Zombie Lolita: (A Collection of Short Stories)

by Harmon Cooper

  3. What Happens Next?

  Those of the spiritual variety do not take as much swaying to bed as the average mortal. Being a strong man, a good man that is a role model to his peers, a man full of vigor & knowledge & sound principles – all these qualities will help one succeed in burying one’s wick into the Ace of Spades! A play by play of a successful mingling of living & departed limbs can be found in Paul Bundlesworth Smith’s autobiography, Phasma Phasmatis: Finding My Klimax. The following is an excerpt from chapter XII:

  Oh! She! Of the loveliest flesh the color of chocolate ice cream & cold bodied & mild tempered. Knew I at this point that our fleshes would unite. Knew I at this point that her long praying mantis arms would embrace my girth & we would bond & my flaming thunderbolt of wisdom would valiantly pry its way into her waiting hog eye! An utterly exorbitant level of Don Juanarie the likes of which I had never put forth would have to be exhibited & I was scared, frightened at the murky & uncertain road that lay ahead! Remain brazen dear fellow!

  Planning was in store, & knew I that this planning would open her lifeless legs & her mouth-that-cannot-bite! I set a date – a calendrical nod to the Great Founder of our order, Joey Will Eager Beaver Smith, Master of Doctrinal Mettle Fetching, as it was the 157th anniversary of his death – & began rearranging & upgrading my humble mansion paid for in full by the pious members of our church.

  Began I with chocolate, spending the average middle class workers yearly salary on bonbons coated in flakes of gold flown in from Paris; a pound of the world’s most expensive chocolate from Trinidad, where it was harvested & prepared on a real life plantation (the workers must work for someone!); a kilo of truffles from Denmark at $250 a truffle & a crate of Godiva for good measure.

  Once the chocolate was in order, home preparations were greatly needed. Every surface of my home was scrubbed clean. My maids draped the finest of silks & tapestries on every conceivable surface that had the potential for parking my yacht in her hair harbor. Delightful! A variety of water based lubricants were placed in every nook & cranny as one never knows where a ghost will appear. Remember kids, preparation is key! The time of the séance was set, & the countdown to varnishing my cane began.

  4. Eight Ghosts to Avoid

  As with people, there are also ghosts which must be avoided at all costs. The following is far from a comprehensive list, but a basic knowledge of these eight appalling wraiths will greatly aid in the safe procurement of apparitional horizontal refreshments:

  Abbess – A former brothel madam, this type of ghost is known to be aggressive & bitter. She keeps strange hours & is known to have manic episodes during holidays.

  Bunter – A Bunter is a ghost who was half-prostitute/ half-thief in her previous life. Expect things of value to go missing.

  Cottager – A ghost who solicits sex in public bathrooms, the Cottager is troublesome due to the likeliness of her carrying a spectral STD (see point 5).

  Hedge Whore – A Hedge Whore will haunt you more than you’d like & she can become quite jealous. Hedge Whores are infamous for their neediness & are more prone to carry spectral STDs than a Bunter.

  Lobster Kettle – As much as experience is nice, the Lobster Kettle (a former ass-peddler at a seaport) might have too much experience for our average church member. They are identifiable by their anchor tattoos. For the more experienced only. Approach with caution!

  Quicunque Vult – While on the surface, the Quicunque Vult seems like a good prospect, especially for our less experienced members, her forwardness can lead to trouble later on down the road. Ready & willing isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be!

  White Hen – A Chinese ghost who died during her engagement. Problematic due to her familial obligations & clinginess. You don’t want to be stuck supporting a rotating cast of dead family members.

  Wolf in the Breast – A common problem for our Eastern European church members. The Wolf in the Breast will counterfeit her way into your sympathy, & should be dropped as soon as the symptoms are uncovered.

  5. Spectral STDs

  Alas, due to the increase of sexual practices between mortals & wraiths, spectral STDs have been rampant over the last fifty years. Horrible indeed! While protection is the preferred method to preventing spectral STDs, the Elders have found that a quick urination after coitus interruptus, followed by a shower & an hour long soaking of one’s bearded blood sausage in tomato juice, goes a long way in preventing spectral STDs.

