girl with the mounds of frizzy blonde hair.
That one is loaded with meat! she thought. What a feast!