Ninja Versus Pirate Featuring Zombies

by James Marshall

  A few of the girls wanted to glue fallen leaves back onto the tree but even the lower branches are too high, we don’t have any glue, and even if we attached all the dead leaves to the places from which they fell, it wouldn’t be the same. It’d be a mockery.

  That’s why I agree we’ll come back later with a ladder and lots of glue. Maybe enough glue to do the whole world.

  One of my hot young female followers emerges from the fog, climbing the hill toward us, carrying the heavy front of her full-length gown. “Baby Doll15 is right behind me,” she says, breathless, kissing me on the cheek. “She looks amazing.”

  All my hot young female followers are dressed similarly and, in this respect, Baby Doll15 is no different. Baby Doll15’s high heels click on the stone path that winds up the hill between the grey headstones. She’s wearing a corseted gown. Its voluminous skirt is full-length. She holds up the front of it to keep it from dragging on the ground. She doesn’t walk as much as glide, and she doesn’t glide as much as seduce. One foot crosses in front of the other with every step, moving her hips from side to side, emphasizing them. The corset exaggerates her already exaggerated breasts. Her hair is an abundance of pink curls toppling over one another. Her skin is baby’s breath white.

  “Good morning,” I say, even though it’s dark and before midnight. I stand. “You look beautiful.”

  “Thanks.” She leaves the path, walking across the leaves and lawn to me, eyeing the scene before her. “I’ve never seen anything like this.” She moves to kiss me on the lips, but I offer her my cheek instead and, after a moment’s surprised hesitation, she pecks it.

  Baby Doll15 drops the front of her skirt, puts her hands on her hips, and slinks over to the side a little, sultrily. She straightens up, reverses the way her hands are on her hips, pushes her elbows toward each other slightly, and leans forward a little. “So what is this? What are we supposed to be?”

  I know what she means, but I don’t feel like explaining the obvious: this is a different time; a time when there was time; we’re others; any others; pretending; making-believe anyone has ever been dignified.

  “The world,” I shrug, retaking my chair. “People.” I gesture for her to sit next to me.

  Earlier I noted the natural elements of the scene include the night, fog, moon, cemetery, hill, the leafless tree, and my raven. I suggested the table, my hot young followers, and I are unnatural.

  I suppose one might say a cemetery is unnatural (let the dead bury their dead), and one (possibly the same one) might say the hot young female followers and I are natural. I don’t know if it’s natural to bury people. We’ve been doing it for a long time but that doesn’t mean it’s natural. I only contend the cemetery is (by no means permanent but) a (for now at least) fixed element of the scenery. We could move the table around quite easily, and my hot young followers and I could leave at any time. Why do I consider myself and my hot young followers unnatural? I’m not suggesting we’re unnatural because we’re hanging out in a cemetery. Cemeteries are (generally) full of more interesting conversationalists than your average office building, church, mosque, or synagogue (for example), so it would seem more natural to hang out in cemeteries than in your average synagogue, mosque, church, or office building (not that there’s any difference). No. I believe my hot young female followers and I are unnatural because I’m a Christian.

  “We all heard your screams and moans of dissatisfaction last night, Baby Doll15,” comments one of my hot young female followers, smiling. “It sounded like Guy Boy Man displeased the hell out of you.”

  “Yeah,” says Baby Doll15, blushing pink as her hair. “It was quite a disappointment. I was really unhappy the whole time.” She turns to me. “Guy Boy Man.” She tries to say what comes next but she can’t. I think she wants to thank me. She isn’t worried about the words she hasn’t said. She means them. Necessarily. What she’s worried about is how I’ll react to those words. It’s funny how we censor ourselves. How we cover up our feelings in these elaborate costumes, which take forever to make and just as long to put on, and we force these words, these sounds, to dance around in an absurd way—a complicated, intricate, puritanical 19th- century way—so as to be proper, and never misunderstood, when we all know, deep down inside, we’re going to end up naked growling animals screwing each other, or trying to kill each other, later. With the lights on and everything.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say.

  Just then her cell phone rings. She pulls it out and looks at it. “It’s my mom,” she says, worried. “Wondering where I am.”

