When I see Robbie skipping toward me, I welcome the sight of the little retard with a happy cry.
“Sorry I didn’t come sooner. I ate so much barbecue last night that I puked and passed out. I awoke bright and early to say goodbye to Bill. His head came off nice and clean. When I grow up and get married, I hope my decapitation is that neat.”
“What about Pym?”
Robbie shrugs. “I haven’t seen her.”
“She wasn’t present at Bill’s decapitation?”
“No.”
I am filled with a selfish glee by this fact. It’s a shame that she couldn’t be bothered to hang around after the wedding night to witness the slaughter of her husband.
“Want me to get you out of here?”
“It’s locked and some zombie has the key. At least I hope one of them has the key.”
“The lock is pretty big. Let me see if I can fit one of my horns in the keyhole.”
“Go for it.”
Robbie twists his head around so that his forehead presses against the bars of the cage. He sticks his tongue out in concentration, carefully aligning his little left horn with the keyhole. The horn slides into the hole. He wiggles back and forth, grinding his horn against the interior of the box-shaped lock.
A little click and the door swings open. I step out of the cage, feeling free even though I have never been free.
I thank Robbie. He smiles and asks if I’m ready for the wedding. I shrug. The lock hangs from his left horn like an ugly piece of fruit.
Swallow Your Dreams and Say Goodbye
I retreat to my hole for a final moment by myself. Some people live aboveground in teetering shanties. Not me. I’ve lived inside this dark and crowded space my whole life. I enjoy living underground. It’s a shame I have to leave my home behind to spend my last night on earth in the wedding tower.
I think about cleaning out my hole so that somebody else can move in when I’m gone, but the layer of filth covering everything has calcified into a gray husk, like the insides of a fossilized whale.
The only thing for me to take or leave behind is the box buried in the ground. The box containing Pym’s letter and nothing else. I could give the box away or leave it to chance and time. Either possibility leaves me cold. There must be another way, something better.
Haha, of course.
I eat the letter, chewing off tiny pieces, breaking down the weathered paper with my spit. The letter tastes like dust and skin. And when my body is dumped in the trough and the cannibals pick me apart, they’ll ingest the letter.
Maybe that will muster some true love in them.
I replace the box in the floor. Some poor explorer will climb down here one day and discover it and for a moment dream of treasure. Won’t they be disappointed. An old box full of nothing.
My jaw feels sore by the time I swallow the last of the letter.
“Goodbye, hole. You were a good home.”
I leave the place behind, ready to face the most important day of my life, fighting with myself to silence the questions looming over me.
Who will be my wife?
Will I be scared or sad when the zombies come for me in the morning?
Do I want to die?
Silence!
A bell rings out, signifying breakfast time.
How to Begin a Wedding Day
They let the leftovers from last night’s feast sit out all night.
Flies swarm the spoiled remains of half-eaten carcasses.
Maggots stained red by barbecue sauce noodle about in convulsive gyrations. They carry granules of meat in their tiny jaws.
I arrive early today. I sit down at an empty bench in front of a broken leg hung with meat so juicy it ripples in the breeze. After a lifetime of eating people, I stand firm in my taste: I hate eating people, except for hearts and legs. I enjoy leg meat. And barbecued leg meat is the best. They only barbecue our food for wedding feasts. It’s supposed to promote fertility. All other times we eat each other raw.
The benches quickly fill up as people come out from their homes for breakfast. Most look hung over and sleep-deprived, their eyes ringed by dark circles, a stoop in their step, but without exception they’ll be at it again tonight, pigging out on the flesh of old friends, drinking past oblivion, only to return tomorrow to do it all over again. This is the way of the wedding season.
My mother walks up holding Ronnie by the hand. The lock still hangs from his horn. They sit down, one on each side of me.
“Ready for your big day?” my mother says.
“My heart is set on tomorrow morning.”
My mother scoffs. “There’s no reason to be grim. All of my other sons got married like perfect gentlemen. Ronnie says he thinks of you as his brother. You should act properly. Set an example for the youth. For the future.”
“For what future, mother?”
“Do you mind if I move into your hole?” Ronnie asks me. “When I grow up, I want to be just like you.”
“That future,” my mother says.
I rip off a too-large bite of thigh meat with my teeth, but it’s full of maggots. I get up from the table and head for the wide-open fields. And yes, those are tears in my eyes.
The Games We Played
I remember playing in this field by the brick wall with Pym. We played here every day for years. We made up our own games. When we were learning to count, we counted bricks in the wall. All day long for several weeks, we counted bricks. If we forgot what number came next, we made up our own numbers.
We played another game that we called Cloud Castle, where we lay on our backs in the tall grass and looked up at the sky. We pretended to be sky dragons who lived on clouds. Some days, Pym and I pretended to live on a cloud together. Our cloud castle, we said. Other days, mostly when one of us was annoyed with the other or feeling staunchly independent, we pretended to live alone on separate clouds. I remember the first time we encountered a cloudless sky after inventing this game. Does this mean we’re dead? I asked. No, Pym said, It means we’ve fallen to earth. She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. We held hands in silence until the sun went down, shocked by the butterflies howling in our chests. On earth, as it is in the great cloud castle.
The Bridal Lottery of a Sad Man
I hurry back to the farm square when the helicopters fly over-head. I push through the crowd and climb onto the stage.
People bow their heads at me in ceremonious fashion.
In the distance, zombies land helicopters in empty fields, sweeping up gusts of sizzling dirt.
The sea of sunburned sweaty human faces splits in half, forming an aisle for the dead to pass through.
The crowd picks up their chant: “Who will be his bride? Who? Who?”
They drop to their knees and sink waist-deep in dust.
“Praise be to marriage,” somebody shouts.
After the last zombie climbs onstage, the second wave of zombies, the sorting wave, sweeps from behind. They push through the human crowd, grabbing at the females, feeling them up, seeking potential brides for me.
For me this time.
I turn my eyes down, unable to handle watching the process and feeling sick from the close range of the zombies. They’re clustered all around me, breathing down my neck, smelling of fungus and rot.
A few minutes later, six females are dragged to the stage. Some go willingly. Other women are dragged by their limbs or hair.
A zombie grabs my head and forces me to look up and address my potential brides.