Chapter 17: Get Down with Zombies

I step outside and light a cigarette. The sky is full of sunshine — hard, blue sunshine that does nothing to chase the shivers out of my bones. A dead gray street surrounds me. Shadows skulk in the windows. Leftover Halloween decorations still haunt the building next door: Skeletons with paper bones taped to windows. Faded grins and dusty capers. Mush-mouthed jack-o’-lanterns mug from ledges. Witches on strings sweep cobwebs out of the sky.

The cold air makes me need to pee. I decide maybe I’ll find a bar, take a leak, and kill my hangover. I’m sick of being hung over. It’s been a week since I called Tabitha out of desperation, and I've been drunk every day since then. Tabitha likes to drink. It's her favorite pastime (aside from gluing cow faces onto the heads of Victoria's Secret models ... and studying crime-scene photos). Now that I'm back with Tabitha, that means I'm getting drunk every night. Fucking every night. Feeling hungover every morning. I may need a break.

Weirdly, I'm getting a little burned out on getting drunk and fucking Tabitha.

“She’s using you,” Craphole Joe says as I slam into this dark little pit called The Gold Standard.

“Yeah, you’re just serving as a dildo until something better comes along,” Jumper says.

“Shut up,” I say.

GET DOWN WITH GAWD BEFORE GAWD GET DOWN ON YOU, God Talk Radio says. In bed, I reply in my mind as the door slams shut behind me.

X

I stumble outside three hours later with my veins loaded full of beer. My thoughts are sloshing around in my skull and there’s no doubt this time that I’m drunk.

I turn to go up the street and hey … is that one of the zombies from Eli’s party? The one with the screwdriver in his neck?

He’s lurching toward me with his lips ripped back to show his teeth and his eyes bugged out and rolling around in his face. His hands thrust out of ripped-up sleeves, his nails rusty red and splintered from rending flesh. White earbuds plugged into his ears are feeding him thoughts.

“Sup,” he says, trying to play it cool as he closes the distance between us. Like he's just another guy.

I see through his ruse.

The bunnies, sensing danger, snarl and cluster around the zombie, driving him back until he gives up and shuffles away.

The bunnies are very protective of me. They may hate me — they may mock and ridicule and abuse me — but they respect the fact that I’m their only conduit to the world. Without me, they’d be nothing, which is probably the only reason they haven’t already killed me.

“Fucking zombies,” Dumper says.

Chapter 18: Dreaming of Mothra

I tell Dr. Marcy: I have this dream sometimes. It’s a recurring dream. Mothra’s eaten all the world’s sheep, and everyone’s forced to wear polar fleece.

We make sacrifices of old wool coats to appease him. Once a day, we pile our threadbare castoffs on our lawns, creating huge mounds of old pea coats and Christmas sweaters and argyle socks that whip up and swirl away as hurricane gales blast glass out of skyscrapers and tumble cars.

And Mothra comes. With antennas tall as skyscrapers, fluttering wings that black out the sky, he veils the sun and flips noon over, plunging the world into temporary midnight.

He descends, and the world flees before him.

“I would like to try hypnotherapy on you,” Dr. Marcy says. “There are still some pent-up anger issues that we can’t quite seem to get at.”

Book 2

Something Wicked Evil This Way Comes

Chapter 19: Payton Learns how to Play

When Payton was a little girl, there were these happy little bunnies that used to follow her around.

They’d play with her in her dreams and spend all day giggling inside her head. Painting pictures of happy rainbows for her. Scribbling pictures of smiling suns and happy houses. All day long, every day, they’d cover paper with yellow circles and orange smiles, until Payton’s head was filled with happy shades of sunshine.

Then Payton started kindergarten. Her first day out on the playground, she was playing hide-and-go-seek when she stumbled across another set of bunnies. These bunnies looked like mean bunnies. They were hiding out behind the school, smoking cigarettes and spray painting the walls.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked.

