Ninja Versus Pirate Featuring Zombies

by James Marshall

  “Of course you do.”

  She doesn’t say anything for a while. Then she says, “I wouldn’t read them to you anyway.”

  The next room in my castle is a fully stocked two-story library. “Books,” I say, waving my hand around, un- and disinterested. The library has rolling ladders you can move from side to side to get to the ones on the second floor. I hardly ever read, but sometimes I come here to my library, move the ladders around, and climb them. I like the ladders. They’re fun.

  The trouble with the books in my library is they’re not real. They’re real in the sense that they’re books. They have pages marked with letters and words (i.e., symbols) arranged in a sort of order. After one learns how to read the symbols, and does so, thereby deciphering them, perhaps not as the author intended but, for better or worse (if there are such things, and there aren’t), associating the symbols with their various meanings (i.e., definitions), choosing the meaning (or meanings) that seem most appropriate when taken in context, these symbols become the reader and the reader becomes the symbols (inasmuch as one informs the other), creating an impression. These books (symbols, black markings, or the white space that fails to be blotted out, or the white space that succeeds in avoiding oblivion) that are readers that are authors, creating their own impressions through reading (or, rather, writing) the text with the meanings (definitions) to which they have access and which seem most appropriate given the context (the context is changeable too) sometimes create thoughts (or seem to). Others, feelings. A few, both. But they’re not real. Again, they’re not fake books. They’re not empty boxes or covers separated by blank pages. They’re regular books. But they’re not what they contain and what they contain is not a book. We’ve been so misled. Books close your eyes and manipulate you. There’s nothing wrong with that until, invariably, the zombies start walking toward you. Sometimes you open your eyes and see the zombies in time. Most of the time, you don’t.

  I leave the library. “This is a drawing room, where I draw.” I move into another room, bringing all my baggage. “This is a sitting room, where I sit.” I walk out into an area where another group of my hot young female followers is gathered, watching the morning’s entertainment. (The party never stops in my castle.) The girls are all dressed anachronistically. In their loose but sexy dresses, in their stockings, with their hair pasted to their heads, twisted in curls on their foreheads, this group of my followers is dressed like flappers: frivolous young women from the 1920s. They’re slinking in huge antique chairs. In a couple of cases, they’re sitting sideways on each other’s laps and lightly trailing their fingertips over each other’s bare arms. They’re drinking red wine from big crystal goblets, talking amongst themselves, smiling, laughing, and sometimes pointing at the show.

  Tattooed and pierced “pin-up girls” are taking turns situating themselves in classic pin-up-girl poses, adding to the sense of timelessness (or the meaninglessness of time) created (or highlighted) by my followers. The pin-up girls— with their early- to mid-twentieth century hairdos and their bright red lipstick, in their garter belts, hosiery, and high heels—try to outdo each other. I stop for a moment, putting my hand on one of my followers’ bare shoulders. Immediately, she puts her hand on mine and looks up at me but I keep watching the pin-up girls. I’m not really a tattoo and piercing guy, but there’s something about the mix of old (pin-up) and new but not really new (tattoos and piercings on and in pin-up girls) that appeals to me. Then I get bored.

  I lead Baby Doll15 away from the party. I whisk her into the south-facing wing of the castle. “Oh my God,” she whispers.

  Each of these huge rooms has gigantic stained glass windows—some of which stretch from threshold to peak, from the width of the walls to the depths of our collective inexperience—and the windows are blushing with and embarrassed by the early morning sun in the east, filtered through the gloom of grey clouds covering everything. Baby Doll15 and I are bathed in soft light, in water colours: oranges, reds, greens, blues, and yellows. The religious scenes depicted are especially sinister and threatening in their dishonest innocence and immutability.

  Obviously, I’m not one of those spiritual leaders who pretends to be a really great guy (not that a woman couldn’t be a spiritual leader), and then you find out he or she is really pretty bad. I admit it upfront. I’m terrible. Really. I’m pretty awful. But when I’m here, in the south-facing wing of my castle, in all these rooms I’m leading Baby Doll15 through, with all these (artful) stained glass windows depicting religious scenes, I know I’m not nearly as dreadful as I need to be.

