Zombie Ahoy.

Zombie Ahoy.

He could feel the bulky end of the silencer pressed into his kidney area as he walked down the aisle. ‘They missed the A out of the ‘best man’s’ name,’ he thought. He had no doubt that Giovani accompanying him would not hesitate to shoot in spite of the potential number of witnesses present. They wouldn’t see a thing, Lorenzo would see to that.

It wasn’t that his bride-to-be wasn’t beautiful, she was gorgeous, but she came with ‘fish-hooks’ as well as access to millions, maybe even billions. But, what price freedom? Aurora, his intended, had set her sights upon him and Lorenzo had never been known to deny her anything that was within his capacity to fulfil even though she was a zombie.

He used to think of zombies as shuffling emotionless soulless creatures, but his opinion had to be revised with Aurora. Inexplicably, she had died, but Lorenzo forced an old voodoo practitioner to resurrect her. It had cost two fingers and a toe 'generously' donated by three of his bodyguards to enable her to rise from the dead, and now she wanted Michael and Lorenzo made sure she had him.

In spite of the apocalyptic state of the world falling into ruin with a sudden increase in world temperature by 10 degrees in one year, Lorenzo still believed in maintaining the old values. The broken-down church aisle was pot-holed by the tiles having been uplifted to build sanctuaries from the heat, but it mattered not for Lorenzo. A marriage needed to be ordained in a church whatever its condition, to be truly sanctified.

Aurora had met Michael before she had ‘passed over’ at a ball organised by the very best of two Mafia factions that had shelved their armaments and come together for the sake of good business. Michael, having lived a very sheltered life, was totally unaware of the dangerous waters he danced in and had enchanted Aurora with his handsomeness, grace and humour. She fell instantly in love with him, but was dead by the end of the celebrations that amalgamated the two criminal organisations.

Lorenzo, being intensely religious, had fallen upon his knees and prayed to his God to rectify this mistake of his, and the word ‘voodoo’ came into his head. He thanked God and had a practitioner of that art brought to him and offered him two choices. Ten million dollars, or the voodoo man's head on a platter.

This did not faze the voodoo practitioner one whit, he had had threats like this before and obviously had retained his head. He made sure that there was plenty of ‘hoopla’ to accompany the resurrection and drove off in the donated car loaded with 10 million dollars of washed bills.

But there was a price to pay for the resurrectee, a permanent extremely intense smell of putrefaction which would never leave the recipient for the denial of how a life should end. Even Lorenzo couldn’t maintain a face of calm in her presence, but Michael would have to learn to live with the gaseous exudation or he would be minus his family jewels, as it was indicated to him.

The gun that pressed into his side felt almost comforting as he contemplated the life that was ahead of him. Aurora was completely unaware of the aroma she gave off to her own nose, and it was forbidden for others to acquaint her with this impediment.

Michael had finally almost come to grips with the future sequestered life that lay ahead of him and consoled himself that he was sure he would come to be able to ignore the ever-present stinking miasma that would pervade a lot of their future home.

Although Lorenzo had loved his daughter to distraction, the price now of close association was too much to be paid, so she and Michael were domiciled, if not in bliss, in a comfortable penthouse with servants that had had their olfactory nerves removed, a service offered to Michael, but to date, refused. Instead, he was under the care of a master yogi teacher that was enabling him to hold his breath for up to eight minutes a breath. Unfortunately, sexual congress reduced this ability appreciably to where he had to employ the English method of their sexual encounters of the ‘Bam, Bam, Thank You, Mam’ style favoured by them.

The world was rapidly coming to an end, but not fast enough for Michael. His absurdly beautiful wife adored him and accommodated his ‘English Style’ by always coming to bed well prepared by devices purchased from the Mafia sex shops. Having come to the marriage untouched, she had nothing to compare her encounters with and didn’t particularly think it strange as to the instructions Michael had written out for her.

She loved her conversations with Michael on the intercom and because of the love she felt for him, didn’t question it. She preferred it to the monologues she delivered to a silent husband for up to 10 minutes at a time now, until he dashed out of the room.

Uncharacteristic of all the zombie tales Michael had heard, Aurora remained beautiful but he aged. He started to look like the envisioned zombies of his former understanding. From desperation, he kept up with the breathing exercises and if the rest of his body had kept up with his lungs he would have maintained his beautiful countenance and grace, but it didn’t. Aurora had taken to their love-making with an enthusiasm that was quite usual for Continental dwellers. She would always come to Michael after the sun went down with a red face and panting to get the ‘finishing touch’ from her husband. She saw nothing unusual in the arrangement and acceded to Michael’s stipulation to keep their marriage fresh by sleeping in separate rooms and beds.

Enormous television screens were put throughout the house so that they could maintain communication and for Michael to know where she was at all times. But now he knew if their situation was to endure he would have to have the olfactory operation, but a different solution was in the offing.

Lorenzo begged his daughter to let him have Michael for a period for something only he could do. As Aurora was almost as devoted to her father as much as she was to Michael, she allowed her father to have his wish.

Lorenzo had seen the decay happening to Michael and wanted to rectify it. Although the world was falling to bits around them, experts existed and brought Michael back to health and fitness again similar to when he first married Aurora, and then Lorenzo killed him.

For another 10 million dollars, Michael was resurrected and he and Aurora lived happily ever after. Well, until the world about them finally burned itself into a cinder.