Everything but this chapter is actually finished, if you want to just skip this one and go onto the rest. If any bullet points/other formatting is messed up, said formatting is available on ao3.
I wonder how well we ever see each other. I wonder how well we ever see ourselves. I worry that our love cannot find expression, that it cannot be spoken and truly shared. That it certainly cannot survive online, in fragments, among strangers.
- Tevis Thompson, "The Existential Art"
Start of the Summer
Tord comes back from the dead to crash at your place. "We need to find the Necronomicon," he says, to which you reply that you need to go back to sleep, you've got big things to do tomorrow.
"Like what, work on your animations?" he says, the lilt of the last word digging under your skin. It's somehow more insidious than when Tom will burst into your room and demand you leave behind your "shitty cartoons" to get drunk with him, or when Matt huffs and rolls his eyes and asks, "If it doesn't have me in it, how good can it be?"
"Yes," you hiss back, "and no, we aren't putting any tits in it. But besides that, Matt wanted me to meet him for lunch at La Curro."
You already regret your overreaction, but it's late and Tord is dead and stinking up your entire fucking living room and your eyes ache simply to stay open. So fuck him.
Honestly you hadn't even realized he was dead until he showed up. Sure, he hadn't texted you back since around 11 am the previous morning, but so what? You leave people on read for days. It's kinda stupid, he says, how it happened - he had been challenged by a Friend You Wouldn't Know to hold a cue ball in his throat "it was like this weird, really, really dumb metaphor for a blowjob someone was making in a paper he'd read," and choked. The friend, present only in the form of a phone call, had tried to contact help once they understood what was going on, "but alas," Tord says blandly, "I was already pretty much out of it when they got there."
"Did you see a white light?"
"Nope."
"Angels? God? Satan? Anything?"
"Nope. Near the end it was a lot like just going to sleep, but kinda like waking up still half-sleep from a nightmare at the same time, if that makes any sense, but I'm pretty sure that was just because I was choking. Anyway, I gave up and then woke up a little while later in the morgue, which was freaky because of course they'd put me in a bag. I look at myself and I'm naked and my skin's kinda turning blue, but also really, really bruised on my entire back side" - which you can still see, the green discoloration of him bleeding into deep purple and black - "so I half expected to look over and see Herbert West standing there with his syringe full of ogre cum."
You snort, the closest thing to laughter you're capable of at the moment.
Tord shrugs. "But it was empty. So I got up and walked out."
"Naked?" You ask, raising a brow, for that is only a partial explanation for why Tord is clothed in only a white T-shirt a few sizes too big, nervously tugging down the hem every so often to hide his genitals.
"I found this shirt lying on the bench in the men's locker room." His eyes are downcast. "I don't think anyone saw me."
It is around three in the morning on a Tuesday - no, Wednesday. Anyone who would be out at this time are the druggies and drunks, who are probably too concerned with their own issues to notice a half-naked zombie darting from light post to mailbox to back alley like a frightened deer.
"Here, you can borrow some of my boxers," you say, and maybe after you get some more sleep you'll be flushed at the prospect of Tord wearing your underwear as though you were more than best buddies, but for now you don't care and did you mention it's 3 in the goddamn morning? You lead him back into your room and go to your drawer, pulling out a grey pair for him, keeping your face turned away as he puts it on.
"We really should go out and look for the necronomicon," he says, to which you grunt.
"Later," and a fall onto your bed face-first.
Without asking, he falls on top of you before rolling off, cuddling up under your covers with one of your pillows between his legs. "Nothing like Miku, but it'll do," he says with a soft, crooked smile.
You flash him a thumbs up and close your eyes.
Tord shuts off the lamp on your nightstand. "Thanks, Edd," he says into the dark.
You don't think about how your friend died alone and scared on the dirty bathroom floor of his apartment. You don't think about how he essentially just told you that God and Heaven and Hell, the background noise of your belief system, are all lies. You don't think about how he rose from the dead and ran half-naked across half the city to find you. You don't want to think about it, not now. Too big to process, to small a brain in which to do it.
You groan and reply, "No problem," your words muffled into the counterpane.
[Tord reveals he can't feel pain by giving himself DIY top surgery, talking through it with Patryck, slamming the call off when he hears Edd creaking around
In the original version this was done after they'd sequestered themselves in the mall Dwan of the Dead-style. Like so:]
What else are you to do when you can no longer feel pain, besides rip off the parts you never liked anyway?
You roll that thought over in your mind and grab a stick, etching furiously into the plastic sand beside you, not even needing to see where your hand goes.
Audience expectations: that you're referring to some emo self-destructive bullshit, demonstrated here by a stick figure about to take comically large scissors to their rolls of stomach fat.
Audience reality: that your zombie friend is in an open Hawaiian shirt, stomach stuffed with rolled up newspaper and patched up with duct tape, holding his disembodied uterus over his head and chanting in his mother tongue.
"Which roughly translates to…" he announces, drawing you out of your doodling. "This bitch empty. Yeet!"
And he throws it into the fire.
[Maybe also have the heat thing come up by having Edd wake up covered in sweat and they fight over the thermostat. Tord can no longer feel any kind of temperature extremes; he assures himself of this when he lights his tongue on fire.]
[Later, the boys go to the store and zombies have raided it so it's out of cola
They go to the local mall to LARP Dawn of the Dead
It's a dead af mall though, so they mostly have the place to themselves cue montage of them doing dumb shit
Matt groans, slumps back in his chair, digging the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. "How am I supposed to wreck your home if I can't get into it?"
Rewrite this scene to be at the mall and about Tord and Edd fucking around a merry-go-round, Tord gets his eye poked out by a unicorn horn too
They start to get bored, so everyone but Tord starts trying to lure zombies into the mall]
"Come on, Tord, gimme a hand here."
"Attached or no?" He replies, not looking up from his tankobon. You roll your eyes, but Tom beats you to it:
"I'll detach your dick if you don't come and help."
"Why would I?" he snaps back. "I mean, I wouldn't be doing it anyway, but now I'm double not doing it."
"Well -" you jump as Matt's sing-songy voice suddenly rings out, dropping your handful of posters all over the floor. "-If you aren't going to move, at least stop clogging up the free ad space," as he drapes a blanket with his face printed on it over Tord's legs.
[Matt gets bitten, realizes he's a Russo but can talk to the Romeros fine
Well time to take over the world
Runs Edd and Tom out, but Tord stays behind
Tord comes back to get his 90 gigs and also Matt is frustrating as hell to work with and two tops don't make a bottom]
The story starts as all great ones do: with the collision of idiocy, zombies, and modern technology.
The zombie - who you have decided to name Romeo for the way he yodeled outside your window no matter how many shoes, drunken bullets, and pieces of Matt's junk pile you'd thrown at him between the twilight hours of 1am and noon today - moans but doesn't try to bite at Tord's fingers as he peels the tiny paper slips off the adhesive pads and attaches them to either side of Romeo's forehead, murmuring a strangely comforting, strangely condescending, "I know, I know, buddy." Between his legs, like the buzz-saw about to cut his junk right now the middle, sits a heart defibrillator box, this one stolen from the department store they had raided for winter clearance sales and whatever else could be of use in the apocalypse – which as yesterday turned out to be "whatever was denied to me before." The house looks like Matt on a sandstorm of uppers—games and action figures and comforters and clothes and dishes for shooting practice piled up in every hallway, sans the foyer which has been reserved as the new ball pit.