  Note: Windward Passage with a ghost is to be avoided during the first few sexual encounters – not the easiest feat for gentlemen of the backdoor – but what’s more important, your health or a night of irreparable damages? For shame if you are willing to sacrifice your health for a single session of baloney colonics & kitchen cleaning!

  The good news, dear fellows, is that the Blue Boar, the Rooster Egg, the French Disease, the Pillowcase & the Flap Dragon have all been prevented using our soon-to-be patented tomato juice method. From Dr. Bennett, Squirting Squire of White Honey County:

  When applying tomato juice for the first time, be sure & massage it in, starting from your love apples in an upward pattern, spiraling until you get to your natural scythe. Avoid the taint area if spicy tomato juice has been selected. Let the juice dry for fifteen minutes & wash it off completely. Towel dry & wash once more. For added benefits, follow the application of tomato juice with the pressing of cucumbers against your danglers. Using your finger, push the guts of a slice of cucumber out & slide the cucumber onto your family fun pipe. Let it rest for three minutes at the base of your jerking iron like a green tutu. Finish it off with lotion – burping the worm is to be avoided – & follow with a three minute meditation in front of a picture of our glorious founder, Joey Will Eager Beaver Smith, Master of Doctrinal Mettle Fetching.

  A few notes regarding updated church policies & practices.

  As the newsletter draws to a close, the haunts stretch their thin arms above their feeble frames yawning & yearning for new flesh in the form of burgeoning truncheons. Oops I did it again! A policy update is in order & well overdue.

  To oversee ghostly marriages, the unification of living hambones & deceased vertical smiles – as well as procedures regarding spiritual one night stands – is no easy task. Years of research, council, prayer & communal foresight have gone into the rules of our revised foundation. A more comprehensive list will be published in the next newsletter. For now, the most important edicts are addressed:

  Homosexual Spiritual Unions. The church will not tolerate homosexual spiritual unions. Proper ghost matrimony & fornication takes place between a living male & a female ghost. Recently, a discussion regarding ladyboy ghosts was brought up in a gathering of the Elders at an undisclosed location somewhere in the Midwest. Until an official ruling has been cast, a romp with a deceased ladyboy will be addressed on a case by case basis.

  Issues Regarding Your Living Spouse. Your wife needn’t know of your spiritual endeavors. Secrets are your friends! Spiritual companions & living companions are better not to be mixed. Although the prospects of a ménage à trois sound promising, the Elders have seen this take a turn for the worse countless times before. Better to treat your ghost as a mistress, or if you’ve grown more fond of your ghost lover, your wife as a mistress.

  Apparitional Polygamy. Apparitional polygamy is highly encouraged. Aside from a few of the ghosts mentioned in the Eight Ghosts to Avoid section above, the deceased usually aren’t protective or resentful in any way. It is encouraged that you stagger your encounters, & if you marry a ghost, it is hereby suggested that you keep her a secret from the others for at least two weeks – unless of course she is into specter gangbangs & other forms of modern companionship. For more on this topic, see John K. Sheen’s recent publication, Love Triangle: Ghosts and Me and Me in Ghosts.

  Sexual Union between a Living Woman & a Ghost. The church will not tolerate the union between a living female & a ghost. A relationship with a ghost is to be taken seriously. We have found tha
t women are not able to handle the responsibility & maturity necessary for spiritual coitus. Women & ghosts do not mix! The Elders are adamant in this decision, & while women can be members of our flock, they are forbidden to participate in any extracurricular activity regarding spectral fornication.

  “Love is the golden chain that binds the happy souls above, and he’s an heir of heaven who finds his bosom glow with love.”

  --Joseph Swain

  Alas, Brethren Gathering, the sun is sinking behind the mountains & our love is ready to spring into the caves of the past! Grab your bawbles & make haste! Remember your confidence, your faith, your friends & your immediate family, both living & otherwise. Our year together will be filled with exciting events, including a potluck & a partially sponsored trip to Southeast Asia for ghosting. Stay tuned. I pray that you spread your mortal seed far & wide my dear fellows! Remember the Five Points, & may your flaming thunderbolts of wisdom continue to penetrate & knight these delectable ghastly beings we are so blessed to come in contact with!

