Zombie Cha-Cha

My name is Germain Simmons, and I am a zombie. You’d never know, though; my hair never dried up or fell out, and has still maintained its luster and curls the shade of coal despite my death. My skin hasn’t fallen away or rotted either, though I am a few shades lighter than the sun-kissed bronze I once was, I am now the color of cream, though not ashen. My biggest fear at becoming a zombie was losing my eyes. Madam Zumir had warned me that thirty percent of zombified mortals grow milky cataracts that cover their eyes, but mine have held their cobalt hue, and I have not lost any vision. I am new recruit to my mistress’s menagerie of undead whores, but my life as the living had been predestined for years.

I had been given to Madam Zumir at the age of fourteen because my mother could not pay a debt to the Madam. Something about a beauty ritual, and a youth sacrament that my mother took, without being able to pay, and I was the repossessed prize. I was basically an annexed granddaughter to the Madam, she treated me well, fed me, and sent me to school, after a short while I barely missed living with my mother. On my eighteenth birthday, just so I was legal, I was created anew as a zombie, and my grandmotherly Madam Zumir became my employer as I joined the ranks of her other “brides of death,” my colleagues, among the zombie-prostitute brothel that she ran thirty miles south of town.

Do you wonder what it was like, becoming a zombie? Especially one as well kept and able minded as myself? It takes a master of necromancy and a mistress of voodoo in one vessel. Madam Zumir, grandmotherly as she may look, was brought up with the religion of vodoun and was instructed as a young adult in the mathematical magic of necromancy. Needless to say, as a voodoo priestess, she knew what she was doing, and was feared as much as she was admired, you didn’t fuck with the Madam. So on my eighteenth birthday she bid me to dress in a gown she pulled from a dark oak chest from her living room. It wasn’t really in style, a deep crimson, but it fit like it was tailored to my lithe form.

“The dress has power,” the Madam explained to me as I dressed. “It will ensure your beauty and the strength of your flesh so that you will not rot once you lay within the grave.” She pulled a seemingly ancient cameo choker from a polished wooden box. The cameo looked like ivory, or bone and had my likeness carved upon it, or at least it looked like me, like any girl with longish curly hair. It hung upon a black velvet cord and Madam Zumir tied it tight around my neck, to bind me to herself, she said.

Once I was dressed Zumir ordered me to lie in a coffin. Seriously, she had this coffin set up on cinderblock and she ordered me to lie inside. Not one to balk at directions I laid myself down, and folded my hands over my chest, my skin had contacted gooseflesh, and my nipples had tightened and perked from being placed in a casket. There was a mix of fear and thrill that aroused me slightly as I lay there pressed against the stiff satin of the coffin and watched as Madam Zumir lit candles around the room, murmuring in a whispers words that were not English. As she spoke the flames on the candles seemed to flare up and throw the room into almost day-bright color. Her skin, which before was merely a dull matte brown was highlighted by the candle light and showed patched of gold and of molasses, her eyes were bright with power, and for a moment I was afraid.

“You will be fine, my dear.” Madam Zumir said, sensing my duress. “You may close your eyes if you wish.” And I did. I could still see the brightness of the candles from behind my eyelids, and could hear the Madam bustling about, but for as far as I was concerned; I was just lying in bed. The heat of the dozens of candles seemed to be heating the room; my skin was feeling warm, nearly feverish, I was afraid I would perspire in the antique dress. The warmth spread through me, but gathered in my erogenous zones, my breasts felt hot against the cool dress, and the heat between my legs made me worry about staining the dress with liquids other than sweat. The smell of rosemary filled my nostrils, and I opened my eyes to see the Madam sprinkling the herb over my body. I watched her pick up three smooth stones, and weigh them in her hand before adding a fourth, and larger stone.

“Open your mouth.” She ordered, and when I opened my mouth she placed the stones inside so that they bulged out my cheeks. I figured I looked like a squirrel with too many acorns stuffed in my mouth. Madam Zurin then took a pinch of beige powder and mixed it with another powder that was a brackish brown; I think it was dried blood. She held the palm’s worth of the powder clasped over my nose, to my credit I did try to fight her. I twisted in the coffin, and tried to expel the stones from my mouth in order to pull in non-polluted air, but her powder-filled hand was clamped over my face, and I was unable to breathe, save through my nostrils.

I tried to hold my breath, but my body betrayed me, and I inhaled the powder that Madam Zurin held for me.

