Table Scraps Chapter Four

(This is where my book starts to get fun, and I hope you like it.)

If you haven’t read the first few chapters, they are all available as posts on Substack!

CHAPTER FOUR

The center of the coffin is caving slightly, bowing under the weight of the earth piled over me. Eventually, the wood will give and the dirt will fill the cracks, washing away all evidence of this box. All evidence of what it contains. Only dirt will remain. My family has already said their goodbyes, Erin is gone, my life is over anyway. I may as well let it take me. Just wait here until the earth swallows what remains.

As I imagine how it might feel to be eradicated by the tide of rubble, my stomach reminds me who's in charge. The pain travels through me, screaming into my limbs. Demanding that I move. Escape. Feed.

There isn't enough room to throw a punch, so I kick my knee into the casket, hoping to make a new sunroof. There's a loud crack and I'm not sure if it's me or the wood. Either way, it doesn't hurt, so I do it again and again until the casket splits and a thin stream of sand spills through the opening.

As I beat my limbs against the wood, the earth pours in faster and I feel like I'm trapped inside of the wrong end of an hourglass. I continue to tear at the splintered roof, ripping and punching the wood and, after a while, the hole is wide enough to fit most of my body through. Things are looking up. Sure, my wrist is broken and the skin on my hand looks like melted wax, but at least I'm also drowning in dirt.

The soil feels better than I expected as it pours in over me, but there's way too much of it. Kicking pounds of gravel into the ends of the coffin, I force my head through the hole and push myself into a sitting position. Layers of filth continue to shower over me, filling my ears and nose with god knows what as I try to stand.

For some reason, I thought this would be easier. The coffin is only six feet deep, and I'm about six-three. If I stood straight up and jumped, it would look like a game of zombie whack-a-mole. But it isn't easy for me to stand or jump or really do much of anything. Pushing the dense earth away from my face enough to make any real progress seems impossible.

The soil is heavy and thick, but still loose enough to drag me under as it pools into the casket, making the climb to the surface almost unbearable. It's really nothing like climbing; it's more like swimming in a pool of Play-Doh, but instead of a fun smell and festive colors, I get mouthfuls of manure and bug guts. If I had to breathe, if I wasn't already a walking, talking monstrosity, I'd be worm chow by now.

When my lips reach the surface, I take a big, beautiful, entirely unnecessary breath and smile. The air tastes clean and perfect compared to the smorgasbord of crap I was eating a minute ago, but the novelty fades as quickly as the hunger returns. Within seconds, I'm out of the grave and sprinting toward something that smells like an all-you-can-eat buffet of irresistible delicacies.

After a few blocks, the aroma is overwhelming and I feel like I'm in an alternate universe. I've been to Downtown Fort Myers hundreds of times. I've seen the few tall buildings towering over the suburban skyline like the first adult teeth in a child's mouth. I've been in every one of these bars, eaten the pizza, choked on the cigar smoke, and avoided the alleys.

This is where I met Erin.

It's where we sang drunken karaoke versions of Jimmy Eat World songs and let our fingers get close enough to kiss. Now it looks like a forgotten cigarette doing everything it can to hold itself in place while waiting to be flicked to the floor. I've been here. I know this place, but I've never seen anything like this.

Black monoliths with bright white eyes tower over me, watching like bored gods waiting for a sacrifice as I stumble down the sidewalk. With the color washed from my eyes, the street, sidewalks, trashcans, and litter are all painted various shades of gray and look like tattered movie backdrops from the silent film era. All of the living things, the things with a pulse, have an unnatural, bug-light glow, and I feel myself being pulled toward them.

The people on the sidewalk don't exactly have faces. They're just brightly lit, moving blurs of unrecognizable features. In the center of the crowd, looking in every direction and surrounded by fireworks of visible heartbeats, I feel like Pac-Man thrown into a pool of white orbs. The harder I try to make sense of what I see, the more ridiculous it all becomes. Those blinking flesh dots start to change shape right in front of me, and suddenly I'm in one of those cartoons where the starving cat looks at the mouse but sees a big, juicy, steak or chicken leg walking around in its place. This must be what the pamphlet meant by hallucinations. I'm seeing the world through monster-colored glasses.

Ghoulvision.

“How you doing?” The voice is behind me. It's raspy and quiet but stern. “You got the time?”

The smell of bacon passes into my nostrils and my eyes close to enjoy the aroma.

“Yo, bitch, I'm talking to you.” Thick sausage fingers grip my left shoulder and squeeze. “Let me get some money.”

It's not just bacon. It's a freshly cooked, hot-off-the-grill, bacon cheeseburger and I need it to be mine. I'm starving. Once that smell hits me, it's all I can think about. My eyes open as I continue to breathe in the sweaty, cheesy, grease perfume, and it calls to me. I need to figure out where it's coming from so I can marry it.

