Chapter 6: Multiplayer

6 months ago

The killer lesbian sat on a stone bench outside the shooting range reading from a thick, dog-eared book of the poetry of Dylan Thomas. She was petite in a long, flouncy skirt and a black and orange striped sweater. Over that, a black t-shirt that carried the slogan ZOMBIES LIKE GIRLS WITH BRAINS. Three stick-figure zombies with x's over their eyes chased a stick-figure girl with a triangular skirt and pigtails.
I couldn't help but smile.
She looked up at me, shaded her eyes from the February sun and smiled. “Are you in advanced marksmanship?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. What are you reading?”
“Oh, Dylan Thomas. Poetry. I'm an English major. Would you like fries with that? Sorry, force of habit.
I laughed. “Dylan Thomas. Cool.” I dug deep. “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper?”
“Close, but that's T.S. Eliot. Dylan Thomas is “Do not go gentle into that good night.”
I wondered if this is how nerds flirted. Or, at least how nerds flirted with gay girls.
“Oh, right.” I checked my watch and then sat down next to her. “I'm Dave.”
“Nice to meet you. I'm the killer lesbo.”
“Uh...” I didn't know what to say.
She left me hanging for a second and laughed, gesturing to where the ROTC students were sitting. “I heard the A-team over there whispering, but they only got it half right. I'm not actually a lesbian, but I am killer.”
“Have you been...practicing that line?”
“Honestly?”
“No, by all means, lie to me.”
A smile lit her face. “Yes, I have been practicing that line in my head. My name is Elise and I am a great, big nerd.”
I nodded my head. “When nerd boys ask nerd girls out, what kind of things do they suggest they do?”
“Coffee.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah, caffeine is the social lubricant of our generation.”
“So, do you want to get a cup of coffee some time?”
“Yes, I would. You know where they have great coffee?”
“Where?”
“My dorm room. I go there all the time.”
“Really, I've never been there. I'd love to check it out sometime.”
She scrawled her number on her bookmark and gave it to me. “I'm done with classes by seven, if you want to hang out.”
“Uh, yeah.” Nerds flirting, remember.
Behind us, our instructor unlocked the shooting range, propping the door open with a cement block.
Elise hopped up from the bench, stuffing her book into her backpack. “Let's go shoot some shit,” she said.
I watched her for the whole class. I watched her because she was beautiful and because she bit her bottom lip when she shot and because she never, ever missed. I watched her because I could not take my eyes off of her. She caught me looking at her, grinned, and stuck her tongue out at me and twisted her face in an insane grimace.
I looked away, my face flushing.

“Dude, what's wrong with you?” Later, Ben lounged in my apartment in a ratty pair of jeans and a slightly rattier t-shirt. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD glowed black and white from my grandmother's television. Elise wouldn't be out of class for several more hours and I had time to kill.
“What do you mean?” I knew exactly what he meant. I had been slowly trying to reveal my obsession with him, hoping that he would pick up on my subtle clues. “All I asked was if you thought this could really happen.”
“Night of the Living Dead?”
“Yeah, so?”
“We've watched Night of the Living Dead, Evil Dead one and two, Resident Evil, Dawn of the Dead, original and remake, Day of the Dead and some zombie shit that wasn't even in English.”
“So?”
“So, what the fuck? You've dropped all your classes. You're taking all this ROTC shit. What are you going to enlist?”
“No, I just...”
“Just what?”
“I want to be ready.”
“Ready for what?”
On television, zombies burst through the door into the house. We both stood and watched it for a second.
He looked at me. “That...isn't...real.”
I stared at my feet. I could still recover this. I could still explain, make my case. I realized that I could not do this alone. I needed help. I needed Ben's help. “Not yet.”
Ben grabbed his jacket. “Get some medication man, okay? You need professional help. Seriously.”
He left.
I stood there for a long time after he left, staring at the floor. The movie went off.

