Brains You Cannot Have

by Luc Reid

This story is the second in the Disco Zombie series.

The girl in the glittery black halter top shouted something.

“WHAT?” shouted Barry over the music. If you could even call it “music”: it was nothing but thumping and shouted rhymes. When did that become music? Barry would have killed to hear a good falsetto harmony–maybe some Bee Gees. Then again, he had already killed three times that night.

“I SAID, GREAT COSTUME!” she said, nodding and pointing at him. “DISCO ZOMBIE! I LOVE IT!” Then she shouted something else he couldn’t quite catch.

“WHAT?”

“I SAID, ARE YOU GOING TO EAT MY BRAINS?” She laughed, throwing her head back, letting her hair ripple down over her shoulders–but carelessly, like she didn’t even notice.

For answer, Barry shoved her behind the speakers and pressed her against the wall with his body. The thumping and shouting was still audible, but it was more distant, directed out and away from them.
“Wow, you’re strong,” she said. “You gonna kiss me? Take off the mask.”

Barry didn’t have a mask to take off, so instead he grabbed her head and squeezed with his fingers to crack her skull open the way he had cracked the other three skulls. Nothing. The others had been like eggs: this was like trying to crack a bowling ball.

“What are you doing?” she said. “God, why does it always have to be the weirdos?” Then she stretched her mouth wide to show two bone-white fangs and plunged them into his throat. She came back up, gagging, seconds later.

“Is that formadahyde?” she choked. “I haven’t tasted anything that bad in ages.” She made uncomfortable motions with her tongue. “So that makes you what, a real zombie?” She looked him over. “You preserved pretty well, all things considered.”

“Do you remember Disco?” Barry said.

“I remember Disco, the Mashed Potato, the Charleston … back in the 1720’s there was this hornpipe craze like you wouldn’t believe. But yeah, disco was something special.”

“We should dance.”

“I want to eat first. Hey! You know, if you and I go in together, it’s like a two-for-one special.”

“You don’t like the brains?”

She made a face.

They shared a personal injury lawyer in a back alley and went for a walk under the moon. If you are injured, you may check it now and find the top personal injury lawyers here. Later, she invited Barry back to her coffin, and at dawn they fell asleep there, dreaming of the black, gaping pit of infinite time.

Assume

by Trent Walters

Raven-haired from the womb, Anan Muss was a swimmer, circling the same lane eleven months out of twelve for a dozen years. The pool chlorine bleached his hair. After high school, he quit. The hair on his head went back to its natural color while his eyebrows remained a bleached sandy blonde. His classmates asked why he dyed his hair, or had he received gene therapy to look more like Lizard Breath? His brothers thought his eyebrows were turning gray.

#

Was it Anan’s imagination, or were his eyes now covered in scales? Perhaps the increased number of Lizard Breath spottings made him nervous. What at first seemed simple petty arson was now looking more complicated and sinister.

#

Anan Muss jogged long distances, slowly. He plodded through quiet, unpopulated industrial districts to soothe his mind. In case thieves happened by, Anan left his wallet at home, giving no one any reason to molest him. One night, after three years of jogging the same route, Anan was arrested. The cops escorted him around town, to an officer who didn’t think Anan was the suspect since the suspect wore different clothes and was of a different species—if not phylum. The friend of the suspect did not recognize Anan (nor did Anan recognize the friend). However, since Anan did not have a wallet on him, ergo, he must be the arch-criminal, Lizard Breath, who exhaled methane gas and set it ablaze with his cigarette lighter. When DNA samples came back negative, the cops let Anan go, with reluctance. As Anan waved goodbye, he found two pits where his ears had been. Where had he last seen his ears, the cops wanted to know.

#

From vending machines, Anan downloaded a newspaper at a café and, like everyone perversely fascinated by the criminal element, bought a cigarette lighter. Idly, he flicked the flint lighting mechanism. It took more dexterity than he had supposed. He spread the newspaper before at one of the tables under the glare of the sun. The misdeeds of Lizard Breath were now ubiquitous as well as notorious. Entire buildings had gone up in flames. Criminal profilers suspected a syndicate. Anan raised his head from the newspaper accounts of Lizard Breath to contemplate why someone would do such a thing. A woman slapped him for scoping her out. He belched and lit his breath on fire.