And then I cried a little.
Or maybe it was raining.
Ah! That old guilt again. Always with the guilt. NO MORE KILLING. These people were innocent! People were going crazy and turning into cannibals, but it wasn't their fault. They were just hungry. Food. People do strange things when they're hungry – desperate things. I was lucky. Before the ghost portal came, I always had tons of Spam to fill me up. I was all set from day one. Canned food at its finest.
After I said my words of peace – after I blessed that boy and kicked away the roaches that were already all over his grave – I made promises, goals: 1) No more killing people, and 2) Try to make friends. Just keep trying until someone gives in...until someone a little more sane than the rest can hold a reasonable conversation. Heck, I'd even talk about politics.
And then I go and yank out that woman's insides and kill her.
And now here we are.
Me dragging her to Kaka'ako...burying another one of my fellow humans...another sad soul. Another sad, sad soul that was just mad with hunger; that's all. Otherwise, good people, I was sure of it. Loneliness. Guilt. I could feel God looking down on me, ashamed; and I could feel Mr. Satan looking up, approving.
“Your room is ready, Dr. Boss,” Satan was saying. “Anytime you're ready. Anytime you're ready.”
A stronger part of me demanded I shut up with all the guilt-talk.
You're a survivor, it said. You're just doing what you have to do to make it in Hawaii – to live, dammit, so cut out all this BS about guilt. You HAVE to kill. You HAVE to protect yourself. These aren't people anymore. These are damn cannibals! Get it through your head. Not people. Cannibals.
But I'm lonely. I need companionship. I need a woman. Please, God, I want a lover.
You'll get over it. In time...you'll get used to being alone. Besides, you wanna be friends with someone who eats people?
No.
Who gobbles up cats? Dogs?
No.
Who eats DEAD BODIES? Are you weird???
Of course not. I don't wanna kiss a girl that just ate a dead body. It disgusts me.
Well, then...stop talking to yourself and head on home. A mighty Spam feast awaits ye.
I had to leave my condo. Those cannibals were everywhere. They were breaking into places and messing things up. My condo was no exception. When I got home, the place was trashed. It was like someone irresponsible threw a drunkard's party. The stink of urine hung in the air, chairs stuck out from walls, spit filled the kitchen sink, and a half-eaten arm was in the toilet. It reached up with a clawed hand. I flushed, but that didn't get rid of it. Those irritating cannibals....they took all my clothes, but they didn't find my precious canned foods.
I stuffed them all in a backpack and went out for my new place, and I knew exactly where to go.
Back in the world, before the island went haywire with ghosts, I was paid to get rid of some zombies in Kalihi. The guy said I could stay over his place until I finished my job, and there would be a lot of zombies to kill, because he lived behind a cemetery. I said, “For all this money you're giving me, I'll hold you down and give you the ol' up-down.” He said that wasn't necessary. I was just joking, of course.
I lived on the bottom floor of a two-story house owned by two 60-year-old Hawaiian-Filipino brothers. The house got into trouble even before I could get to work. If memory serves me right, one brother got drunk, died of a heart attack, turned into a zombie, and tried to eat the other. Much screaming. I remember being in bed, trying to read, looking up at the ceiling and thinking, What the F is all that damn noise?
To escape being bitten, the still-human brother jumped off the roof and broke his neck. I saw tears in his eyes. I like to think it was due to a broken heart. After he, too, turned 'sour', I killed them zombie brothers with a sharpened shovel. Seeing as how I had to get paid, I searched them. Not finding anything, I went upstairs and looked around. The place was strange. The walls were covered in newspaper, and animal hair was all over the floor, and I kept hearing a soft whining sound, like a dog was behind a wall or somethin'.
In any case, I found my money in an empty honey jar and got the heck out of there before the fuzz came and threw me in jail. Sure enough, as I walked down the sidewalk, cops sped by. I kept my head down. Works every time....
The house still looked the same, except for the plastic covering the windows and all those boards nailed over the front door. Took me an hour to get them off. I could've smashed through a window, sure, but I wasn't in the mood to hear shattering. I placed each board in a nice pile and opened the door. I expected no one to be home, and I was wrong.