“You okay?” Elise waved her hand in front of my face.
“I'm sorry,” I said. I took a sip of my coffee. “Stupid stuff.” Elise's dorm room had a fold-out sofa instead of a bed and the two of us sat on the sofa, facing each other. Her room was decorated in warm, earth tones and fabric hung from the walls giving the place a warm, comfortable feeling rather than the usual solitary confinement cinder block chill of a dorm room. Elise had her own cappuccino machine and the sweet smell of the coffee wrapped around me. I don't think I've been so comfortable before.
I brushed a small lock of hair out of her face, gently touching the side of her cheek. I don't know why I did this, I had never done it before and to the best of my knowledge only ever saw it done in movies. A small, pale scar ran in a straight line from the corner of her mouth almost to her ear. I hadn't noticed it before as it was almost invisible against the pale of her cheek, but I realized that she'd kept her hair covering it when she could.
“Why did you do that?” She yanked the lock of hair back into place.
Why had I done that? “Because...” Why had I done that? Why had I done that? “I'm sorry, I just wanted to touch you.”
I brushed the hair out of her face again. She grabbed my hand, but gently. I rubbed the smooth line of her cheek with the tips of my fingers. She let me. Her scar didn't even register. “I didn't even see it. It's nothing. Less than nothing.”
“You're just saying that to get into my pants.”
I kissed her cheek. “How am I doing?”
She fought a smile.
I noticed that she had a little tattoo. It read Petite Mort. “What does that mean?”
Embarrassed, she covered it with the long sleeve of her sweater. “I don't want you to get the wrong idea about me.”
“You aren't a...serial killer are you?”
She smiled. “No.” She pulled the sleeve back down. “Petite mort,” she said with an inflection that told me it was French. “French, right? Its another way to mean, like an orgasm, but that fall, like a little bit of death. Like dying for just a second.”
“Oh.”
“Dave, I really like you.”
“I like you, too.”
“I'm not like this usually. I'm really, occasionally shy, but I, um, I really want to have sex with you, but I need to tell you something, to tell somebody, and I just need you to listen, you don't have to believe me, but just don't laugh, or, you know, I'm not going to have sex with you.” She took a deep breath.
I held mine.
“I think, no, I know that at some point in the immediate future that something really bad is going to happen. I think it is going to involve dead people. I can't explain it really, but I think dead people aren't going to stay dead. I think it is going to be horrible. Like a fucking horror movie. I think that dead people are going to kill us.”
“Wait,” I said. “Let me get this straight. You...want to have sex with me?”
“You are such a doofuss,” she said and kissed me, hard, seizing my hair with her hands. Elise kissed with her entire body, her hip bones grinding against me. With her free hand, she grabbed at her long skirt, pulling it up, baring her legs. I grabbed at the skirt, pulled it from her hand and yanked it up above her waist. Her hand suddenly free, she grabbed at the front of my jeans, unbuttoning me. She managed my boxers down with one hand, her other hand never leaving the hair at the back of my head. I pulled her panties down and eased myself down on top of her, inside of her. She was hotter than lava. Her body rocked and I had to hurry to keep up with her. “Don't stop,” she said, and that was the hottest thing I'd ever heard a woman say and I was sure that it was the end for me, but the pain, the amazing pain, that she was causing me by pulling on my hair held me back better than thinking about baseball. Finally, she shivered, couldn't stop shivering and I went, not able to hold back a single second longer.
I felt like I was dying for a second.

I woke up in the middle of the night and for a minute did not know where I was. I'd fallen asleep in Elise's bed. Embarrassed, I sat up, covering my naked body with the comforter from her bed. At the foot of the bed, I saw Elise curled over on herself watching the news on a little TV. The light made the whole room electric blue.
She turned when she heard me stir, and I could see that she was still naked. The flickering light outlined the small curve of her breasts and her belly.
I smiled before I realized that she was shaking.
“Are you okay?”
“That boy, the boy who froze a few months ago?”
I'd only just woke up and I was still a little fuzzy. Frozen boy? I vaguely remembered something about that. “Yeah, the kid who died.”
Elise shook her head, eyes slick with frightened tears. “He isn't dead anymore.”