Blog like the end of the world day is the annual zombie-blogfest where imaginative bloggers
write as though they are under attack by zombies. All accounts to my knowledge are fictional.
This is presented in chronological order, for your reading enjoyment – and so you are able to follow the storyline for June 13, 2009.

Year 1: 2007 The Zombies Arrive – Minneapolis, Seward

Damn Zombies

Jun. 13th, 2007 at 3:37 PM
As if my day weren’t annoying enough, zombies have decided to invade Minneapolis. Of course, my building’s security is a joke, so barricading the door has been a trip – fortunately, judging from the splats I’m hearing, any attempts to ram the door are being confronted by tissue and skeleton simply falling off. Ugh, I wonder if Stanley Steamer can cover that?

I notice from my friend’s list that most people are OK, even unaware. Someone did wonder if zombies can climb… I suppose it’s a bit mean, but I’ve left my third floor window open to watch the fun because they can certainly TRY to climb. They even seem to have some cognition – and I must have one hell of a nice smelling brain, because so far I’ve watched them try to climb on each others shoulders three or four times so far. They always get about three zombies high before an arm breaks off, or a shoulder caves in. They almost had it for awhile, though, until the top one’s head just fell off and took another zombie’s head off on the way down. It was strangely like watching a macabre bowling match from the wrong angle.

…..
God dammit, one of them just attempted the roof down angle.  From the smell of it, I have large intestine splattered all over my window screen. Mike’s going to love getting that off the back of his computer.
…
I’ve just lined up every fireproof container in my apartment, and I have asfoetida smoke just rolling out the windows. I am not dumping boiling oil on anyone – I’m having a run on perfume orders already from towns where the attacks have subsided and my suppliers were shaky enough before they ate each others’ brains. Leftover zombie is fucking rank. I think patchouli and Victorian BO is going to make a comeback; this whole rotting-corpse in the street thing is so 16th century.
…
Aw shit, better close the windows now. They may have slower cognition, but it looks like they jawed on the firemen down the street… who apparently have enough brains left in their heads to operate the fire truck…and… nope, nope, nothing to worry about, they just crashed into the Sierrea club building across the street and there’s a whole lot of barbecue stumbling down the street. One of them just tripped over a fire hydrant, another did something that exploded the water tank, so they’re basically setting themselves on fire and then immediately disintegrating their charred ashes into the gutters. I better go dig up those water filters; all that zombie can’t be good for the groundwater.

Ah, this is nice. Zombies, like many other things in life, are ultimately a self-correcting problem…

Now introducing Zombie Repellent

Jun. 13th, 2007 at 4:23 PM
So I just got off the phone with the Haitian dude, a guy I contact when I want to buy vetiver that doesn’t suck, or get a fingerbone for my witchcraft, or somesuch. I’m not very clear on the whole story, and he has this sexy accent, so I always get distracted when talking to him anyway. Hot AND interesting, and into the occult… but, anyway – he was very apologetic, told me something about a family reunion he was at getting a little too dysfunctional, and in his family raising dead issues always ends in raising the dead, and one angry teenager tried it out unsupervised, and as happens with teens and psychism havoc ensued that is national and possibly international in impact.

He passed along a recipe for Zombie Repellent after making me promise not to tell anyone too much about what’s in it – I can tell you it does have vetiver and carnation bouquet in it, along with a few other banishing herbs. I felt some guilt about capitalizing on what’s turning into a national tragedy, and Haitian dude gave me a very stern talk about honoring my Slavic ancestors and their mercenary habits involving black markets. So I have it available … it actually smells kind of good.

Wow, poor guy. I thought my family could be dysfunctional.  I’m starting to see where my mother was coming from, encouraging me to suppress my inherent psychism… I could totally have done what that kid did and inadvertantly raised the dead  internationally with all my teen angst.

Jun. 13th, 2007 at 5:17 PM
What gets me about all this is that I’m not seeing any ghosts.  I see ghosts of relatives, but nothing even hovering over their bodies. There’s still a few stragglers on my street – there’s water everywhere, so most keep shuffling until their legs fall off, and then there’s bloody stumps; you can see feet, legs, and arms sort of floating towards the Mississippi. I’m not finding any television coverage and they got rid of that whole pan-city camera awhile ago; times like this it would come in handy.

