Ninja Versus Pirate Featuring Zombies

by James Marshall

  The prison guard hands Baby Doll15 a big stuffed lion. It’s probably full of stuffed gazelles.

  “I don’t want it.” Baby Doll15 passes it to me, like she’s disgusted by it.

  “Good, because I didn’t want to give it to you,” I lie, jerking it away. “Come on. Let’s go throw darts at a carjacker.”

  I’m caught. This is happening sooner than I thought. Having had no experience in this matter up until this point, I could only guess: How long would it take? How long could Baby Doll15 and I go with things so intense between us before the words would become absolutely necessary? Forget the sex, never mind the kissing, ignore the touches, pay no attention to our fingers intertwined, and overlook our staring at each other. Our casual glances would bring blushes to hardcore porn stars. To those not involved, it must seem so ordinary. Perhaps to the followers of my religion it seems pathetically ordinary, like a neurochemical response to a biological imperative: to find a mate, reproduce, and pass on my DNA, half of it at least and, sadly, at most, which is desperate to get away from me, to try a new combination, anything new, only to keep failing. But to me and, I believe, to Baby Doll15, it seems like something so special, so important, so extraordinary, nobody in the world could’ve possibly felt anything like it before. If they had, certainly all the world’s problems would be solved by now and everyone would be living in harmony. I know what’s happening. I know my mind is tricking me, fooling me into continuing (life), deluding me into misbelieving there’s hope, but despite this knowledge—no, stronger than that, this certainty— that this is, in point of fact, what’s happening, I don’t care at all. Reason is gone. There’s only emotion.

  Angrily, Baby Doll15 and I walk through the prison’s cement and steel. Without looking at me, Baby Doll15 asks, “Do you honestly think your religion is what’s best for the world?”

  “Of course,” I answer, without hesitation. “Destroying the world is obviously what’s best for it.”

  We walk in silence for a few moments. “In silence” is a little misleading. There are prisoners howling in pain and humiliation, and children screaming and laughing and running around, and zombies groaning and that kind of thing. We pass the Spin-A-Ponzi-Schemer and the Come-On-Everybody-Let’s-Fry-This-Guy. I’m just saying, Baby Doll15 and I don’t say anything.

  Suddenly Baby Doll15 stops and insists, “There’s no such thing as zombies, Guy Boy Man.”

  I stop too. “Of course there is. They’re everywhere. They control everything.” Playfully, I move the stuffed lion toward her, like it’s going to get her. I’m trying to make peace here.

  She ignores it. It’s like she’s been holding back these words for a while now. “I’m going to take the Zombie Acceptance Test, Guy. Unless you can make some kind of commitment to me and convince me we’re going to be together for the rest of our lives, I’m not going to give up on my education. I mean, I’ll drop out and become a waitress if we’re going to be together, but I really want to take the test if we’re just going to break up in a month or two.”

  I lower the lion. Is she saying that she won’t take the ZAT if I tell her I love her? “Baby, you know we’re going to be together forever.”

  She takes my hand in hers. We hold the lion together. Neither of us says anything for a long time. Then Baby Doll15 sighs and says, “Why don’t you get into politics and try to change things that way?”

  My shoulders fall. “The problem with democracy is that the majority of people are idiots.”

  “If you think they’re idiots, why do you want to help them?”

  A billion different thoughts rush through my mind all at once, and I don’t know which to focus on, and I don’t know if any of them are right, if none of them are, or if all of them are, somehow, even the contradictory ones.

  “I want to help people by destroying them,” I say.

  “If people stop reproducing,” says Baby Doll15, “you’re going to run out of hot young female followers.”

  “Sex robots,” I say. “Nice try, though. That was a big concern. Come on.” I reach out to her. “Let’s have fun.”

  Past the Dunk-a-Drunk-Driver and the Throw-RingsAround-The-Neck-Of-A-Guy-Who-Accidentally-KilledSome-Other-Guy, we get to the Car-Jacker Dart Throw. I buy a bunch of darts and offer some to Baby Doll15. She shakes her head.

  I throw dart after dart. Most of them miss but quite a few stick. When I get him, the car-jacker curses and jumps around and pulls out the darts as quick as he can. I laugh every time that happens. Hurting people is hilarious.