  Yours in thought & prayer,

  Jebediah M. Grant

  The Attar of Roses

  [3]She began as a faint blue line, at least that's how her mom described it.

  ~I couldn't believe it really. We'd tried so hard for so long to get pregnant, eventually going as far as finding a donor egg. I'd never anticipated something so much. And there it was, a little blue line on a pregnancy test. A faint blue line. It’s happening, I thought. I almost couldn’t believe it.~

  Dacha stretches her fingers in front of her face. From a faint blue line to faint blue veins to pale blue fingernail polish. She listens to the radio recording while lying on her bed, her head pressed against an old Hello Kitty pillow she's had forever. Kitty Face, she calls it. Still fluffy, the fabric hardened by tears and sweat and grime. She refuses to wash it, and Grandma doesn't press the point.

  ~We were happy. We’d tried so hard, I mean, we tried everything, and here we were, finally pregnant, and everything was going right. Bill began moving all the boxes out of the spare bedroom, replacing the wallpaper, buying books about child rearing. I'd come home and he would have all these catalogs open next to our computer. You know, pricing things, figuring out what we needed, trying to save us money. I could feel the baby in there, could feel her growing.~

  Five months into the pregnancy, something went horribly wrong. Dacha has heard the story a thousand times before. Mom was at work, typing, and she suddenly starts to feel sick to her stomach. Seconds later, she looks down on the floor and sees a puddle of blood. She screams, and the lady in the cubicle next to her comes running. Mom wakes up in the emergency room, surrounded by a team of nurses.

  That’s how the story goes.

  Dacha turns off her iPod and rolls off her bed. She looks over at her dresser and the bowl of potpourri she keeps in her room to keep the moths away – dried rose petal, rosemary leaves, cardamom, benzoin pieces, and lavender flowers. Each room in the house has a different scent designed by Dacha and her grandmother; the home has that overpowering aroma of a Bath and Body Works.

  ‘Dacha!’ Grandma yells from downstairs.

  Dinner time. Grandma probably made a casserole or if Dacha is lucky, her famous bacon clam chowder. She wraps her headphones around her iPod, stuffs it in the front of her jeans, and runs down the stairs two steps at a time, inhaling the vibrant scent of jasmine and lemon peel – their hallway selection. She lands in the foyer with a thud.

  ‘Slow down!’ Grandma says. The evening news is on and a doll-faced woman is talking rapidly next to a picture with yellow police tape across it. Grandma doesn't like the news, it depresses her, but she watches it anyways because it gives her a sense of community and many times, a sense of why their community is failing.

  ‘What were you doing up there?’ Grandma asks.

  ‘Same,’ Dacha says.

  ‘You really shouldn't listen to that recording so much. I think it's bad for you.’

  ‘I like it, Grandma.’

  ‘I know sweetie, but every day? Oh, you know what, never mind, forget I said anything. If it makes you happy, you just go right ahead and listen to it. Not enough people do what makes them happy these days. Well, any days, I suppose. I can't remember people doing what made them happy when I was your age, either. I just think they were better at accepting it then.’

  Grandma hobbles into the kitchen behind Dacha. Dacha nears the stove, and pops the oven open to retrieve the seafood casserole. The casserole is hot even with the oven mitts on, and she can feel the heat radiating to her bones. She fans the smoke away from the burnt cheese and quickly places the glass pan on the stove.

  ‘Let me cut it,’ Grandma says.

  ‘No, it’s ok, you sit. I’ll bring it to you.’

  ‘Well, if you insist. How about bringing me a glass of cranberry juice too? Oh, and my meds. They are…’

  ‘I see them, Grandma.’

  Dacha lumps a serving of casserole onto a clean white plate. She fills a glass with cranberry juice and tucks the weekly pill organizer in the same hand as the glass. She sets the plate, the juice, and the pill organizer in front of her grandmother.

  ‘Eat, Grandma.’

  ‘No, I’ll wait for you, so I can say Grace.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Dacha says, returning to the kitchen for her slice of casserole. It’s not like it’s the last time we’ll ever have dinner together.