Two dead, old women were on the couch. The looked somewhat ethnic, and they smelled like fish.
I took them out back and buried them under a mango tree.
I was hungry, and a sick part of me started getting some ideas. But I wasn't interested in cutting them old people all up and eating them. I'd KILL myself before I ate another person – living or dead or living dead.
I turned on the TV and got nuttin' but static. I knew that would happen. It was just that I always hoped to see a news reporter. “Good news!” she'd say. “Everything's back to normal! The ghost portal is gone!” And if you were lucky, you'd see my commercial right after:
Aloha. My name's Dr. Boss. I can help soothe you – help get rid of your walking dead problems. Just pay my murdering fee and we can do business. Oh, and let's not forget my cleaning fee and depression fee....
All that right there was what you heard on my commercial. It would air at (if I'm remembering correctly) two in the damn morning. It didn't bring any business. A thousand dollars. Down the drain. Good grief. Running a business is hard. I thought I was supposed to be making money? I wasn't living, I was surviving. That's no way to go. Money was tight. Everything I ate was Spam. Spam, Spam, Spam. Meals like fried Spam, boiled Spam, microwaved Spam, chilled Spam, and liquified Spam.
It's all that damn ghost portal's fault. See, that's when the zombies stopped coming! I don't get it. They just...stopped...coming.
Well...now let me tell you a little about this here ghost portal. I'm looking up at it now as I write this. Look at it...ghosts flying in and out, carrying white souls, black souls, yellow souls. (Five minutes later.) I just spent five minutes yelling at that damn portal. I was venting. It never listens to me. It just does what it does...stealing souls at random.
It showed up over Honolulu in 2010 – a big hole in the sky that sucked in the clouds all the live-long day. It was like an upside down, giant sink drain, but for clouds. At first, people were happy to see it. The hole was interesting. People pointed and many clapped. Japanese tourists took pictures, and when even more tourists started flying down, we all thought, Good. Better for Hawaii's economy. The Governor even held a big Downtown party: Rock bands played; girls with painted, naked bodies danced and jiggled their fat; kids ran around naked and free; parents got drunk and breakdanced on cars; and Governor Sherripa was seen running topless through the crowd of drunkards, screaming something about aliens – but in a good way. She was then seen swimming in a bathtub full of whiskey on the back of some pickup truck. She was taken to the hospital as a result of alcohol poisoning. Later in an interview, she apologized for her sick actions and vowed never to suck a drop of alcohol again. (But that's what they all say. I should know.)
All were merry.
That is...until the ghosts came down and started “attacking” people. But they didn't just scare the living daylights out of everyone. They took their souls – right done yanked them out and took them up, up, up...back into the portal. The cemeteries were filling up fast. Many bodies had to be put in big freezers by order of the Governor. Families were pissed. But as they say, “Better to be pissed off, than pissed on.” And it got me thinking....Why didn't people just cremate their dead? Why keep the bodies lying around? What is WITH these families that insist on holding on to rotting corpses? They're insistent! What is this sick fascination? Are they craz
y? Daft? Mental???
The first police officer to shoot up at the portal got his legs pulled off by a ghost. Some Irish tourist caught it all on tape. It was all over the news. Jesus....The cop looked very confused.
Then more police attacked the portal...then more ghosts came...then the military attacked...then MORE ghosts came. The message was clear: Leave the ghost portal alone. Nothing could be done. Not even those priests could help. One day, they all got together under the portal and held hands and complained to God about the hole in the sky. Long story short, ghosts flew down...ate their faces off for some reason...and stole their souls back up to the ghost portal. The zombies slowly stopped coming. I wasn't getting many calls. Few people needed my help. I felt useless. It was at this point that I started my crying phase. All hope was lost. I quit my side-job folding clothes and stayed in my room for days. Didn't matter anyway. The mall was closing. ALL stores were closing. The tourists weren't flying in – not after being attacked by atrocious spirits. People were dying on the streets. Once, on the news, I saw a row of people just fall over like dominoes. It was amazing. After that broadcast, everyone stayed HOME.