I can’t really test if the Zombie Repellent works – they all pretty much lost interest somewhere between the asofeotida and me putting “Don’t Worry Be Happy” on repeat – my secret exorcism weapon. Ain’t nothin’ living or dead that sticks around for that; I barely have an immunity myself.

Holy shit, is that my fifth grade teacher? Huh, even without her hips she doesn’t seem any different.

The Haitian guy just called me back, left some message about my sexy mind and asked me what flavor of forehead I’m wearing. So glad I went cell only when I moved here. Dead from the waist down is bad enough, but undead is a complete turnoff.

Even the living dead like my boyfriend

Jun. 13th, 2007 at 5:37 PM
Mike just strolled up to the door, same as ever, completely unmolested. He just thought a water main had broken. No idea that the world is under attack, but pretty pissed off that I left a window open by his computer when it was raining internal organs. It took him a minute to ask about that – there’s some spleen and liver stuck to the side street window, and at first I don’t think he believed me.

WTF? Even the undead just see my boyfriend as a benign force to leave alone…

Scratch that

Jun. 13th, 2007 at 5:46 PM
Or, er, scratch Mike. I just thought it was his usual post-corporate funk, but he’s eyeing the top of my head the way he eyes my breasts or a good steak… and when I asked him to smell my Zombie Repellent, he started crying and locked himself in the bathroom.  The guy was raised Iowa cornball – there’s no way vetiver and carnation could evoke a sense memory.  I’ve rubbed a bit of the oil in my hair, now too.

He came out of the bathroom and glared at me, and said something about me being a snack-stopping meanie, and sort of shuffled out, shutting the door behind him.

Shit. I knew I was on his ass to write a will – but it’s not like I expected to need a zombie insurance clause in his life insurance plan. I’m sure rent won’t be an issue for awhile anyway.. nor will running water, emergency services, or paved roads.  Hey, I wonder how the looting will be once the zombies clear out?

… and I just caught myself wondering about the metaphysical and fragrance associations of tinctured zombie. I am a sick, sick woman.

Hi Mom, have you been eaten by Zombies?

Jun. 13th, 2007 at 6:14 PM
I’m debating whether or not to call my family. My sister’s an ambulance driver, and she’s a worrier. I’ll let her worry about herself and Kid, assuming she’s not in the thick of beating her ex husband with his own leg.  As for my parents… I just don’t want to give them any ideas about civic responsibility, or worse, open a rant about the corrupt Chicago government and how now they’ll be voting dead all over again. I can actually almost hear my mother talking about old friends she’ll see again – it will be like a Hades-hosted reunion of DAR members. On the bright side, it might solve their membership problems, assuming that the Bill of Rights can have an amendment allowing for the rights of the dead… but with the whole “brains” agenda…

Then there’s Dad. I’m just going to have to assume he’s agoner, and happily chowing on brains while playing poker and betting for his buddies’ knucklebones.  My mother’s priorities being what they are, she’ll be just mortified at what the neighbors think about her husband running around eating brains.

Touched Home

Jun. 13th, 2007 at 7:28 PM

I was wrong about my dad, he’s not a-goner. The same dumb luck that saw him through the Watts riots in Hollywood* reasserted itself. He came home to my very panicked mother and said something casual about how “everyone outside looks like a zombie today.” No one’s heard from krisravenna. She has these bizarre, semi-suicidal impulses that causes her to climb trees in lightning storms; I’m going to be so very beyond pissed at her if I have to work my necromantic mojo on my own sister. I’m not worried about Kid so much – she’s got that same weird gauntlet of protection I had at that age.

I’m relieved about Dad. I was picturing zombie-Dad trying to feed on the brains of some of his former students and starving to death. What little sustenance some of them would have in them would have been from him, anyway.

I’m amazed the Internet has held up. Mike built a good system, with backup generators. It’s all the work from his killer robots.

