somewhere somehow she’s sleeping and smoking a cigarette and someone is stealing so they can slowly start to stand and say so long to sad situations and welcome to wonderful wednesdays where we all will wander through wishes when a hello for him held holy significance and made us see circles in our silly story.
A little over a week ago, Tim challenged me to write a short story. He said it should be about 1,000 words long and contain a zombie or two, a heroine in a blue dress, the word “undulate”, love, a car chase, and the realization of some great life lesson. After a lot of editing, it came to 1,175 words. One of the hardest parts was deciding what to name it. For now, I’m calling it “The Cages”. It’s posted below.
…
Jon’s bottom lip along with most of the skin below it had been bitten off after Molly’s third visit to the cages. Since then Molly had been back every day for a week, so she was getting used to the sight of his bloody teeth and exposed gums. It was a very skeletal look. Some days she would imagine he was fine and that a simple flesh-eating bacteria had consumed the bottom portion of his face. Only in reality Jon’s problem hadn’t been bacteria, it was zombies.
Fortunately for Molly’s obsession with Jon, PETZ had been founded before anyone had put a bullet in his head. PETZ, People for the Ethical Treatment of Zombies, consisted of a bunch of bleeding heart humanitarians who decided that the undead had a right to life. Molly considered these people to be fucking bat-shit crazy (to say the least), but as she stared into Jon’s dull, lifeless eyes that she loved so much, she decided to keep her opinions to herself. She was not a stupid girl – she even recognized her own insanity every night when she squeezed her size five hips through the rear window of the warehouse holding the cages.
In fact, she also noted how deranged she was for telling the walking corpse that she was in love with him, something she could never do when he was alive. Molly never knew how Jon felt about her, but she was certain there had been chemistry between them. They gravitated towards each other. “It’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all” was the cliché that repeated in her head. (Of course, this was preferable to the time she worked at a corporate office and the stalls in the ladies’ room proudly displayed signs that read “If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be neat and clean the seat.” She hated those signs, and she hated that for months after she quit, every time she used a restroom the words came to mind. As if she wouldn’t clean her own piss off the toilet seat if it found it’s way there while she squatted.)
Following three weeks of routine secret zombie visiting, Molly was shocked when after her entrance through window she ran into another living human. They encountered each other in the hallway leading up to the cages.
“Uh, can I help you?” he asked.
“No, I, uh…” Think! she told herself. What’s a good excuse for being in the PETZ warehouse after dark when no one else is usually there? Fuck.
“Nice dress,” he commented.
She was wearing her favorite blue dress. She liked to look nice for Jon. Just like when he was alive, she always liked to look nice for him. “Thanks,” she replied. “I’m just here visiting, um, an old friend. I just…”
To her relief, he interrupted her. “I’m Matt,” he said.
He’s cute, she thought, very cute. Not cute like Jon, but in a different way. Taller for sure, and those eyes… She felt like she could trust Matt’s eyes. She never felt that way about Jon’s eyes. Maybe that’s why she never told him how she felt when he was alive. How her heart would undulate in her chest every time she saw him. How she wanted to make him happy. How she was a different person when he smiled at her. That she would carry the world on her back for him at his request, and that she would wage war on anyone who hurt him.
“…so it really makes no difference to me,” Matt was saying. She had missed everything he said while lost in thought. “You just do your thing, and I’ll –“
Right then a bottle of wine that she had smuggled in fell from its ripped paper bag and shattered on the ground between them.
“Shit shit shit!” she burst out as she reached down to pick up the glass. “Fuck! I cut myself.” Blood dripped down her forearm from the palm of her hand.
He took her uninjured hand in his. It was warm. “Come on,” he instructed her as he led her to the first aid kit.
Molly didn’t see Jon that night. It turned out that Matt had a bottle of Jameson stashed in his office, and although the first three shots were meant to dull the pain of the cut on her hand, the rest of the bottle went down easily for both of them. They found that they shared a love of Irish whiskey, among other things. So many other things that they talked until the sun came up.
This became Molly’s new nightly tradition. Matt was hired as the night watchman for Jon’s PETZ location. It seems the daytime staff starting suspecting nighttime intruders after finding two empty bottles of wine in the break room garbage can one morning and a tube of red lipstick by the cages another morning.
