Catastrophic Personality Adjustment Counseling: The End

Even the heavy brown and green curtains cannot keep all the sunlight out of the office. He has a huge smile on his face and it refuses to be subdued.

The counselor cannot help but smile back. “Session twenty one. You seem to be in a fantastic mood.” She said rhetorically.

He nodded. “ I almost got the crap kicked out of me today.” He explained.

The counselor was confused. “That doesn’t sound promising.” She pointed out.

He shook his head. “I’m not that worried about it. You know what I love?” He asked out of the blue.

She shook her head. “Enlighten me.” She replied.

He looked like a kid on Christmas morning. “I love coffee. More specifically I love the epic poems masquerading as caffeine delivery systems. Double Ristretto Venti Half-Soy Decaf organic chocolate brownie iced Vanilla double-shot gingerbread Frappuccino extra hot with foam whipped cream upside down double blended. It’s like a dancing with your mouth.” He gushed.

“Ok, start from the beginning.” She laughed.

He looked confused. “The beginning of what?” He asked, then realized that he didn’t sound like he was making much in the way of sense. “Oh, my obsession with coffee? I guess it all starts with this place I found that was willing to serve me.” He explained. “It’s this chain place that looks way fancier than it actually is and I know now that they burn their beans which is great for me but most humans have more detailed taste profile…” he trailed off for a second.

“Most?” She asked, landing on the right word.

He nodded. “I was, uh” He cleared his throat. “Almost a week ago I was sitting at this place. Reading “For the Win” by Cory Doctorow.” This group of good old boys came into the store and placed their orders. Their leader bumped into my table while the others were harassing the baristas. The book had me feeling braver than I should have so when he tried to sit on my table I made my presence known.” He explained. “The guy turned around and got in my face. ‘You say something corpse?” He growled at me. I nodded and held my ground ‘yeah’ I said trying to sound braver than I felt. ‘ I said excuse me. See you spilled my drink and while you appear to be in dire need of a shower and a breath mint I feel that it is common courtesy for you to apologize when you spill another person’s drink.’ He got real close in and I could smell the beer on his breath. ‘Well then I’m in luck, ‘cause you ain’t no person. Now, why don’t you get up, and get the hell out of here before we take you apart like a Lego set.’ I wanted to fight him, I wanted to fight all of them. But I could see the other patrons in my peripheral vision trying to hide behind books, newspapers, and laptop screens…so I chickened out. I stood up. Looked down at my feet and gave up. ‘Frankie go now, sorry make mess, me bad.’ I mumble as they laugh at me. The leader keeps talking as I leave ‘So gawt damn tired of these Obamanation’s thinking the own every gawt damn place’ I hear before the door closes.” He hasn’t looked up from his feet the entire time. After a moment he holds out his empty hand. “In the box of my belongings from my old life, I had an MP3 player. On the Back there’s this quote. ‘If you have to crawl to live, stand, and die.’ When I betray myself in moments like that I can feel that little player like a judgmental weight in my pocket.” He wipes tears from his eyes.

The counselor was still confused. “How did this end up with you in such a good mood?” she asked.

He finally looked up, “Oh! After I left I ran into this couple who were walking by the coffee shop. I’m pretty sure they heard the guy before the door closed. The guy asked me about my book and we got to talking. They invited me to their coffee shop. A place a few blocks up the road from here. I’ve gone there every day since. They know my name. The owner is a human but her daughter died of lung cancer a few years back and she came back to life. She didn’t care about the social rules or the fact that her daughter no longer remembered her. She refused to let her go. Her daughter got into politics in her afterlife and has been running meetings for a group called Stronger than Death.”

The counselor stifled a giggle.

He smiled “I know it’s S.T.D. but it’s a support and political action group continuing the fight for afterlife rights. They know me there, I’ve bought my roommate by…I’ve finally found a place where I feel like I belong, where I feel I can make a difference.” He explained.

The counselor nodded. “Enjoy that feeling. In fact. If you ever take any of the advice I’ve given you let it be what I am about to say. Happiness is the best revenge. Be happy and pass that happiness on to others.”  She smiled at him

He nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He said, standing up and heading for the door. “See you next week?” He asked. She nodded.

The Counselor is nervously tapping her pen on the heel of her shoe.  He hasn’t shown up yet and considering the state of the nation she wasn’t really that surprised. She checked her watch and saw that he was almost fifteen minutes late. She got out of her chair and began to pace. He wasn’t breaking a law by not showing up, none of them were, she reminded herself. In fact, she realizes and stops pacing. It’s not that had stopped coming that worried her. Hell they were allowed to stop coming as soon as they wanted, it was the fact that if they stopped coming today and there was a better than even chance that they were out on the streets, protesting.

The knock on the door startled her and she stopped pacing. She hadn’t even realized she had started pacing again. “Come in.” She said, trying to keep an even tone.

It was him. He looked torn up, like he has swallowed fire and it was burning him up inside. Without saying anything he shut the door and sat on the couch. She quickly sat in her chair. She didn’t know if he didn’t want to look at her, or couldn’t look at her. He stared at his shoes. “I wanted to believe.” He started.

The tension she felt before had disappeared, she knew it was on the other side of the office door, just 

waiting for her, but she’d worry about that when she had to.

He sighed the way a person does when their trying not cry. “I wanted to believe that I was part of this, great force. A great force of positive change.” Tears left dark circles on his jeans. “That along with my fellow un-dead brothers and sisters I was helping to push towards a new time, a better time, where we could live in peace with the rest of mankind.”

It wasn’t the first time in her career she felt like she needed to say something but didn’t have the first clue of what that something was, so she did the next best thing. She waited, as patiently as she could.

He wiped tears from his eyes. “But this election...” He trailed off. “All I wanted, was to shed the image of monstrosity that humanity had created for us.” He looked up finally “They dismembered my roommate three days ago. Tore him limb from limb with their trucks. See we don’t die by hanging, so they found a more, entertaining way to get the job done.” He looked back down at his feet for a long time.

She looked down at her notes and saw that they had been smeared by her own tears. “The laws haven’t changed yet, there is still time –“

“Public opinion has already changed, and truthfully I wonder if it was ever as progressive as we were led to believe.” He interrupted.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket, another news alert most likely. The last seventy two hours had brought unimaginably horrible violence. Fights at pro and anti-Zombie protests, both sides blaming the other for starting it. She had unplugged her television when she realized that in the first day she couldn’t find a channel that was talking about the losses of zombie life, only the so called ‘human’ injury toll, but the cameras could not avoid the scattered piles of dismembered and burning body parts. Then Afterlife Heights a low income housing district had been walled off with trucks and firebombed, the ones that were able to escape the fires were met with shotgun blasts from the high ground of truck beds.

After that it descended into nationwide chaos.        

“You know there’s isn’t a single zombie movie or book where the zombies are sentient and have good reason to hate humanity?” He snorted a halfhearted laugh. “The best part is, the One Life Party was successful in keeping “Zombie” as a race option off the US census, so even the best guesses of our actual numbers are most likely catastrophically low.”

She nodded and dropped her notes in the tiny trashcan next to her desk. The fact that they were on the third floor did nothing to mute the chaos in the streets below.

“I used to think we could all just be people. But in the last week I’ve learned one unavoidable fact about humanity.” He said listening to the crashing cars, the screams of terror. “There must always, be a monster.” Together, they watched the window light up a bright orange.