At least Ringo seems to be enjoying it.
The zombie must have sniffed you again, for he groans and tries to reach, chains rattling –
("Why do you have chains in your room?" you'd asked Tord, to which he'd winked and you'd rolled your eyes)
- but his arms are pulled so far back behind him he's more likely to dislocate them than reach you. You lean back against the door, but at that moment the door shoves you forward, and Romeo screeches in excitement as Tom joins you all, a tiny tan booklet in his hands. "Who's ready for Sunday school?" his voice booms, only a tad of liquor audible on his tongue.
"Oh, I am," Tord replies, leaning with his hand on the big red button, cringing only a little as the zombie starts to seize.
"Alright, let's see what we got here." Tom opens up the booklet, reading, "Why Don't Girls Like Me?""
"Me," you and Tord say at the same time.
"No, Tord, you're "How To Conquer the Habit of Masturbation," Tom says, to which Tord concedes.
"What even is this?" you, trying to look over Tom's shoulder.
"It's a little collection of Jehovah Witness advice for teenagers."
Ho boy.
"I can actually remember my mom giving me some of the magazines this stuff originally came in," he continues, thumbing through. "Don't really remember the part about how being a flirt makes you monster incapable of love."
A harsh crackling and thump makes you realize that Tom has his phone out, hidden behind the book flap. "They're right you know."
"So basically the rich guy cuts open his butlers pectorals and starts stuffing them with money.—"
"Should have just used the basketball method," Tom interjects, taping the side of empty shot glass against his temple. "Figured that shit out at age 6."
"No, but he's rich, so it would be a bunch of crochet balls."
"But then there'd be a bunch of lumps."
"Breast cancer," Tord says. "Which in this case would be great! Because— no, stop laughing and listen, the whole point of this is that the rich guy knows women and children get rescued first, so he's honestly trying to save this guys life."
"Could have fooled me."
"Oh you can't blame capitalists," Tord waves you off. "They don't have real emotions. Because they're not real people."
"They're lizards?"
"That's anti-Semitic."
"Oh, sorry."
"What if the rich are just two legged pigs like the end of Animal Farm?"
"I hear pigs are actually super empathetic."
"Pat and Paul have a new mini pig; we can ask."
You and Tom both stare at him like he's grown a second-head. "Who's Pat and Paul?"
"Oh." He blinks. "I never told you?"
"No, you didn't."
Another slow blink, a small shrug. "Well, I'll call them later and see if they're up."
And you want to think nothing of it, but that's going to prove impossible as time moves on.
The whole point that I never got around to writing is that Edd doesn't admit to himself how much he wants someone who doesn't need him. How much he doesn't want to be held responsible for anything.
"Where's Paul's mistress?" Apparently Patryck asks, jiggling the pig in his lap. "Penelope wants to say hi. Don't you Penelope?" The pig leans up to lick his face as Patryck coos, and while it melts your tiny, emaciated heart, you're too thrown through a loop by that first admission to appreciate / revel in it.
"Wait wait wait," Tom takes the words out of your mouth – and the eye out of Tord's head when he smacks him upside it. "You knew who Matt's boyfriend was and you never told us?"
"Knew?" Patryck chuckles. "He introduced us all."
"You seem awfully okay with it," you say.
Patryck shrugs. "Our relationship's always been open."
"We could have been making fun of Matt for months." Tom punctuates his anger with a little clap, in a way that reminds you of your old wrestling coaches. "Months, Tord. We're all supposed to be in this together."
"You gotta understand, Tom," Tord says, pushing his dangling eyeball back in and blinking experimentally. "You guys are my friends; Matt and Aussie here are my brothers in arms."
"So what's Paul?"
"Don't say it," Patryck seethes, covering Penelope's ears. "I won't let you taint her the way you do everything else."
"She's a pig, she'd think a dumpster is an extra large food bowl."
"If you keep going I will strangle you with my bare hands and bake your remains in her birthday cake."
"Who is this Paul guy anyway?" Tom asks, stepping forward to partially block Tord's view of the camera.
"Oh he's out – we got some stragglers trying to break through the fence. None of them articulate. Have you seen or heard of any more intelligent zombies?"
You shake your head. "No, I don't think so – it's just Matt and Tord."
Patryck gives a thoughtful hmm, resting his chin on the top of Penelope's head, smoothing her ears down as he ponders. "That would make the ratio of Russo to Romero zombies one to ten."
"Russo?" Tom asks.
"He helped write Night of the Living Dead with George Romero," you explain. "But then they broke up."
" – So Romero made all the "of the dead" movies while John Russo made his own sequel to Night in 1985, called Return of the Living Dead."
"Oh yeah." Tom begins to nod along. "I remember watching it with you guys."
"Remember the way the zombies could talk and whatnot?" Tord asks, which causes Tom's black eyes to widen in understanding.
"Oh yeah! – And it was because of that mad scientist guy—"
"No, that's Re-Animator," you correct him. "In Return of the Living Dead it's the Army's fault."
"But the salient point –" Patryck's voice cuts through your trivia dumping, "-that means important for those of you playing at home – is that Russo's zombies can not only talk, but they don't go down with a good knock to the head the way Romero's do, and their parts will remain animate after they've been cut off. Has any of this been happening to Tord?"
"No the last part, I don't think," you say.
"Maybe they got his laziness too," Tom suggests.
Tord flips tom off and Patryck hmmms again, scribbling down notes onto a notepad out of the camera's view.
"I honestly wouldn't discount it," he says, to which Tord's turns his upraised finger in his direction. "Do you feel yourself rotting, Tord?"
"All the time."
"Does it hurt?"
And the look Patryck gives him is very peculiar, you think – quizzical and anxious all at the same time.
Tord shrugs. "Kinda? But not really, it's just – uncomfortable. Like when you're lying in bed and can't find a good position to go to sleep? I don't know," his eye shoots down. "It's hard to explain. But I don't really feel any real pain anymore."
"Yeah, he barely never noticed when he stuck a plunger handle right through his leg," Tom says.
"Or when he cut off his leg on my car door," you add.
Patryck scribbles furiously again, before he says. "I ask because in Return, the zombie they capture to interrogate says that eating brains is the only thing that numbs the pain."
"Oh no no no no," Tom shakes his head and claps Tord hard on the back, popping out his eye again, but this time Tord is ready to catch it in the palm of his hand and replace it. "You're having none of that. You can do vodka and coke like the rest of us unfortunate living."
[You all burn the mall down. It's getting boring. The s'mores taste like plastic and the zombies love to walk into flames.]
"So you aren't coming back?" you ask.
Matt laughs like it's the funniest thing in the world. "Are you kidding?" The connection starts to crackle and cut out, as though Matt is going through a tunnel, and then you hear an explosion on the other line, human screams and zombie groans. "Gotta go guys! Be gay, do crimes. XOXO."
"Yeah, mom," Tom says for you before he ends the call. Then he looks at you - or at least you think he looks at you and his brows move as though they're things in there to roll. "I give him two weeks."
