Zomtropolis Read online

  ·1: I Hate This

  I’m so drunk right now I can hardly see straight. My head feels like it’s in a mixer. My heart’s somewhere in my gut, absent from my chest and just sitting there, boiling in stomach acid. And I feel every burn, every pinch.

  It’s a trippy thing when an ex-girlfriend comes back into your life. Except, in my case, Selena is dead.

  Man, I hope I don’t mess this up. Don’t even know why I’m writing this. Catharsis, or whatever it’s called, I guess. Maybe I’ll go back later and check for typos. Maybe I won’t.

  Who cares.

  It’s getting to the point of being too much now, sitting here, in this dingy apartment, waiting for the world to finally come to an end.

  Oh, yeah. That already happened. Maybe I’m just waiting for my own world to come to an end. Wait, that happened already, too.

  Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

  One would think that after sitting here in this stupid hole for the past two months I would have gotten used to having next to nothing to eat, next to nothing to drink, next to no sleep for nights on end.

  Right, back to my ex. I guess you want to know what happened. Well, guess what? So do I. I mean, I can tell you what happened, give you the nitty-gritty about the night she waltzed back into my apartment and tried to rip a piece out of me again. Or maybe you want to hear about how after we first broke up this girl messed me up so bad she landed me in the hospital on suicide watch? Wanna hear about that? I bet you do. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be reading this.

  Figures. People always love to hear about the downfalls of others but when it comes to their own demise, they tend to back away.

  I’m glad the human race is near dead. Probably just a few more weeks to go and it’ll all be over. You. Me. And anyone else who’s out there, hoping this thing would pass.

  Sorry. Getting sidetracked. Hard to juggle two mind-benders at the same time. What’s weird is that both of them have to do with death, dying and more death.

  Hang on. Got this bottle of Tequila beside me. Need some. Say what you want but the stuff’s great, probably the only thing keeping me detached enough from reality that I’m even able to keep something of a brain together.

  Booze never goes bad.

  My ex. Man, why did she have to come back? And, boy, I tell you, she really came back. Lock, stock and two smoking barrels and all that.

  Taking a shot. Hold on.

  Done. Wait, here comes the pinch. Okay, I’m ready.

  So…you really wanna know what went down about six hours ago?

  Okay, I’ll tell you.

  Tomorrow.

  ·2: We’re All Gonna Die

  Look, I’m sorry about the other night. Probably wasn’t a good idea to try and type drunk. I’ve gone back and cleaned up what I wrote. Got rid of the cursing and a host of profanities that I seemed to have made up on the spot. Not even sure what some of those mean. What’s a “piss poking needle hammer,” anyway?

  You’d think that, at least these days, if someone is trying to connect—peacefully—with whomever’s left on this planet, one would lay off being a foul mouth.

  Okay. So, you’re back to hear the story of my ex. I can give you the romance, all that “before” stuff. Or I can give you the horror, all that aftermath crap that everyone wants to hear but only once. After that it falls in the nobody-wants-to-hear-it category.

  Wait. What’s that? Right. I hear ya. Pretty standard, I guess. I knew what you were going to say even before you said it. You want the aftermath stuff.

  Standard.

  “Want the good news or the bad news?”

  “Gimme the bad news first.”

  Weak. Typical human response.

  Seriously, forgive me if I’m coming off a bit rough here but I’ve lost all faith in the human race. Even in what’s left of it. We were never a good species to begin with and I don’t care what you say, we’re not a good species now. We’ve done too much damage over the years—yeah, since way back at the dawn of time—and now, it seems, it’s finally caught up to us. Who or what has decided we all deserve a red-bottom spanking, I don’t know, and right now it doesn’t really matter. The real issue is: where do we go from here? Onward, upward and all that stuff. Glass is half full. Lemons into lemonade.

  Lemons. Had some with the Tequila last night. Was already drunk when I pulled out my last one. Found out this morning when I woke up the thing was rotten because I spent the better part of the morning with my head in a bucket, puking up what’s left of guts and my heart.

  See? I didn’t lose focus. I brought up my heart for a reason. I nearly lost it yesterday. Nearly lost everything again and, after I logged off, took a razor to my wrist. Got a few scratches in and was about to make the big gash but passed out before I could. Us suicide-wannabes never finish what we start, do we?

  So, you want to hear about Selena. Want to know why all this rambling before I really dive into it. I guess I’m holding off for a reason. Not for fear of having nothing to say and not because I don’t know where to start. Things are a lot clearer today. Head feels like someone’s stomping a boot on it, but inside—yeah, inside—things are pretty clear.

  We’re all gonna die.

  ·: Geeky Gawker

  Didn’t mean to drop out on you yet again yesterday. Had something I needed to attend to (took me all day, actually), but I just needed to get it done before coming back on here. I promise. It won’t happen again. Well, maybe. But if it does I’m sure I’ll have a really good reason as to why.

  Okay, so let’s get this thing going because I’m getting sick of beating around the bush, too.

  Selena.

  Oh man, it was all about her. Everything. Life. My heart. No one and nothing else mattered.

