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.