  CHAPTER NINE:

  The Ultimate symbol of Your Wealth, Power, and Your love of Jesus

  I have to hurt Baby Doll15. In hurting her, I’ll hurt myself. I don’t want to. I don’t want to do either. If I never have to say the necessary words, and if I hadn’t already taken steps to prevent ever impregnating anyone (I got a vasectomy), I’d stay with Baby Doll15, and I’d give her as many children as she’d like. No matter how strongly I believe—no, no matter how much I know—it’s wrong to reproduce. I’d do anything to make her happy. And I know it’d make her happy.

  She made a passing remark. She envisioned herself one day pushing her children on swings. It was simple for her. The idea made her happy, so she wanted to realize it.

  Right now I don’t care that she’d, inevitably, love and devote more time to these strangers than she would to me. I’d do it, if I hadn’t already taken steps. I’d fertilize the egg of her desire for more than me. Despite her selfishness. Despite her thoughtlessness. Despite her failure to consider, in any meaningful way, the pain, struggle, and stress she and I would have to endure—she’d have to endure it more than I would, obviously, because I’d get an office and start spending a lot of time there—and the impossible decisions we’d have to make, to transform these selfish, slavering, screaming beasts after they emerge from her vagina—that’s my vagina, and you’re wrecking it!—into socially acceptable and responsible people, or, to put it more precisely, mindless, flesh-eating zombies dedicated to, and intent upon, ruining everything for everyone in the course of satisfying their own base desires, bouncing from stimuli to stimuli with no coherent thought for the future or any understanding of their own purpose, other than to bring more zombies into (human) being, to keep dividing, to continue the failure.

  This is where it ends.

  Baby Doll15 and I are on my pirate ship. It’s a stateof-the-art, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. It’s named Industry. Technically I’m unqualified, but everyone calls me “Captain.” My aircraft carrier is in port. Moonlight shines off the deck and fighter planes. Baby Doll15 and I are wandering around the high-tech killing machines, holding hands and swinging our arms, happily.

  When I got the aircraft carrier, I had to agree not to get fighter planes. When I got the fighter planes, I had to agree not to put them on my aircraft carrier. (I also had to agree not to purchase air-to-air missiles, air-to-ground missiles, cluster bombs, etc.) When I got the munitions, I had to agree not to load them. Kindly, the people who sold me the munitions showed my crew how to load them hypothetically.

  I don’t know if you know this about aircraft carriers, but when you buy one, you get an amazing deal on all kinds of cruisers, destroyers, and submarines to protect it!

  Nearby a group of my followers is gathered. The hot young pale-skinned girls wear ridiculously high high-heels in which they manoeuvre with bored ease, black leggings that slightly obscure their shapely calves, knee-length skirts made out of a million layers of crinkly black tulle sticking way out to the sides (making it appear their legs are growing out of upside-down dead and dried carnations), and corsets of various bright colours. Orange, blue, green. Their makeup is severe. Some have their pouting lips done in the same colours as their corsets. Others have their eye shadow done in big black designs. Their hair is spooky, ghost-like, teased back and then sprayed up in a messy kind of way. All my followers hold tall thick white candles that glow yellow near their flapping flames.

  “I
’ve got something to tell you,” says Baby Dolll5, looking down, kicking at something invisible with one of her stilettos. She’s wearing a grey baby doll, black leggings, and black high heels. “I think it’s appropriate that I tell you here on your aircraft carrier, because it’s the ultimate symbol of your wealth, power, and your love of Jesus.”

  “Jesus preached socialism and pacifism,” I say, “which is wrong and un-American, since it discourages entrepreneurship and doesn’t support our troops, but I’m a Christian, so I forgive him.”

  “Are you happy?” asks Baby Doll15, staring down at that which supports us.

  “Right now? Yes. Very much so. You?”

  “Yes.” She says it very seriously.

  I can hardly see her in the darkness.

  “I’ve got something to tell you,” says Baby Doll15, brushing all her pink hair over to one side of her head with her free hand, turning, and looking at me in the gloom.