  I’m working on it, though.

  Back in my bedroom, Baby Doll15 sits on the edge of my bed. My demons, Mike Hawk and York Hunt, are there. As usual, they’re eating Hot Pockets and drinking Red Bulls.

  “So are you going to do her or what?” asks Mike Hawk, lifting his Hot Pocket to his mouth and taking a big bite.

  “Why are you guys being like this?” I ask, confused. “Usually you advise me against this sort of thing. ‘She’s evil, don’t do it, you’re going to regret it,’ ” I mock. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” says York Hunt, exchanging anxious glances with Mike Hawk. Both of them have mouthfuls of Hot Pocket. Both of them have stopped chewing.

  “Something is definitely going on,” I insist.

  “No, it isn’t,” chokes Mike Hawk. He’s trying, and failing, to be casual.

  York Hunt swallows a big lump, nervously. “We’re going downstairs.” Anxiously, he jerks his head toward the door for Mike Hawk to follow. “You kids get to know each other and do what comes natural.”

  “You’re terrible demons,” I mutter, as they leave.

  “That’s very nice of you to say.”

  “It’s a real pleasure tormenting you, Guy Boy Man,” adds Mike Hawk, smiling, with his head stuck in. Then he closes the door.

  I slam the door behind them. I take a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm myself. Then I turn to Baby Doll15. She quickly looks down at her hands; they’re fidgeting on her lap. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed. It’s a scary edge, a cliff. Her knees are together, tightly. Her feet don’t reach the floor. Her white stocking feet and pink high heels dangle. I walk over to her. I sit beside her.

  I lift her chin with my crooked forefinger. I move my lips close to hers, so close to hers, and I stop there. Our eyes are open. We’re both looking down, at the nearness. Our eyelashes are whipping at each other and almost touching. I want to kiss this girl and I don’t know why. I want to kiss this girl more than any other girl I’ve ever wanted to kiss. (What’s going on? She’s only mildly attractive!) I want to kiss her but I don’t want to kiss her because then I’ll be kissing her. It won’t be as wonderful and horrible as this. Unrealized desire. The problem and its apparent solution. It’d be worse to leave it here, or so it seems, so we kiss, once, innocently, gently, and then we part, but before we do, we seem stuck together for a second, glued, and then it gives way.

  Her mouth is open and close to mine. I feel her hot breath. I smell its strange sweetness. Her eyes open slowly. They widen, searching both of mine, back and forth, like there’s a flower conversation going on between my irises and she doesn’t want to miss a petal, or a word. When her lips move toward mine, seemingly almost against her will, like I’m drawing them there, I move my head back slightly to prolong it, this, the moment we’re both here, on the edge, before we both fall over, become weightless, and feel the wind trying to catch us, to save us, before we land and die this death we both want, the death of the unknown, where we’ll be born again, touching, tasting, feeling, hearing, and seeing everything. I say, “I wonder why my demons want me to be with you.”

  She grabs my head and forces her lips against mine, shutting me up. Our mouths open and close against each other, saying wordless words, pronouncing nothing except some slow and sweet sound, declaring only willingness, no, eagerness now, and our tongues join in and reach for something they’ll never find, and we enc
ode and decipher a new language, communicating, and it’s impossible to say if our tongues are working together when they never seem to agree and always seem to be at cross purposes, but they don’t seem to ever want to stop.

  On the bed, we pull off each other’s clothes. We pull off our own clothes if we’re having a problem or it’s going too slowly. (I tell her to leave on her heels and stockings. And her pearl necklace and golden chain and cross.) There’s a momentum to this now. We’ve been caught in its gravity and it’s pulling us toward the centre we’ll both soon share. We’re breathing hard and both our bodies are feverish and once we’re naked and there are no secrets anymore, no secrets that matter anyway, and our hands have dissatisfied themselves, journeying to the places they always wanted to go, only to find they’re tourists, we realize we need a place to stay.

  I kick down her door.

