Note: maybe call this my attempt at a short story? I'm not sure.

~

The night i picked up thai food and walked to your place i felt like i had been raised from the dead. I imagined a wizard digging up my grave and sending lightning pumping through my heart and brain just so i could finish what i started before the un-life. I was just getting over what you were still sick with and i had said i wanted to see you, but what if i had actually died in that feverish haze and been brought back? I wouldn’t have known either way, so i just texted you.

want anything?

nah i’m saving money

ok

In my headcanon you were my corpse bride and we were destined to live another life together, except this time everything would be as perfect as it could possibly be for zombies. Or maybe you were the wizard, and you couldn’t live without me so you studied for years and scoured the earth for the materials to bring me back from the dead. I couldn’t decide if i was excited or sad, so I just laid in bed and tried to keep breathing.

Ten minutes later i walked out the door. I was too scared to wear anything but that bright orange hoodie, so i had on that and a face mask. The old brown bricks in the road had been worn smooth from all the years of use, and now they were speckled with the late autumn light that filtered through the bare trees. I imagined how nice it would feel to lay down right here and rest my cheek against the cool shaded ground. If a car rolled over me, would my skull pop like a pumpkin? That’s how it always looks in zombie movies.

Picking up the food was the easy part. It only took a few minutes for me to get my carton of basil fried rice and get the hell out of there.

While i walked to your place i looked at the sky. There were lots of nice sunsets in that part of the world, and that evening there were birds and squirrels in the trees watching with me as the sun sank lower and lower behind the horizon. I knew the way to yours like a dog knows the way back home, i just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

At the end of the street and five steps down was your place. They really call anything a studio apartment in college towns. This one was situated in the basement of what clearly used to be a normal house, now split into as many units as was legal. The dusty stairs were crowded with dead leaves and spiders and i always thought that the single bare light above the door would go out any second.

Maybe that basement was part of the reason you were depressed, but you made the best of it as much as you made the best of the rest of your life. You put a lot of effort into distracting yourself and cheering yourself up. Sometimes it came off to me as a little too silly when you made sound effects or narrated what you were doing. I had called you immature for it before and said that was the reason we wouldn’t work out. Well i’m the one with the wizard headcanon now so maybe i was projecting.

You hugged me when i came in, and i pretended that you were still my girlfriend. We talked and laughed, and i wanted to go to bed with you. I ate my food, then told you i couldn’t finish it and put the leftovers in your fridge. You can have it later, i said, acting like i was doing you a favor, but really I wanted you to save me and didn’t know how to ask.

When i got home i thought i was going to cry, but i just couldn’t. Instead i crawled back into the broken earth and waited to be summoned again.