Aleksandar Hemon - The Making of Zombie Wars

Script Idea #200: A woman is besieged in her house by her demented ex-boyfriend and his insane sidekick. The only weapon she has to defend herself is an ancient samurai sword she inherited from her Japanese father. After much suspense and struggle, she slices the sidekick down the middle, like a dog. In the last scene, she stands over her ex-boyfriend with the sword in her hand, deliberating whether to decapitate or castrate him. Their eyes lock. “Kill me,” he says. She kills him. The end. Title: Assholes Also Die.

“Stagger, I beg you, let’s forget about this,” Joshua tried again. “I’ll come back tomorrow and get your sword. I promise.”

They stood in front of Kimmy’s house, away from the porch light, close to some unnameable bush, leafless and devastated by the winter, in which something rustled — a fuckable hedgehog, perhaps, or a nightingale. Ana stayed in the car, calling Esko repeatedly, receiving no answer. Stagger took off his Crocs and gave them to Joshua, as if saying farewell. Then he knelt and rubbed dirt all over his face and shirt and body, including his underwear and cast, which happily retained its blazing whiteness. Joshua longingly looked back toward the car, at Ana, who was pressing her phone against her ear, shaking her head at him, mouthing: “No!”

“If you go in there, Stagger, she’ll call the police for sure, accuse you of rape. Unless she cuts you in half first. Please, let’s just forget about it.”

“It’s behind the washing machine, correct?” Stagger whispered.

“Correct,” Joshua said. “But you don’t even know where the laundry room is. I beg you — I’ll go get it tomorrow.”

“It’s my weapon. It’s a marine thing to do,” Stagger said. “No man other than me should fall for my weapon.”

“What are you talking about?” Joshua hissed in lieu of a whisper, grabbing Stagger’s cast. “Nobody’s going to fall. Come on, man! Let’s be grown up here!”

Stagger looked down at the hand on his cast, then at Joshua. Very gently, he removed Joshua’s hand. He embraced him firmly and whispered something unintelligible into his ear. Then he slipped up the stairs to the porch, stepped onto the banister, gearing up to climb the downspout under Kimmy’s bedroom window. How was he going to do that with the cast?

“Wait!” Joshua hissed. “I have a key!”

“Take your shoes off,” Stagger ordered.

“Wait!” Joshua said, and vomited.

* * *

It took him a while to find the key in his jacket pocket: movie tickets, coins, and whatnot — a lot of whatnot . Joshua pushed the door open without a single creak or crack, Stagger half-naked in his wake. Not so long ago Bushy had rubbed against Joshua’s shins; Bushy used to live here, now he’s dead, and his spirit could be anywhere, including nowhere. What did Kimmy do with his corpse? What do you do with dead animals? Once upon a time, Mom had put his green parakeet, his first and only pet, in the freezer upon its demise. For months it had remained among the tubs of kosher ice cream, and then, one day, it too had vanished.

The house was lightless, indifferent. On the tip of his ex-marine toes, Stagger crept into the living room, then into the kitchen. Joshua wanted to stop him, but dared not produce a sound, his heart pounding like the drums along the Mohawk. Stagger finally turned around to spread his arms. The gesture should’ve meant that it was all clear, but with Stagger you never knew. Joshua followed him to the kitchen, where his hunger came back in a rush so powerful that he opened the fridge without thinking. This time, there was no beer. There was, however, a tray of sushi leftovers that looked reasonably edible and he grabbed it, closing the fridge door noiselessly. He placed a piece of California roll in his mouth, crushed it with his teeth, and swallowed, tasting enough of it to know that it was not fresh at all. He offered the tray to Stagger, who shrugged and grabbed a couple of unidentifiable pieces. The two men, one of them half-naked and tattooed, stood in the cold, mute darkness of Kimmy’s kitchen and ate leftover sushi — the little man in the crawl space knew this could make a compelling scene in some script. Joshua opened the freezer, and the smell of ice cream and frozen dead animals washed over him. How about a scene in Zombie Wars : A morgue worker takes out a tub of ice cream from an empty corpse-fridge compartment. He hears noise coming from the compartment next to it. Foolishly, he opens the noisy one, the pistachio ice cream still in hand.

Chewing the last piece of sushi, Joshua pointed toward the laundry room and Stagger showed him thumbs up. All this wordless communication: it was well nigh troubling that he and Stagger understood each other so well. It would have to end, this buddy-buddy relationship, tonight, right after they got the sword without getting arrested, right after they tracked down Daughter Except, right after they fully descended from their high, as soon as the new day arrived. By the end of Passover, I’ll have moved back to my humble abode on Sanity Street.

The dark house was fragrant of Kimmy’s life: the industrial smell of the carpet on the stairs, the shop scent of the tchotchkes on the coffee table, the ubiquitous lavender. He missed them all, all those smells, even the rancid sushi, all the meaningless sensory details of a well-governed life. By next Monday, he’ll have begged Kimmy to let him back in; he’ll have bought her a diamond ring. He’ll have said, again and better: That was not me! That was not me at all!

The problem at hand, though, was that the samurai sword was stuck behind the washing machine and it couldn’t be retrieved without moving the cumbersome beast, which at three in the morning would surely be heard all the way to the police station. In the gloom of the laundry room they conferred in susurration: Joshua would go upstairs and keep an eye on the sleeping Kimmy and distract her if she woke up; meanwhile, Stagger would figure out a way to get the sword. “Good teamwork,” Stagger whispered in Joshua’s ear, his breath warm and foul.

Step by slow soundless step, Joshua moved up the stairs, ninja-like. His diminishing high was now compounded by somnolent alertness: he touched the banister so lightly it felt half-existent, as if slow in rematerializing. He could hear the wall cracking infinitesimally; he spotted Bushy’s toy mouse — a little rubber monument to his absence — just before it squeaked under his foot. Kimmy must’ve been disabled with grief, unable to touch anything that belonged to Bushy, unable to remove the remnants of his presence — she surely missed him more than she did Joshua. Script Idea #204: Mr. Grief comes to your house to clean up after the final departure of your loved ones, providing all kinds of grief-management services. To do this, Mr. Grief has to lock up his own grief deep inside — the loss of his wife. But when he meets a grieving widow, his dead wife’s doppelganger, his Box of Grief (the title?) breaks open .

He reached the top of the stairs. The bathroom was to the right, Kimmy’s office before him, her bedroom to the left. As per his orders, Joshua should’ve stayed there and watched out for any signs of Kimmy’s movement, acting to distract her only if she for some reason headed downstairs. But the door of Kimmy’s room was invitingly ajar, just enough so he could squeeze through it. His heart was break-dancing in his chest; his memorious dick made the first step toward erection, pointing in the direction of the ring and handcuffs.

There stood Joshua, unpresent in the breathing darkness, taking in the stale lavender air of the slept-in room, the taste of vomit still in his mouth, his cheek burning. He moved along the wall, toward the deeper shadow, closer to her bed. She looked minuscule under the cover, practically bodiless, except for the dark smudge of her head on the pillow. Joshua froze and held his breath when he heard a screech coming from the laundry room. Still, Kimmy’s head did not move.