"I give him until his hair gel runs out," you quip back.
"I give him a week before I start going through his stuff," Tord adds. "He told me before he left he'd bought me some yuri for my birthday."
"Now I call his records," Tom says, leaning back with his hand planted on the big red button, Romeo spasming so hard his jaw falls off in a spray of foam, causing Tom to girlishly shriek and jump back into your arms. "You didn't hear that," he tells you.
"I am Helen Keller in this bitch," you say solemnly, setting him down. "Now I think it's only fair that we all give Matt a week before we start going through his stuff."
"He left his new copic markers," Tord says.
You bite back your worst impulse.
"And I saw him take a 12-pack of coke up there," Tom adds. You hold your hands out, silencing both of them, taking a deep breath to settle the goblin in your brain.
"One week. Everything will still be there in one week. Alright?"
Even the zombie nods in mindless agreement.
Matt doesn't answer your calls until the start of July.
I kept forgetting to write a Tord who can't speak English anymore.
Frame Story
The zombie lying fetal in the tub stirs briefly as you climb in and rev the new engine that had cost him a few more of his fingers to install, brain matter and curdled blood splattering against the windshield as you run through the postman trying to shove his rotting jaw into your mailbox. Tord pops out of the pile of blankets to enclose you in a shaky hug, nuzzling his face between your shoulder blades, even as they draw up almost past your pinkening ears. You try to lean away, practically folding yourself over the steering wheel, every point of connection between your bodies horrible – not because of the chill that sinks into you whenever he demands to be let underneath your clothes, no, because of something deeper, more visceral.
It takes a lot to not sink back into his embrace.
"Knock it off, Tord, I gotta drive."
He lets out a groan, tightening the arms around your stomach. "It'scold, my good bitch." A line he's fed you a million times before.
"It's gonna be six gurrilion degrees by noon."
"Have you ever been sounded by an icicle the size of your arm?" he asks indignantly.
"Have you?" You snap back as you pull out onto the main road, the ride bumpy with potholes and cracks and discarded limbs and various other kinds of detritus.
"That's what it fucking feels like!" Tord cries. "Sorry that I'm over here getting body-flossed by frost giants when –"
"Alright, alright, alright." You elbow him, but don't protest any further as he drapes the blanket over your shoulders, cocooning himself snugly against the hunched curve of your spine. Too bad for him that most of your body's heat has settled into your face and ears. "But no funny business."
He grabs one of your breasts through your hoodie and gives it some light squeezes. "Honk honk."
You elbow him again, feel it sink too far into the open pit where rib and flesh used to be, but thankfully your hoodies take the infection for you. Only problem is you get stuck for a second, and when you finally do manage to free your arm, your sleeve comes back spotted dark, bone fragments cutting shallowly into the green cloth like teeth.
[It's time to move back home.]
No one in the house can sleep alone anymore. Tord because he will follow you or Tom wherever you go in search of warmth, Tom because the alcohol makes him somehow both disgustingly clingy and cripplingly withdrawn, and you because of your own spiraling, Pettibon thoughts.
So more often than not, you all will find yourselves drawn to Matt's room, Tom usually the first to set up shop, playing on the air the violin his mother made him learn until Year 6.
("Oh, fuck it up, fuck it up!" Tord will laugh. "Vivaldi who?")
("Yeah, eat my Glass," Tom will say, before furrowing his brows in confusion. "Oh c'mon Edd, you love that one.")
("Why don't we just watch some TV?" you will ask, caging both of them to your sides with a thick arm as Tom mutters about concertos and 'apreggos' and asshole judges and Tord sniggers, perhaps a bit less humorously.)
You all sleep sprawled out together on Matt's bed, Tom on your legs, Tord tight against your side, stump thrown over your hips. You stare at the ceiling for so long you could weave tapestries from its cracks, the dim glow of Matt's tiny ancient set casting indistinct patterns over everything and seeming to sink deeper shadows into the bags under Tom's eyes, into the pits of Tord's bandages, everything collapsing inward.
You listen to Tom's soft drunken snores, to Tord's harsher, rattling breaths, like his lungs are filling with cobwebs and dirt.
You see them all in your dreams, as you often do — Matt's black and purple, Tom's dark blue, Tord's violent red.
Matt, who might not come back, whose sickly-sweet smell presses down like an elephant on your chest.
Tom, who is leaking out more and more with every passing day, whose empty bottles are plugging the holes were Tord's security system misfires.
Tord, whose seams could unravel tomorrow, who you still dream of kissing so he can rip out your tongue with his sharp, yellowed teeth.
Your thoughts are finally smothered under the hot and frozen-cold weights of those who you didn't lose today.
[How tom will tell you about his mother drinking herself unconscious, ask if you remember the angry messages he'd send you whenever he found an empty bottle of hers in his room and you nod your head yes, because you'd immediately call the others and pile them into your car to take him out to get a bite to eat, to bowl until the lane was about to close.]
How you find him in the rocking chair Matt's mother left for him, idly rocking back and forth, bottle tucked between his legs.
How you lose them as you fall more in love with them, in a way you aren't sure is love and aren't sure wholly isn't.
You're used to it.
Tom is on his hands and knees, a bowl of soapy water by his side, scrubbing furiously. You smell detergent.
What're you working on, Cinderella? You ask.
Tom looks up at you as though caught in the act, a wet nail brush in his hand.
You wait for him to say anything.
Oh, oh nothing he says finally, just yknow, cleaning up some of the stains in matts carpet. Really deep set, you know.
And you aren't gonna do anything about his uhh , you gesture towards the clutter — the mountain of stuffed animals that has become its own spreading mass, an infection, the records slipped out their milk crate, the bric a brace in matts garden like weeds. all this ?
Oh. OH.. Tom glances around as though only now noticing how dirty and cluttered and hoarders tier matts room truly is.
Despite it being, yknow, MATTS.
I was gonna do that in a minute. These stains have just been really bothering me. A plastic smile.
Need anything for your knees? You ask with a quirked brow.
Oh no no, I'm fine. Now can you — a shoo shoo motion towards you, so you step back a few feet. You're wearing your shoes.
/ yeah/. What about it? Is he really gonna get uptight about this on matts behalf? Really?
Who knows where you've been, Tom says, running his hand over the carpet upon which you'd just stood.
With Tord. Like I told you I'd be.
Tom pulls himself away and goes back to scrubbing at the cherry stain on the floor, dipping the wand in the bowl again. That's what I was afraid of.
So you just roll your eyes and leave.
Well god can't be a handicapper general — that would imply some degree of design.
You know you're in trouble when the premise that's god not even real is an easier one to swallow
["We all have the emotional intelligence of a dead turtle / a chocolate éclair."]
[Also more debates over the temperature, tord wearing more and more layers secretly, eventually slipping into Edd's room to cuddle up because Edd's like a fucking space heater]
"You spend the summer falling a little more in love with all of them"
Matt calls. He asks what new animation you're working on. He insults it. You bicker. Tom takes the phone and Matt starts on about his zombie hotel, it's one of the later "of the Dead" movies, it's a paradise, it'll have a fifty foot statue of him, you'll see.
"Will the cock to be scale too?" Tom asks.