  Though I’m a guy and, I suppose, compared to most this was the most “un-guy” thing to do, I always knew, even from a young age, the type of girl that I wanted. I got glimpses of “her” throughout the school years, even way back starting in elementary. The way Jill smiled because Carl made a fart joke in class and even though it was unlady-like for her to think it was funny, she smiled anyway then covered her mouth when she couldn’t hold back her laugh any longer. Or when Sammi came to school with a Superman comic and me, being the comic nut that I am, suddenly took note and this ugly girl became oh-so-attractive in my eyes because of that. Or how about the time when Amy came into our high school chemistry class wearing a suit and tie (nearly the same as the teacher’s!) just so Mr. Finch could kick her out and she’d get a few stares and laughs from her classmates. Man, I love a girl with an adventurous spirit! The list goes on and on. So many girls. So many qualities each one possessed that I so deeply desired, but so many other qualities they also possessed which eventually drove me away. I never told them I started to be attracted to them. Didn’t want to girl hop. Maybe some of them. I don’t know. Never had a girlfriend back in school. Not one. Was never liked all that much by those of the opposite sex.

  But those girls . . . . Yeah. They each had something I wanted. Something I knew I liked. Stuff I connected with. Must have had a list of about thirty things going, everything from the superficial straight through to the important stuff like how my dream girl feels when it’s raining outside. (Was she like me? Did she like to hide under a blanket, listen to the rain and suddenly become washed over in this utter feeling of safety, that the little pellets of water outside couldn’t hurt her, that nothing could hurt her, here, in this dark place with nothing but the sound of the rain calming your soul?)

  And along came Selena. She had everything. All of it. Not a one missing. If you could have only seen her the day I met her. Nothing out-of-this-world happened. I was at the art gallery. Me and a few other folks. Just minding my own business, checking out a wall of comic art when sh
e came up beside me and asked me for the time. I remember turning to face her, see whose voice that was, a voice that, upon hearing it, sent a jolt up my spine and made my ears feel as if they were learning to hear clearly for the first time. She just stood there, looking at me with brown eyes so wide and so innocent that I forgot the question. I’m telling you, I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything. All that I was just simply locked inside and I was lost in her.

  Never, ever expected that happen.

  She brushed back a lock of long, wavy brown hair back over her shoulder then hooked the lock on the other side behind her ear.

  “Do you have the time?” she asked again.

  I fumbled for my watch. Checked my right wrist instead of my left where it always was. “Um, yeah. It’s 3:33.”

  She smiled, her lips soft around the edges. Not too big. Not too small. “Thanks.” And she sidestepped over to the Wieringo piece beside me and lost herself in it.

  My hands began to shake. Sweat lined the rears of my knees and I think I was holding my breath because the next sound was a loud gasp. It was me.

  She snapped around to face me, eyes wide. I completely startled her and even to this day I don’t know what terrified her more: the loud gasp or the fact I had been standing there, staring at her for who knew how long like some geeky gawker who only saw beautiful women on the Internet.

  “Sorry,” I said and looked back at the piece that suddenly didn’t seem worth looking at anymore. I thought about walking away, about going somewhere else in the gallery, anything to get my mind off her and free of the chance of looking like an idiot again. But I stayed there. Beside her. Not really looking at the art in front of me though pretending to. I just needed to be around her.

  My heart bubbled inside. Butterflies let loose in my stomach. I lost my breath again and more than once had to wipe the sweat surfacing on my forehead.

  This girl had gotten to me.

  Selena moved about the gallery, going from one picture to another, all in order. I stayed beside her, pretending to do the same thing, superheroes and ink lines suddenly having lost all meaning to me.

  By the time we were done, she waved me good-bye and made her way back downstairs. When she was about halfway down the winding steps, a weird squawk popped out of my throat and echoed throughout the place. The few others in the same gallery looked at me as if I was trying to be a bird or something and that the art gallery was hardly the place for that.

  This time, Selena’s eyes didn’t go wide. Instead, they grew soft, expectant, asking me what I wanted.

  “Do you want to go out for coffee?” I asked. Those weren’t my exact words, but that was the gist of it.

  And you know what?

  She said yes.

  ·4: Everything

  I know you had wanted the bad news first. The “aftermath” of me and Selena, as it were. And I honestly thought about getting right into it and unloading on you. I actually began typing but then stopped because, see, none of it would have made sense unless you understand what Selena was to me.

  Everything.

  After that day at the art gallery and after going for coffee at JavaJoe down the street, we at first just kept in touch via e-mail. Probably after, oh, eight or nine messages back and forth, I gave her my number just in case she wanted to call. Then the e-mails stopped and there was nothing for a couple of weeks even after I sent two or three messages asking her how she was, what she was doing.

  One day, the phone rang.

  “Hello, is Marty there, please?”

  She didn’t even have to introduce herself. I knew that voice. It had been imprinted on my memory since she first spoke to me by that Wieringo Spider-man pic.

  “Hi, Selena,” I said.

