FIVE DAYS. FIVE. That was how long it took for Mama to turn into a zombie.
Day one she was stoic. She refused to move from the couch, even after I turned off the TV in the evening. I still remember how frigid her face looked in the dimness of the flickering candle before I blew it out. The spaces above her cheeks were sunken in, eyes bulged away from her face. A wiggle under there, only slightly, but it did. I saw it move. I saw it twist.
And her brown skin looked frail and thin—any wrong move, and I was afraid it would tear away in small slits, revealing the tissue beneath.
“Mama…” I whispered, creeping closer to her in the darkness. One foot after the other, the floorboards creaking with each step. I wanted to know if she was okay, if she was even awake, but she didn’t say anything. Looked at her again, waited. She released a deep breath, the air cracking on its way out. Sounded like something was in there, inching its way up her trachea.
I left it alone. Kissed her clammy head, pulled a blanket over her, and tucked her in, hoping she’d be fine in the morning.
And she would be fine. She always was.
Day two was strange. It began with her golden-brown eyes. They glazed into a cynical gray like cataracts, and the brightness that used to be in them dissipated like smoke in the wind. When she spoke, her sentences were short and sloth-like—every word a complete struggle—almost as if someone had stuffed cotton beneath her tongue.
On day three, her veins oozed a thick green sludge under her skin. They pulsed and vibrated, not quite right. And her shoulders slouched inward, like they were weighed down by a thousand invisible moons, disrupting her inner tide entirely.
As she inched closer and closer to the invisible abyss, her dark cloud of sadness stripped away the caramelized flesh from her face, leaving her disfigured.
By the fourth day, every breath came with a creaking croak. It was like watching a sped-up time lapse of a fire burning out. Everything I loved about her was gone.
We didn’t dance.
We didn’t sing.
She wasn’t the bleeding sunrise anymore—she was the deep, deep, dark ocean.
And on November 4, before daybreak, her last breath rolled up her throat and turned her into the undead thing that I feared.
It was the worst day of my life.
I found her on the floor in the kitchen, and my throat swelled. Her body lay in the fetal position, her right hand below her heart, crumpled like an old rose.
But I didn’t get it. Zombies weren’t supposed to die so easily, yet Mama did.
When the EMTs came, I tried to tell them, but the words wouldn’t come out. They couldn’t see that she wasn’t only dead—she was undead.
I—I, uh, my thoughts stammered; all I could do was stare blankly. How could they not see it? How was I the only one?
And she…she needed more time. We needed more time. I didn’t understand. What was wrong? How did she die? Was she really dead?
But they rushed her out, and I couldn’t move from that spot in the kitchen where I’d found her.
Couldn’t force the air out of my lungs. Couldn’t take any more steps forward.
I tried to hold myself, but a sharp pain in my navel forced me to my knees. I curled into a ball on the laminate floor, and the smell of the brewing coffee nestled in my nostrils, reminding me of how she was just here, alive.
She was alive.
Closed my eyes, warm cheek against the cold tile now. And she was gone. I knew she was because of the permanent goosies on my arms.
When Mama died, I think her soul shattered into a Postimpressionist painting filled with yellows and blues. We were the zigzagged, black lines in that painting, the birds. And I swore I flew with her soul that day, the wind still fresh between my fingers, but I couldn’t reach her. Didn’t matter how fast I flew, she flew farther, and the sapphire horizon created a million miles between us. It swallowed her.
They later told me that her heart exploded in her chest. Exploded. I didn’t know how that could be humanly possible, but when they told me, I saw those colors again.
She was yellow. I was blue.
She was dead and undead, and now the earth was flooded with zombies, drowning me with the constant reminder of Mama.
Why? I didn’t know why.
But why?
I didn’t know why.
But I terribly, terribly, terribly wanted to.
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