  “This is the position Christians used to convert the heathens,” I announce. “I’m in the Christian position. You’re in the heathen.”

  “Oh my God!” she moans. “This is so disappointing!”

  Her body is killer. Guns shooting. Hatchets swinging. I’m really looking at it. Especially her boobs. They’re big. You should see them.

  “Oh yeah, I’m really giving it to you now,” I admit.

  “I can barely feel a thing!” she cries.

  The look on her face keeps changing: one moment she’s shocked: wide-eyed and open-mouthed; the next she’s in pain she seems to like: her face is scrunched but her jaw works over soundless words.

  “I hope this doesn’t last much longer!” shouts Baby Doll15.

  “It won’t,” I assure her, glancing down. What’s happening below us is disgusting and tragic, beautiful and important, or both.

  I know it sounds crass, but I made a study of the vagina. Admittedly, at the time, it was a little awkward for the owners/operators of the vaginas of which I made a study, but they went along with it. I looked at vaginas in soft light, in fluorescence, in harsh white incandescence. I drew diagrams, scribbled notes, entered (male) numbers into (female) formulas and came up with (dissatisfactory) answers. I wasn’t happy with the results. I went over my findings time and time again. I kept looking for an error that would nullify my conclusions. But ultimately I failed to find fault with myself. My method was sound. [I’m not saying I used sound, exclusively, to study the vagina. Obviously, I bounced sound waves of different frequency off the vaginas, and I used sonar to fathom their depths, but “sound” was not my only tool. (High five.)] Eventually, I had to admit it.

  No matter how much I’m drawn to vaginas, they’re ugly.

  Baby Doll15 frowns. “Is it still in?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow,” she groans. “This is not what I was hoping for at all.”

  “I’m really turned on by dissatisfaction.”

  “You must be so turned on right now!” she cries.

  “Yes.”

  I don’t know what floods my mind to convince me otherwise during the prelude to sex, but vaginas are a freak show. (Have you ever noticed how aliens and monsters in sci-fi and horror movies are often vagina-like?) By no means did my study suggest that penises are in any way “better” or “more attractive” than vaginas. I didn’t study penises. Penises are not my area of interest. But I suspect a thorough scientific examination of penises would yield similar results (i.e., they’re gross too).

  “I should have said more than ‘yes’ back then,” I admit, “but I couldn’t think of anything.”

  “Your penis is so small!” she shouts.

  “I know. I used to be really depressed about it but then I realized I didn’t care. It’s good enough for me. If you’re unhappy, that’s your problem.”

  “Then I’m having all kinds of problems right now,” she moans. “Oh God! I’m so unhappy!”

  The vagina appears to have been blown out from within, as if by some great force, possibly an explosion, and all the disgusting bits and bobs on the surface resemble some sort of horrific fallout. I wonder: was I looking at it from the right side?

  “Shouldn’t it be harder?” whimpers Baby Doll15.

  “No, it’s always about this difficult.”

  “I mean your penis.”

  “Oh. I had sex five times before you came over so I could last longer.”

  “You shouldn’t have!” she says.

  I bury my face in the pillow next to her head, in a pile of her hair. It smells like baby shampoo. She breathes hotly in my ear. “Please make things better.” The sensation of her lips on my ear is so visceral, it’s visual. I can actually see her lips through the sound of their feeling.

  “I’m really frustrating the hell out of you, aren’t I?” I sneer, lifting my head.

  “So much!” she cries. “It’s torture but not the good kind!”

  “This is awesome.”

  Something is happening. I don’t know how, what, or why. Something is definitely happening. It’s happening to me. Maybe it’s because she isn’t beautiful. Maybe it’s because she’s just cute. She has room for improvement. In my eyes. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. It’s never been like this for me. It’s never meant anything. It’s always been about escaping. The moment, the place, myself. Now it’s about her, giving something to her, something she doesn’t believe in. Angrily, spitefully. I don’t believe in it either: The sacredness of this disgusting animal thing. But I want to disillusion her of her disillusions, even though I share them, because I want more for her.