One thing did benefit from the ghost portal, though.
A game show called Ghost City.
The commercial went something like this: “Would you explore Hawaii's most haunted places for hundreds of dollars? If you think you've got what it takes, we want you for...Ghost City! Hawaii's first ghost hunting reality show. Sign up now to be a contestant!”
And yup, people came like farts in the wind.
But only 10 were selected.
ME being one of them.
Good thing, too. I was jobless. Again, the zombie busting business was pretty much dead. I didn't understand why the dead weren't coming back to life. Something was wrong. It was like all the zombies just gave up and stayed dead. It had to do with the ghost portal. It showed up, and that's when the zombies stopped coming. I needed money. Big-time. That game show thing seemed so easy. All we had to do was make our way to the rooftop, where a briefcase filled with money was waiting. No problem. Seemed easy enough. In my mind, ghosts had to be easier than zombies. I don't know why I thought that. I just did. And I was friggin' so wrong.
All of us were wrong.
Contestants were getting killed left and right – ghosts disemboweled them, tore their limbs off, skinned them alive, fried their bones, stripped away their nerves....Damn ghosts. One of the contestants kept giving me static, kept insulting me, kept trying to intimidate me. It was some big guy who shall go unnamed. Fool! He thought he knew everything; thought he had it all planned out. What's worse than an arrogant fool? An arrogant fool that's also a ghost hunter. Screw that guy! I don't even wanna say his name. Let him cook in Hell. But anyway....
I made the mistake of making pals with one of the contestants.
Her name was Lacey Zoolu.
She was Russian.
We all had to survive a night at an abandoned place called Lord Hannigan's Hospital. I didn't tell anyone, but I already went to that place the past year to take care of some zombie business. I don't remember his name, but some guy that lived in the woods called me, complaining about a zombie terrorizing his family. I went to his house and found the living dead girl riding on their large dog. The family watched in horror, pointing, screaming, demanding me to do something about the terrifying spectacle. The zombie girl saw me and tugged on the dog's left ear and headed right for me. I yanked out my trusty sledgehammer and swung a big, heavy one. Her head came off messy, hitting that guy's wife right in the face; then the head rolled around on the grass – teeth chattering – and the husband lit it on fire with his lighter; then they hugged one another and cried while the flames cooked.
The dog flung the zombie's headless body high into the air. It landed on its feet and ran down the dirt road with its arms waving in the air. It ran all the way to....
Lord Hannigan's Hospital.
It ran into the abandoned place, into some dusty room filled with gurneys, and right before I was about smash its legs with my sledgehammer, the thing up and died. I figured the head – the brain – finally burnt up. I got my monies – my $200 – from that guy and started my long walk home. Tired, I decided to sleep the night over at the old hospital and think about my life. What was it all about? Where was I heading? Did I really love what I was doing for a living? Was it my calling? These were all very important questions. More often than not, they seemed like problems. They needed solving, I believed. Or what was the point of it all? Of living?
Purpose.
It was all about purpose. What was mine? Maybe it was time to get a girlfriend. Maybe she could help. Maybe a good sit-down chat with a lover could help make things clearer.
Cut to: Me and this girl, Lacey, walking the dusty hallways of that abandoned hospital. She was with some guy that got spooked real bad by a ghost and ran away like a fancy girl, leaving Lacey all by her lonesome. That ghost would've gotten her, too. That is, until I came along and punched that ghost's head. Its face come off and crashed through a window, and I think it hit a bird. I took Lacey's hand and ran off with her. She was wonderful! We talked about love, about life, about politics (which I thought I hated talking about), and we talked about art. But then she had to turn a wrong corner and get snatched up by a ghost. I grabbed her feet and pulled, but it was no good. The ghost ripped her neck open, and her soul (along with much blackish & greenish blood) flew out from her. The ghost took her soul and flew away with it. I ran to a window and shook my fist at the ghost, yelling, “Bastard! Come back here with her! With her souuuuuul!”