  ‘You never know when it’s your last. Might as well make it worthwhile.’

  ‘All right, I’ll be there in a second.’

  Dacha slides her plate onto the table and sits down. She bows her head as Grandma says Grace. Her mouth waters as she looks down at the mushy casserole.

  They eat, finish, and Dacha begins washing the dishes. Grandma has different china for each season and Dacha makes sure not to chip anything as she sets the plates in the drying rack. On the windowsill above the sink is a potpourri jar filled with her late mother's favorite scent, jujube combined with mignonette.

  ‘Oh, you won't believe what's happened now,’ Grandma calls out to Dacha. She’s in the living room, watching the news and clucking.

  ‘What?’ Dacha presses the spout down, silencing the water.

  ‘Just another suicide attack in Pakistan. More people died than the one in Iraq three days ago.’

  ‘How many people?’

  ‘Maybe thirty-five. Sixty have been wounded, so you know, some of them might die as well. Oh, these young people...what have they done to the world? You know, just the other day I was talking to your Uncle Bryan about all this.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Dacha says. She runs her finger along the dish until it makes a low octave squeaking sound. She put too much dish soap in the sink and lemony bubbles keep popping under her nose. She waves a few away and they float into the dining room like shiny little dreams.

  ‘Anyways, Uncle Bryan, oh, bless his heart, he gets so worked up about these things.’

  ‘Well, what did he say?’ Dacha calls out, ready to turn the water on full blast.

  ‘He said the usual: we should turn the Middle East into a parking lot. So I ask him, who's going to park their cars there? And this stumps him for I don't know how long. Maybe thirty seconds! Anyways, longer than it should have. So I start laughing and he gets a little upset at me.’

  ‘Ok.’

  ‘So, next time you see him, if he says anything about turning the Middle East into a parking lot, you know what to ask him! Who’s going to park their cars there? Ha! That'll get him going.’

  ***

  Dacha finishes washing the dishes and turns to the back door. A swing hangs from the roof of the porch, an old rusty thing that grandpa installed years ago. He built it himself, sanded the armrests smooth and painted the whole thing white. It's dirty now, the paint chipped and the seat worn away by the billets of jeans and the soles of shoes.

  Regardless of its slowly deteriorating condition, it's still one of her favorite places in the world. She sits there through th
e seasons, swinging and thinking. Great place to bundle up in a blanket during the winter and to take a nap in the summer. Great place to watch the leaves swirl in the fall and to watch the sun set in the spring. She puts her headphones in and presses play.

  ~There she was. I couldn’t believe it. We watched her little silhouette tremble on the ultrasound and we could hear her heart beating. So quick, baby's hearts. And I started to cry because I knew right then she was going to die. Chunks of blood had poured out of me, and there’s just no way she’ll survive, I thought, no way. I turned away from the ultrasound. I can't watch her die, I said to my husband Bill, I just can't do it. Even worse, my insides were on fire from the magnesium sulfate they’d given me to stop my contractions. Finally, after being heavily sedated, I fell asleep holding Bill’s hand.~

  ~The next day, the doctor came in and told me that I needed to make it to twenty-four weeks. At this time I was at twenty-two weeks, so if I could just make it to twenty-four, the baby might just live. The doctor explained that at twenty-four weeks air sacs form in the lungs, which, according to the state of Vermont, made it feasible that the fetus could live on its own. The doctor explained that at twenty-eight weeks, the lungs began producing serfactin, a fluid that stops the lungs from collapsing. Luckily, an artificial serfactin was invented in the seventies. I just needed to last two weeks. ~

  Grandma joins Dacha on the swing.

  ‘I thought you'd be out here,’ she says. She finds Dacha's hand and squeezes it. The swing quakes and tilts slightly and she laughs.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Dacha asks, pulling her headphones out.

  ‘Oh, your grandpa, he couldn't fix anything. Just look at this lopsided swing! I remember the time when he picked me up from the ice rink. God, it must have been 1948. No, it was ‘49. That’s right; Harry Truman had just taken office for his full-term. I’m just wild about Harry. That was his campaign slogan.’