  All my hot young followers make an “aw” sound in unison. “That’s so cute,” says one of them.

  “I remember when my mom used to wonder where I was,” says another, whimsically.

  “Is your mom always this adorable?”

  “What should I tell her?” Baby Doll15 says, looking at me, anxiously. Her phone rings for the third time.

  “The truth?” I suggest.

  Her shoulders fall. She stares at me. She can’t believe I’m serious.

  “Some sort of lie?” I offer.

  “Be specific,” says Baby Doll15, jumpily.

  “Tell her now is not a good time,” I say, as the white-clad staff walks toward us, bringing our late-night breakfast.

  “The truth works!” shouts Baby Doll15. She flips open her phone, says, “Now is not a good time,” and then she flips it shut. “I’ll have to deal with that later,” she mutters.

  “That’s when everybody deals with problems,” I say.

  As alluded to earlier, the reason I have a problem saying my hot young followers and I are natural is because I’m a Christian. Christians (not me personally) believe homosexuality is wrong because Jesus (is rumoured to have) said so at the (thoroughly undocumented) last luncheon. I don’t believe homosexuality is wrong because I don’t discriminate, and I think people who discriminate, like Christians, are wrong, but I forgive them because I’m a Christian. Regardless, the main Christian argument against homosexuality is that it’s ‘unnatural.’ Of course homosexuality is not unnatural. It happens in nature all the time. Animals are gay. Not all of them, obviously, but the gay ones are. Gay. They’d probably have big fat gay pride parades if they felt compelled to do so because they were openly discriminated against by the other animals, which, interestingly enough, they don’t seem to be. When one points out homosexuality is [in (actual) fact] natural, Christians are fully prepared for this defeat of their main argument, which makes you wonder why it’s their main argument. Christians believe people aren’t animals. Christians believe people are better than animals. Therefore, people are unnatural. I’m a Christian so I believe people are unnatural. (It helps me understand why so many of them discriminate against homosexuals.)

  Between the candles, burning straight up in the still night, the white-clad staff lays a bunch of silver (Atomic number: 47; Symbol: Ag) platters, crystal carafes, and golden (Atomic number: 79; Symbol: Au) plates on the long periodic table. (It’s a stable table. When I say it’s a periodic table, I’m not suggesting it’s shifting in and out of reality; I’m just saying it has the periodic table of elements on it; and if the table actually is phasing in and out of existence, it’s doing it so quickly it’s imperceptible; in retrospect, I shouldn’t have said the table is stable so categorically. How can we know anything is?)

  The silver platters on the long periodic table are covered with fresh bread, fresh butter, fresh fruit, and soft cheese. The crystal carafes are filled with milk, cream, orange juice, and apple juice. Champagne bottles in champagne buckets are placed near all of us. Over our heads, the oak’s long naked branches reach out for something. The night touches everything the candlelight does not, and even some of what it does. The leaves stay fallen.

  Honeydew melon green. Strawberry red. Orange orange.

  “Fresh fruit,” gasps Baby Doll15. She slides onto the chair next to mine, takes a big handful of purple blueberries, and bites into them. “I can’t re
member the last time I had fresh fruit. We live in the desert,” she explains to the other girls.

  The other girls, with their mouths full, nod in understanding.

  Even though I picked up Baby Doll15 this morning, and I know her house is in the city, I know what she means about living in the desert.

  I pick up a crystal carafe full of cream and pour it over what’s left of the blueberries in Baby Doll15’s hand; the whiteness slides so easily over what she holds and the sides of her palm.

  Baby Doll15 laughs, takes another bite, and moans. “So good.”

  I marvel at all the small and fleeting variations in her expression, how she says different things to me silently, how she conveys important information about herself, her mood, so easily, all the while staying, unchangingly, moderately to highly attractive. “Eat until you get sick,” I encourage.

