by Frank Feliz
“Zeke, honey?” It was Kelsey.
I turned around, and so did Zeke, and Kelsey and Zach stood right in front of us with the most horrified faces one could ever witness.
Kelsey started to scream until she couldn’t anymore, her trembling hand slapping over her wobbly mouth as if to stop herself.
Speechless, Zach looked as if he’d seen a ghost.
My heart beat faster, and my focus was solely on Zeke. What could I tell him? That he was a monster in the eyes of everyone around him?
Panting, Zeke took off with great struggle, but he was relentless, willing to hide anywhere he could, despite the inability to walk normal for a lengthy period. He stormed into the bathroom, somehow managing to turn the light on from what his memory probably allowed him to do. Moments later, he screamed in horror. “Mon-ster!” He wailed for the first time since his reanimation, a cry so loud, I ran to shut the entry door.
“Mon-ster!” I heard him pounding on the mirror several times and causing it to crack.
His parents cried, too, holding each other tightly. They prayed devotedly without stopping.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I suddenly didn’t care that I wasn’t alone. I looked at the ceiling with watery eyes and a weak voice. “Granter! Please help me! Please make Zeke human again! I beg you!”
Silence, save for Zack’s and Kelsey’s cries and prayers, along with the continuous sound of emotional agony from the bathroom. The mirror was probably shattered completely by now.
“Please!” I broke down in the bitterest of sobs, collapsed on my knees, and hugged myself with my chin pressed against my arm. “I’ll do anything you say. I swear I will. Just make him human again. Please! Please make him human again.”
Still no answer.
I cried for minutes until the desperation took control. “Take me instead! Make me the experiment! Just leave Zeke alone! Please, Granter! Please!”
“So you want to be reanimated,” Granter said in reverb. “Is this what you really want?” His tone was as apathetic as usual.
Zack and Kelsey were still in each other’s arms, crying and praying, apparently not hearing Granter’s voice. Meanwhile, Zeke lumbered out of the bathroom and stopped right near me with more cries, a dotted trail of blood visible from behind him.
I gasped at his lightly cut face. He held a bloody shard of glass in his bleeding hand, and the agony in his beautifully blue eyes killed me. I wondered if I was going to be sick from the nausea, just thinking about being like him. What would it be like? What kind of hardship would it entail? What kind of sacrifice was I considering? Would there be another steep price involved?
I looked up at the ceiling. “W-will you restore Z-Zeke if I let you t-turn me?” Then, I yanked the shard of glass out of Zeke’s hand and threw it across the floor, and we held each other so tightly. I waited the several minutes it took for a response.
“Very well. As you wish. But there will be untold consequences.” Granter’s voice didn’t sound pleased. Far from it.
“Anything!” Anything? Seriously? There was no turning back. But the more cries that filled my ears, especially Zeke’s, the more sure I was. The suffering needed to stop. I would suffer instead.
“I cannot tell you what the consequences are. You must be willing to accept them blindly. Are you sure you want to accept them?”
I tightened my fists while still in Zeke’s arms, clenched my teeth, and squeezed my eyes shut, as if on the verge of jumping off a cliff. My head wobbled. “Yes! I accept the consequences!”
“So be it.” The last word echoed.
In an instant, Zack and Kelsey were pushed toward the entry door by an invisible force, both screaming for their lives. Once the door flew open the way a furious wind would, they were tossed out into the hallway, seemingly unharmed, and the door slammed shut.
I let go of Zeke and huffed repeatedly. The air I breathed decreased by the second until I felt as if a giant pillow blocked my mouth and nostrils. My eyes filled with pressure, my arms flailed in all directions, and my body shook violently. My vision blurred a crying Zeke out as the last thing I could clearly see, and it darkened and darkened until unconsciousness pulled me under. But it wasn’t unconsciousness.
It was death.
The Fate...