"There are pebbles larger!" Tord chimes.
And the room erupts with laughter.
When it finally dies down they call his name – Matt, Matt, Matt buddy, you there? – only to pick up Tom's phone again to see –
"—Holy shit, he hung up on us!"
And it starts all over again.
Words, you've come to find, are probably the worst fucking medium when it comes to expressing emotion.
Deep in one of your journals there's chicken-scratch so heavily tear stained it looks like you've spilled a glass across the pages — messages you blew his phone up with, an attempt to render them again into something bigger, more accessible, because even though you were sobbing so hard you could barely see your screen at the time, the morning after...
Well, good lightning is hard to come by, let's say.
And the art piece fell apart ; life got in the way, for reasons that you can barely remember.
And all this over a book about a drunken blue furred bear.
Art, you've come to realize, is an expression of love. The greatest kind of love — deep and true — from creator to audience.
And it feels as though I'm belting out love songs to a dark window.
Have been for years.
"I mean I know logically that it's a soulless abomination being puppeted on the end of Satan's cock, and if I think about it for too long, it honestly does kinda make me sick— you end the phrase with a humorless chuckle —" but at the end of the day, I can't draw if I'm dead!"
Tord gives you a look with his remaining eye.
"Un-undead," you clarify.
"Or you've eaten all your fingers off," He adds from his spot on the couch.
Tom briefly tears his black gaze away from the television, not sitting up from his half-melted state in what used to be Matt's chair. "Uh, why would you do that?"
"It's from this Stephen King story — I forget what it's called, but it's one of his short stories he doesn't like being reprinted because it's too dark."
"Like the school shooter one?" You take a seat on the arm of Tom's chair, your hoodie sleeve a glove around your ice cold cola as you knock back a drink.
"No, that one wasn't necessarily because it was too dark," Tord explains, "but because it was causing too many copycats. But anyway, the premise is that this doctor gets stranded on an island and eventually has to start cutting off his own legs and stuff for food."
You cringe, kiss your teeth. "Good grief. How's he even manage the first part of that?"
"He got stranded with a fuck ton of cocaine."
You furrow your brow. "Can't you just eat the cocaine? Tom, look up how many calories cocaine has for me."
"Way ahead of you," Tom replies, his phone already in his hand. "But also fuck off, don't tell me what to do."
You give a dismissive wave which smacks him gently across the face. He shoves you off the seat, but your feet were already on the floor, so no real cost to you— you sit over with Tord, slinging an arm around his neck.
"Now, I am be the active CEO of Dipshit Incorporated," Tom starts, but you quickly cut him off:
"No, I'm the CEO, you're my vice."
"And what am I ?" Tord asks.
"Coffee monkey," you say at the exact time Tom says "cock warmer."
"I guess I see who respects me." Tord cuddles up close to you, shooting a silent challenge towards Tom, who isn't even paying attention as he presumably investigates the nutritional content of cocaine.
"Oh no," you say, "I still expect to swallow, I just don't want you to think I'm paying you for it."
That gets Tom to look up and laugh, voice twisting in a mockery of Tord's accent, "this wasn't in the job description."
Then Tord's lowers to a monotone facsimile of you: "Should've read the fine print."
Your hand lands on Tord's ass with a decently loud smack as you quip in, "You aren't getting that promotion for nothing."
"As long as I don't have to call you daddy we're good."
"Yeah," Tom says, "That's strictly for me."
Tord throws a pillow at him, which Tom blocks with his forearm.
"You know the idea of the comedian's comedian?" Tord asks one day, lying prone on your bed, eye cataloging all the cracks and patterns and pencil puncture wounds in your ceiling. "I wonder if there's a dictator's dictator."
You left out a quizzical hum. "Maybe Stalin? Because he lasted the longest, right?" Why did you make that a question.
"No, no, like who Stalin would have looked up to. Other than Lenin."
"I think Stalin would have been too busy jerking himself off in front of a mirror to look up to anyone else." Tord gives you a look like he's about to laugh and hit you in the face. You shrug. "Just from what I know about him."
"You have 1984, don't you?"
"Yeah, why?"
"That might be it." He reaches his hand out, so you look over the stack of old, dog-eared books on your desk and pull out the slim volume he's looking for. It's certainly seen better days. You toss it to him. "Basically every new dystopian book that comes out gets compared to it, anyway."
"Wasn't Orwell ripping off Jack London, though?" Another look, another shrug. "Heard it somewhere."
"Do I look like I read?"
You laugh. "Do I look like I'm not Jared, 19?"
He points the book at you as though it were an extension of his own hand, which is a meaningless phrase, you realize, but you don't know how else to describe it. And it's something you've always admired about him – the way he chews the scenery to shreds and then swallows, the way the girl from the story book takes multi colored pills that change her skin into a rainbow.
But he likes it.
His voice cuts in and ties your admiring reminiscing up in a nice bow. "Exactly."
[VERY END OF THE SUMMER: Matt finishes work on Fiddler's Green and burns so many zombie bodies that the rain raises all your town's dead. Even the bugs, even the birds. Even the squirrels chased into the road by dogs come back. You could have predicted this, had you choose to stick around the mall you so carelessly torched down.]
You wake up in Matt's bed, spooning Tord as Tom spoons you. You can feel his erection press into your boxers, hear him mumbling as he nuzzles harder between your shoulder blades, his breath hot through your thin T-shirt.
You wait and listen. Sometimes Tom talks in his sleep; never sensical, always funny. What was it last time – 'Matt, don't fuck my applesauce'? But his new position quiets him, even if his nightly wood doesn't flag, you sigh and nuzzle yourself closer to Tord, breathing in the scent of his mango shampoo. He doesn't smell that rotting-y, when you're up close. Or maybe you've just gotten used to it.
It's one of your best traits, you've been told.
Tom's breath hot against your back, his arm heavy on your wait. Tord cold against you, your lips on his scalp, the only pulse you can feel your own.
[Your phone rings. Then Tom's, then Tord's. Every phone in the house all at once.]
[The acid burns your and Tom's skin and makes Tord whoop and holler and run out to meet his new comrades.]
"Well, I wasn't planning on show you guys until it was done – I fully expected none of you to get it, but I knew I wouldn't be able to resist flexing on you."
You and Tord can't suppress your laughter.
"Matt," Tord says, peeling Tom's fingers off the receiver, "Matt, I would die again for you."
"You will." Then Matt's usual, goofy, ditzy laugh. "Aww, I love you too! I found some plant tentacle lesbians – want it?"
You roll your eyes at Tord's spreading wolfish grin. "Hell yeah, brother!"
Another laugh. "Figured."
"I honestly can't tell whether or not you're being ironic now, Matt," Tom says, finally sitting up in his chair.
A pregnant pause.
You look down and play with your hands.
"If you can't tell when I'm being serious –"
"I can't tell, that's what I just said. That's what I'm afraid of."
"If you genuinely can't tell, then by all means just don't anything I say seriously. Not that that's ever stopped you before."
Tom sighs in exasperation. "Matt –"
"Oh, don't give me that "Matt."
"Will you stop being so fucking sensitive for five fucking seconds?" Tom snaps. "Like, can I talk to you like an adult for two seconds? Because – and he hung up again."