The concoction had no taste, which surprised me, but it was strong, and made my eyes tear up. I had never done cocaine, but I figured the burning and tingling that suffused my nostrils and spread throughout my face and neck was akin to the sensation. It took a few moments for me to realize why my eyes were tearing up, because I could not blink; I had lost control over my body, and could not move my neck or face. The tingling was settling into a numb feeling, and I could feel it spreading over the rest of my body like an icy wave, and soon I could not move any part of my body, and even my chest stopped moving, stopped puling in oxygen. Panic filled me as I fought to breathe, my head raced and psychosomatically I felt I was choking, which was silly, since I didn’t have the control over my body in able to choke.

“Very good, Germain. Good girl. Now, the worst part is coming up. Right now you are only paralyzed, you must spend time with the dead in order to attain your full capacity.” Madam Zumir said as she packed the coffin, my coffin with salt and the leaves of herbs that I could still smell. She pricked the skin of my arm with a long needle, and I tried to flinch, only that I could not move, only feel the silver prick of sensation. I could feel a drop of blood form on my arm and spill down the side of my arm towards the inside of my elbow, the blood made me itch. The Madam caught up a bit of my blood with a white rag and put the whole cloth into a jar that she set on a shelve next to other nondescript jars. I felt as if I was only one of many touched, pulled, and paralyzed by the Madam’s power. If I could have moved, I would have shook with fear, or perhaps I wouldn’t have since my emotions were slowing falling into a blend of mild curiosity and apathy. And then the Madam closed the casket over me, shutting out light, shutting out day, shutting out my life as a mortal.

In the days that passed, I grew bored. I could sometimes hear, through the thickly insulated casket, strange sounds outside of my coffin, outside of myself. I could feel my casket being moved, could feel it being lowered, and I assumed I was in the ground because of how much colder the air around me grew. I could hear the sound of dirt falling against my narrow wooden home, and I knew, without much worry due to my apathy, that I was being buried alive, or as alive as I still remained. It was at this time in my existence that I became, for a short while, a philosopher. There was nothing so determining as time in my undead lifestyle, I did not need to sleep, or eat, or breathe, I did not have a pulse to count, or heartbeats to measure the time I spent submerged in the soil. So I seemed to float on timelessness as time was only relative to the living, I only had time to think. I was detached from myself, felt no pain, no aches, and no desire to be anywhere but where I was. My body was cold, I could feel, but it didn’t matter, and when, an indescribable amount of time later I was pulled from the earth that no longer mattered either.

When I was taken from the earth is was not Madam Zumir that I saw above me. Large, rough hands that chaffed my skin hoisted me up; out of my entombment. There was no moon as I was raised from the grave, pun intended, but it was bright. The cloudy sky reflected what illumination there happened to be from street lamps and car lights. In this gloomy, glazed light I caught sight of my hero/grave robber: dark skinned, and more broad than tall, his face was thick, his lip generous. His build wasn’t fat, just big, like that of a bouncer, or if he was fat, it was the hard fat that could take a punch with little damage. A muscular fat. He wore a black cap over his hair, and faded black jeans, nondescript clothing.

“I’m here to take you home, Miss Germain,” he told me, in a bourbon voice, deep and low, rounded out with a husky growl. “Your old lady sent me, you can be callin’ me Nathaniel.” I obviously could do nothing, couldn’t move or even acknowledge that I was still alive, and I felt assured that ol’ Nathaniel knew as much, since he spoke to me as if I were able to hold a conversation. Only madmen chatted with corpses, so he must have been an employee of the Madam; I had been summoned from my grave.

I was neither thrilled nor afraid to be returned to Madam Zumir, I felt very little except my deadness. There was no surprise, or dread when instead of directly returning me to my mistress Nathaniel dropped my body on a patch of grass on the bank of my grave, a gaping maw marring the landscape. “You is mighty fine to my eyes, Miss Germain, you’ll be a fine tool for Madam Z. The good thing, I figure, is that she don’t care too much if I use her corpse as a tool before returnin’ her.” I did the only thing I could do; I lay perfectly silent and still. A part of me, a tiny part, seemed to wish that I would want to rebel, at least in my very silent mind, against this rape, this necrophilia.

My brain felt as uncaring and cold as my body while I watched Nathaniel’s dark, greasy eyes scan my body in the fitted burial dress. He pulled an old pocketknife from his jeans pocket and flicked the blade. It was a bit rusty near the edge, but glinted dully in the low light, he knelt next to me, on the far side of my grave and stared at my face as he put the knife to the hem of my dress.

