There’s fear churning in Gloria’s belly as she makes her morning coffee. And it’s not because there’s a zombie banging a shovel against her kitchen window.
That’s just Frank, transplanting the tomatoes now that the weather’s dried up a bit. The bed’s in close to the house to get the reflected heat from the southern exposure. That plus some channelled runoff from the eves makes that stretch of yard a little hotbed of tomato production in the summer.
No, her churning stomach isn’t because Frank’s a zombie. He’s been one ever since they first met 6 weeks ago when he came back to “life” in her neuropathology lab bewildered and flailing. When their eyes locked, it took her breath away. That is if she’d had any left after the cranium she was about to saw into moved with a jolt as he sat up. She’s since stitched up the flap of muscle and skin she’d already peeled back from his forehead before she picked up the saw. The stitches are a neat little row but the muscles never knit again. So you have to watch for any surprise he might feel in the shape of his mouth. He’ll never raise his eyebrows again.
No, the dis-ease she feels isn’t about the zombie-ism. Humans are very adaptable creatures, it’s amazing what can be assimilated to “normal” given enough time. She’s scared because she’s falling in love, seriously in love. And she doesn’t know what to do about that.
There are complications to dating a zombie. Sure, she’s told her friends and family about Frank, but she hasn’t exactly told them about Frank. The idea of meeting the parents just got a whole lot more stressful. But what really scares her is surprisingly mundane… can she trust him. Sure sometimes when they’re making love he tries to bite her a little too enthusiastically, but she’s learning to navigate that. It’s not protecting her brain she’s worried about. It’s protecting her heart.
Can she count on him? Will he be there for her? How do you build a life with someone who isn’t exactly alive?
Read the next instalment.
Valerie Roney 
so there it is, the start of a zombie romance. I really have no clue what I’m going to write tomorrow, so really looking forward to some feedback and goofy ideas here.
What do you think this love affair would look like from the zombie’s point of view? What issues is he wrestling with? does he thing about anything other than brains (and maybe boobs)?
What are the logistics of zombiehood. How’d does one get zombified, how contageous is it, how much of who you are is lost to your new zombie nature.
announcer’s voice: “All these questions and more on the next installment of Love of the Living Dead…”
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I read this to the girls at Steeps. They giggled and said that they would like to date a zombie.
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I think that the zombie’s point of view is he gets a second chance to live, love, find out what’s important to him, live life without regrets make his life count for something, small or large. He’s got a second chance to find out what it means to really have a relationship with someone. I hope he takes advantage of this opportunity.
He’ll face many challenges, his predilection for brains being only one. He’ll have to face bigotry from people who won’t take the time to get to know him, and from people who feel threatened or fearful. He has to face how he’s going to be within an environment of the living, where society values beauty and youth.
As to how he became a Zombie: maybe he was a genetic experiment. A scientist may have thought “what would happen if I injected living stem cells into a freshly dead person?” Or maybe he was a victim of a voodoo curse just as the earthquake in Haiti hit. And the woman who is falling in love was about to do an autopsy on him, which was sort of like a macabre sleeping beauty thing that wakened him.
Zombie love, hopefully isn’t tainted by past experience – innocent but adult at the same time. Or maybe he does retain his memory and he prefers to actually learn his lesson and tries to put into play all those relationship revelations. But he could possibly do it in such a way that it is humorous and quirky, because he may take things too literally or too much to heart.
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