in downtown Fairyland.
I don’t know how we got to Fairyland. It was a blur. I was so excited. We were moving so fast. Knowing how to get to Fairyland would be invaluable to zombies. Zombies would mount an attack, hoping to massacre all the supernatural creatures, even though we’d never be able to. Supernatural creatures outmatch us in every way except one: they’re compassionate. Compassion is a terrible weakness. It’s what we, the zombies, exploit to survive.
Supernatural creatures love living people. They play tricks on them sometimes but they love them. I understand why they love them now. I didn’t before I became depressed, but now that I do, I never want to forget.
Love of living people is what led to the tentative truce between zombies and supernatural creatures. The tentative truce continues to this day, in the form of an uneasy alliance. We, the zombies, only infect living people who, unmistakeably, embrace the zombie life. In exchange, supernatural creatures hide zombies—until it’s too late—from, it should be said, most living people, as well as most signs of zombie behaviour, including but not limited to, concert hall massacres, shopping mall massacres, airport massacres—all your conventional massacres—along with general destructive behaviour on both the small personal scale and the large institutional scale. I say supernatural creatures hide zombies and signs of zombie behaviour from most living people because there’s a small percentage of living people who learn or recognize the horrible truth and can, thereafter, see us for what we, unfortunately, are. These living people are few and far between and, I’m afraid, very afraid.
Reportedly, there was a time when the vast majority of the living embraced the supernatural creature life over the zombie life. That time, it seems, has passed. These days, almost all our young become zombies.
Some blame the education system; others organized religion. A few don’t see the difference.
In any event, now supernatural creatures do the hard work of cleaning up after zombie rampages: they fix what we break, pick up what knock down, and organize what we disorder. They usually get most of the blood. They keep us from completely destroying ourselves. We, the zombies, tell ourselves, telepathically, supernatural creatures do it because we’re so much more powerful than they are and we control them. But we know, down deep inside, that they only do it because they love people: non-undead people. They want to hide the horror from them. They hate us: zombies. Or so I mindlessly thought.
Once we’re both inside Fairy_26’s apartment, she closes the door, locks it, and leans back against it, smiling at me. “We made it,” she says. Her hands are flat against the door.
I groan in agreement.
“Why don’t you wait for me in the living room? I’m going to take a quick shower.” Still beaming at me, she unbuttons her drugstore uniform top. She takes it off right in front of me. I stare at her small, perky, warm, and alive breasts. When she turns and hangs the garment up in the open closet next to the front door, I stare at her little wings and where they emerge from her wound-free back. They sprout lightly from between her shoulder blades, which jut out in a strong and angular way in comparison.
I turn away, uncomfortable. Somehow her wings and where they meet her skin are more intimate than her breasts. I stumble toward the living room.
“Turn on some music if you want,” she calls after me.
I don’t know if this world is bigger than mine, if we shrank, or if it’s a bit of both. The carpet is spongy green moss. The walls are flowers: two walls are covered with white daisies; one wall is covered with red daisies. Every other exposed surface is warm brown wood; it has a fresh cut smell but I know it hasn’t been cut; it’s still alive. Like Fairy_26.
If I turn back right now, I know I’ll see her take off the rest of her clothes. It’s cruel.