  When presented with a feast, starving people always do the wrong thing. It doesn’t matter if they’re told, and they understand, it’s the wrong thing to do. They do it anyway. The right thing to do when you’re starving and you have the opportunity to eat whatever you want is to eat just a little. The little you eat should be bland and easy to digest. Then you should wait. Your system needs to get accustomed to food again. After a while, if you haven’t gotten sick, you should try to eat a little more. Then you should wait again. You should take it easy for at least a couple of days. From there you can eat progressively more difficult-to-digest food. But starving people never do that. They eat what they’ve been dreaming to eat, they eat it right away, and they eat as much as they can: ice cream, pizza, chocolate chip cookies, hamburgers, etc. I don’t know about you but I have a hard time blaming starving people for doing the wrong thing. In fact, I don’t think it is the wrong thing.

  A little ways down the table, one of my followers holds a champagne bottle. With her perfectly plucked eyebrows up, she looks at me, questioningly, and I smile and nod. She shakes the bottle, holds her thumb over the opening, and directs the spray onto a couple of girls across the table. Each gown these girls wear costs as much as a modest house or an immodest car. It’s fun to spend so much money on frivolity when the same money could save other people’s lives. They’re not our lives.

  The sprayed girls hold up their hands uselessly against the champagne showering them, close their eyes, and turn away their heads. I can’t help thinking that it’s what everyone does all the time, but to something far less wonderful than champagne. The girls under attack finally get to their feet and grab champagne bottles of their own. It turns into a war. Except for me, everyone gets involved. I move and stand a safe distance away. The girls can tell I just want to watch. And I do. I want to watch beautiful young women wearing meticulously designed and intricately embroidered gowns spray each with bottle after bottle of champagne until their hair is drenched and pasted down the sides of their face, and their makeup is running like watercolours. I want to watch as they close their eyes, open their mouths wide, and stretch out their tongues, trying to catch those alcoholic raindrops.

  Holding up a bent arm to protect herself from the champagne fire, Baby Doll15 runs over to me. “What’s the point of all this?” she asks, laughing.

  Staring at her happy face, her meaningful eyes, and the way her pink hair is glued in strange ways all over her face and neck, I laugh too. “Exactly,” I say.

  CHAPTER SIX:

  The living and The Dead

  On Monday morning, in the rubble-strewn, waterslick, electric-spark-cracking-and-arcing, bloodsplatter-walled, bare-fluorescent-bulb-flickering hallway at Scare City High, after Baby Doll15 and I spent the entire weekend together, despite my better judgement, we’re in front of my locker, and it’s a night terror. We’re kissing, smiling, nuzzling, and whispering! I don’t know what the hell is going on! No girl has ever had this effect on me! She’s taking up so much of my attention, I’m having a hard time smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey! I’m still doing it, though. I finally figured out the best way to do it. I’ve got my smoking arm slung around Baby Doll15’s shoulders, and when I want a drag, I just kind of get Baby Doll15 in a headlock for a second. She doesn’t seem to mind. If I were to sling my drinking arm around Baby Doll15’s shoulders, I would’ve choked the life out of her by now. I take my drinking seriously.

  My demons, Mike Hawk and York Hunt, are loving this. They’re saying incredibly disturbing things like, “You guys make the cutest couple,” and “I knew you two would be great together.” My demons usually hiss at girls and call them terribly funny names but they’re completely enamoured with Baby Doll15. It’s worrisome. Demons are only valuable inasmuch as their advice is contrary to good sense. If a demon suggests a course of action is wise, it’s wisest to take the opposite course of action. I don’t know what to make of their approval of Baby Doll15. All I know is, it can’t be good.

  Every once in a while, I panic. I think: what am I doing? Why am I still hanging out with Baby Doll15? My demons like her! I should tell her to get lost! But I can’t do it! God. What’s wrong with me?

  The only thing that can reduce your immunity to the bad influence of demons is an angel.

  Are angels involved in my feelings for Baby Doll15? I mean, I do think she’s a little heavenly. Maybe that’s why the demons are so supportive. They know what’s going on and they’re enjoying it. They want to see me suffer. Stupid demons. I knew they never liked me. Unfortunately, during the course of exciting adventures I can’t be bothered to relate here, I learned it’s impossible to track and kill angels. That was, like, one of the first things I tried when I found out how bad they are. They’re invincible because everything has to go according to God’s plan. [The idea that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, could intervene whenever God wants, and has a plan according to which every little thing goes, but somehow is (miraculously) not responsible for anything (or everything) terrible that happens is just angelic propaganda; holy spin.]