I’m a bit hurt that he’s wandered off into the hordes, but you know, if I can’t maintain a romantic relationship with ghosts – a frequent issue I have – I certainly can’t with a zombie. I’ll mourn later. Right now, more asfoetida.

*this actually happened. My father actually went for a stroll during the Watts riots and left without a scratch on him.

Mother of God

Jun. 13th, 2007 at 7:52 PM
I’ve been unceremoniously retrieved from my apartment by a priest in a cherry picker. Turns out I know the priest – well, knew him. We went to college together back when he was still an atheist and I thought salvation wasn’t a do-it-yourself job. There was always this hovering weirdness in our friendship; I think my mother always thought we’d hook up but he was the football star and off with his cheerleader girlfriend, and I was busy wiggling out of my relationship with the wannabe actor boyfriend and eventually I left for Mankato and my dumbass hippy nonboyfriend. I wanted him to tell me to stay, he wouldn’t do it, and after a couple of phone calls we sort of lost touch. I left, he went off to play semi-pro, and I became a witch while he took orders. I only found out about the priest thing when I Googled him on a whim.  Gone are the days where the ice is broken between us with a crude joke. That helicopter ride was more uncomfortable than the smell of intestines earlier this afternoon.

I’d often imagined a reunion with Pete, but I was hoping for something that didn’t involve him nabbing me from my home with body parts littering the street beneath my window. I don’t see us being buds after this – after he fished me out, a swarm of militant fraters raided all my magic shit. They knew the Haitian dude, and I was the last phone call on his ID, so they tracked me down.

We’re at some base at the top of the IDS tower. At least he gave me time to get my laptop, and there are generators going, plenty of wireless, and every password I’ve ever wanted just magically available to me. I’m none to pleased to see my occult library and my implements – including my perfumery stuff – has been packed and “donated” to the “cause.” I didn’t sign up for any damn cause, I’m all ready for that black market life.

So now we’re sitting here, him with his cross and me with the pent I no longer bother wearing. I am pissed off that I’m here, but he thinks I have answers. He gave me some crap about God being at work… may be, but it’s not his god.

My mission, if I choose to accept it

Jun. 13th, 2007 at 8:26 PM
Well, every question I have about hidden knowledge has been answered… not that I didn’t pretty much already kind of know. *Rolls eyes* Conspirators are the most obnoxiously public of them all.

I’ve asked Pete some very direct questions, and for once in his life, he gave some very direct answers. The church — which has, evidently, replaced humanity in Pete’s mind — needs me.  I can see the dead, and in circumstances, command them. It’s not like I’m some magnificent “witch of all time.” I happened to be respected and liked by Haitian dude right up until his need for family counseling bit him in the head, and Pete happens to know me, making him feel more comfortable working with me rather than working with an older, more experienced, and possibly more loose-canon member of the occult community. He was around for our college Ouija disasters, so he knows what I’m capable of.

Or, Father Pete. I don’t really recognize his authority, and the only reason I’m recognizing the “church’s” authority is because they’ve helped themselves to my stuff and I want it back now.

I already know deep down that the only real solution is to let this play itself out. If you’re magical, you should have the sense to use everything in your arsenal to protect yourself. If you’re not, I really hope you’ve got a shot gun, and maybe some rock salt lying around. I mean, making zombies initially was a case-by-case basis – one asshole, one pufferfish, a whole lot of hypnosis.But this whole going viral thing?

…and to think, less than 12 hours ago my biggest frustration was some guy trying to pick me up when all I wanted was to buy coffee. Now I’m actually stuck in an ivory tower with a priest – who, by the way, was the biggest whore of ALL my college mates. Rapunzel Rapunzel, let down your brains…

if there’s a hell…

Jun. 13th, 2007 at 9:41 PM
I’m definitely going to it, because I just pushed a priest off a very tall building. So tall I couldn’t hear a reassuring splat of a crash landing or impalement. Pete’s carefully not saying anything to me about it, and has pointedly left me alone.

