Zombies, Vampires, and Other Bullshit
Have you ever wondered what would happen if a vampire sucked a zombie’s blood?
Yea, me neither, but that’s the kind of bullshit you start asking yourself after you’ve received your 10-millionth manuscript rejection. That’s when you start looking around at the popular trends and trying to figure out how you can copy it and get some of those sweet goodies for yourself.
Next thing you know you’re sitting in McCoy’s on a Monday afternoon drinking beer and wondering about vampires and zombies and shit, and then whamo! all of a sudden you find yourself starring in your own meta-fiction piece.
So, that’s where I was — that’s where I am — sitting in McCoy’s on a Monday afternoon smack dab in the middle of my own meta-fiction piece thinking about vampires sucking zombie blood, when all of a sudden all hell breaks loose on the street outside the window.
There’s people running around and screaming and getting their heads tore off. There’s zombie-vampires flying around and vlogging (2018 undead) themselves biting and eating people.
How’d it start?
Hell, I don’t know…how about a 2,000 year old vampire named Achinoam got hungry and bit some guy who’d just been infected with a zombie virus.
Achinoam turned a zombie-vampire, ten times more powerful than a regular zombie but without the intellectual capacity of a vampire, so it’s just mindlessly running around and tearing shit up.
Not much else needs to be said, I guess.
Point is, I’m sitting here in McCoy’s writing about myself sitting here in McCoy’s, and the bullshit apocalypse has begun.
None of the zombie-vampires of the victims come into the bar, though. This is my story, and I want to drink.
And whoa, there’s this real hot, I mean Debbie-Harry-hot redhead at the end of the bar. She’s drinking whiskey. She’s my kind of woman— tough, smart, fearless, likes rough sex and Tom Waits.
Yea, a proper kind of woman. Her name’s Desdemona, but everyone calls her Dezzy.
“This story sucks,” Dezzy says across the bar.
“I know.”
“Want to do something else?”
“Like what?”
“Like me.” She smiles. Holy hell what a smile…mushroom clouds, air raid sirens.
“You’re my kind of woman,” I say.
“What kind is that?”
“Honest and unafraid.”
“Everything you’re not,” she says.
“Hey now. I made you.”
“Yea, but you made me to be your kind of woman, and your kind of woman doesn't get bossed around.”
“Good point. I guess I’ve written myself into a bit of a paradox.”
“Why are you trying to write that zombie-vampire bullshit?” she asks. She’s serious now.
“Don’t insult my artistic integrity.”
She won’t take the bait. Still serious. “Why do you care so much about what other people say?”
“I don’t know. I just want to make money off writing so that I can write more. Writing is the end game. Always has been.”
“So you think anything will be solved with a best seller? Then you’ll just have to write another boring thing that’s like everything else. Then what? Once the buzz runs off you’ll be back to the same place in your head, crazy for another fix. Write like that and it’ll end up no different or better than your 9 to 5.”
She’s right. I know it. I don’t like hearing it, though.
“Buy you a drink?”
“Buy me several, but my point about the fear and all that isn’t to make you feel limp-dicked or anything. I’m trying to help. That’s really why you’re creating this whole scene. The Big Time’s all an illusion, man. You know it, too, or I wouldn't be here, and neither would you. You’d have written some book about vampires sucking zombies off.”
“Zombies and vampires aren’t so bad,” I say. “Just overdone. that’s all. It’s all so repetitive now.”
“Yea, I know. I actually like vampires a bit. Zombies bore me. But, point is, you don’t want to be the kind of writer that did what everyone else did. You never have. That’s not what the gods put you here for. You head’s just all twisted up right now because you feel like a failure. But what the fuck does failure even mean?”
She leans across the door and narrowed her life-changing green eyes on me. “How about this? You've got two choices. You get the vampire-zombie book deal, or you get me.”
I slap a stack of bills down for the bartender that I never wrote into this story and lead her out the door.
The street carnage leaves us untouched. No zombie-vampire’s going to ruin this moment for me. I let it go on, though, because it makes a nice backdrop.
Dezzie brains one of the zombie-vampires, just for kicks.
To hell with the mainstream. I’d rather have Dezzie. I prefer this story over a zombie-vampire apocalypse story, anyway. Won’t appeal to the masses, maybe, but at least it’s not unoriginal.
Of course, I’m going write it up and publish it on Medium and hope that people like it, and dream that maybe millions of people will.
Goddamn, I’m such a whore.