Four weeks went by before Matt told Molly that he was in love with her. She felt the same way, and so she told him. She never thought she could feel that way and actually have those feelings reciprocated so effortlessly.
It was a Tuesday when he told her that he loved her. It was on this same Tuesday that she was wearing her favorite blue dress, the one she wore the night they met. It was also this same Tuesday when the old, rusted lock on Jon’s cage fell to the floor.
All Molly remembers of that fateful night is feeling Matt tense up as she kissed him. As she opened her eyes she saw that Matt’s eyes were wide with shock, and she felt a warm liquid soak her hand that was affectionately placed on his neck, just below his left ear. Blood.
As Matt’s body collapsed in front of her, she saw Jon. His bottom teeth and exposed gums were covered with Matt’s blood. Jon immediately knelt at Matt’s side and bit into his neck. Molly screamed and scanned the room for a weapon. It seemed that only a second went by when she looked back down at the horrific scene to see Matt’s neck had been completely devoured, his head separated from his body.
She ran out of the front door. Her car was parked on the street. Another car sped by followed by a police car with its lights flashing. She was disoriented. She had Matt’s blood on her hands, and some on her blue dress.
Somehow she managed to get into her car and start the engine. As she drove away she saw Jon’s undead body stumble out of the warehouse. She was off-track, she was falling, and she was confused. And then the thought came – “It’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all”. At that moment she realized the inaccuracy of the saying. It was a half-truth. She knew it was better to have loved and been loved back and lost than to have never loved at all.
I used to be chorophobic1. Good friends were shocked when I overcame this fear. I remember telling Devin that I never danced because I wasn’t happy. Or maybe it simply had to do with gelotophobia2.
During my teenage years, I developed a strong glossophobia3. The apprehension is still very powerful, and I long to get over it. It goes hand in hand with my ophthalmophobia4. When people stare at me, my face tends to blush. Because of my ereuthrophobia5, this situation is most uncomfortable. I’m not sure why this happens. Maybe it stemmed from my cacophobia6. Growing up, I hated how I looked, but I wasn’t exactly eisoptrophobic7. That could be because I was always trying to make myself pretty with a variety of hairstyles and makeup products. Some may label this superficial, like my obesophobia8.
The majority of teenagers today make me ephebiphobic9. Funny that we can fear what we once were. It probably happens more often than we realize.
Recently, I wrote about my entomophobia10. I have also touched on my pedophobia11. Never mentioned, but quite prevalent in my life is my dentophobia12. Those who knew me last fall when I had my wisdom teeth removed witnessed my concern over having someone rip four teeth from my head. To say that I was terrified is an understatement.
Around that same time in my life, I met someone. When I start to think back, I get slightly mnemophobic13. I suppose my philophobia14 will perpetually affect my ability to be with someone. I can be very zelophobic15 – the fear being that I will feel this way, not necessarily that the other person will. With many people, more often than not this has to do with insecurities. Closely associated to my relationship insecurities is athazagoraphobia16. I clearly recall times when I have told boys not to “forget me”. One of them said he never could.
Lately, I have been getting over my decidophobia17. Obviously, I have made many decisions instigating changes in my life. My chronophobia18 doesn’t have to do with gerontophobia19, but more a fear of running out of time to do everything that I want to do. I have a tendency to step back and look at the big picture, and then the cliché invades my mind: Life is short. It’s true, especially when comparing it to the actuality of everything.
A final phobia worth mentioning is quite the double-entendre, but I find that both interpretations are applicable to my foreboding: scelerophobia20. Yet all of these trepidations considered, and at the risk of quoting two overused phrases in one blog, I must agree that the only thing we really have to fear is fear itself.
1. Afraid of dancing.
2. Fear of being laughed at.
3. Fear of speaking in public or trying to speak.
4. Fear of being stared at.
5. Fear of blushing.
6. Fear of ugliness.
7. Afraid of seeing oneself in a mirror.
8. Fear of gaining weight.
9. Afraid of teenagers.
10. Fear of insects.
11. Fear of children.
12. Fear of dentists.
13. Afraid of memories.
14. Fear of falling in love or being in love.
15. Afraid of jealousy.
16. Fear or being forgotten or ignored or forgetting.
17. Fear of making decisions.
18. Fear of time.
19. Fear of old people or growing old.
20. Fear of bad men, burglars.