Diana Rowland - My Life as a White Trash Zombie

“I’ll make it up to you,” I said, realizing it was a lie as the words left my mouth. I had no desire to screw him anymore. I didn’t want to move in with him. I was using him for the night. Yeah, classy.

Luckily he didn’t seem to be offended, simply dropped his hands with a soft sigh. “Okay, I won’t be a dick. You do look pretty worn out.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said, managing a smile. He gave me a lopsided one in return, but his expression was guarded, as if he was debating whether or not to say more. I didn’t feel like prying it out of him, whatever it was. “Okay, um, I’m gonna go grab a shower, okay?”

He gave me a slow nod, then plopped back down on the couch and picked up the remote. I turned away and headed down to the bathroom, feeling like there was something hanging in the air between us, with neither of us giving enough of a fuck to care.

The morning light seemed dull and filtered as it speared through the streaked window. Dust moved sluggishly along the track of light as if reluctantly being sucked up to some higher dust heaven. I could feel Randy pressed up against me, his face tucked into the nape of my neck. His breath was warm against me, but even that felt muted. I closed my eyes and sighed. My last full meal of brains had been two days ago. By later today I’d start to smell. In another day or so I’d begin to fall apart.

I eased away from him and checked the time on my phone. Maybe I could go on in to the morgue with the excuse that I left something there. Check and see if any bodies came in.

I’m still a junkie looking for a fix, I thought with a scowl. Only now my life depends on that fix.

Randy was pretty well dead to the world, and I was able to pull clothes on and slip out before he woke up. A weird sense of relief washed over me as I drove away. Once again, I checked my rear view mirror to see if anyone was watching me go. Once again, real life failed to pay attention to how things were depicted in the movies.

It was barely eight A.M. when I pulled up to the back door of the morgue. I did my best to not act like I was slinking, but I sure felt as if I was pulling some sort of heist. My mouth was dry, and my hands shook as I swiped my card in the reader. I had no reason to be so nervous, though, right? I mean, all I had to say was that I was looking for something I’d lost. My watch. That would work. I hurriedly yanked mine off and stuffed it deep into a pocket.

I closed the door behind me and listened hard. There was only the low hum of the cooler and the scent of Pine-Sol and formalin. I headed down the hallway, cringing at the absurdly loud echo of my footsteps on the linoleum.

Pulling open the door of the cooler, I quickly slipped inside, relief swimming through me at the sight of a bag on a stretcher. I paused. Took a deep breath.

Shit.

Even before opening the bag, I knew what I would find. Still, I pulled the zipper open, confirming with my eyes what my nose had already told me. The woman had probably been pretty in life, and even through the bloat I could see that she’d maintained herself well. Toned and slender body with some fake boobs that had probably set her back quite a few grand. Carefully waxed eyebrows. I could even see the remnants of makeup. I had no idea how she’d died, but whatever the circumstance no one had found her for several days. She wasn’t crawling with maggots or anything like that, but the first few layers of her skin were already beginning to slip off and I knew that there wouldn’t be any brains worth salvaging.

“Angel? What the hell are you doing?”

I jerked in shock and whirled to see Nick standing in the doorway of the cooler. Shit! I’d been so absorbed in my pity party I hadn’t heard the cooler door.

“Jesus, dude, you scared the crap out of me!” I yanked the zipper closed, then moved to exit the cooler. I thought for a second that Nick was going to block my way, but at the last instant he stepped aside, giving me a baffled look.

“What were you doing, Angel?” Suspicion and worry darkened his voice.

I paused, took a deep breath and turned back to him. “I was looking for my watch.” I twisted my face into a grimace. “I remember having it on the last time I was here, and I’ve looked everywhere. Stupid me was thinking that maybe I dropped it in a bag….” I trailed off. God, this was the dumbest thing I’d ever come up with. There was no way he was going to buy this.

But, shockingly, the suspicion in his face cleared. “Oh,” he said, brows drawing together in a slight frown.

“That must be one special watch if you were willing to wear it again after it was in the bag with a decomp.”

I mustered a weak smile. “I didn’t know that was a decomp. I guess the last one I worked on has already been picked up. I mean, it’s not a really nice watch or anything, but I hate the thought of springing for a new one, y’know?” The lie came to me with the ease of too much practice.

He shrugged. “I guess,” he said in a tone that told me he’d never really had to worry about money. “You seriously came in on your day off to look for a watch?”

I gave him what I hoped looked like a sheepish smile. “Yeah. Hey, I have no life, y’know?” And if I didn’t find brains soon, I wouldn’t have any life.

He rolled his eyes. “Obviously.”

I mumbled something and then made my escape.

I sat in my car and bit my lower lip as I considered my situation. I was scheduled to work the following morning, so there was no reason for me to start panicking yet about my next brain-meal. It had only been two days since my last—longer than I usually liked to go, but I was only barely beginning to smell, and I was getting weirdly used to the gradual dulling of my senses. As long as I didn’t go crazy with activity it should be at least another full day before I started actively rotting.

Somebody would surely die in time for me to get a meal. I was going to be fine. Really.

I groaned and rested my forehead on the steering wheel. I suck as a motivational speaker.

Screw it. I had nothing to do and nowhere to go, so maybe this was a sign that it was time for me to take the first step and see how much it would really cost to find a new place to live. Time to be a grown-up, right?

I drove to an apartment complex about five minutes from work—a nice place that looked clean and safe. It didn’t have super-fancy landscaping or a guarded gate or anything like that, so hopefully it wouldn’t be too expensive. I parked in front of the leasing office and tried to control the nervous flutters in my stomach, shamed by how clueless I was about the process. Normal people would learn this stuff from their parents. Or maybe even in school. There’d been a class called Life Skills when I was in high school—the sort of class that had once been called Home Ec, but wasn’t called that anymore because that would be politically incorrect or some crap like that. I’d even taken that class and made it through the part about how to boil eggs. But the section on how to do stuff like balance a checkbook and make a budget had been at the end of the semester. After I dropped out.

Sick anger swam dully through me. Where were the people who were supposed to make sure I grew up right and not a complete fuckup? My parents? Yeah, that was a joke. Mom couldn’t stand to be around me. Dad had actually been all right at basic dad stuff until he had to do it all himself. Then it was like he gave up doing anything at all. By that time I’d been self-sufficient enough to make sure I got fed and had clothes to wear. But there was more to growing up than that.

This is stupid , I chided myself. Taking a deep breath, I held it until spots swam before my eyes then let it out. “Yeah, well I’m a goddamned grown-up now,” I muttered. I picked up dead bodies for a living. I could handle this. Okay, so I got screwed in the parenting department. But there was no getting that time back. I could whine and bitch about it all I wanted, and it wouldn’t change a damn thing. Everything that happened from here on out was my own doing.