“I’m sorry to interrupt. I won’t trouble you any further. Have a charming evening,” I say, the bitterness in my voice like splintered wood fileting bare flesh.
“What about the gift?” Pym says.
“Excuse me?”
“Unless my ears misheard, you said you had a gift for me. If it’s mine, hand it over. The least I’m due for this lousy affair is a present, though from you I shouldn’t expect much.”
“Very well,” I say, withdrawing the picture from my breast pocket, confused and heartbroken by her behavior.
She’s acting more like we’re strangers than two people who have been in love for most of our lives.
I lay the paper in her palm, trembling in fear as she eyes the tattered, folded-up picture. She unfolds it carefully. She laughs pleasantly as she holds the picture before her. Bill and I join in, dissolving the tension.
Pym likes my picture!
Without warning, she tears the picture in half, then into fourths, eights, and sixteenths. “What a dreadful little drawing,” she says. “I’m ashamed that you saw me a fit subject for your unskilled hand. You are a creepy little man.”
“Don’t you remember, Pym? We intended to marry each other. I love you and you love me. We swore to never part. We swore to go away from here someday, to live a life beyond the cattle farm.”
Pym scoffs and tilts her chin up, looking away from me.“Go sit down now,” Bill says, laying a hand on my shoulder. “You’re getting worked up.”
I slap his hand down and point a finger in his face. “I should kick your ass.”
“You’re out of line.”
“Let’s fucking fight, man. Come on.”
“Get out of here before they take you away.”
“I will punch you in the face. I will seriously punch you in the face if you threaten me again.”
“That wasn’t a threat. It was the truth.”
I look at Pym. “Come on, are you really going to marry this guy?”
“Leave Pym alone. You’re getting emotional. Nobody needs this.”
“I will beat your ass if you say her name again. Don’t talk to me about my emotions. You are not my friend. You are a motherfucker. You are a—”
Several zombies leap on me at once. They wrestle me to the ground and twist my arms behind my back.
“I warned you,” Bill says, shaking his head sadly. “You shouldn’t have caused a scene.”
“I will fuck this farm to death,” I tell him.
“I’m sure you will,” he says.
The zombies lift me to my feet and cart me away.
Everyone stares at me as the three zombies drag me from the area.
They toss me into a cage and lock the door.
I’ll never see Pym again.
Mother at My Cage
I rise and grab the bars when the zombies in their helicopters rise into a sky that is dark too early, flying over the towering brick wall that encloses us, back to wherever it is that dead people live.
I only tear my eyes from the sky and become aware of the rust now caked beneath my fingernails when Mother approaches my cage.
“Is the ceremony over?” I ask her.
“No, it’s only beginning,” she says.
“What are you doing missing it?”
“I should ask the same of you.”
I lower my eyes, ashamed. I wonder if she watched them cart me off.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” she says.
“You didn’t see it?”
“No, I had not yet arrived,” she says, shaking her head.
“It was nothing. I became hyperactive. That’s all.”
“That’s all? I heard rumors of certain confessions.”
I say nothing.
“You weren’t confessing anything, were you?” she says.
“I told Pym I love her.”
“Do you love her?”
“Yes. Pym and I have always loved each other.”
“Always?”
“Since we were children.”
She scrunches her eyebrows and a darkness clouds her eyes. “That must not be true,” she says. “That must not be true at all.”
“I think about Pym a lot. She’s always on my mind. I’ve been really excited about my marriage date since it was arranged because I’d dreamed that Pym would be my bride, that she would redeem me and give me a happy death.”
“A happy death, yes, that’s something we’re all after.”
I lower my voice and say, “I drew a picture of her.”
“Did you show it to her?”
“Yes.”
“And she laughed in your face.”
“And tore it up right in front of me. It was so humiliating. I’ve never felt so embarrassed in my life. Then words started flying out of my mouth. I must’ve sounded like a madman or a drunkard, so delirious.”
My mother smiles and nods, “Yes, you are in love.”
“Why are you smiling? It’s not a good thing. My life is over now. I’m ruined.”
“I loved your father. He’s the only husband of mine I ever loved. We were lucky enough to be paired up. Prior to our wedding night, I often slept in his hole.”
“You mean… love does exist on the farm?”
“Of course it exists.”
“Bill said it doesn’t. He said love was just what the dead people used against us.”
“Bill is a good man, but he’s also a teacher. Teachers will tell you the saddest things they know so that you won’t be disappointed later on. It’s their job. Just as it’s Pym’s job to be Bill’s bride, and that means ignoring you.”
“But she’s marrying Bill. The day before my wedding.
If she had any idea how bad this hurts me, she couldn’t possibly marry him.”
“If she really loves you, it’s hurting her just as bad.”
She shrugs. “Anyway, Bill will be decapitated by morning and lying headless in the meal trough in a week. Don’t be mad at Bill.”
“Bill is a good man. One of the best. Wise.”
“No, Bill is human like the rest of us. He’s seen more of the world, but his brain is the same size and it will end up in the same place. In fact, you and him will probably be shelf buddies in some brain market.”
“You’re not sad that I’m dying the day after tomorrow?”
“Oh, heavens no. I’m happy that my littlest lamb is finally being delivered to the slaughter. This is a cruel situation we’re born into. If I weren’t such a coward, I would have killed myself after my eldest son was born. I hate this life. I hate myself for bringing more people into it. I feel like a mean old cunt sometimes, when I think back on the life I’ve lived, then I get sad when I realize none of it’s my fault. I wish I had guts to do something bold. Maybe stick a knife in my pussy and cut a big hole. Oh, what a big hole already.”
“Mother, please…”
“Anyway, the ceremony should be almost over and I don’t want to miss the celebration. I still get a thrill watching the dead lock the bride and groom in the wedding tower. Do you have any last words for your love? I’ll impart your final message to her if you have one.”
“No,” I say, “I have nothing.”
“Very well then.”
I curl into the corner of the cage, weeping now, as my mother walks away.
I shiver on the cold floor, alone while the farm celebrates the marriage of Bill and Pym.
The smell of charred flesh carries over. My stomach grumbles, longing for some barbecue.
It is nearly dawn when the party dies down.
Horn in the Keyhole
I awake early on account of the morning heat, the chopping roar of the zombies’ helicopters, and also the mortifying fact that it is my wedding day.
I’m still locked in the tiny cage, still heartbroken.