“Our owner ditched us,” one of the bunnies said, pitching his cigarette and dropping his paint can. He waved his yellow paw, and the delinquent bunnies attacked.

They pounced on Payton’s giggling bunnies and started tearing them to shreds. Squeals of pain filled the air.

"NO! NO! NO! NO!" Payton stomped her feet and told the bunnies to, "STOP! STOP! STOP!" She cried, she begged. But ultimately, it didn’t matter. The mean bunnies gobbled her happy bunnies, and there wasn’t anything she could do about it …

Except find out who owned the bunnies.

And change her name.

And wait.

And wait.

Chapter 20: Dirty Sanchez

 Tabitha calls me up.

“Turn on the TV. Shooting in San Antonio.”

Tabitha calls me up.

“Turn on the TV. Shooting at some retirement home in Seattle.”

Tabitha calls me up.

Tabitha calls me up.

It’s 10 a.m. Tabitha calls me up.

“Hey, douchebag, what’s for lunch?”

And suddenly I realize we’re back to our old, comfortable relationship again. I feel this bubble of happiness that rises in my chest like gas.

“I don’t know,” I say. “What do you want?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I asked you.”

 X

Tabitha’s sprawled across the booth with one boot propped on the table. She has a cigarette between her fingers and she’s poking her tongue between her teeth as she draws lightning bolts around her knees. Blue ink zigzags up and down her legs.

“We should do a stunt book,” she says. “Get on the Internet and look up sex positions. Try every one we find. Even the really dirty, weird ones that you know some dorky kid made up. The Dirty Sanchez – that kind of shit.”

She’s staring down at a notebook on the table. At the top of the page she’s written THINGS THAT WILL MAKE US RICH.

So far, she’s got:

Come up with a cool website concept – evil pranks? Guerilla bungee jumping?

Rob some banks.

Laundering money – look up how?

Make custom self-mutilation videos.

We struck that last one out because, well, self-mutilation videos seem impractical. There are physical limitations, you know? I mean, you can only cut yourself so many times before the scarring starts taking a toll on your appearance.

But the stunt book ... that sounds promising. My balls start pulsing at the mere thought of all the crazy sex we would be forced to have while researching it. Tabitha’s right – the Dirty Sanchez is a given. The Alabama Hot Pocket … well, maybe not that one, but I’d do an Alligator Fuckhouse for sure. A Rusty Trombone. A Cincinnati Bowtie.

Maybe a Dirty Cowboy, if we can figure out what a Dirty Cowboy is.

“I’m down for that,” I say. “We could make it like a guidebook. Rate the positions, give tips. Call it something like, A Loser’s Guide to Dirty, Nasty Sex. It could be like a coffee table book.”

Tabitha shrugs noncommittally.

“Maybe. Sounds like a lot of work.”

She starts coloring in one of the lightning bolts. A woman in a Skinny Burger uniform steps out of the bathroom and walks past our booth. She glances at us and does a double take when she sees Tabitha’s cigarette.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” she says.

 “There is no excuse for you.” Tabitha doesn’t look up from her drawing.

“Ma’am, there’s no smoking in here.”

“I smoke in here all the time.”

“I don’t think so. There’s no smoking in here.”

“Really? Since when?”

“Since never.”

“Wait, so, what you’re telling me is, you’ve never not allowed smoking in here?”

The woman squinches her eyebrows together. I can see the wheels in her head spinning as she tries to decipher Tabitha’s statement. Is it nonsense? Is it a joke? Is this girl crazy? On drugs? No telling.

Obviously in over her head, the woman decides to forgo further debate in favor of a much simpler and less difficult solution: she tries wielding brute authority at us.

“Ma’am … ”she says, punching her fists into her hips.

Tabitha smirks. Staring at the woman, she plants the cigarette between her lips and takes a nice, long drag off of it. The woman leans forward to pluck the cigarette out of her hand, but Tabitha lashes a boot out to drive her back.