I was standing on the observation deck – it looked like the law firm that owned the space had pretty much ended the day by noon by a thorough zombie-overboard. Flailing undead lawyer – now there’s one for America’s Funniest Home Videos. One of the priests came up to me with this look in his eye, and this aura to him – just sidling up by me. My body reacted before my brain took control, and a flying priest was borne.

There was definitely something wrong with him… and if it’s what’s wrong with everybody else… oh dear gods, I better find Pete.

*phew*

Jun. 13th, 2007 at 10:20 PM
Pete’s OK, but that was close. Too close… way too damn close. We’re not really safe up here – I was right about the priest I tossed off the building being infected; until further notice I am classifying myself with the pre-emptive Kevorkian set on that one. Also, while the Zombie repellent seems to work by making the zombies really sad and grumpy, it doesn’t really make them go away. It just makes them really depressed. We’re going to have to set fire to the building and take off in the helicopter stat. All my beloved witchcraft books, up in flames.

Huh, my mom’s prayers may have been answered on that one.

Something that’s not right about all of this… can’t put my finger on… where are the spirits of the dead? Where are their souls? I should be able to see them, speak with them, channel them.. . and nothing. Radio silence in the spirit realm. Not even Pete can figure it out.

OK then…

Jun. 13th, 2007 at 11:10 PM
There’s this theory that new gods arise as humanity creates new things. While normally I’d turn this into an “I told you synthetics were bad!” lecture, it’s kind of a moot point now, because the world’s not just gone natural, it’s gone freaking feral. Also, my jokes about putting Prozac in the water supply? Someone heard them. So there’s some chemical convergence – a great power got unleashed, and it interacted badly with the flouride in the water – high doses of fluoride cause suggestibility – and the added Prozac. Half the populous was well on its way to Zombie-ville, and someone got bit by just the right fluoridated-Prozacced up hell beast, and it’s been quite the party every since. Everything, whether you can touch it or not, is connected. Even the power of some demon mixed with fluoride. No rituals of Pete’s or mine, and no inventiveness on my part, can undo this. There is no hope – exccept to survive.

Because of this, rather than running away from me, the Zombie Repellent’s just making the Zombies all sad and stop approaching me. I noticed a tear in Pete’s eye and I almost freaked out on him, but no, he was just thinking of his mom. Dammit, I knew that the overuse of antidepressants would bite us all in the ass someday.

This only partially explains where the souls are going, and soul retrieval is far, far beyond my ken. I’m going to try to reverse my dial-a-god line, and go to the one unzombifiable source and ask some questions. Praying now I come back to my own brains still in my own head.

Figured it out

Jun. 13th, 2007 at 11:59 PM
OK, who’s the moron who resurrected a hell god? You dumb shit, all those souls got EATEN.
These may not be my last words, but they’re almost definitely my last words in this reality. If I remember any of this, I’m so starting a send-a-shrink-to-Haiti fund.

End Zombie, 2007

Jun. 14th, 2007 at 12:10 AM
It couldn’t have been us by ourselves. Pete’s faith is too shaky, and even with that weird Goddess-channeling moment where I was myself but I was Myself, I don’t think we could have ended the Zombie-thon all by ourselves. Besides which, usually when I get “taken” I don’t feel my own annoyance, and I could feel myself MIGHTILY annoyed this time.

I don’t think Pete’s going to keep his frock after this. I don’t know if he’s going to keep his mind. He thought I was so innocent when we met in college, him with his oversexed biography and me with my shy attempt to be smart about everything. Turns out he had the innocence he needed protected, and I am the girl who finally broke his heart – three zombie priests pitched over a building and one conversion to a religion that trumped his was all it took.

I don’t think I’m going to be keeping Pete after this, or much of anything. There’s all these stories about priests being chosen to walk the earth, and now that my life and business have been torched in Vatican sanctioned flames (oh the irony) I guess it’s my time to test my magick mettle out on the streets and fields. Too bad about Mike, and Pete.

