Fiction

For twenty-five-year-old Penelope Adams, a good day begins and ends with a glass of liquor, the long hours between filled with mind-numbing carpet-cleaning—anything to keep her from thinking about the life she’d almost had. But all that changes when she loses her job and discovers her sister Ruby is engaged to Raymond Longbourn, the very man who brought her life to shambles. In a fit of desperation (or inspiration?), she agrees to enter a team-romance-writing competition with him, in hopes of appeasing her sister and winning the much-needed cash prize. But when she suspects one of the judges is none other than she and Ray’s old Creative Writing professor, the world-renowned author Benjamin Charleston, she must confront years of buried trauma in order to discover her voice, take authorship of her life, and accept the love she deserves.

“I want a divorce.”

The air left her chest, like he’d yanked the oxygen from her throat. His eyes raked over her again, his expression full of disgust and aberration. It knocked the breath out from her. Heat flooded her cheeks. 

“Is this about the re-release party?”

“What?”

“You’re doing this to humiliate me, aren’t you? You’re gonna make me go alone. I can’t—”

“Are you kidding me? Wow, Meer. Just—wow. You don’t care if we’re married so long as we look—”

The glass of their back door shattered, and a Zombie collapsed on the kitchen tile.

Miracle screamed; Flynn leapt back. Together, they stared at the wretched form. A piece of the glass protruded from between the body’s shoulder blades. The body must’ve belonged to a man once, but now it was all bones and torn, sagging skin. For a moment it lay still, but then the shoulders contorted, the elbows bending inward. As if trying to swim against the ground, its wrists slammed against the linoleum and dragged the rest of its body forward. When it lifted its head, the neck extended too far upward. Its left cheek appeared charred and sunken; fuzzes of blue mold grew along the cheekbone. The right side of its face swelled with pus. The eyes, all gray, radiated hunger. It opened its mouth into a perverted travesty of a smile, the gums dark black and bright red.

“You didn’t get the doors reinforced?” Flynn said, finally.

“I called, but no one answered. And then… I guess I forgot.”

“You forgot? You heard that Zombies have popped up in several cities across the country and you just forgot to get the doors reinforced?”

“If you were so worried, you should’ve called! I don’t know why you’re putting this all on me!”

“You’re always home! I figured you had ample time to make calls.”

“Well I’m sorry that Zombie-proofing our house wasn’t my first priority! I thought this would’ve been like the aliens last summer. We spent all that money and time securing our bedroom ceiling—and for what? For nothing.”

“Clearly, it pays to be cautious!” Flynn yelled, pointing at the Zombie. Suddenly the two of them remembered that there was an actual Zombie on their kitchen floor, dragging itself dangerously closer by the second.