“You won’t be mindin’ this at all, Miss Germain. None of Madam Z’s girls ever do. You is just a tool to be used, is all. You understand I’m sure.” And with that he shredded, none to gracefully, my burial dress. From the corner of my eye I could see vermilion tatters dressing the soil-strewn grass, a remnant of my humanity. I was naked before my loving rapist, my adoring and perverted paramour, a lover of things deceased. And yet, I wasn’t dead, because I felt his hands upon my ashen body; I was aware of the warm, slightly sweaty touch of his palms cupping my breasts, and his teeth pulling my nipples out, and away from my body. I did not move. I couldn’t. He clutched my body; so cold in comparison with his heated one, his shirt felt like flannel, a rough, but warm material, and his breath burst like steam against my neck as he nuzzled me.

Just because I am a zombie, doesn’t mean I cannot feel pleasure, I soon learned. The friction of his unshaven face rubbing against my neck as he kissed me, nearly reverently, gave me a strange sense of elation. If I were alive, I would have physically reacted to the pressure of his lips on my jaw, his tongue parting my cold lips, and his searing hot kisses. But I was only a mind, and the pleasure, was only in my brain. So peculiar, I thought, that the touch, the phantom arousal that I felt bled away the cold and lifeless apathy that I had insurgent within me. Silently, I began to urge my captor to fuck me. Wordlessly I cheered the removal of his trousers, and if I could have spoken I would have applauded the healthy girth and optimistic length of my first post-life lay. It was a fine cock, as good as any I had had while alive, and with my death I wasn’t nearly as picky. I would never have dated one of Madam Zumir’s toadies while I was living, but I didn’t mind him fucking me while I was dead. I considered him a tool as strongly as he thought me one, I got the man off, and he broke up the monotony of being dead. Besides, I couldn’t have stopped him even if it did bug me.

He gave his manhood a few priming strokes, it was two meaty fists high, and even Nathaniel’s substantial grip did not fully encase the cock. An opalescent bead fattened on top of the turgid member, but I worried about lubrication; physically a dead body couldn’t produce lubricant; this could become a rape in truth. But thoughtful ol’ Nathaniel was kind enough to spit a large wad of saliva onto his hand and smear it as lubricant on his cock, crude, but effective. He readied his slicked up dick to penetrate into my slit, positioning a hand behind my back to support me, and another hand on my tit, his breathing was excited and peppered with animated murmurs. His first push inside me was pain. Spit was not the best lube, and being dead, I found, leaves you exceptionally dry. The second thrust drove his entire length into my pussy, and if I could have made any sound, I would have howled. It burned me bitterly, and it wasn’t just the dryness. I felt like I was literally burning, the skin of his cock was scorching in comparison with my ground-chilled corpse.

Nathaniel rested for a moment inside of me, driven to the hilt; he gave me time to get accustomed to his heat. It seemed that ol’ Nathaniel was a pro at the grave-robbing-corpse-stuffing game, it figured. His body was pressed so close to mine that I could smell his stale sweat, and cigarette smoke on his flannel, but the feelings that stabbed into my head kept me from being disgusted. Sex was suddenly a mind-altering drug to me in my deadened state. My body could feel, but could not react, had no outlet except for my brain, and so my head was overloaded with sensation, nearly mad with pleasure.

Nathaniel withdrew his cock with a grunt before shoving it all the way into my sex again, and began to rhythmically pump himself into my body. We made eye contact only once: my head was tilted back as he cupped my ass to impale me on his cock, and a curly tendril of my hair fell over my eyes. He brushed the hair away, almost tenderly, and grinned at me before looking back to his work.

I reached orgasm only a minute before Nathaniel kindly filled my pussy with boiling come. To say that ‘I reached orgasm’ is like saying falling face first off out of a plane is reaching the ground; my orgasm tore into my brain like a raccoon through a wood chipper. As inhumane as the comparison is, I find it apt. My body did not orgasm, my mind did, all the shudders, all the moaning, all the tingling and exploding was quarantined to my brain. My thought process couldn’t even track what had occurred to me, nor even if Nathaniel had pulled out, near the end I think I fainted. Funny, I didn’t think zombies could swoon.