Resting peacefully at the funeral. Being buried underground in the casket. Rising to a lifeless kind of life. Lumbering by default. Reuniting. Perma-stench pre-experiment. Agreeing to the experiment. Munching on brains. Adapting. Showing mutual affection. Kissing chastely. Showering. Hiding in the apartment most hours of the day. Sleeping together each night. A carriage ride incognito planned on occasion. Controlling the emotional agony. Continuing a different kind of love. A reanimated kind of forever...
On Friday morning in the beginning of summer, the air conditioner turned on for the umpteenth time and circulated throughout the living space. I fluttered my eyes until I opened them all the way. I moaned and snuggled against the only bare back that would ever lean against my bare chest each morning, searching for the kind of warmth that the sheets alone couldn’t provide. I wrapped my arm around the only body I’d ever do that to. I planted a kiss on his neck, and another, and another, the tenderest of kisses. The stench of refrigerated meat with chemicals was gone, and in came the natural scent of man.
Turning around and revealing himself with his widest smile yet, Adam was human again, and I couldn’t believe how much I missed seeing him that way after fulfilling the remainder of the tedious and torturous experiment that had lasted one full year.
“You’re back. Just the way you’re supposed to be.” Well, almost.
Adam didn’t respond. He couldn’t if he wanted to, but he gave me a slow nod. And despite his eye direction being a little off, he knew exactly who he was looking at. His ears, the only capture of me aside from touching, smelling, and tasting, were stronger than ever, or so I believed.
We had a journey together ahead of us, on the verge of discovering new ways to communicate with each other, our families, and the world. How could I ever forget what Adam had sacrificed for me? A thousand thanks would never be enough. And the beautiful thing? What Adam felt, I did, too. Maybe we were too young to settle on forever as a firm decision. Maybe we’d be told by everyone to slow down and wait a certain number of years to know we’d truly want to be together in such an exclusive and devoted way that romantics everywhere would be proud of. But the thing was, we already knew the answer. We’d known it even before my reanimation. And after Granter had spoken to me about the consequences the night before, the waiting game would’ve been worth it by the tenth year of my and Adam’s commitment. Only then would Adam be restored of all his senses. The catch? A new study recorded by Granter and his coven, in which they’d record what true love was like in the first decade of an unconditional human relationship to encourage future reanimated corpses that they, too, could love and be loved in a humanly manner. It wasn’t going to be fun having our privacy invaded once again, but at this rate, we’d do what we had to do.
I pressed my lips against Adam’s for long seconds. “I’ll never let you out of my life. I promise to be here for you for as long as life allows it. You’re my life and I’m yours, and we’ll grow old, gray, wrinkly, and physically weak together, sitting out on the porch of our new house every day so everyone can see that our love never lied, that it was real.”
Adam’s eyes watered, and a deep frown spread across his face.
“Don’t cry. I know ten years is a long time. I know it is. But you’re not going to lose me. I promise. What you did for me a year ago... I could never begin to repay you. Thank you.”
Crying silently, Adam placed a wobbly finger on my chest and managed to trace a heart. He mouthed, Love.
Memories of my time as a reanimated corpse struck me in one go, especially that particular expression. I pursed my lips to control an incoming burst of emotions. I pecked Adam’s nose and gazed into a set of eyes that weren’t quite able to look back the same
way. But they didn’t have to. They’d already done so in the past, and they’d continue to do so in a decade at almost thirty.
I rubbed noses with Adam, the everlasting guy in my renewed life, smiling, feeling the natural bliss from our unbreakable bond, our undying connection, our permanent-bound togetherness that no one or nothing could ever come between.
And I responded, “Love.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To the family members and friends close to me who have supported my writing and believed I could have a chance at some kind of success. You know who you are, and you’re special to me.
To my only sister and the few cousins of mine who read plenty of my typewritten stories and comic books with anticipation and love, way back in the day. Also, thank you for helping me with coloring a lot of the uncolored pages of my comics whenever I was too lazy to do it myself.
