Loved By Death

Short story

May 28, 2024

I had never been happier to have pre-ground human bones than I am today. By candlelight, I throw it into the large mixing bowl whose content had really started to fucking stink. Some intestines, some heart matter, the poison of the puffer fish, some of her blood, some of her hair, pieces of a cat, and all the things my father had taught me needed to be in The Powder for a successful zombification.

I admit this was not my first attempt, nor was it my second, and I had experienced a fair amount of failure. In truth, the knowledge I’d acquired from those failures gave me the confidence that I could produce a little more than an empty vessel from her and so I continued to pound the mixture together until her blood was indiscernible from the cat tail and other bits of living beings. It had become a thick paste that no longer smelled like death. There was a sickly sweet smell leaking from the mixture. That is how I knew it was ready.

Being on death’s doorstep had drained her of the fire that drew me to her in life. On any other day, she would be buried under the old texts or a bowl of fruit letting the juice of mangos run down her chin. I took pleasure in licking it off. She took pleasure in letting me. I think that perfectly encapsulated our relationship. I take no pleasure in rubbing her corpse with the powder. It’s true my hands linger in places out of habit. I rest my hand on her heart barely feeling a beat. I try to focus on the task at hand not whichever wicked fucker had poisoned her. She’d have told me to focus lest she died before I had finished the ritual.

The sound of crickets is the drumbeat that I shovel to. I don’t make the grave too deep because she will only be here briefly. In the meantime, I work on prepping the mixture to tie her soul to her body. I try to distract myself as the hours dwindle. I drag my exhausted flesh body to the grave site right before daybreak. Pull her out of the grave.

In the traditional practice, I would’ve trapped her spirit self in a clay cursed pot and buried it somewhere secret; this is not traditional. I had been working on a new and improved version of this spell. This is not to say I believed my ancestors had not already made attempts or that some were successful. I’m sure there were reasons they decided to replace the old soul with a place holder but I needed her to be as much herself as possible.

The only alternative to life without her would be death which I rebuke. I have many plans in place for an extended life and most of them include her presence. The sunlight rises higher and her body begins to twitch. It starts with her digits, then her head moves, slowly she sits up and blinks as if molasses coat her lashes.

“Cherie,” I whisper closing what distance existed between us glad to have eviscerated the distance between her and death.

She says nothing. I let her rest in silence. I can only imagine her confusion. It always takes time to speak so I am not yet worried by her silence but I yearn for the sound of her voice vibrating on the air. I make myself busy tidying up the rest of the mess of the ritual. Eventually, she joins me. She moves slowly but I see the patterns of her true self starting to emerge. A little past twilight, we sit at the table with two plates and five candles between us. I shovel lentils, steamed fish, and a rice and peas made with coconut milk into our plates. It was one of her favorite things to eat.

For a while, the only sound is the sound of mouths chewing until she interrupts.

“It tastes like sand.”

“She speaks.”

“She wants to eat.”

And so she does. We try her favorite fruits. I watch as she slips pieces of food into her delicate lips. I watch as she stuffs pieces of day-old bread, coconut meat, and stew meat hopefully into her mouth. Eventually, her face falls and she wails. I know it is more sand to her. I bring her head to my chest. I am sorry. She is sobbing a dry eyed, desolate cry knowing that food is now tasteless. She inhales deeply. I feel a heavy tongue dragging along the center of my breasts. She moans a deep guttural moan.

Buy Me A Cookie

“I am not your food,” I pull her head away and look into her eyes. You know the rules. You eat me you’re no longer tied here. She tilts her head to the skin of my wrists inhales deeply again and moans.

“But you smell like ripe fruit.”

“And you smell like you are one missed bath from being a carcass but you’re not buried. Focus, Cherie, let us find who poisoned you and you can feed to your heart's content.”