  Anyway, last Thursday, I informed everyone that it was the final day zombie teachers and zombie students would be permitted at this school. Now, it’s Monday morning, after a long weekend. In school, the living kids are trooping in, no longer marching to earn their place in the zombie army, but instead to follow me, in hopes they’ll pass through me, leave me behind, and find themselves free on the other side of me, where I’ll have their backs. The Zombie Acceptance Test—the ZAT—was scheduled to take place at the end of the week, but now it looks like that’s not going to happen, and we’re all free. Free to scrounge for survival in a zombieinfested dystopia, as soon as we miss the ZAT. The halls are filled with a nervous excitement.

  I’m wearing the Pope’s hat, which is a pirate hat, which I pirated, and which I’m wearing; I think I mentioned that already. Covering my breeches and loose-fitting and mostly unbuttoned linen shirt is my ceremonial robe. My ceremonial robe is wrapped around me like all the months in the year. There’s no beginning and no end but an infinite number of divisions. My robe is shiny high-tech white. It isn’t actually white fabric. It’s showing a white image in full HD. I’ve got my nine-millimetres in their holsters, and I’ve got my sawed-off pump-action shotgun slung over my shoulder. You never know when a troubled teen, or a group of troubled teens, is going to arrive and start shooting up the school.

  While I wait to see how the zombie establishment will react to the banishment of all zombies from the premises, I may (or may not) get a cock fight going. In the eerie flicker of the fallen sky and its faltering fluorescence, a group of students surrounds the flapping, pecking, clawing birds. Money changes hands, forever, staining them, inking their fingerprints, signing everything they touch. A couple of kids have the financial channel on their cell phones; they’re observing the cock fight’s effect on the stock market.

  I’m wagering that the zombie establishment is going to write this school off as a loss and let me and my fellow living human students go about our business. No one intervened after I killed my parents. They must have wanted to avoid drawing attention t
o me and my cause. The zombie police didn’t come after me. I wasn’t on the zombie news. Sometimes I think maybe I never killed my parents at all! Anyway, I need to get the world’s attention somehow. How can I end human suffering if people don’t realize there are zombies everywhere, controlling everything? So far I’ve only managed to open the eyes of the kids in Scare City High School and, to be honest, I’m not so sure they really believe me as much as they enjoy getting out of class and the thought of missing the ZAT.

  “Hey,” says Sweetie Honey, walking up to us. On either side of him stand two of his four exotically beautiful, genetically engineered, and behaviourally modified Eastern European girlfriends. He has his arms wrapped around the two girls closest to him, and they, in turn, have their arms around the girls farthest from him, who, in turn, have their arms around the girls closest to him. It moves in and out like that (sexually), over and over. “We caught your sermon on HowToEndHumanSuffering.Com yesterday,” Sweetie tells me. “It was great. Thanks for explaining everything to us. And it’s so awesome you’re the Self-Appointed One. I knew you were a great guy but I never knew you knew that too. And really. Thanks for taking it upon yourself to end human suffering.”

  “Sure.”

  During yesterday’s sermon, I began by telling my fellow (living) high school students what they already knew: Everything is sex. Addition is penetration; subtraction is withdrawal; multiplication is the goal; division is the result. Chemistry, physics, biology: They all spring from and summer in sex; describing it, deriving from it. It’s selffulfilling and self-denying. I asked them, “When are we going to figure out there isn’t that much to understand?”

  Standing in front of my locker with Baby Doll15, Sweetie Honey, and his four exotically beautiful Eastern European girlfriends, I watch the living kids walk through the (nightmarish) hallway. I want to believe they’re no longer marching into this school to sit idly by while the horrible world that’s been willed to them is described in ghastly detail while they take notes. I want to believe they’re trooping in to do war with that world. I think back to the way it was, the way it used to be, back in the old days, last week, when zombie teens and zombie teachers ambled around in our very midst. I remember how dead they were. I remember how sick I felt from their rotting stink. I remember all those broken-tooth mouths gaping open and drooling behind their stainless steel muzzles, starving for our brains: the brains of we who remain alive.