Even though I’m relieved they’re ALL OK, I’m sure as hell not moving nearer my parents. I just got off the phone with my mom, and she was in a pique because she had to impale her boss in the eye with a pair of pinking shears. Mostly, she was upset about the shears, and very concerned that her conduct not reach her DAR chapter. And Dad… Dad wants to loot a DVD store. *shakes head*

Krisravenna got stuck in a Denver airport. As far as being under siege by zombies goes… well, at least she wasn’t stuck in Chicago traffic.

The zombies punched holes in three ATMS down Hennepin. I better gather it now and get on down the road. I’ll stop at the Famous Footwear on 6th for better shoes while I’m at it.

Year 2: The Zombie Apocalypse, 2008 Minneapolis, Chicago Avenue, across from Abbott-Northwestern Hospital

One Year Later: Preface

Jun. 12th, 2008 at 11:01 AM

There was a weird smell in the back garden tonight. Vaguely rotten, like the really putrid rotten you get when you’ve ripped open a man’s intestines. I haven’t smelled that since last year.

I’ve told Joel to lock the doors and windows, and just in case line the windows with aesfoetida. The official word is that the zombies are gone, but I’ve got this sense that whatever it is isn’t done. Thankfully, Joel doesn’t argue with me like Mike used to – he just trusts my instincts.

I wish I weren’t so woozy. It’s easier to pinpoint my psychic warnings when I’m not sick.

Mourning Nostalgia

Jun. 13th, 2008 at 12:01 AM

I’m hoping my paranoia comes to naught, but since I can’t bring myself to watch the news – PTSD, say my doctors, as is the fatigue – I’m sitting here thinking about last year. Thinking about, early in the day, when I thought the situation was funny as zombies tried to climb the window and get at me. When I still had the man I loved. When I didn’t know the so-called secrets of the universe (Kung Fu Panda just about sums it up.)

One of the concepts I explored between my first and second degrees in witchcraft was the possibility of alternate realities, and I use that possibility to comfort myself now. In another scenario, the zombie never happened. Mike never got bit on the head because one of Honeywell’s security issues went wrong. Zombification is still nothing more than a ritual practice of inflicting neural damage that is absolutely non-contagious.

In that other dimension, Mike and I are still living happily together. He’s finally closing in on his PhD and I’m teasing him about his “deadline” to propose to me. I’ve had sufficient time to resolve any doubts about the relationship. Our apartment may be a nightmare, and my friends and I meet and drink and have our little dramas and laughs, but there is no mystical bullshit, just the steady comfort of my religious and creative practice. I do not have to deal with check-ins from a Vatican representative and I wasn’t tried and acquitted for killing a priest although the Vatican ruled he was not a zombie, despite the corpse attempting to sit up several times during the autopsy. None of my Etsy orders involved me opening an envelope to unload a human foot and middle finger. In this other place, my life is still one of quiet business-building, expanding on my writing career and one where I can usually sleep through the night.

But I’m not in that other place, right now, I’m here. And I’m sad. I’m not going to unload on Joel about this, I’m just going to sit at the computer, shotgun across my lap…

And wonder why the hell there’s a helicopter landing in our backyard.

The thing about helicopters

Jun. 13th, 2008 at 8:00 AM

OK, before I shoot a helicopter pilot in the face, I really really should make sure said pilot shuts OFF the helicopter first. By now the battery has worn out or whatever, and I’m amazed that mine was the only gun fired, especially given the noise. When you live on this part of Chicago Avenue, you get used to helicopters being target practice. This is mostly because heavily armed drug dealers live along this block, and they tend to be heavily armed and extremely cranky when stirred from slumber. They’ve shot in my yard before, but to their credit, they don’t generally shoot at me. One of the nurses at the hospital told me they were afraid while we were chatting over some blood tests. I couldn’t get that nurse to fill in more details – I saw her look at my blood, turn white, and disappear.

It’s not the first time a helicopter landed here since I’ve lived here; once, it was the Vatican, returning my stuff including what I needed to make the Zombie Repellent. Once, it was Pete. I try not to think anymore about Pete.

As for today, our back garden should be riddled with bullets – it’s not. Except for the dead man decomposing face down in the tomatoes, it’s like we’re the only people around here.