Tord is silent, his green knuckles pale and thin on his armrest's leather skin. He looks at you with a pained expression, a puppy yelled at by its master, no comprehension or way to go forward.
"Are mom and dad getting a divorce again?" You ask. "Is it my fault?"
Tom gives a mirthless chuckle. "Looks like it."
"You're the ones who didn't abort me when you had the chance!" You throw back.
"Well I dunno if you've noticed," Tom says, snapping his hand towards Tord, who leans away as though afraid Tom is about to strike him, "but that wouldn't have matter anyway."
[The original version of this story - back when I wrote it all in one day for BaconCola week 2018 - was all this one scene of Edd taking Tord to the beach in a stolen grocery cart.]
Once you've shove him through the door and shot the mailman weakly trying to leave his rotting jawbone into your mailbox, you reach down and run your fingers through his hair.
Careful, or more will come out.
It's a lovely sunrise, the birds singing pleasant chimes, the clouds painted with such a broad golden brush that you can see the strokes along their bellies. You think of waking him, decide against it. Let him get his sleep. Besides, it'll ruin the surprise.
Not that it matters much – the sidewalks have gone to such shit that even your leisurely pace sounds like you've thrown the cart into a tumble dryer, and too soon the sun is up high, microwaving you alive in your T-shirt and swimming trunks.
He throws an arm over his face and groans, earning your hand in his hair again, trying to soothe him. "Almost there, buddy," you say, retracting your hand only to pistol-whip the girl scout who's gotten too close to your legs.
"Edd?" Tord asks, voice still thick with sleep. "Where are we?"
"We're almost there," you reply. He's starting to prop himself up on his elbows, so you reach into your hoodie and grab the plastic baggie that had been lying under your pistol.
"Just tell me what's—" His sentence sputters out as you drop the bag onto his face; you can't see his face as he sits up and pries it open, but you know he's smiling as he wafts in the greasy smell.
"Oh, awesome," Tord practically moans as he shoves a handful of bacon into his mouth, and you roll your eyes.
"Don't splooge everywhere, please," you chide, a tiny smile on your face. "You know I hate cleaning this thing."
"No, I wouldn't," is his mouthful response, " 'cause you don't." The cart is so coated with dried blood it looks more rust than metal.
"Exactly," you reply. "So don't cream yourself and I won't have to start."
"I wouldn't cream myself so easily if you were better at –"
Here you shove his hood over his face. "Go back to sleep."
"Are you going to tell me where we're going?" He asks.
"That'll ruin the surprise."
He raises a jade finger to his empty socket. "Tell me or I'll spray you." Recently Tord has discovered (much to Tom's disgust-cum-rage) that if he jabs into what's left of his caruncula, he can spurt blood like an acid-spitting lizard.
You tap your chest and offer it up for target practice. "Do it pussy." Before he can, however, you smack him upside the head and try to shove him back down into the cart.
"Let me up! Fight me, coward!" He's yelling, but it's so choked with laughter he can't put up much of a resistance.
Suddenly one of his arms snaps at the joint, and Tord's face-plants into the side of the cart, skin open cutting on zip ties. Blood - thick, congealed sludge, like curdled milk or tar – slowly drags down his cheeks. "Ow."
"You alright?"
"Do you have the duct tape?"
You reach into your back pocket and feel around. "Uhhh…" You retrieve the tiny tape dispenser and hold it out sheepishly. "Masking tape."
He sighs, and takes it in his mouth, speaking around it as he pulls out a long stripe. "I guess it'll work."
The birds are chirping, the sun is out, and you're picking up your pace, because with this heat the zombies are gonna start exploding like overfull water balloons and you forgot your umbrella. Tord settles down to repair himself, and you two make only small talk until –
"Do you still dream?"
"Only occasionally," he says, trying to hide the half-full bag of bacon in his hoodie pocket when he thinks you won't notice. You hardly hear his next words as you try loudly not think of what that means. "But I never dreamed very often, anyway. The only thing that's changed is the content."
"To what?" You ask.
"Remember how in Hellraiser, Julia helped Frank regrow all his muscles and skin by bringing him people to kill? Take that, but with us."
You make a little noise of acknowledgement, and then don't say anymore.
Fall
[Matt finds out that Edd/Tom/Tord have become a triad and insists they move in with him and his development project because no one is allowed to have more fun when he's away. They refuse (Tom pointing out that he's invited Matt back countless times), and Matt ALSO finds out they're going through his stuff because Edd lets slip that Tom's been sleeping in Matt's room.]
"Give me one good reason why I should've told you guys any of this stuff"
"Uhh," Tom replies, "because we're your friends?" As though Matt were the biggest idiot on the face of the earth.
Which he's always been — right along with / alongside the rest of you. Collectively you all form the Captain Planet of absolute buffoonery, as all good friendships should.
"That's not a good reason," Matt says matter of factly.
"Matt, do you hear how you sound right now?"
"Yes— a little stuffy, I might say. I think my vocal cords have another roach in them. Just can't seem to get rid of the little buggers."
Tom scowls as you plant your hand in your face.
[Matt just fuckin. Steals his room from the house with a bulldozer and ends up kidnapping Tom]
You should join me, Tord. Matt reaches out his stolen, skeleton arm. Brothers in arms, remember? A large smile, a sing song voice. And I have some tentacle yuri waiting in the car for you~
Tord reaches out, but you grab him by the waist, pulling him tight against you, brittle bones crack. Nuh uh, Tord's not going anywhere until you put the bloody roof back!
What are you, my mother? Tord snaps.
Yes.
Stop flirting, Tom groans, still hanging on by his fingernails to the jagged lip of floor and pipe and carpet.
Well, while you and your new fuck-mommy get things settled, Tord, Matt calls, having to yell over the sounds of his crane whirring and beeping back to life with an insectile buzz, My odder remains open! You know how to find me!
Guys, help — ah, fuck it. Tom lets his outstretched arm fall limo before throwing it over, grabbing onto the carpet and yanking himself up as the third floor of your little house pulls further and further away, blotting out the sun. Screw you assholes! Tom calls, hands cupped around his mouth.
Which of course you both know is code for "come save me."
Don't think I'm not still mad at you! Matt snaps, yanking on stick shifts and cranks as the house starts to move away to the right / side.
The last thing you see of Tom is him rolling his black eyes, arms crossed. When are you not?
And they're gone.
Well, not really, the crane is slow enough that you could have followed it, but you're still tired and Tord's still cold and there are now more zombies than ever called to your yard by the noise, and it will take more time cutting through them to get to Matt then it will be to simply sit down and watch some TV. So you and Tord sit down, his corpse cuddled cool and gross but you're used to / mundanely gross and glossy and waxy against your skin, your mouth in his hair and he in your hoodie, and that's exactly what you do.
[Meanwhile, Tord gets kidnapped by those Game Master guys so Edd calls up Matt like "hey not to interrupt your anime villain bullshit but we gotta go save Tord"]
"No one is beating Tord to death but me— move, move, move! get the fuck out of my way!" Tord has to scream to be heard over the roar of the crowd, squeezing and shoving through the writhing masses like a weasel feeling its way out of a stampede.
