PROLOGUE
I can’t keep her face in my mind for more than a moment yet something holds me to her. I can’t relinquish the feelings that I have for her—no matter how confused or unjust. No. To see her is simply to fall deeply in love with her. I’ve heard other people talk about her—she has this charm, this way of trapping men without the games that girls usually play. But trapping isn’t the right word to use. Nope. Maybe it’s just in the way that she makes men feel: that they can have her, that they are the only ones for her. I never thought that. I never thought I had a chance with her. And as cliché as what I’m about to say is, it’s how I’ve felt day in and day out: she is the last thing I think of before I sleep and the first thing I think of when I wake. And now she’s a zombie.
Was there a chance for me? I knew her for less than an year, we went out together – with others. I’ve touched her softly. Felt her breast press lightly against my knee as she slowly leaned across my legs to talk to another.
Her friend kisses me on the mouth.
“You’re hot,” she says.
Her, my beautiful seductress, drunk and now leaving, kisses me on the cheek and whispers:
“She’s right, you are.”
And still I wasn’t able to share my feelings for her.
She was tall and slender, tall and slender. Her jet black hair, streaked with the color red. It rested on her, brushed slightly against her, her full/tender, pink/red lips. She had the smallest indication of a lisp as she sucked on the words that fluttered from her mouth. She was young, smart, tired—you could see the tiredness in her eyes—and she was very, very sexy.
She was naïve or pretended to be. She was tough/tender/cold and caring. I thought I knew her story: her independence, her inexperience, her need to be different but not knowing how to. And I was scared of her. I even told her this—eluding to her height—but with that and her natural beauty combined, she scared the living shit out of me. This is why I couldn’t have told her most of what it is I would have like to. And with all of my own claims of being a tough/tender/cold and caring person, I fear rejection—from her, from anyone—but she seemed to have so much of me already, even if she didn’t know it. And now she’s part of the great undead.
#
Six
I had been living quietly in a small apartment three blocks off of the beach; working a temporary night job that had just expired thanks to the governments recent efforts to re-nationalize their labor force. All foreigners were told to leave. Global travel was nearly at a standstill, some countries no longer sent for, or welcomed, their former citizens. Other countries only made the effor to return their foreign nationals about once a month – if you were lucky.
I had no friends, no fun, and five thousand dollars in the bank. I was going to take the train across the country to the
Prostitution is legal in
I wanted to see her bat her eyes wondering what I’d ask her to do but know that I’d have difficulty in asking. I wanted her to reach past me and close the door, turn its lock. And I wanted her to place my hand on her breast, over her heart, open my pants and take me into her mouth—a fan oscillating in the far corner of the room.
But I had mixed the dates. My train would be leaving on the Monday not Tuesday. There would be no dream for me. I would be seated on a train, overcrowded with people trying to escape the mounting plague, for the entirety of my birth-day.