Joel just brought in the newspaper – it’s a civility he insisted on when we moved in together, I suspect more to try to re-socialize me than to try to stay informed. It looks like the paper was torn into, savagely. And dripping with something like saliva. Joel was holding it by the barest piece of newsprint, possibly the only dry spot on it, and allowing it to drip onto the wooden floor. It was gross. He’s tossed it out back on top of the dead man. I’d think he was being callous, if I hadn’t dosed him with scopolamine. I know it’s a horrible thing to do to a dear friend, but I have to – for his sake. The things I do on a daily basis since last year are horrible, and just because I’ve been warped into a feral version of myself doesn’t mean Joel needs to be. The repellent thing has made me kind of underground famous. Poor Joel. He lives with the Zombie Queen, as one of the more sensitive editors of the City Pages dubbed me.

I went to stick my head out the front door, and our neighborhood, usually violent and noisy, is ghost-like. There’s no one in the Abbott-Northwestern parking lot, and the lights are off. I better check the news to see if there was a power outage or worse, a hostage situation.

Gawd, the air smells putrid today. I should check the smog index. It can’t be the guy I shot – nothing rots that fast, especially since it’s not really humid today.

Abbott-Northwestern is Closed

Jun. 13th, 2008 at 10:27 AM

Joel called me up on the roof about half an hour ago. Our neighborhood is still a ghost town – I can see people shuffling, and I can smell burning. It looks like the US Bank Building is up in flames. So much for that property sale. What’s getting me is the absolute blackness of Abbott Northwestern Hospital across the street. The windows are dark. On the upper levels, I can see some attempts to barricade the windows, and I wonder if the helicopter masked their sound last night.

I don’t need to check the news, I know what this means. I do, however, wish I’d bought some binoculars. Some doctors and nurses could be up on the roof, and today was the day that I was supposed to get my test results. I need to know if I’m a carrier, because if I am, Joel is in trouble.

Pieces of the Puzzle and Pieces of Some of the Involved

Jun. 13th, 2008 at 1:10 PM

Since this morning Joel and I have managed to cross the street, work our way through the hospital, and found our way to the roof. There are five doctors up there, three living, two dead, all conscious, one a ghost and one a disembodied zombie head that the “expert in mortuary health” insists upon keeping. I haven’t been able to see a ghost since last year, since the ritual that is now leeching my red blood cells also blocks my psychic channels. I can’t fathom how I can see him. I have my mini-laptop up here and the wireless access is solid; we’re in contact with other doctors on the roofs of other hospitals in the city, and we’ve been passing around the Zombie Repellent like sunscreen while mortuary science guy asks me incredibly dumb questions about mystic applications and why the hell I’ve been living the way I have been, as though it’s his business.

Getting through the hospital was…weird. There’s a new breed of zombies on the loose, fast ones. I don’t like fast ones. That said, that isn’t what we found in the hospital. I can’t say we actually found zombies…we found pieces of them…very active pieces of them. It was like someone was holding an audition for the Thing in the next Addam’s family remake. I stepped up on a loose hand going up the stairs, and two flights up got kicked in the shins by a disembodies leg, ostensibly for stepping on the hand.

I would have preferred to head straight to the roof, but Joel insisted we make our way into the lab and get my test results. He doesn’t know that what I’m being treated for is zombie-related, he just knows it’s autoimmune. But by his logic, now is as good a time as any for me to stock up on medications. The boy is thinking like a looter already. I am a terrible influence.

He’s actually been getting crankier with me, today. He’s informed me I have some ’splainin to do, because of course, today of all days his neurons reassert themselves into normal memory patterns and I think he knows I’ve been drugging him.

Joel’s method for testing me for “zombie creep” was to dump a bottle of Zombie Repellent over my head and ask me if I felt depressed. Not a great test, as I’ve been depressed for the past year. Of course, now that homicidal rage is a symptom… Come to think of it, that’s not a very Joel thing to do.

I swear, if that mortuary science jackass makes one more stupid comment about me I’m going to arrange for that disembodied head to bite him in the ass and then eat his brains myself.