Someone looks about to punch Tom in the face, so you offer a comforting hand on their shoulder. "Ive actually already called dibs on killing Tord, but I just let him let him think that." And quickly dance yourself away from their fist, letting them fall into the person behind you with a shout.
You can't help but smile at the thought of a riot breaking out, the kind you always dreamed of starting in the school cafeteria but we're too afraid to actualize? Do they have any kind of contingency plan ? Does it happen all the time? You'd assume so, but far more importantly, does it delay the release of the zombies at all?
Regardless the crowd is emptying a pocket of itself to the two you've left behind, an ameba whose porous skin you and Tom finally manage to slip through and reach the cages. Down below, about a meter or two, is the hapless idiot, standing there with a pipe wrench in quivering hands, back pressed against the dirt wall so they don't collapse onto their buckled knees.
"Who wants to bet they've already pissed themselves?" Tom asks you.
"I'm surprised he didn't make 'em change," the person besides him answers, referring to the thin black leggings the victim is wearing. "People love when the chumps piss themselves in fear."
"How lovely," you mutter, threading your fingers through the gaps in the wire. There's a gate on the opposite wall from which the zombies will enter, but right now you don't see any, not even a green hand grasping through the bars.
The victim whimpers.
(Later, Tord will tell you he waited in the shadows with the other zombies, ignoring the chain collar around his neck to look them right in the eye and lick his hidden knife.)
"This your first pit fight?" The person asks you and Tom.
"First time here period," Tom replies with a big, fake smile.
"Oh, what brings you?" They ask, loud enough for you to finally smell the equally loud stench of alcohol on their breath.
Oh well, at least you've found a friendly drunk.
"Our friend's in there!" You reply.
Their eyes go wide. "That's your friend?" They ask, pointing through a particularly large gap. "You came to watch them get eaten alive?"
To rescue him, you want to say, but honestly it's time to give up the chase. If you wanted to rescue Tord, at least before the match started, there's a million more useful things both you and Tom could be doing right now.
See, it's not idiocy, it's honestly.
"No," Tord says, smile ravenous and real. "We came to watch him do the eating."
And when the bell rings, you watch as Tord waits for the others to pour out, pretending to stumble as he reaches into his boot, pulls out his hidden handgun, and shoots the victim square in the forehead.
That's when the riot breaks loose.
[In the ensuing raid Tord loses his arm and gets SUPER fucking upset, to the point of trying to scuff rug burn onto the bones of the arm Matt gives him.]
What a strange feeling, realizing the thing that inspired this strange fascination with scars - that proof you were never lying - is going to have happened a decade ago rather soon. I was only 15. I still feel only 15, sometimes, when I'm around my father.
This section was cut for being too autobiographical.
A mini-flashback, childhood this time: You two cut your palms and press the wounds together, promising to keep each other's secrets, to always share your bacon and candy and cola, to help each other cheat on tests and video games, and to stay best friends forever.
Matt says, It should be all four of us, burning the world down together
I thought that was what we were doing?
You quirk your brow.
Tord says, Just because we're on rival teams doesn't mean we aren't all playing together.
Yes, Matt adds, nor does it mean we aren't all still friends once it's over. Well articulated, Tord.
Once it's over? You ask. Maybe you mean once we're over. Because I don't see how the worlds gonna come back from this.
Matt takes a look around, seeing the sun just beginning to crest the horizon. A small, inquiring noise. Perhaps, he says finally, turning his chair back around to face you. You never know; that's one of my favorite things about life, you know, not knowing. Adds a little spice, you know? His eyes widen. Okay, so we're clear that you know that I know what I meant when I said —
No, — I mean, yes, I know what you mean. You sigh, stick your hands in your hoodie pockets. So if we never find a cure, what are we gonna do? Keep fighting forever?
Yeah. A little shrug from Tord. It be that way.
Matt nods sagely. It really do.
Okay this section has so many typos I'm not reposting it, so we'll just skip to the part I ripped directly off from Equestria Girls' "Forgotten Friendship" special:
[And then tord explains the memory gun, that he would use it after every embarrassing presentation (hence why edd would keep forgetting tord was in his classes), etc, bc he's super sensitive to embarrassment]
"It made me even lonelier, but I guess I only had myself to blame for that one."
And he slings his arm around your neck and gives you a peck on your cheek — the virus will spread if he were to kiss you on the mouth, so you'll let this be enough.
Eternity with him wrecking havoc is already not living up to all the hype. A bloated, unwanted sequel that's begging to be taken out back and put down.
He puts the comic down in his lap so he can hug you from the side, nuzzling so hard into your shoulder you hear cartilage crack.
"I still don't get how you don't feel that," you say.
"Remember when I shattered my wrist in half?" He says, and you do — he slammed into a wall and the next time he laid his wrist down flat, the bone fragments formed an S with the rest of his arm and hand, and didn't cry at all — "it's like that. Sometimes stuff just hurts so bad it just doesn't even register anymore."
You don't think that's how broken bones work — at least, that's what your vague memories of doctors visits tell you —
"You know bones can die, right?" He says. "So it's like beating a dead horse."
You nod. You don't understand.
"Are you drunk, Matt?" you ask as you hear the distinct slam of a shot glass down onto a granite counter.
A noise like he's recoiling from the taste, then he says, "No, but I'm trying to get there."
"Same," Tom says, hiccuping with another gulp of smirnoff. "Are you done yet?"
"Done with what?"
"With whatever the fuck it is you think you're doing?"
"Building a zombie empire?" Matt asks. "Well, uh, no."
"And when you gonna be done?" you chip in. "It's still your turn to do the dishes."
A heavy sigh, which makes you only knit your brows all the more - who the hell does Matt think he is?
You know what your guardian angel showed you, and you're still waiting on that thank you.
Before Matt can reply, however, Tord grabs the phone out of Tom's hand and asks, "Are you and Paul still having sex?"
You spit up some of your coke. Tord plants his foot on Tom's forehead to keep the phone out of reach.
"Uh...well..." Matt gives a humorless chuckle as you wipe the spillage up on one of Tom's shirts that's been left out on the chairs to dry. "Funny you should ask - I convinced Paul to just give it a try last night, but uh...I'm too cold."
Tord laughs at your thousand yard stare.
"Yeah," Matt continues, "he barely got it in before he turtled up again."
Tord laughs all the harder as Tom relinquishes the phone to slam back the rest of the bottle and you start to massage your temple, focusing not only his face but on a particularly fascinating point on the wall.
"Cock rings were invented for moments like this," Tord says.
"No!" Tom yells, swinging the bottle away so violently that he manages to splash an arc across Tord's jeans and onto the floor. "No they fucking weren't!"
"To keep your erection up?" Matt chimes. "Well, actually -"
"Shut the fuck up -"
"It's not my fault you can't get any because your dick looks like a fucking acorn, first of all," Matt cuts him off, and it feels like he's here with you again, holding up a finger to Tom like he's a disobedient schoolchild being told to wait his turn.
Tom flicks off the phone before he realizes his mistake, says, "Fuck you," but Matt continues unabated.
"Second of all, Tord's right, but Paul was pretty embarrassed, as you might imagine."
"Yeah, I'd be pretty embarrassed too if I were a necrophile," you say.