A special thanks to Kianna McDowell, whom I’ve dubbed “my editor friend” to others, for continuing to believe in me and especially this story, because your advice was and still is as valuable as any writing opportunity I’ve ever come across. We may have butt heads plenty of times, and I may have been stubborn about change more than a time or two, but in the end, my first publication happened. Why? Because I was finally ready to believe I could do it. Seriously, thank you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I've been writing passionately since I started high school, but I dabbled with it here and there before that. I've written stories in various genres to see where my writing best fit. Young adult and new adult ended up being my age focus, since I enjoy writing young characters experiencing all the things older adults already have. Mermaid fiction and fairy tale retellings are among my favorites, including fun adventures and powerful friendships, and I love a good contemporary romance with more sweet than steam. I also do graphic design, make music for fun, study languages, and of course, read. My biggest love of all, however, is writing. Writing is simply my life and always will be.
Website: artsbyff.wordpress.com
BEHIND THE BOOK
I came across a submission call in late 2015, which was a zombie story that required some kind of romance plot, given that the LGBTQ publisher specialized in romance. I wondered how on Earth I would pull off such a thing. Granted, no zombie was required to be the protagonist or love interest, but I'd never written a zombie story before and had only watched a couple of zombie films, so it was all new to me. I had a couple of months to work on something—anything—and I waited until the last minute to start the crux of the story, to know its premise and where it would lead. I'd already known I didn't want a typical apocalypse or a zombie trying to attack the protagonist. In fact, I wanted something different for a change, something that either hadn't been done before or had rarely been done. (Don’t we all?) Once I started writing the story, I knew I'd reach that goal quite easily with the way my creative and strange mind worked. Sadly, the call couldn’t surpass 20,000 words, so I had to do the best I could with such a limitation after tons of ideas flooded my brain. I managed to reach 15,000 words and called it a novelette before having my editor friend, Kianna McDowell, work her magic to improve my chances on my story being accepted. I submitted it giddily and nervously, and along came the wait period, which was about five weeks. Then, the answer: rejected! Okay, so the email was at least generically sympathetic, but it was still a thorn on the side. I was devastated because I'd truly thought I'd be accepted with such an original story, given that the publisher preferred originality. Even the epilogue made me feel so proud of having written it. It wasn't that I was arrogant, since I'm typically anything but, but I'd chosen to think positively and believe in myself. Even Kianna was initially shocked, but she eventually realized and made me realize that the publisher simply had different expectations for which submission they'd select. (Or, of course, they might have just not cared for it at all.) Oh, well. I still thanked the publisher for their time and consideration, and I didn't have any ill feelings toward the staff. You see, after three consecutive rejections, each a different story, I began to wonder if I'd ever make it in the literary world, until I remembered that even writers of a higher caliber than me had been rejected more times than a measly three, and for just one story alone. Kianna continually told me that I simply couldn't give up, that I'd face even more rejections, but that I had to keep trying and improving. She was right. I had to get over the devastation, quit wallowing in self-pity, and lift myself up and be ready to be knocked back down numerous times until I'd make it all the way, just where I needed to be. (Thanks, Kianna!)
The point, dear readers, is that I believed in this story and still do. I can't explain why I chose this story as my first to publish professionally, but I edited it quite heavily and finally did it. Zombie and romance aren't exactly a popular blend, especially when the kind of zombie I created isn't quite the common one you'd expect. I'm still proud of the epilogue, and it makes me smile each time I read it because of the effort I put into it, because of having poured my heart into it to make it as emotional and genuine as it reads, despite such young characters. I didn't want a contrived or perfect Hollywood version of a HEA or HFN. So, thank you for giving my story a chance. I hope you enjoyed the novelette as much as I enjoyed writing it because it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever revisit zombies in future works.
Other creatures, though? Most definitely!
COPYRIGHT
© 2018, Francisco Feliciano. All rights reserved.
DISCLAIMER: 1) The names and details of all characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental. 2) All models and locations on the artwork are used solely for illustrative purposes and have no affiliation with the content they portray.
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