Eating my experiences (27)

TOME 34

Mel lavished me in comforts I had long let go of, a proper bed in a warm room and fresh food. I nearly got lost in her charm before I went to visit Alex, who was kept in a windowless room away from all others. He had his hands bound and slept on a concrete floor. I rushed to his side, my new dress trailing behind me across the floor. Alex was under a thin cotton cloth shivering in the cold.

"Alex, Alex, are you okay?" I screeched shaking his shoulders. He sputtered into action slowly blinking away his dreams.

"You abandoned him so easily, tsk-tsk" Gab's voice reverberated off the walls.

"Oh. It's you... are you okay?" He never stopped worrying about others even in this dilapidated little neglected room.

"Dear god, we need to leave here....let me untie your hands. I'm so sorry, I got lost in the whimsy Mel spun for me and just assumed you were okay..." tears threatened to leap from my eyes, but I swallowed them down with force. "Get up, we're leaving." I pulled his narrow frame up, balancing him on his teetering feet before grabbing his hand and leading him out of the room. I was filled with shame at nearly forgetting my closest friend, the only friend who made it this far.

We wandered the halls for some time in silence before coming to a strange looking room filled with numerous experiments all laughing among each other. The room was filled to bursting with severed heads speaking as though nothing were wrong, or bodies devoid of all intestines', spines exposed with metal skewers poking into them. I thought I had seen it all when one spoke up.

"You're looking for your beau, right" he giggles a sadistic laugh. "Well some of him is there, if you don't mind his brain being gone." The room erupted in laughter as I looked at the mushy, maggot infested head of Gabe, and sure enough his brain was missing. I could not hold down the vomit that spewed from my body as reality set in, I had lost a dear friend for nothing. Gabe had likely already been gone when we left.

Alex helped me collect myself before standing me up with terror in his eyes and pleading with me using unheard words while pulling my numb body down the hall.

TOME 35

My feet were heavy and hard to move, but Alex pulled me along, it took a good while to realize the trudging sound was not coming from me, but guards behind us, and suddenly his fear made sense. I tried to bring myself back to reality when I heard Mel's voice, humorous and sweet like honey.

"Oh silly girl, what are you doing?" She gifted us another giggle before parting the sea of guards who now cornered us. "Is this boy to blame?" She asked tilting my head up for her to kiss me, and I enjoyed it. She had a sense of gentile grace I had hoped to experience again one day.

"I- can I leave? Or...can you treat Alex better?" my voice was weak and wafted through the space that separated us.

"Why do you care so much, my darling?" She cooed gentle as always.

"Well, he's...important to me" my voice trailed through my head.

"Hmmm, aren't you sweet. As long as you don't try to escape he can have the room next to our, how does that sound?" Her smile warmed me from the inside out, so I agreed, to Alex's horror. "Good pet" She said leading me by hand to our room where she sat me on the couch, Alex apprehensively beside me. Tea was brought to us, something she had started to do for me, since I told her how much I missed fresh tea.

Alex shot me a surprised look as the steaming tea pot and milk were brought to us. We hadn't had milk in months now. He cautiously followed my lead as I prepared my cup, sipping with a look of fear in his eyes. I drank it down greedily, smiling after each sip.

"Hah, you two are two cute, I was wrong to keep him locked away." giggled Mel with her hand in front of her mouth. She always laughed with her hand covering her mouth, likely because most zombies first point of rot is their teeth. Alex shot her a contemptuous look over his tea cup, he had been kept in that cell for days, cold and hungry. I placed my hand on his shoulder in the hopes it would calm him, but he simply shook me off, an act that made sense but hurt no less.

"You must be tired, Alex, should we try to find you a bed?" I asked, causing Mel to jump into action, calling for someone in the hallway.

"Well, the room next door is fully furnished and quite pleasant, if I do say so myself. Follow me, Alex." She said with a beckoning movement of her fingers. Alex did follow, but cautiously.

TOME 36

Once they were gone, I browsed Mel's room, looking at all her fancy creams and trinkets before sitting down on the velvet couch to read one of her books. When she came into the room she was beaming and asked if I'd like to see Alex, to show me he's okay. I decided to follow her, and saw Alex eating at a table in the far corner. I sat with him and he put how his spoon.

"Okay, this is alright for a while, I see what you were thinking." A meek smile graced his face.

"I'm glad you get it, but I don't know how comfy we should get...I just want to make sure we don't get, well, eaten."

"Sure you don't want Mel to eat you so you're with your little friend" came Gabe's voice, slurring and sloshing in the corners of my mind. An ever present reminder of my mental deteriorating.

"Stop." I muttered, bringing Mel into Alex's apartment a look of worry on her face.

She placed her hand on my shoulder, bringing Gabe's voice back to the forefront "you can't be thinking of being with that thing? Maybe you like zombies after Lilly" Gabe's voice sneered.

"Stop! Don't say her name!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, my voice breaking midway.

"Sweetie, I got you something in case the...well the psychosis set in..." Mel said, pity filling her entire being while pulling a small glass bottle of pills from the bag she always carried. "It's Seroquel. You used to take it, right?" I latched onto the bottle with greed overflowing from me.

"Where did you get this?" My eyes were full of stars.