Matt blows a raspberry. "What's so wrong about necrophilia, anyway? - IN THIS CONTEXT," he yells over your and Tom's agonized cries (and Tord's hoarse, bellowing laugh). "In this context. Like, think about it - why can I donate my organs after my death but not dick?"
That gives all of you pause.
Finally, Tord breaks the silence: "He has a point."
"Yeah!" Matt says, emboldened. "Getting my organs harvested is a lot more invasive and permanent than getting fucked post-mortem. Assuming they don't tear anything."
"Yeah," Tord says, grinning ear to ear at you. "Just rinse that shit out."
"What kind of STDs can you get from corpses," you wonder aloud, but you're ignored.
Instead, Tom asks, "How would you enforce that, though? Are you gonna have a camera man in there with you?"
"Yeah, the judge would really love that," you say. "No, see, it's consensual, we wrote all of it down in this BDSM contract we posted on our kink tumblr."
"No, it's cumblr now," goes Tord.
"Oh god."
"I feel like we'd need to set up some kind of necrophile Bunny Ranch," Matt says. "That's probably the only way to do this safely, if we're just talking about regular corpses."
"But we're talking about zombies like you."
"Like me? Well, not everyone's like me and Tord. You've seen that. What did Pat call them, Russo zombies?"
"Russos and Romeros," you parrot back.
"The issue is, Mat," Tom says, leaning back in his chair, "that sex requires at least three brain cells and you have maybe one tenth of that."
Matt chuckles. "That is true. What was that movie about the girl who falls in love with a zombie?"
"Warm Bodies, I think," you say.
"That was the one where love cured their zombie-ness, right?" Tom asks, arms crossed.
"Yeah," you say, "and you bitched about it for hours."
"Well it's a fucking retarded -"
"REGARDLESS," Matt interrupts. "Us Russos are capable enough, I'd think, but then again I'm not technically sentient and don't have emotions according to Tom, so -"
There's a crash in the distance of Matt's call, muffled by static, and he shouts at someone named Laurel to stop touching that, Yuu, take her to the heat room, before he returns and says, "We've been - well by we I mean Patryck but I've been crossing his name out and putting my own, ssh, don't tell him I told you that - We've been trying to do some more research on their cognitive abilities, and we can say Romeros are officially somewhere between chimpanzees and dogs. We got them to understand pointing... after about fifty tries. He wasn't getting anywhere, so I had to step in." You can't help but note the smile in his voice. "God, Patryck's so arrogant - he complains endlessly about how stupid the Romeros are, but he doesn't get it, you know? Tord, you can talk to them easily, can't you?"
Tord nods, then remembers himself and says yes.
"Exactly! It's not that hard. Like we wouldn't call someone who only speaks one language stupid just because they don't understand Greek or whatever." A dramatic sigh. "Alas."
With the shock value of Matt's sex life draining away, the conversation no longer interests you, so you turn on the TV and turn your focus to it, trying to ignore how Tord sits down next to you and places his hand on your upper thigh.
For a split second, his slender fingers look like writhing earthworms, brown and ringed and covered in dirt, rising and falling of their own accord, the way you mistake the statuesque form of a loved one for breath at a wake.
Tord holds the phone to his ear now, taking it off speaker, and after a few minutes of banter you aren't paying attention to he gets up and leaves the room, his voice quiet, but you strain, and as he passes into the kitchen you swear you hear, "So what have you been eating lately?"
I fucked up writing the frame story so badly it still haunts me two years later. That's not an exaggeration at all.
But here's a good bit, I think. There was supposed to be more, a whole new mini-arc, but we can't always get the things we want, can we?
Tord shouts annoyance as you send the cart rumbling down the long trail of rocks and shells, quickly turning gleeful as it overturns and he tumbles head over heels into the cold, sparkling water.
He thrashes and rubs his taped face with wet hands, peeling lot of it off as you sit down, cooler in tow, feeling the tide drag the ground underneath you away.
"What was that for?" Tord asks, but he doesn't even try to fake anger.
You shrug, your own smile tugging on your lips. "I just wanted to go to the beach." You make the cooler a wall between you two, flipping open the lid. "Want one?"
Tord's face drops into disappointment. "There's no ice in here."
"Yeah, I know." You crack one open at arm's length, feeding the sea foam.
Tord lies flat on his back; you see the flesh starting to pull away from the bone, hanging off his frame like a once-tight shirt after you've started loosing weight. You're gonna need to raid the office supply store again and pick up some staples. Matt would probably know how to pull the skin back and sew it together so subtly you wouldn't know (so long as he kept his hood up) – but who knows what Matt is doing nowadays. Edd wouldn't be surprised if he accidentally bit off his lips like so many of the other zombies, their preservation instincts sapped out alongside their pain, and killed himself for the shame of wrecking his own face.
Oh well. You've already grieved for Matt. You keep your photos of him in a box and burned a drawing you'd intended but never felt was good enough to give him, because you wanted some ashes and couldn't bring yourself to destroy any of his stuff. Still can't. Not yet.
Tord is a walking urn of his own ashes, one you have to keep repairing because the cat keeps knocking it off the mantle. A necklace with a locket of your dead lover's hair and a cheap Chinese chain.
"I've already grieved for you," You've told him once before, only half-joking. His leg had fallen off again; he'd asked if you and Tom were going to show him the rabbits once you finally ran out of duct tape. "So I can go as long as you," you'd added as you cut another stripe of gray with your teeth. "Longer, in fact. But we both knew that already."
Winter
[Tom, Edd, and Matt are reduced to post-apoc scavenger lifestyle, with their house outfitting in lord knows what kind of weapons]
[People are using burning barrels and shit to lure zombies into traps, Tord has to be kept on a leash - or, if his leg is already gone, kept to a shopping cart / in the Bathmobile]
[Patryck teams up with Bing to develop clone brain harvesting, Tord starts hanging out at FG more and more, he and patryck and matt get into a lot of fights about moving there]
[[some shit advertising Paultryck's brain pie shop] ….located at Fiddler's Green, one mile left of the Whataburger!"]
The tv turns back to its pointless news show.
You stand there for a moment, unsure how to process the information. So instead you fold your arms and quirk a brow towards Tord. "So much for being lesbian farmers, huh?"
Tord looks back at you and shrugs. "I guess it makes sense. Paul and Matt are – were? – kinda together."
Tom's face forms a harsh rictus as he folds his own arms together. "Yeah," is all he says, chewing his words too soon.
"Where are they getting the brains from, though?" You ask.
Tord pulls out his phone and starts punching in numbers, but you can't help but notice the way Tom's fingers are digging into the fabric of his bloodstained sweatshirt. You offer a hand hovering over his shoulders; he shoulders you away harshly.
"Pat? Pat?" Tord asks. "What's going on?"
"I'm on break, what's up?" Patryck answers, sounding just a little bit winded. In the background you can hear the dull roar of a crowd muffled by wall, or at least so you imagine, because that's a lot of information to gather from just a few seconds of a phone call.
"We just saw you on TV!" Tord asks, yelling to make sure he's heard.
"Oh yeah!" Patryck laughs. "Matt moves fast, doesn't he?"