“If you touch me, I’ll sue the shit out of you,” she hisses, though she does grudgingly reach over and drop the cigarette in my drink. “Happy now?”

“Yes. Thank you, ma’am.” The woman turns and shuffles toward the front of the restaurant. She  rolls her eyes and shakes her head at the other customers as if to say she had no idea such people existed. Tabitha rips the notebook page over and starts a new list.

PEOPLE I HATE AND WANT TO KILL

Below that she scratches, FAT ASS SKINNY BURGER HOES.

Then, as an afterthought, THE EASTER BUNNY.

She lights another cigarette. I grab my drink and peer ruefully at the butt floating in it, then go to throw it away.

Chapter 21: My Father the Insurance Salesman

It’s 7 a.m. and the alarm clock is cranking away. My mind stumbles headlong into a fog and reels around, fumbling for context. Trying to fill in the little blanks between my thoughts. Where am I? Who am I? What do I do?

I go through this routine every morning.

As my hand swats out from beneath the blanket, my fingers spider crawl across the bedside table in search of the snooze button, I think, who was I when I fell asleep?

Some mornings, I just can’t remember.

I wonder if this is a common issue, forgetting who you are. I don’t know of anyone who has problems with it. My father certainly never did. My father was a Salesman. An Insurance Salesman. He was Ernest Clever, the Insurance Salesman. When people asked him, “Who are you,” he’d say, “I sell insurance.”

He never forgot who he was.

My grandfather was a Dentist. He was Dr. John T. Clever, the Dentist.  When people asked him, “Who are you,” he’d say, “I’m a Dentist.”

He never forgot who he was.

I’m Fred Clever. Most mornings, I can’t even remember what my job is.

Sometimes people introduce themselves to me and I can’t remember my name.

Sometimes I’m buying groceries, and I realize I can’t remember where I live.

Sometimes I can’t find my way to work. I will take a turn and suddenly have no idea where I am. Driving down strange streets full of other people’s landmarks, I'll swerve around corners in a desperate panic, searching, searching, trying to find something that looks familiar. 

I’ll ask the rabbits if they know where we are.

“Fuck you,” they’ll say.

Steering the car at random, wheeling around school buses and women with walkers, stopping at green lights to check the cross streets, I’ll feel the tension looping my shoulders into knots. I’ll sigh in disgust and cuss myself.

“You fucking moron. How can you get lost like this? Jesus, Fred.”

I’ll yell at myself: “God, Fred, you are a fucking moron.”

Pounding the steering wheel as the rabbits chime in with their chorus.

“Woo hoo, right on, brutha! Sing it, pastor Fred!”

And when I finally do make it to work, I’ll think I’m in the wrong place — a cramped butthole of building brimming cheap yellow light. It's full of strangers who freeze to watch my entrance. I’ll stare at all those marble eyes and plastic expressions and I’ll say, “Excuse me.” I’ll start to duck out again when some guy will walk over.

“There you are, Fred. Where the hell have you been?”

“Sorry, I got turned around...”

I will infer from the guy's tone that he’s my boss. According to the nametag on his chest, his name is Ernest. Ernest, my boss. It will occur to me that he has the same name my father did. Have I told him that? I don't know ... I probably have.

My boss, Ernest, will stand there with his chin sagging to his chest and his eyes floating on wrinkled pillows (purple pillows), blinking at me while I resist the urge to ask him what we do inside the butthole building. 

Instead I’ll just wait for him to tell me something to do, somewhere to go.

And Ernest, my boss with my father’s name, will stand waiting for me to finish my sentence, but I won’t finish my sentence. My hands will flutter around on their wrists for a moment as I try to form excuses with my lips, but in the end, nothing will come out. My hung-over head will hurt and my gums will feel like sponges soaking the moisture off my teeth and I’ll be so distracted thinking about how miserable I am that I will forget what we were talking about.

So instead of responding to him, I’ll ask, “What time is it?”

“Eight thirty. You’re late. Again.”

And still I have no idea why I’m here.