  “You said that already.”

  “I’m scared,” admits Baby Doll15.

  It’s strange. No matter how long Baby Doll15 and I hold hands, they never get sweaty. “I thought you said you were happy.”

  “I am. I’m both. I’m scared about what I’ve got to tell you, but I’m happy I’m here. Okay, I’m not happy I’m here but I’m happy I’m anywhere with you.” We’re still strolling in the moonlight shining on the aircraft carrier.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t tell me,” I say, worrying now too.

  “I have to.”

  “Are you sure? Sometimes it’s better to put things off. You might not really want to tell me. You might feel like you have to, but you don’t. It might be one of those things you feel like you’ve got to do, but then you don’t, and the next day you’re really glad you didn’t.”

  “It’s not one of those things,” she says, suddenly confident.

  “How do you know?”

  “I feel it.”

  “You can’t know a feeling.”

  “I love you,” she says.

  I let go of her hand.

  She reaches after it for the smallest, most heavily divided fraction of a second, but she catches herself and stops. She stops walking. She stops dead, so dead, in her invisible tracks.

  I walk a few more steps. Then I stop too. My back is to her. After a minute, I turn. They say actions speak louder than words but they don’t. I don’t know if they ever do or never do but when someone says, “I love you,” it doesn’t matter how many heroic feats you’ve performed, or impossible problems you’ve solved, to prove, beyond a shadow’s doubt, you feel the same. You have to say it. Verbally. Orally to aurally. With words. Or everything you’ve done or could ever do doesn’t and will never matter.

  I don’t say anything. I give her more actions to make up for my lack of words. I stare at her, at her eyes, into them, the everlasting peace of them in the aircraft carrier night, with my hands open, silently pleading for what I want: more. So much more. Always more. Like the richest baron or the poorest artist. Nevertheless.

  Baby Doll15 looks at me, waiting. She doesn’t gasp. She doesn’t take a step away from me, like she’s just realized she’s wrong, or she’s right but she’s wrong about me, and if she was wrong about me, how could she be right? She doesn’t do anything. She just waits, looking at me.

  I wait too.

  We both stand there, waiting for something that never happens. We wait for something that can’t happen. We wait and wait and wait. We wait forever.

  CHAPTER TEN:

  Nobody Can ever Get me

  I don’t know where Baby Doll15 goes. She disappears. I don’t know how she gets there. I don’t take her. When I return to my castle, as soon as the heavy doors are opened, I see the gold and diamond ball and its gold chain waiting on the floor. I don’t want it, but as everyone watches, I pick it up and carry it away. When I’m on the stairs, the chain slips away from me. It makes a loud cracking sound when it hits stone. I don’t try to pick it up. Instead, I drag it, rattling and clanking, behind me. It’s my ball and chain. It always was. I gave it to her but it was mine. It was my attachment to her. It was my burden. All the hot young girls watch me, wordlessly, as I carry it away. It’s weird how you can feel people watching you sometimes.

  The next day in school, there’s a note sticking out of my locker. Who passes notes? It’s so analog. I pull it out, unfold it, and read it: “Guy Boy Man, this isn’t working. We need to talk. Baby Doll15.” It’s the first time I’ve seen her writing. It’s terrible. How could I ever love someone with such terrible handwriting? Dramatically, I crumple the note in my clenching fist. Then, less dramatically, I smooth it out on my leg, fold it back up along its lines, and stick it in my pocket. I pull out my cell phone. I text her: “It’s over. There’s nothing to talk about. It was fun. Say ‘Bye’ to your big breasts for me.”

  My followers and I still go to school, even though there are no teachers. That’s not accurate. There are no zombie teachers. Now, all classes are sex ed. They’re very hands on. I’m uninvolved. The Principal is thoroughly engaged. His disembodied voice booms from the dangling intercom speakers constantly. He chastises the young and playful with the strongest words, in the strongest tones: what they’re doing is wrong, shameful; what they’re doing is dangerous, even when done safely. Right now I don’t care about his disinformation.