The Worst Thing in the World?

Jun. 13th, 2008 at 1:28 PM

Opening the file, and reading – after all those pokes, and prods, and needles:
Results Are Inconclusive.
The ghost doctor was the expert, the disembodied head was his assistant, and he’s pretty sure the reason they got nailed with the zombie-virus first is because of my tests. So the question is: do I reopen the psychic channels and risk the possibility of becoming the Pied Piper of the Undead very quickly, or do I stay on shut down, physically and psychically weakened, to slow what might be the inevitable anyway?

Decisions suck. At least this time I can shoot someone.

He’s More than Happy to Shoot Me in the Head

Jun. 13th, 2008 at 3:00 PM

Joel has reassured me that, after everything I’ve done to and for him this year, he would be quite pleased to have the honor of shooting me in the head if it becomes necessary. I had to prod very insistently for the “only if it’s necessary” clause.

So, before we engage in the procedure, the ghost doc and one of the living docs and I have agreed that there’s a whole bunch of stuff I need to make public record, things I’ve kept locked down since last year. The world needs to know what happened to Pete, where the zombies went, what happened to me…

Being given the zombie repellent formula was less of an accident than originally thought. The Haitian I used to buy my vetiver from had tracked me down specifically, though I didn’t know it at the time. He had often told me if I weren’t so scattered and American I’d make a great houngan, and he had been transferring that information to me in bits and pieces, in interesting conversations couched in flirtation so I wouldn’t realize I was being taught. My grasp of the occult is much like other people’s grasp of mathematics: I just happen to be really good at it. He was so good at it he was being tracked by the Vatican and the Vatican was being tracked by the HSA, and in the mix I wound up being tracked, especially after last year’s trial for pitching a priest off a building.1

Here’s something no one really talked about: those zombies that didn’t get hacked to bits, they were still around on June 14th last year. Mike was one of them, and since his family was completely unprepared for zombie care, it fell to me. Although Pete and Vatican personnel offered me a nice safe place in the Alps, I said no – first, because I really don’t want to have “convert to Catholicism” conversations every day for the rest of my life, second because I’d like to have sex again someday, and third because I refuse to live anywhere I can’t have a pizza delivered without paying for airfare.
So, since Joel’s family was decimated and he was one of my only close friends who had experienced serious loss, we found a place we could afford in Minneapolis that was basically in the ‘hood and settled in together. We tied up Mike in the backyard Shaun of the Dead style, and tried to go about rebuilding our lives.

And I started getting sick, sicker than I ever was before the last apocalypse. I was staggering across the street daily for anti-nausea medications, Vicodin, Percoset, anything to numb my head. Then, just before Thanksgiving, Pete showed up.

There are two things I can be assured of after Pete’s visit: bad sex really is worse than no sex, and don’t leave your new lover in the backyard alone with your zombie boyfriend. Apparently zombies are conscious enough to get jealous. Ultimately, I had to shoot them both and bury them in the backyard. I also dosed Joel for the first time that day – at this point, he’s remembering many incidents that now qualify me as a serial killer. It changes his view of me as a moral compass for the both of us, and it makes me sad, but I really thought he was better off not knowing how we were really living.

It seems that something had happened to Pete before he ever got exposed to Mike – something that worked differently than the whole undead metaphysical fiasco of 2007. I’m not sure I fully understand the details, but within a month I was swarmed by Homeland Security Agents who knew damn well I’d hidden Pete’s body and were more concerned that I’d slept with him than that I’d killed him. Apparently I’d saved them the hassle of doing it themselves. I got dragged in for testing, and Joel got dosed again. Now that I think about it, I should tell Joel to get checked out for organ damage.

Although no bodily fluids were exchanged, etheric fluids are always exchanged during sex and there is no contraceptive for that. Whatever Pete carried, I now have, buried in my aura and battling with my blood. For some reason, the same thing that would make me a good houngan makes me an especially dangerous carrier of this infection. One tip of the virus in the wrong direction, and suddenly I’m leading the brains brigade. Since I’m a carrier for both fast zombie and slow zombie, the results would be particularly unpredictable. We’ve suppressed it by suppressing my physical and psychic immune system: they are connected, and they are weak.