“Are you fucking deaf?” The hand on my shoulder gets heavier. “Gimme what you got,” he says. “Now.”

I feel something sharp in my lower back as the fingers squeeze my neck. It's as if I'm lost in a beautiful bacon mist. Like a cloud of breakfast is passing over and through me. I can't stop smelling it. It's everywhere and nowhere. I see a bar. A few closed down shops. A laundromat. No food stands. No restaurants.

No bacon.

“Yo,” he says, pulling my shoulder enough to spin me in his direction. “Don't be stupid.”

And there it is. Spitting its beautiful onion juice burger breath into my face and shining like the heavenly arches of some dreamy fast food paradise. A biblically accurate burger is staring me in the eyes. This is happening. The living, breathing, absolutely mouthwatering bacon cheeseburger sneers, “Gimme your fucking money.”

I'm not quite sure what I can believe or how to react to anything right now, so when the five-foot, thrift-store-sport-coat-wearing bacon burger grabs at my filthy tuxedo and screams something at me, my reply is simple and to the point.

I bite it in the face.

“What the shit?” Burgerman yells. He raises his awkward bacon strip arms into the air and turns to run.

Despite his appearance, the handsy, lunch-shaped thief is quick on his feet. I don't hesitate, or pause for consideration. I just run after him, chewing the savory burger bite and watching his movements the way a wolf watches a rabbit.

Drops of glowing ketchup trail behind the running burger as he sprints. I suppose when someone bites off the larger part of your nose, you're apt to feel a bit of a spring in your step. This is fast food at its finest.

I know that I'll catch him. Not having to breathe has its advantages. Sure, being a reanimated corpse, I may not be as agile as I once was, but in the long run, when there's no need for a second breath, when cramping is no longer an issue, I might as well be a superhero compared to most people. Cole, The Super Ghoul. I should make some business cards.

After a few blocks, this guy is out of gas, wheezing and stammering, still holding on to what's left of his nose, while I'm all slobber and baby bibs. I might as well be running with a fork and knife in hand. He turns wide, stumbling into a dark alley, and I'm only a few steps behind him.

Around the corner, I see a couple of trashcans, a lot of litter, and a high fence blocking the far side of the alley. There's no exit. I step in his wet footprints, following one after another, sniffing my way toward my meal like a toucan searching for Froot Loops.

His burger juice fingerprints shine like dashes on a glow-in-the-dark map leading toward the unbearably delicious bacon strip ‘X’ waiting for me behind a trashcan. I hear him whispering every curse word imaginable as I get closer and closer. He's whimpering. Asking me to stop. Threatening my family. Crying. As I swallow the last bits of noseburger, the color comes flooding back into the world and the blood lights dim. Mr. No-nose is behind the dumpster, crying and cursing, and I'm standing in the middle of a crime scene, looking like I just spent the day at a vampire barbecue.

What the hell was that?

“I–I'm,” my voice stutters. “I'm sorry.”

As the man shouts, I turn and sprint away, hoping that no one will notice a dirt-showered, tuxedo-wearing dead person running through the streets. Thankfully, the people I pass all seem too consumed by their own lives to show any concern for the undead guy who recently consumed a nose in a dark alley.

Some burger bits are still stuck between my teeth as I run, and I hate myself for savoring them. The entire spectrum of flavor is cycling through my mouth as the flesh passes over my tongue. Sweet, then sour, then spicy, then salty. I feel like I spent the night at an all-you-can-eat buffet, but really, I'm just burping up dreamy memories of Wonka-esque nose meat.

It's kind of gross. Okay, really gross. But it makes me feel strong somehow, like I could run forever. I guess these are the perks of being undead. A nose can taste like a bacon-sprinkled milkshake and my legs are unflappable.

When I finally stop running, I see my reflection in the dust-covered window of an abandoned dollar store. I look like a monster. Like an actual, lurks-in-the-shadows-and-goes-bump-in-the-night monster. I can't let Erin see me like this. I shouldn't let anyone see me like this. Digging through the suit, I find Terry's business card folded in the jacket pocket. The address is only a few miles away. I'm not really excited to see him again, considering the fact that he left me to rot in a coffin, but I have no money and I just ate a guy's face. I'll take whatever help I can get.

With the neatly manicured flower bushes, brightly lit entrance, and small coy pond out front, Terry's funeral home actually looks like a legitimate business. The blinds are all shut and the sign on the door is turned to ‘Closed’, but I try the handle anyway.

It's unlocked.