She eyes me as if deciding if she would risk ending herself. I see the moment she decides against eating me. I pull her close and peck her forehead. I had worked the spell for an answer on who tried to murder her after pulling her from the ground. I pour the bones out of the bag and get my answer. That jealous fucking bitch. I would enjoy every moment of his demise.

Enilio had spotted us three nights prior at the edge of the forest. We had expected privacy. He had been trying to learn where she went at night. He was not pleased with the answer or the way her mouth curved against mine.

Behind me, I hear her growling. She is muttering strings of words that make no sense. I give her privacy. It is an unfortunate side effect of the spiritual break. The mind will lapse every now and then until it is broken completely. I will make sure her final days of sanity are spent eating his flesh. I fantasize about peeling it away from the muscle. I fantasize about watching her mouth covered in his blood. I want her to enjoy it.

He is sitting in the back of his house smoking what smells like ganja and tobacco.

“I was waiting for you to find me,” the statement stretches from his jaws. “Her, I was expecting to be dead and rotting. I see your greed got the best of you. You couldn’t let her go huh.”

“Neither could you,” I turn as I feel her breathing down my shoulder. She steps past me towards him.

He pulls a cutlass from beneath the bench he squats on. She crouches as I work my way to his left.

“I’ll kill you both and feed you to my fattest pig,” he says switching the cutlass between his hands and spitting towards her. She moves like a viper striking him with such precision, force, and speed that he is knocked back and falls over the bench. He manages to hold tightly to the cutlass. She climbs on top of him punching him in the head. He tries to swing the cutlass I catch his hand. She continues to swing at his head until it is a bloody mess and he is lying still.

He is a pathetic excuse for a gifted one. A better match would’ve had him a zombie or spirit waiting to defend him. It was arrogant of him to think we could not take him. I take his cutlass and slice three of his fingers off. She chews on them like carrots. I burn the wound to stop his bleeding. We need him alive.

She carries him back to the house like he is just two coconuts instead of a man who is potbellied and unconscious. We move through the trees thankful for the cover of darkness. I am eager to feed her. She is eager to eat. I ignore her nonsensical mutterings happy to watch her alive and moving.

By the third day, he is barely breathing and covered in bite marks. I stored his left ear away for future use. I fed her his right ear, several of his toes, and parts of his member, and took great pleasure in slicing his tongue and watching her devour it. Suppress the thought that once, she took it in her mouth in pleasure. Suppress the thought that she was starting to unravel. Each day she speaks less and less. This morning I wake up to her crouching next to him eyeing him as if he is the final breath of air left in her lungs before drowning. He is too drugged to care. I give her his right hand. She curls up on my lap.

“I’ve loved you since before I knew I loved you. I love you even now covered in blood.”

I run my hair through the parts of her cornrows. She turns her face up at mine some of the blood of his hand still smeared on her chin. In another life, it’d be mango juice and I would lick it. It is not but, I can tell that this is her conscious self. She stares at me the way she does after sex.

“Love? Sometimes love is not enough,” she turns her head away muttering nonsensical things again. I don’t think she’ll make it through another night. At least her grave has already been dug. At least I get to tell her again and again that I’ve loved her and will always love her. I press my face into her scalp and breathe deeply. She is starting to smell like a carcass and not her sweet musky coconut oil scent. I will miss her but she’s right sometimes love is not enough.

Often times when we think about zombies we think of the new age scientific monsters (World War Z or The Walking Dead). I wanted to go the more traditional route. I also wanted to explore the idea of being enslaved to a psuedo-life because someone claims to love you. I enjoyed writing this but I feel like it’s missing something. When I read it to my husband he said I could build a world around it which was nice to hear. I do try to write short stories in a way that I could make them into books if I wanted to. I’ll probably revisit it in a few months and see if I’ve figured it out. I thought about having her be eaten but I went that route with Saltwater Kissed so I decided to try something different.

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TELL ME:
Did it end the way you expected? Would you bring back a deceased loved one even if there were risks like the ones in the story? What was your favorite line or turn of phrase?

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