Part II

When I came to I was on Madam Zumir’s kitchen table, a pale yellow Formica affair. I knew I came to, because my eyes opened. All by themselves it seemed, and it was incredibly odd. Even stranger my body budged when I attempted to raise myself to my feet. Oh, I didn’t get anywhere; I just kinda wobbled and floundered salmon-like on the table. I was naked, so I did not make the clichéd mistake of naively believing I had dreamed the entire event of my zombification and sexual education with Nathaniel. Just thinking about the sexual tryst made my body shiver, and my nipples tighten perceptibly.

“Ah, then you’d be waking up then, aren’t you?” Madam Zumir asked as she stepped through the kitchen door. She flicked the overhead light, blinding me before I could reflexively shut my eyes. I struggled to roll over, away from the light, but I felt weaker, more unable to move myself. The light switched off. “Just checking, Germain. Your light response is normal, bright lights have a draining effect on zombies, sunlight is the worst, the most debilitating,” The Madam informed while she checked my nonexistent pulse and raised me to a sitting position. I had the strange feeling of being in a doctor’s office for a check-up.

“Is it through? Am I… dead?” I asked, croaking with my unused vocal chords.

“The transformation is complete, and you look perfect, my best yet. Little Germain, you are a masterpiece. And you. Shall. Live. Forever!” The Madam’s pride and prominence made me a little leery, even in the state I had taken, I gestured for a mirror to see what monstrosity I had become. I took the silver-backed hand mirror that Madam Zumir proffered, bracing myself to see my terrible state, and I was astounded: I looked like me. Actually, I was me. I was a bit dirty, and paler, but not deformed, or decayed like I had feared. So, here I was, my soul bound to The Madam, and undead to boot. “You shall draw in many customers, dear, beautiful Germain. Once we get your legs back, that is.” She said emphatically. “I figure we’ll have you ready in a day or so. Are you hungry yet?”

Come to think of it, I was. But it was a sort of hunger I never felt before. In my human life I felt hunger in my stomach as my tummy would gurgle, or rumble, and I would physically hunger; my hunger now was a thought in my brain, a small idea gnawing at my consciousness. I nodded.

“We’ll get you some food, Germain. You must remember always to eat when you can. That way the hunger can be controlled. Wait too long…and you will become a ravenous creature beyond reason.” Madam Zumir waltzed herself over to a large avocado-green refrigerator and pulled out a pound of raw, ground beef. She removed the plastic wrapping from the meat and removed the Styrofoam backing, and pressed the red, slimy meat into my hands.

“Ugh!” I shouted, my voice still hoarse. I set the cold wad of beef on the sunny yellow table next to me and looked around for something to wipe my greasy hands on. “It’s raw! I can’t eat it raw!” I choked out over my disgust.

“You can and will, darlin’. Sooner or later, when your hunger takes control over your revulsion. Zombies like you need a complete balanced breakfast of raw meat. Either you eat this beef, or when the hunger takes over your brain, you could feast on the mailman, an innocent, or God forbid: a customer. Eat now.” She broke off a small chunk of the raw meat and waved it under my nose, and I could feel my mouth water. The idea of hunger in my brain became more insistent, almost demanding; the thought of eating raw meat became less disgusting. I snapped at the piece of meat, and nearly gobbled a bit of The Madam’s finger. That thought didn’t even gross me out. I felt like a finger wouldn’t be too bad at all.

“Now don’t you even think about it, Germain. I am not that kind of voodoo practitioner. You will not be eating anyone if I can help it.” Her voice was stern, and she pointed to the hunk of beef on the table. I hesitatingly lifted the meat up, leaving a greasy splotch on the Formica and tentatively ate at the beef. Eating the raw meat slowly was a bad idea; I could feel the slimy texture slide down my throat, ever so gradually…If I wasn’t so sated by the retreating hunger pangs, I would have thrown up the cold, slippery meat. But before I knew it I had devoured the entire pound.

On the bright side, I felt stronger. I no longer had to fight to remain sitting up, I stretched a little, feeling a healthy ache from my body; coffins tend to be cramped, even if you can’t move. “Should I try to walk, Madam?” I asked, my voice gaining in strength. She nodded, smiling at her creation, proud of her power. I willed my limbs to move and I hung my legs off the side of the table, toes dangling four inches from the swept hardwood floor. I nudged myself off the edge and there was a great pain in my feet and calves when I touched down onto the floor. Severe pins and needles, like my legs weren’t just asleep, but like they were in a coma, I stumbled, and leaned my hands against the stove, willing the pain to recede. The Madam just calmly watched with arms crossed and bird-like eyes peering seemingly into my soul, if I still had one. I felt like she was gauging my worth, measuring my value to her…my employer was terribly shrewd.