She giggled again, that melodic chime "I run the town, silly, I can get anything you want." I hadn't considered being able to take my meds again, something I have craved for months. "I have Lithium somewhere too...I just need to find it. Zach's brain told me what you take...what you have" I suddenly realized that being with a Zombie who knew my afflictions was the safest place, they wouldn't want to use me as bait.

I looked at Mel through the new light of my savior, no longer willing to accept life outside her building. She seemed doubly radiant, her skin nearly shone with the newfound hope she provided me. I had no way of expressing my thanks to her, but she showered me with kindness, Alex not as much, as he remained skeptical and I understood why. He was not treated as a loved creature, but as an afterthought. I felt bad, allowing him to be so ignored.

I sat on Mel's padded vanity bench with her, doing her make up as we listened to music on an old phone. I looked down at a pad of hilight turning my brush in the fingers of my left hand while gnawing on my lower lip. "Hmm, what's up, princess? You okay?" She asked, placing her elegant fingers under my chin so she could see my eyes.

"Ye-yeah, I'm okay, I was just thinking about Alex. I don't know how to make him more comfortable and almost think we should" I allowed my voice to drop off knowing well the answer would be no, but choosing to presson anyway. "I was thinking maybe we should let him go." My steely eyes met Mel's as she shot me a look of surprise.

"Well, honey" she started, leaning her thin arm on her extravagant vanity "I don't know if I can simply let him go knowing as much as he does. You understand, right?" I nodded soberly. "Cheep up, puppet, you know it's for the best, we have anything he could need, even doctors." She was right, but I knew he wasn't happy trapped away in this place, always being watched.

I cleared my throat before my next question "what does happen when a zombie is fed a brain that's mentally ill? If it's too hard to answer don't worry about it." I finished by waving my hand dismissively.

"Well, it's really easier to show you." She grabbed my wrist hard, pulling me up with her half finish make up look, but I let her. I always let her do as she wished with me.

TOME 37

Mel whisked me past several blockades and groups of guards to a room that had been sequestered off. The room stunk through the boards that nailed it shut. Mel snapped her fingers and several guards scurried to her aid. "Pry these boards loose, will you?" She said patting one of the men on the cheek, he blushed and rushed to action as Mel continued on her diatribe. "We did experiments for a while on zombies be feeding them only the mentally ill, that's how we got Zach the first time, actually. Well, we had heard rumors that it makes us zombies less and less capable of maintaining a 'normal' life and ability. We weren't prepared for what came to pass." A darkness swept through her I had never thought she could possess.

"Well, we fed them, and fed them, and soon enough they were...broken, they killed themselves one by one, the bodies of their friends rotting around them, but we couldn't remove them because the remaining zombies were too erratic. The experiment was a failure. Everyone died. Have you ever seen a zombie try to kill themselves? It's not as thought they can cut their wrists and bleed out the way humans do." Mel was becoming hysterical, shaking me by the shoulders, her eyes wide and far away. "They rammed into the walls head first, spilling brain and blood while wailing, or they would claw at their heads trying to pry the brain form their head. We eventually shot the remaining survivors. Only five of thirty-three." If I didn't know better I would say she was crying.

The door now swung open, letting loose a flurry of flies and a stench that immediately turned my stomach. Once I had finished spewing my stomach across the floor, a guard handed me a flashlight, inside were torn and rotting bodies stacked on top of one another, all making a horrific face, eternally scratched into the leather of their faces. I absorbed the reality for a meager moment before my CAPS took hold, plunging me into the darkness of fainting.

"Close the d*mn door. Board it up again." Were the last words I heard swimming toward me through my pulse.

TOME 38

I woke in Mel's determined arms, my head bobbing as she glided through the halls back to our room. When she saw me awake, she gave me a soothing smile before returning to her intense look. When we got back to our room of reds and velvets and silks, she placed me on the bed surrounded by pillows. She called down the hall for tea and only minutes later we had a tea pot with the tea from my apartment that Gabe's mom had given me.

I absorbed the familiar exotic flavor of the green tea far above my pay grade. Mel was watching me with a worried smile as I enjoyed myself far more than I had any right to. Fainting always provided a certain sense of bliss as it faded in and out, the lowered blood pressure leaving me thoughtless. Mel softly touched my bangs, shifting them while her smile grew.

As Mel leaned over to kiss my cheek, I could smell the perfume she used to cover the smell of the slowed rot. She had creams and tinctures she used to slow the course of rot in herself, although staying well fed seemed the best way to keep zombies fresh, something she would never have to worry about. I allowed myself to get lost in her softness in her ever present ability to keep me safe.

I rolled into bed, feeling myself grow heavy as she slid into bed beside me, giving me the comfort needed to fall sleep.

I dreamed of Mel becoming everything before devouring the world, and I didn't mind it. Mel took on the face of everyone I had loved before melting away into an ocean that became her before seeping onto all land, making all land and water hers.

I woke gasping for air while Mel kissed my forehead. "Calm, sweetheart, I won't eat your brain if that's what you're scared of." She giggled that giggle I loved so much.

"No, I just had a kinda nightmare thing." I offered weakly.

"Oh, are those coming back again? Is there anything I can get you for that?" She was taking my temperature with the back of her cold hand. "Here, have your Seroquel and go to bed for the night." She handed me the large white pill and my now cold tea which I gulped down, it tasted like fond memories of loved ones.

I slept deeply, having rushes of dreams that didn't make sense before waking to the sound of birds in Mel's window, sunshine pouring into the room.

TO BE CONTINUED....