  Wait, wait, wait. What? I want more for her? Why? That’s crazy. I want more for myself. But maybe by wanting more for her I’ll get more for myself. Who are you? What are you doing in my head? Are you the zombies? Are you hacking into my brain?

  “I wish everything was different!” yells Baby Doll15.

  “I’m fantasizing about other girls.”

  “I wish they were here instead of me too!”

  “It’ll be over soon.”

  “That’s what you said when we started!”

  I look down at her, beneath me. She’s so much more than cute now. She seems more beautiful than any girl could possibly be and I know that whether or not I saw her more accurately before, I’ll never be able to see her that way again. It’ll always be like this, with wonder in her scary eyes and a whimper on her lips. Maybe the zombies are using this girl because she possesses some special pheromone that reduces my immunity to their zombie signal. Is that why my demons urged me to be with her?

  Suddenly I want Baby Doll15 to devour my body. (That’s worrisome. Could I allow myself to become zombie food?) I want her to drink my blood. (That’s less worrisome— vampire make-believe.) I don’t want to be inside her just this (admittedly) little bit. I want to become her. I want to be her, looking at me like she’s looking at me, and meaning it. I want to eat her body (worrisome; could I become a zombie willingly?). I want to drink her blood (less worrisome— vampire make-believe again). I want her to know how I feel.

  As the pace increases, I can’t look at her anymore. She becomes too gorgeous. I cover her face with one hand and turn her head to the side. She pushes her face against my hand and groans. As I fall faster and faster, and the sound of my body hitting the ground grows in intensity and frequency, she twists out from under my hand and locks me in her eyes. I feel everything bad leave me. For a frantic second I want it back, I don’t want it to change her, but then, somehow, I know it won’t (i.e., I’m using a condom).

  We look at each other, out of breath and sweating, and we don’t say anything but we both know exactly what we mean.

  CHAPTER FIVE:

  There’s a Table on a hill in The Cemetery

  Baby Doll15 and I sleep through the day and wake in the night. It’s the same night. It’s the darkness on this side of twelve instead of the darkness on the (so-called) other side of twelve. The magic prison guards of the calendar haven’t attempted and failed to divide it yet. At the witching hour, they’ll cast their spells and tell us some
thing has changed when it hasn’t. We’re always on this side of twelve. The wrong side.

  The full moon is a big pearl hanging around the neck of night. The chain is stars. The sky is black and glossy, like the coats of nightmares, wrapping around us. A select group of my hot young female followers and I are in a cemetery foggy with ghosts of the living: it’s a heavy fog, lying in the lower parts of the (I should’ve mentioned this earlier) hilly cemetery; that’s how I can still see the sky.

  There’s a table on a hill in the cemetery. Above the table, a giant leafless oak tree stands. In the tree, my raven stands guard. The table is covered with the periodic table of the elements. The tree’s branches stretch over half the table. The branches aren’t actually stretched on the table. They’re above it. In the air. I was going to say the tree’s branches stretch over the table in the sky, but the table isn’t in the sky, and I don’t think the branches are, either. I don’t know about you, but I think of the sky as something higher than tree branches. I think of the sky as something black and blue, grey and cloudy. I suppose you could say the sky is all around us and we live in it and I wouldn’t argue with you, because if you say we live in the sky, you’re crazy, and I try not to argue with crazy people. They’re usually right. Anyway, let’s recap. Night, fog, moon, cemetery, hill, tree, raven (those are your natural elements), table, hot young female followers, me (those are your unnatural elements.)

  Candle flames illuminate the table, the periodic table of the elements, and the faces of my hot young female followers seated around it.

  Nearby, the oak’s trunk is so thick the girls can’t get their arms around it. It took six girls holding hands to hug it properly. Giant leaves cover the ground around the tree, like tears shed over the loss of tears. The leaves lost their creator and their vibrant colours. But the tree lost the most. Its yellowish flowers are gone. Its foliage is torturously nearby but forever gone. The brilliant red protestations before the fall were ignored. Now only soft brown reminders cover the cold green spikes of longish lawn. Soon the snow will come and all of this will be covered with one big lie we’ll tell ourselves is white.