"You can say that again," you chuckle, shooting a glance towards your friend. "Right, Tom?" An invitation to Laugh, you dumb asshole.
"So much for being sick of city life, eh?" Tom asks instead, voice tight. Grouchy.
"Funny thing about that," Pat says, "I'd gotten back in touch with Bing – you might know his movie, The Big Called Monster?"
"Oh, I love that movie!" You blurt out.
"Get well soon. But anyway, I was catching up with him when he mentioned that he'd been keeping the zombie infestation around his house under control by cloning Larry and throwing him out there every time they got too overwhelming for his crowd control. And you know me, bright ideas just pop into my head constantly, can't ever turn it off."
"So you had Bing whip you up a little priest?" You ask.
"Yeah, exactly!"
Tom is still scowling, has that I'd hate to rain on your parade look on his face that shows he's secretly not hating it at all. "So what happened to not killing people?"
"Glass houses, Witness," Tord quips. "Glass houses."
"Oh don't give me that," Patryck adds, the eye roll dripping from his tone. "First of all, they're clones, they don't have rights."
You and Tord have to nod in agreement.
"Second," Patryck continues, "we clone the brain and body separately – saves resources, and sidesteps the ethical issue of how many times it's humane to beat someone's face in with a shovel so they'll stop screaming."
"And they can't tell any difference?" Tord asks.
"The Romeros? No, not at all. The Russos? They can, but most don't actually want to go to the bother to hunting and killing real live people."
"So humanity's the real monster?" You ask, your mind flashing back to the Gamelands, the pit, the zombie trading cards – consumerism, you realize with a light urge to laugh, always finds a way.
You can feel the sage nod from the other end of the line. "As per usual."
"He's lucky he's undead," Patryck says as he places a piping peach cobbler down in front of you, the curls of smoke making your mouth water. "It saved his life, funnily enough / ironically."
"How do you mean? - This looks really good by the way." You watch as Pat sets down a pie in front of Tom, whose face doesn't soften even a bit as he takes in the scent of his favorite flavor of dessert.
"Thank you. Here, hold this, baby boy," he says, handing Tord a chalice full of blood red liquid as he sets his oven mitts down and turns back to his cutting board.
Baby boy? You're not sure how much and exactly what you should make of that.
"Oh yes," Patryck says with a heavy sigh, beginning to rapidly cut a pair of carrots, knuckles briefly white grip. "As of late your pal Matt had been getting on my every last nerve. So I had planned to either poison his food or make Paul break up with him, which proved more effective long term."
How boring life would be, Matt had told you once, if we didn't fall at least a little bit in love with all our friends.
At the time you had brushed him, quirked a quizzical brow — in love with so many people at once (or no one, at least who'd return it, as you had jokingly told him at the time), well that sounded like a right pain in the ass.
You get it now. He's gone and like the idiot you are, you finally get it now.
In the later winter, when Tord's English starts to slip more noticeably - when his usual quiet nature has finally carried more than it can bear - you start having nightmares again for the first time since you were a child.
In your dreams, you lead him out of the cave, all the while feeling his flesh turn to sand in your grasp and give way, knowing somehow so certainly that if you look back you'll –
You all know this story already.
You awake in adrenaline and annoyance, cuddling him close, your lips in his dirty, thinning hair until you finally fall asleep again. Or until Tom barges into your room, hungover and trying to drink his way through it, demanding breakfast. Whichever comes first.
[It turns out that they've just quarantined England and no one outside really cares.]
Spring
[Like after the zomb mech falls tom is like "you guys just go back home. I'll handle this."]
You sure? You ask, your voice strained by a hoarse cough.
A curt nod. Just pick up some more milk and smirnoff on the way home.
You look down at Tord, an indecipherable look on his face. You grab his good hand, pulling him onto his feet, but he wobbles, so you hold him to you, arm to shoulder, hip to hip. Will do.
And Tom begins to walk off towards the screeching, steaming mass, motioning to cock his gun - before realizing he's out of bullets, scurrying back to you for more, and then rushing towards the mass, his causal step too deliberate to fool.
You don't watch him go.
[Tom heart defibs Matt and cuts his head off school days style. They keep it in a jar. Like literally a pickle jar.]
"And a part of me I wanted to say the line — yknow, "If you hurt yourself, you hurt me too" – be a total asshole, to try and make it better. But I couldn't. You know how it is with me— it's so hard to make anything come out. And I could tell he was looking at me to say the right thing, comfort him, which made it even harder to speak. So I just hugged him and kissed him on the cheek, because there wasn't anyone else there to see, and I hit the button. And he let me. And then I walked over, and picked up the gun, and shot him. I knew you guys wouldn't have done it anyway."
"I think I flew a little off the handle, cuz I shocked him a couple of times – nearly stomped the things to bit." A humorless laugh, a hand on the back of his neck. "Oh well. Too late now, I guess."
I brought Matt home! Fucking finally.
Why is he in a pickle jar?
Well I didn't want to just leave him there to rot.
What about the rest of hi-?
Oh I had to get rid of all that so he wouldn't attack us.
Tom puts Matt on a leash and walks him around the yard like a dog
So maybe at some point edd calls home and tom mentions taking matt on a walk
Which can be complicated by having Tom discuss getting a pet to replace matt (see fusselman, why do I think My Dad Is Dead is a good thing to name my son?)
Tom runs a hand over his unshaven cheek. I guess you could say it was pretty selfish of me but...a half-smile tugs on his lips. We been knew.
[Tord gets scared and cowers lowkey behind Edd, starts crying "please don't get rid of me" in Norwegian, not that Edd knows.]
[And that's the end of my notes.]
Why does my other file have an extra 4,000 words of this trash? Am I gonna actually make myself read this? It probably would be more beneficial to just rewrite this whole stupid thing from scratch.
I didn't truly realize how shitty of a writer I was until I wrote the ending of the frame story – Edd trying to express how Tord has become a part of him, how empty his world will be when Tord is too far gone to justify keeping alive any more, the delineation between physically dying of a broken heart and living as a shadow of yourself.
I sobbed writing it and the person I wrote it for didn't feel a single thing.
I read it the next morning and saw the cringey, maudlin shit he didn't have the heart to call out.
But the birds are chirping, the water is whispering quietly, echoing in the caves behind you and drowning out the white noise of the zombies beyond your little sanctuary. The tides are rolling up to your knees, so you reach out and squeeze his hand, wiping away with your other the unshed tears.
"Do you wanna hunt some sharks later?" You draw your hand away from your face and start hurriedly scribbling your plans in the sand. "I was thinking we could use you as bait, and I'll use Tom's harpoon to –"
In this new version, Tord shakes his head.
"No?" You ask.
He shakes again.
"Well…" Your eyes fall to your feet, watching the sea casually wash your plans away. "Do you want a snack, then?"
Tord nods. He's watching his own stick figures vanish, too.
In the new version, Edd has a gun in his trunk, and a heart defibrillator, in case he needs it.
In this version, when Edd comes back with the gun and the defibrillator box and a bag of cheese-its he throws over Tord's head to distract him, it fails, and Tord turns around, and instead of pain and pity and sadness swirling in that one remaining silver eyes, you see a question you don't want to name.
Are you —