It didn't listen.
I assumed it was heading its merry way toward the ghost portal. They always did. That's what I always saw on the news. Weeping and sniffling in that crazy, embarrassing way, I walked over to Lacey's body and embraced it. I didn't care that her neck-blood spurted all over my face. I held her close. She could have been the one. The ONE. And this ghost portal had to go and screw it all up. I felt like crawling up into a ball and sleeping all day.
I was more depressed than usual.
But there was no time for it.
I picked myself up and thought about money – all that money waiting for me on that roof. I was gonna win that money, buy a ton of beer, go home, and get hammered drunk.
Suddenly, I felt a lot better.
I folded Lacey's body up and stuffed her down a laundry chute as gently as I could for safe keeping. I then ran screaming, positively, down some dark hallway.
“Get ready, you damn ghosts! I'mma gettin' my monies and nothing's gonna get in my way! Yaaaaaarrrrggghhhhhhhh!”
At some point, I was trapped in a room filled with what seemed like 20 ghosts, and that big, unnamed guy I mentioned earlier (the ghost hunter) locked me in that room. He laughed while he did it, saying how HE was gonna win that money and “throw” a dollar in my mouth, because he was such a “nice guy”. So there I am...all trapped in this room with all these ghosts. It was a mad fight. I was flinging ghosts here and there. They got in a few good hits, but I managed to hold my own. One of them ran their fist through my chest and almost – almost – pulled out my soul, but I punched that ghost IN the face and pulled out ghost-brain and threw it back in its face and kicked the ghost away. It crashed through a window, and that's when I got my little idear: Climb out the window!
Which I did.
And was able to climb one of those water drains...all the way up to the roof.
To my stupid horror, I saw Mr. Unnamed dancing around with my briefcase of money. He talked to the host of the game show with the camera guy all up in his face. The host kept calling that ghost hunter “Winner”.
“Anything you wanna say to your adoring fans, Winner?”
“My mom, dad, all my fans. I want to thank Ghost City for this exciting opportunity. And, of course, I want to thank my lord and savior,” the winner smiled, but he didn't say who that was. “Kids, remember...stay off them drugs!”
He was smili
ng so brightly. That bastard! I ran up and made to goose him, but those damn Samoan security guards put their mitts all over me and hauled my ass away. I dragged my heels, cursing into the night, and watched as that ghost hunter was showered with love. Those Samoans threw me into a taxi. I told the Korean driver to drop me off at some bar, where I got super drunk. I went to my condo that night and collapsed on the kitchen floor. In the nude.
I didn't dream of anything.
Usually I dream of nice things when I'm drunk.
But not that night.
Waking up was the worst part. I couldn't stop vomiting. I didn't even get up. I opened my eyes and mouth and bad stuff flew out in a powerful stream. I hit a rat once, but I didn't care. I tried not to think too hard...but her face just kept popping in, stalking me.
Lacey....Lacey....
After I lost the game show, I'd always find myself walking through the woods, hammered drunk, just crying, thinking, not caring how hard it rained. I was an epic failure. Failed zombie business. No money. Now I'd have to get a job, maybe as one of those guys that pushed carts around at supermarkets. Looked easy enough.
For some reason, I got an urge to go to church, so I's did.
I saw some people on a hill with their hands in the air. Ghost flew all around these dumb-asses. I started running toward them and yelled at them to run their dumb-asses away, but they didn't listen. They just stood there...and then the ghosts flew through them and towed their souls away. The people dropped dead, I walked away, and that was that. Almost seemed like they wanted to die. I couldn't blame them. Crazy times. Crazy, depressing times. After that, I just strolled back into the woods and walked around some more...thinking about other possible future jobs. Maybe I could go back to school and be an accountant. I shuddered at the thought. Math. Numbers. Gadzooks. It felt like a black hole was swallowing me up. Hopeless....Hopeless....But come on. Accounting. People were always hiring for that sort of thing. Nursing was another option....Sure, cleaning butts all day is gross, but I've seen worse, believe you-me.
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