Zombie

Japanese Title: ゾンビ (Zombie)
Author: Murakami Haruki (村上春樹)
Taken From: TV ピープル (TV People, 1993)

A man and a woman were walking down a road next to a graveyard. It was midnight and even foggy. They didn’t particularly want to be walking in such a place in the middle of the night, but due to various circumstances they had to pass by that way. They held each others’ hands tightly and walked at a quick pace.

“It’s almost like a Michael Jackson music video,” the girl said.

“Yeah, the gravestones are moving,” the boy said.

Just then, they heard a groan, giiiiii, that sounded like something heavy moving somewhere. The two stopped walking and, without thinking, turned to look at each other.

The boy laughed. “It’s okay. There’s no reason to get so nervous. Some tree branches were scraping against each other. It was the wind or something.”

But the wind wasn’t blowing. The girl gulped and looked around the area. She felt really bad. She had a premonition that something terrible was about to happen.

It was a zombie.

But they couldn’t see anything. There wasn’t any indication that the dead had risen. The two started walking again. The girl sensed the boy’s face growing strangely rigid.

“Why do you have such a sloppy way of walking?” he asked abruptly.

“Me?” the girl asked, surprised. “Do I really walk in such a sloppy way?”

“It’s terrible,” the boy said.

“Really?”

“You’re bowlegged.”

The girl bit her lip. She probably was a little bowlegged. The bottoms of her shoes tended to wear down a little bit more on the outside, but it wasn’t bad enough for anyone to come right out and say so to her deliberately.

But she didn’t say anything. She loved the boy, and the boy even loved her. The two were planning on getting married next month. She didn’t want to get into a stupid fight. I’m probably a bit bowlegged, she thought. Isn’t that okay?

“This is the first time I’ve dated a bowlegged woman.”

“Really?” the girl said with a stiff smile on her face. Was he drunk? No, he can’t have had anything to drink today, she thought.

“And then there are the three moles inside your ear,” the boy said.

“Oh really?” the girl said. “Which ear?”

“The right one. Right inside your right ear, there are three moles. They’re really ugly.”

“Do you hate moles?”

“I hate ugly moles. What planet would you have to come from to like something like that?”

She bit her lip much, much harder.

“And then there’s your body odor,” the boy continued. “It’s been bothering me for awhile. If I had met you for the first time in summer, I wouldn’t have dated someone like you.”

The girl sighed and withdrew her hand from the boy’s.

“Hey, hold on a second. Do you have to say it to me like that? That’s really terrible. It’s that what you’ve been thinking all this time?”

“The collar of your blouse is dirty. The one you’re wearing today, right now. Why are you so filthy? Why can’t you do even one thing right?”

The girl was silent. She was so angry that her mouth wouldn’t work.

“You know, I have a whole ton of things I want to say to you. Your bowlegs, your stink, your dirty collar, the moles in your ear, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. That’s right, why are you wearing earrings that look so bad on you? You look just like a prostitute. No, a prostitute would be much classier. If you’re going to wear something like that, why don’t you just put a ring through your nose? It would go perfectly with your double chin. Right, your double chin made me remember – your mother is a real pig. She’s a real oinking pig. That’s what you’re going to look like after twenty years. You’re so greedy, just like your mom. You’re a pig. You really eat shit up. Your dad is terrible too. He can barely write kanji, you know? He recently wrote a letter to my parents, right, and everyone laughed at it. They were saying how it was like he was almost illiterate. Did that asshole not even graduate from elementary school? Your house sucks. It’s a cultural slum. It would be better if someone threw oil on it and set it on fire. All the pig fat would sizzle while it burned, you bet.”

“Hey, if you don’t like me that much, why are you marrying me?”

The boy took no notice of her. “You’re a pig,” he said. “And then your thing. It’s really terrible down there. I just give up and do you, but your thing is like a cheap rubber band that’s already been stretched out too much. If I had your thing, I would die. If I were a girl, and something like that was stuck on me, I would die of shame. It wouldn’t even matter how I died. I would just die as quickly as I could. Living would be too embarrassing.”

The girl stood there in a daze. “How could you….”

Suddenly, the boy clutched his head. His face contorted painfully, and he sunk to the ground. He scratched at his temples with his fingernails. “It hurts!” he said. “My head feels like it’s tearing apart. I can’t stand it. It’s too much!”

“Are you okay?” the girl spoke up.

“I’m not okay. I can’t bear it. My skin feels like it’s burning up into pieces.”

The girl touched the boy’s face with her hand. It was feverish, as if it were burning. The girl tried to stroke it gently, but the skin slipped off in a film. As it peeled away, slimy red flesh appeared. She gasped and jumped back.

The boy stood up and cackled. He peeled off his skin rapidly with his own hands. His eyeballs plopped out of his head and dangled down. His nose became nothing more than two black holes. His lips disappeared, and his teeth stuck out. Those teeth grinned at her.

“The reason I was with you before was to eat your piggy meat. Do you think there would have been any other reason for me to date someone like you? But you were too stupid to get it. Are you an idiot? Are you an idiot? Are you an idiot? Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh…”

And then that lump of exposed flesh came chasing after her. She broke into a run. But she couldn’t escape from the shambling mass of meat behind her. At the edge of the graveyard a slimy hand clutched her collar. She screamed and screamed.

…..

The boy held the girl’s body.

Her throat was dry. The boy looked at her, grinning.

“What’s the matter? Did you have a bad dream?”

The girl roused herself and looked around her. The two were sleeping on a bed in a hotel by a lake. She shook her head.

“Did I yell?”

“A whole lot,” he said, laughing. “Your scream was really loud. I bet everyone in the hotel heard it. It hope no one thinks there was a murder.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay, don’t worry about it,” the boy said. “You had a bad dream?”

“You can’t even imagine what a bad dream it was.”

“Would you tell me about it?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

“It would be better if you talked about it. If you tell someone, then all the bad vibrations will disappear.”

“That’s all right. I don’t want to talk about it now.”

The two were silent for a moment. She hugged the boy’s naked chest. She could hear frogs croaking in the distance. The boy’s heartbeat thudded solidly.

“Hey,” the girl said, remembering. “Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Are there any moles in my ears?”

“Moles?” the boy asked. “Are you talking about the three ugly ones in your right ear?”

She shut her eyes. It wasn’t over….

~ by Kathryn on February 22, 2010.