Stuck On You
What happens when a Zombie falls in love? Reg Shoe encounters a new complication of Undead life... inspired by Alice Cooper's very sick and very, very, funny "Cold Ethyl", a tasteless ditty to necrophilia.
"So how long have you been dead, then?" Reg Shoe asked. It wasn't the most inspired line, he knew. But there was something about Ethel...
She shrugged. A little dust cascaded.
"Oh, two or three years." she said, as if it were no big thing. "And you?"
"Over thirty years, now." he said, with some pride. It didn't make him the oldest Zombie in town, he knew. The lawyer Slant was pushing for six hundred years dead. He'd heard some of the old kings of Djelibeybi had managed nearly six thousand, with the aid of good embalming and lots of bandages to, you know, hold it all together. But it gave him a little street-cred in the city's small but vocal Zombie community.
She looked at him with appraising eyes. They weren't all that sunken, yet.
"Maybe you can show me, you know, how it all goes. Oh, thanks, Igor!"
Igor, the bar-thing at Biers, moved his mouth into something approximating a smile.
"Least I can do." he said. "On the house. Sorry it didn't seem to work out."
He set down two shot glasses full of formaldehyde. Zombies didn't need to eat or drink in the conventional sense. Or even to breathe. But Biers was set up to cater for the needs of all the city's undead and differently vitalised. Igor knew all their preferences and needs and could cater for them. He also knew when not to intrude on a possibly private moment between two customers, and he returned to the bar. Reg understood: his formaldehyde on the house was the sort of perk a barman gave to a Watchman. Ethel's was consolation for the way her act had been received. It had been some way short of a roaring success.
Igor had heard other pubs around the city had boosted trade by bringing in lunchtime strippers. After a long hard think in which he had still failed to grasp a few essential truths, he had put up a poster advertising "Dead Girls!" and asked the Guild of Ecdysiasts, Nautchers, Cancanieres and Exponents of Exotic Dance if they had any suitable performers. Miss Dixie "Va-Va"-Voom!, the Guild president, had frowned thoughtfully and said she would ask around. And, on that Wednesday lunchtime, Ethel had turned up and performed her act, to underwhelming results. Oh, in life she'd been a stripper. That had been before the creature Wazir and Webb (1) had assured her was a tame and harmless Large Common Grass Snake had turned out to be a Howondalandian Spitting Mamba. Tired of being manhandled, it had bitten her in an unkind place (2) and had escaped in the ensuing confusion, finally finding sanctuary in a post box on the corner of Zephyr Street. (3)
Ethel had blinked and returned to another sort of life on the mortuary slab at the Lady Sybil. Doctor Lawn had groaned, said "not again!" and given her an introduction card to the Fresh Start Club. She had pocketed this, and gone straight back to Miss Dixie to ask for advice. The Strippers' Guild president had said "well, you're still fairly fresh. I supose we could still find work for you. At least, for a little while..." and had kept her on the books. She had not contacted the Fresh Start Club, seeing a new lease on life. But as a couple of years progressed, she found the bookings dwindling to nothing. A cleaning job at the University had terminated after she'd had a row with Professor Hix about post-mortem communications. Hix, a man who found Zombies to be a professional embarrassment,(4) hadn't been pleased, and she was out of work. Then the call to be a stripper had come again.
Reg had lurched into Biers on his day off for a quiet drink. He had watched the thin, gaunt, red-haired stripper take the stage, and had realised what she was the moment her clothes started coming off. As had the rest of the clientele who had sat, perched, squatted on their hindlegs or otherwise frozen with amazement and open-mouthed consternation. It just wasn't working...
"Look." said Reg, kindly. "I still run the Club. A shame you didn't drop by earlier. Look, maybe you could, I don't know, come and see Mr Vimes with me? We don't have nearly enough Zombies in the Watch, and you look like you could make a good recruit. You don't really have a future as a stripper, I think, and I've never really been comfortable with the gender-relations issues it raises and the way the patriarchal system imposes subordinate roles on women..."
She cut him short.
"Reg, if you're going to start spouting feminist dogma at me and coming on like Erica Mungbean or Germaine Grinder, I'm walking out of here..."
He hastened to reassure her. He'd never met anyone like this before. He didn't want to lose her. New thoughts were pushing for attention in his hindbrain. Could it be called necrophilia if both partners were dead?
As they left Biers and walked around to Pseudopolis Yard, where she had consented to at least look at the application forms, she consented to let him link his arm through hers, but very, very, carefully.
Reg Shoe felt as if he'd died and was looking at the gates of Heaven...
The city's only licenced wild animal dealers, who approach the trade with the sort of cheerful disregard for trades descriptions or indeed professional ethic which can only be found in Ankh-Morpork. See my story Zoo Tales.
The back bar of the Troll's Head. This is a tough audience for any performer.
Eventually recaptured by Johanna Smith-Rhodes in Nature Studies. Had she known the serpent had a prejudice against red-haired women, Johanna would probably have gone in even harder and given it an additional grudge to bear.
Because maintaining an expensive department in Post-Mortem Communications (definitely not Necromancy) and performing elaborate rituals to be able to speak to the Dead , are rendered quite redundant when one of the Dead is standing there, in plain sight, holding a dustpan and brush. Especially when she points out you could speak to me any time you want, Prof.
Alice Cooper - Cold Ethyl
Lyrics:
One thing I miss is Cold Ethyl and her skeleton kiss;
We met last night making love under the refrigerator light!
Ethyl Ethyl let me squeeze you in my arms,
Ethyl Ethyl come and freeze me with your charms!
One thing,
No lie,
Ethyl's frigid as an eskimo pie!
She's cool in bed,
Well she oughta be 'cuz Ethyl's dead!
Ethyl Ethyl let me squeeze you in my arms,
Ethyl Ethyl come and freeze me with your charms,
Come on Cold Ethyl,
Freeze me babe...
One thing - it's true!
Cold Ethyl I am stuck on you!
And everything is my way,
Ethyl don't have much to say!
Ethyl Ethyl let me squeeze you in my arms,
Ethyl Ethyl come and freeze me with your charms!
Come here Cold Ethyl...
What makes you so cold? Ooh so cold...
Cold Ethyl
Cold Cold Ethyl
Cold Ethyl
Cold Cold Ethyl
Cold Ethyl
Cold Cold Ethyl
Cold Ethyl
Cold Cold Ethyl
If I live 'til ninety-seven,
You'll still be waiting in refrigerator heaven,
'cuz you're cool,
You're on ice,
Cold Ethyl,
You're my paradise!