MARCH 2009

 ABOUT   ARCHIVES   AWARDS   LINKS   SUBMIT   HOME

Zombies in the Shower
By Ryan Dilbert, Jan 12, 2009

I drove a tank over to her house. I always drive a tank. It makes me feel like a man, like I’m strong. In that machine, with my helmet strapped tight, and the avenue tearing apart under me, I feel like I am Gatorade.

Darla’s house was easy to miss. It was small and painted the color of twilight. As the sun went down, we often drove right past it. Her cat was always stuck on the rusty tin roof, calling out with a pitiful whine. His name was Physics.

I parked my tank and climbed down the side of it. Darla came running out of her little house, crying. She was wearing that dress she knew I liked. It fit snugly around her flat chest and hips. Even in the dark, those swirling marine colors mesmerized me.

She wrapped her arms around my ribs and cried into my chest. I tried to ask her what was wrong, but she mumbled something like, “I want to be of people.”

I had gone there to make love, to feel her face, to have my balls experience rich rewards. I didn’t want to deal with anything.

Then I felt the blood soaking through my shirt. I jerked Darla’s arms off of me. Something had torn into her forearms. The blood spurted out. It looked like a slow, lifeless fireworks show. Stuff like this always happened to Darla. I was always stitching something back on or slapping on a homemade cast. I was tired of it. I think I just ran out of surgeries.

“What is it this time?”

She tugged on my arm and pulled me into her hobbit house. She rested on her bed, pointing to her bathroom. I was thinking about how pretty she was. I remember when we first started going out, the speed of those vehicles, the booth, her bare leg burning through my jeans. When you drive cars that fast, the eyes of their engines tear up.

“Honey, this is serious. Are you listening?” she said.

I focused on what she was saying. She told me that she came home and saw what she thought was bird shit everywhere. At first she didn’t think much of it, because sometimes you come up empty and sometimes there’s bird shit. But she went to take a shower. She pulled the shower curtain open and saw a pair of zombies showering. They had ripped off part of her arm and tried to detach her bare leg from her body.

I could hear them. The water was running. The zombies were mumbling. Darla’s arms were bleeding a lot, making a mess of everything.

“You have a TV, right?” I asked her.

“Yeah, why?”

Sometimes she was so helpless.

“Because you can kill zombies with a TV.”

She didn’t know that you can pretty much handle zombies with any big, blunt instrument. She didn’t know a lot of things, like how to make a bed. The whole time we dated she never learned how to tuck in the sheets. My mom always said not to date an unmade bed. I guess this is what she meant.

I walked into the living room and unplugged the TV. I hoisted it above my head and headed for the bathroom. After kicking the bathroom door open, I charged in. The zombies were standing under the showerhead with their mouths open. It sounded like maybe they were laughing. They turned to me and stuck their arms out. They wanted to tear into me too and maybe eat up my brains. But blood was already over this journey.

I smashed their heads in with the TV, the screen shattering and clinking along the bathroom floor. Both of the zombies collapsed. Darla was extremely grateful and started to make me a drink.

I left the broken TV on the toilet.

When I sat down in Darla’s loveseat, she shyly handed me a propane tank.

“I’m sorry, honey. I ran out of glasses. I put some juice and Kahlua in this.”

I’ve drunk more than a propane tank. And I was used to Darla mangling drinks. I sipped on the straw.

Darla teetered over and held herself up by holding onto the doorway. Blood had wet all of her dress. I knew what was under that dress. I was numb to what was under that dress and and that was the problem.

“Maybe I should go the hospital,” she said meekly.

Most of the time, I didn’t care if we made love anymore. She was pretty, yeah. And my friends were always saying, “She’s nice, man. Rich.” But I wanted this to burn again, to reach inside her like a poet. I was bored and I didn’t know how to tell her.

Darla’s eyes drooped down and they were beautiful. What did I want? Her eyes were so big and wonderful.

I put down my propane tank, the drink swishing around in it. I was about to get up and try to make love with her when a pair of undead arms crashed through the window and grabbed me by the throat. He climbed into the house, sprinkling bloody glass on the floor as he choked me from behind. I could feel his breath climbing up and down my skin.

I grabbed his frigid wrists and pulled them off me. The zombie moaned. I flipped him over and popped him in the mouth with the propane tank. I hit him until his head was a stain on the carpet.

Darla apologized. She was passing out, and barely managed to reach out and touch my hand.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know there was another zombie.”

There was always something.

She was pale and her forearms shook. She had blood smeared all over her. Sweat mixed in with the blood until Darla was dripping with pink fluid. Her dress was ruined.

“I sweat so much. I made such a mess. I’m sorry.”

Her head fell like a limp flag.

“You’re always a mess, Darla.”

I patted her moist head and told her I was never coming back. I walked out of her zombie-riddled house. Physics called out to me as I got back into my tank. The cat’s face seemed confused, if that was possible.

I drove off with no regrets. I went to go drink someplace new.

When I got to the highway, a sexy girl with a gap in her front teeth waved at me from her moped.

“Oh my god, I love your tank. So cute.”

Maybe I drive a tank just to feel love.

She rode away after smiling coyly at me. She wore a turquoise dress that had been through the washer too many times. I watched her ride off until she, the moped, and the dress were all one blue speck submerged in the sky.