Two empty office desks greet me as I enter the dark room. There are no pictures on the walls or calendars marked with anniversaries and birthdays. I don't see nametags or motivational posters. There aren't even chairs. This place is just a front. There's a muffled shout from the back of the building. I'm not sure what it is, but I follow the sound past the desks, through a narrow hallway until I finally reach a metal door.

As I push the door open, I see Terry standing between two slabs. He's doing some awkward pelvic thrust near the corpse of an old woman with his back facing me. The James Brown song is too loud for him to hear me come in, or to notice as I get closer. After a minute, he stops dancing and just stands there staring at the body on the slab.

This would be the perfect time for revenge. I've never been one for violence, but here he is, this mouth-breathing creeper, perving over someone's decrepit grandma when he should be saving me from the grave. I want to tear out his throat. I want to rip off his face, and make s'mores with his eyeballs.

Where the hell is this coming from?

In the movies, characters have their lines written for them so, whenever they're in this sort of situation and it's time for one of those badass one-liners, their tongues wag like bullets with the sort of witticisms that just don't come easy to most of us. So, not being one of these fortunately fictional characters, instead of sneering a, ‘you should have killed me when you had the chance’, or fumbling through a, ‘I have come here to eat brains and kick ass, and you're all out of brains’, I just yell, “Asshole!”

It's simple but effective.

Terry jumps onto the slab, screaming and knocking the elderly corpse onto the floor with a loud, meat-juice pop and squish. Lunging toward him with my hands outstretched, I probably look like I'm going to rip out his throat. What I really want to do is shake him, but, in his confused fear, he falls backward and lands face-first into spongy, naked granny guts.

“You were gonna leave me.”

“Who are you?” Terry isn't kidding. He seems to genuinely have no idea who I am. It could have something to do with the fact that I'm caked in mud and blood.

“I'm the guy who’s gonna make a Lunchable of your intestines.” Who needs a writer?

“Oh, good, you're a Ghoul,” he says, shoving a pamphlet in my face as he lifts himself from the body. Where does he keep these things? “I thought you were a zombie for a second.”

He turns the music down, and I remind him of the plan. I tell him about the pudding, the funeral, and the uncomfortably delicious nose-meat patty melt, and he laughs. Not just an ‘oh yeah, I remember that’ sort of chuckle, but an annoying, saliva-to-the-face, spit-take of a laugh. Apparently, with everything that's been happening, I forgot to take the gauze out of my cheeks, so I sound like Don Corleone. Terry lifts the old lady onto the slab, puts on his best Brando face, and makes a few ‘Ghoulfather’ jokes.

None of them are funny.

“Wait,” he says, choking back the Brando voice. “Did you say that you bit some—”

Before Terry can finish his sentence, the old woman on the slab sits straight up, opens her eyes, and screams in my face. Her disgusting, tar-colored witch fingers grab at my collarbone and push me to the floor. So, that's why Terry was staring at this poor old lady.

Granny Ghoul is a freaking monster.

Terry yells for me to hold her still as he looks around the room for a weapon. I have Granny safely locked at arm’s length until she breathes something that tastes like a fish and bowel cancer chowder into my mouth, and I buckle.

The flesh tears from her shoulders like she's some kind of zombie kabob, leaving little more than bone and an army of maggots to hold onto. As her muscle meat drips toward my face, Granny never stops screaming. She never stops convulsing. She never stops trying to eat me. This is why there's no zombie pamphlet. I might have some issues, being undead and all, but this thing is the stuff of nightmares.

Granny chews around the staples in my neck with her three remaining teeth until a bedpan kicks her in the back of the head hard enough to knock my flesh loose from her gums. She collapses beside me as Terry stands over both of us, shaking his head with the bedpan in hand. Without hesitation, he stomps her head into the floor until the screaming stops and I'm covered in fishy zombie sauce.

“Who did you bite? Where were you?” Terry asks, already grabbing his keys off of his tool tray. “Also, where did you get that awesome knife?”

“What knife?” I look down and see the handle of Burgerman's knife sticking out of my rib cage. “Whoa, whoa, whoa.”

“It's fine,” he says, pulling the blade from my skin. “Now, I'm the King of Britain.”

“That's not funny.”

“It's a little funny.” He lifts a cup of pudding off of one of the slabs. “You need to tell me who it was.”

I'm still picking chunks of Granny out from between my staples as I stand.

“It was some guy downtown. He was trying to mug me. I didn't really see his face.”

“You said you ripped off his nose!”
“When I bit him, he wasn't… he didn't look like…” I don't know exactly how I should break the news to Terry that I'm seeing living lunch meats. “He wasn't exactly a person.”

Terry sighs. “He looked like a human-sized pizza, didn't he?”

“Cheeseburger,” I say.

“Yeah,” he chuckles. “It happens. Come on, we have to go quick.”

“Where?”

“To stop the apocalypse.”