  At first we just talked normal chit-chat and she apologized for not e-mailing me back. Later that evening, when we met again at JavaJoe, she let it slip that the reason she didn’t message me back was because she was so nervous about giving me a call, she didn’t want to go, as she put it, “the cheap route” and stick to e-mail and accidentally type the wrong thing.

  It was then that I knew I had gotten to her, too.

  We were at the coffee shop for four and a half hours and only left because the place was closing. I walked her home. It was a warm spring evening. Outside her apartment building, she asked me if I had a good time. I could tell by the way she said it that she knew it was a cliché thing to ask but didn’t know what else to say.

  “I had a great time, Selena,” I said softly.

  She smiled, as if those were the exact words she wanted to hear.

  We stood so close together that our toes were touching. I could feel every part of her, a warmth that emanated from her like steam from a bath. A warmth that came from within. She smelled of strawberries and vanilla, a smell that to this day I can still recall even though such smells are nowhere to be found.

  I took her small hands in mine, gently squeezed her fingers and looked into her eyes. Selena leaned forward. I did, too. Our lips met, soft, gentle—perfect.

  I had never kissed a girl before. But with Selena, it came so easy, so simple.

  After, I took her right up to her front door and watched as she dug her keys out of her purse. When she pulled them out, she found the right one for the lock, stuck it in the door, turned it, but didn’t go in. She looked at me, smiled, then jumped at me and wrapped her arms around my neck.

  We kissed on that doorstep for an hour, totally obviously to the time or where we were.

  Only focused on each other.

  It was then I fell for her.

  ·5: Nothing Lasts Forever

  Didn’t sleep last night. Couldn’t. Wanted to. Even took about forty quick and short breaths to get myself lightheaded to help me drift away.

  Nothing.

  Just laid there atop unwashed sheets, thinking about Selena. She was alive. She was dead. Alive then dead. Alive then dead.

  Memories swept me away last night, and I thought back to our time together.

  Oh, I love her. I can’t stop saying it. Can’t stop thinking it. I never stopped, not even after everything ended and I didn’t see her for two years.

  She gave me life and ruined it all at the same time. And now with her gone, there’s not much point in going on, no other reason than to perhaps leave an account of one man’s life so that whoever—if anybody—survives what’s coming, they can at least have some kind of record of what things used to be like. Even if it was written by some love-struck loser who is so depressed right now that he can hardly see the keyboard beyond the tears.

  Going down memory lane and telling you about Selena is killing me, you know. These are memories that I learned to suppress because they were getting too painful to recall. Every time I did, I wanted to hide under a blanket and pretend it was raining just so I could get away and retreat into myself. Maybe fall asleep and awake in a world that isn’t dead anymore.

  That’s thing the about reality: try as we might, some things just are and there’s absolutely nothing we can do about them. What makes it worse is that not only are you depressed, trapped and have lost all hope, you also have the sickly realization that none of it can be changed.

  None.

  Forget what all those self-help gurus have told you. Sure, we can change our mind about some things, change our attitude and behavior and “start a new lifestyle.” But you know what? That’s all surface stuff. There is one thing that we can’t change and that is our heart, the true and deep who we are, the part of us that simply is and no change of circumstance can alter it. And when who you are is tied so intricately with outward situations that are irreparable, hopelessness takes on a whole new meaning and all you have left to do is either go through the motions and wait to die or just end it yourself and check out.

  I’ve tried the former; failed on the latter. I don’t know why I keep hanging on. I suppose it’s because of Selena. Though she’s dead and even though it was only her that could make life wo
rth living again, Selena had one quality that I never possessed but, I guess, am learning to have now: dying hope.

  “It’s the most important thing in the world, Marty,” she once told me. “You lose that, you lose everything.”

  Selena was willing to press on in all things even when it appeared there was no hope.

  One night, after cuddling on my couch, holding each other, she told me that her parents were killed four years earlier in a massive car wreck. She was an only child, just turned eighteen. Her folks didn’t have life insurance and had a ton of debt. She had lost everything and had to sell the house, the car and everything inside except for a few pairs of clothes just to pay off most of it. Her relatives lived either in the States or in other provinces and the distance over the years created a huge gap between them and her family. Some came for the funeral, the brothers, sisters and the one living grandparent. The rest didn’t. Most flew home the next day. A couple stayed on an extra day or two in a hotel.

  Selena had been alone.

  Once the house and assets had been liquidated, she was homeless. She had just graduated so didn’t have a job. Her plans to go to university were squashed. For a month, she said, she lived on the street, bouncing around from shelter to shelter, if they had room. On the nights they didn’t, she spent them beneath the Hellmouth Bridge, out of the elements, trying to sleep with hands over her ears to shut out the noise from the cars driving overhead.

  At that point, she said, the only thing that kept her going was something her mom once told her: “It will pass. Everything does and nothing lasts forever.”

  Finally she managed to get a job serving coffee to the late night crowd at a coffee shop downtown that no longer exists. Slow but sure she saved up enough for a damage deposit and first month’s rent on an apartment. It was the same apartment I dropped her off at the night we first kissed.

  Anytime throughout our relationship I talked about how bad things were, she always silenced me and reminded me that nothing lasts forever.