  Shortly after reading the note, feeling its weight in my pocket, still in the hallway, I start sobbing, but in a very masculine way. If any hot young girls see me sobbing, I can’t tell through the sad blur, but if they do, I’m sure they’re very aroused by the manliness of my grief. Between shaky intakes of breath, I suck on a cigarette and drink whiskey.

  Sweetie Honey appears in the broken hallway. All the lockers are painted with a fresh coat of blood. [I had all the heavily armed troubled zombie teens shot in the head yesterday. (I’d already dispatched most of them singlehandedly yesterday, but some of them were just seriously wounded and, if you’re thinking about getting in the zombie eradication business—it’s a burgeoning field with lots of employment opportunities—even when you’re really confident a zombie is un-undeaded, or redeaded, you want to be completely sure.) After having them shot in the head, I also had the (formerly) heavily armed (once) troubled (previously) zombie (at an earlier time) teens’ bodies cut into pieces, their pieces removed and lit on fire, and their ashes scattered widely]. Sweetie is wearing an all-red pair

  N v p f z

  of sneakers, white sweatpants, a dark blue sweatshirt covered with white stars, and his backpack containing his ninja outfit. Noticing my despair, Sweetie rushes up to me, wraps his muscular arms around me, and cries, “Oh, Guy Boy Man! What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

  “Baby Doll15 and I just broke up,” I weep, stoically.

  Sweetie seems to hesitate for a second, but maybe I’m wrong.

  I stipulate the possibility I could be wrong. You don’t get that with the leaders of other organized religions.

  Without letting go of me, Sweetie Honey leans back and looks at me with a sympathetic pout. “It really hurts?”

  “No.” I shake my head. “It’s not like I—” My face scrunches up. I nod. “Okay yeah. It really hurts.”

  “Oh, Man,” he cries, pulling me close again. “It’s going to be all right. You’ve always got me, okay? Not literally. I’m a ninja. Nobody can ever get me. I’m just saying. We’ll be best friends forever and who knows, maybe now . . .”

  “Maybe now, what?” I ask, when he lets that sentence trail off.

  He hesitates again. “We could . . . hang out more?”

  “I guess,” I sob.

  “Guy Boy Man,” he says, leaning back and looking at me again. “I know you and Baby Doll15 were close, but it’s over now, right? You’ve got to move on. There are plenty of fish in the sea. Not literally. There used to be. Now there’s pollution and over-fishing, so there aren’t plenty of fish in the sea. That was a bad analogy.”

  “I know what you’re trying t
o say,” I say, and sniff.

  “Good,” says Sweetie Honey. He lets go of me and steps back. He claps me on the shoulders, squeezes them, and shakes me a little. “So do you mind if I ask her out?”

  “Who?”

  “Baby Doll15.”

  He turns away from me. He starts spinning his combination lock back and forth. He opens his locker. When the door swings open, I look at the pictures of the shirtless hunks stuck to it.

  “Why do you have pictures of shirtless hunks in your locker?” I ask. “Are they ninjas too?”

  “No,” he laughs. He takes off his backpack, opens it, and starts yanking out textbooks and slamming them inside his locker. “They’re. Uh. My inspiration. You know. For when I’m training. They. Motivate me.”

  “That’s cool, I guess.”

  “So what do you say? Do you mind if I ask her out?”

  I want to say, “Yes, I mind.” I want to say, “I can’t believe you’re even asking me.” I want to say, “I’m going to reach back, grab one of my nines, chamber a round, click off the safety, stick the muzzle against your forehead, and pull the trigger,” but I know better than to threaten a ninja, or to even think about (actually) killing a ninja. I was only considering the idea of threatening a ninja, which I knew was foolish before I even began thinking it, and I dismissed the thought before it was fully formed, and I only went through the motions of the notion because it’d be rude to interrupt myself. “If that’s what you want to do,” I say, “you should do it.”

  “Terrific!” Sweetie Honey makes a fist. He shakes it a little.

  Sweetie didn’t realize it then, or if he did, he didn’t let it show, but he and I had just stopped being friends. We’d started being enemies. And he was a ninja. Obviously, he realized he was a ninja then. When you’re a ninja, you never stop realizing you’re a ninja. I’m just saying. The fact he’s a ninja was something I was taking into account more so now that we were enemies.