The doctors are going to flush my system (yeah, this will be humiliating on the roof and nowhere near a toilet) and we’re going to get the drugs out of me and turn my metaphysical self loose. God, I hope I don’t have to kill anymore people – at least, not today.

I started getting even sicker after that, and showing bizarre symptoms: wild needs for raw meat and fresh organs, a distaste for my own formulas. I had to force myself to touch rock salt, and I have to make Joel handle the aesfotida.

All materials are copyright Diana Rajchel and Magickal Realism (TM) C 2007 (TM) C 2008 Magickal Realism (TM) is a trademarked fragrance brand.
References

1. If I’d pitched off a homeless person, no one would have cared. But slap a white collar and a cross on a guy and people get all upset. [↩]

That Could Have Sucked More

Jun. 13th, 2008 at 4:00 PM

The ghost is a man named Doctor Z. I like him. I always like ghosts. They make more sense to me than the living. But now I’m an extra sad, a different sad as things run out of my body in the most public humiliation I’ve had since junior high.

There aren’t many souls left. The slow zombies, they have no souls. The souls are off in a bottle somewhere. The fast zombies, they’re trapped inside themselves. Somehow that’s worse.

And Joel is almost satisfied that a barium enema on a roof top is almost sufficient punishment for routinely drugging him for the past year. Almost. But at least he doesn’t want to shoot me in the head anymore.

I feel more like myself than I have in the past year. Like I could start cracking jokes. Or cracking heads. God, I could go for some meat, that zombie head looks kind of tasty. Not the human heads, just the zombie head.

Er

Jun. 13th, 2008 at 5:00 PM

So, I’m now locked in a room on the top floor of Abbot Northwestern. I had a bit of a … lapse. I was hungry. There was a disembodied head. I ate it while it cursed at me.

I don’t want to eat anybody else’s brain. I just have a taste for zombies now. It’s like they’re finely aged, like a good, stinky Lindbergh cheese. And now, fast or slow, when I walk towards the body parts, they run away. I’ve taken my revenge on that disembodies foot that kicked me. I’m pretty sure that this “perky” feeling I’m experiencing is actually wanting to hunt. I want to hunt dead things.

Only the ghost doctor feels safe with me, but since only I can see him I can’t really use him to communicate with others. I could tell him how to take possession of Joel, but that won’t do much. The mortuary life doctor has summoned a medical helicopter and we’re heading to Mayo Clinic soon; I’ve agreed to let them strap me down and wear a mouth guard in case I want to bite someone else.

I’m pretty sure this is the last time I’ll have on a computer for a very, very long time.

They Came and Took Me Away, Hee Hee!

Jun. 13th, 2008 at 11:14 PM

The people at Mayo Clinic decided that if I was well enough to mention Geneva convention laws, I was well enough to have a computer and what amounts to a vacuum sealed room. They’re leaving me trays of food, but nothing smells appetizing – and relax, no one smells appetizing. My stomach was pumped…more humiliation for the day… and while my blood is holding steadily at midpoint, my cravings for organ meat are subsiding. But seriously, why had no one tried biting a zombie back besides me? If you’re really infected, you’re screwed anyway, and at least you have the satisfaction of the confused expression that only a cadaver can have.

Joel remembers everything now, and he’s really, really pissed, but he says he’s going to forgive me, he just needs a proper night’s sleep and more perspective.

Dr. Z is going around waving his hand in front of nurses and the extremely tired, trying to get someone to talk on my behalf. At this point, I’m half-expecting him to take over someone while sleeping. Possession: nine tenths of metaphysical law.

I’m on quarantine, either until I die of starvation or until they actually diagnose whatever this cha cha my blood is doing. This leaves me with nothing to do but meditate, let people stick needles in me, pretend I’m Hannibal Lecter (my Halloween costume is all picked out) and look at a LOT of porn.

It’s gonna be a long year.

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