Licensed CC-BY.
Part 1: The Vestigial book of Judah
Can’t believe in you
Rosemary and Joshua Woods were botanists. They had three boys: Jujuba, Judah, John. I was with my mother one evening after Sunday night mass. Jen was there. She insisted her name wasn’t Juniper. But it was Juniper, like the tree.
When we went to church, I could almost hear my mom praying for god to make it better down here. She would pray to Mary and all the saints for our sinning hearts. I hope he got her letter. My brothers turned away from religion…off to college and the military to bring death with new diseases and guns. “You’re the images of God,” she would tell us.
Jujuba goes by the name Joe. He found a way to reduce the price of beer in New Mexico. He has never needed to write a letter to God. He plays God making diseases and curing them. Father, Son and the Holy Ghost…help my family. They seem not to believe in you, God.
The truth is that John maybe the most normal of us. Well, he’s a psychiatrist in Detroit. He and Joe broke mom’s heart when they told her they didn’t believe in God.
Jen is coming. I want to surprise her with my writing after a year.
UNTITLED
My Dad died several months ago. He was a pure man, real salt of the earth and the demons took him. Joshua Woods was seventy-two; the coroner’s report said he died in his sleep of natural causes.
I know it was the demons. My mother cried for several days. I stayed in a sort of daze. They painted him to look as though he were alive. His veins and bowels were drained of matter and a plug inserted into the anus. Formaldehyde injected. His body placed gently into a mahogany casket.
My mom was certain that dad and St Matthias were smiling upon the ceremony in Downey. The priest looked very ghoulish…I used to know all the priests by first name. Since I stopped attending mass I see them for what they really are: demons, minions of Satan.
Joe and John were social butterflies. They eulogized him and carried the casket. I couldn’t get close to it. It was the work of the devil. Being in the church was some sort of miracle. God works in mysterious ways, they say. The ceremony revolved around the resurrection…if only they knew what the resurrection was. Time stops when Jen is around.
She is the miracle I need. I see the light of god in her eyes. I know it is not false; this is how we will defeat Satan. We will cast Satan out of this hell and we will create heaven on earth. Truth and Love will defeat the lies of Satan.
Jen and my mom are coming and I’ve just started this journal. Mom and John think writing this journal will help me deal with my father’s death. I titled it Untitled thinking I could add a title later. It just dawned on me that the title “Untitled” is still a title.
I just got into this religion called Gnosticism. One of the tenants is that through sex I become enlightened like Jesus. I plan to put the light of God into Jen tonight. This whole thing is just a passing point in my catharsis since dad died.
John prescribed me some meds today. He thinks that I’m depressed and my thoughts are telling of schizophrenia. I think he’s the one who’s crazy. I know that I’m not God. I am just the eyes of God. People are how God experiences the universe.
My brothers are staying in town for a couple of weeks. John convinced Joe to come visit. Apparently, he needs special military clearance to come visit since the accident in New Mexico. His girlfriend is very beautiful. Scientists, they work on viruses for the military. I’m not telling John another single thought out of my head.
Jen is coming down the hall. She’s singing–it means she wants sex.
John loves Barbeque. He lives in Houston, now; before it was Detroit. I liked it better when he was in Detroit. He was far enough away that he did not meddle in the family affairs. Today we are going to grill some pork chops and burgers.
Joe has always had the greatest green eyes but today in the light of the barbeque, they shone like emeralds. Joe recently met with the President. Joe says ol’ Bill is quite the diplomat and host. And Victoire–I think she’s French or something. It must be hard not to cry out her name in mid-coitus. It is such a beautiful name and her voice like an angel. I should delete this before Jen reads what I think of my brother’s girlfriend. I caught my brothers in mid-sentence talking about a new virus. Joe seemed very excited and squeezed Victoire’s hand a little too hard. I saw a skin irritation on Joe’s wrist. Mom pays no attention to what I say; neither does any of my family.
I took John to the airport today, good riddance. I don’t think I’ll continue the medicine John gave me, the quack.
I tried to explain today how the same President has been running the country of the past 200 years. They don’t get it. Over five thousand years ago, I created the world and shortly thereafter Satan killed me the first time. It’s so simple…rational even. Why can’t people understand it? I’m God, the creator of everything. It’s just that Satan somehow has more power than I do and I can’t regain control of this world.
It’s maddening they want the whoremonger to come back to town to evaluate my behavior. Strangely, Juniper sings wildly when I’m like this. So out of my head that all I can do is type. My mind dances between the Earth as I see it and the Eden it once was.
Jen told me once that she knew she liked me form the start. This is how women work, she says. I’m paraphrasing of course but really, women one way or another figure out they will fuck a man in the first hour of knowing him. It seemed senseless at the time but there we were fucking in the girls’ showers of her high school. That is how we got Ruth.
The children are hoping for a heart attack
The human interest stories…Rosemary Eve Woods, May 5, 1937–June 12, 2009…is what the obituary would read but for now everyone thinks she is visiting John in Detroit. John is a hard man to reach being a psychiatrist and all. I scratch at my nose.
I counted the devils on the match as I lit a cigarette. I took up smoking when dad died and since mom died, I smoke twice as much. Jen hates it. But she loves barbeque. A “Grade A” cannibal she is becoming. We went jogging to today after I read the morning scores. We saw a wino; I wanted to tear his heart out. It would have been a cheap shot. But I could have feed it to the dog.
Stupidity, this guy could lift himself out of the gutter but he has fallen into the bottle. Those guys are worse than crack whores. Truth is stranger than fiction…pictures to shock. The streets are filled with conspiring demons.
My brothers were hoping that mom would die the way dad did. Natural causes–a heart attack in her sleep. But this was not the way God would have it. I need to set out some rodent traps today.
Homicide…I like to think of it as euthanasia. I slid a knife into her left lung. I snuck up behind her as though I were going to kiss her on the cheek, which I did. The lung collapsed and I let her body down. I cradled her until she suffocated. She had been getting too curious and I overheard her on the phone with John.
My whole existence is flawed
“This will bring you closer to god,” my father said to me as a child. We went hunting for the first time when I was five. By thirteen, I knew how to gut and bone a deer in the field. It was better than sex. Killing is far better than sex.
My dad would often say. “Son, we fucked that buck good.” He was a funny man making jokes about hunting. One day I killed a pregnant doe. It was a sort of accident. She knew I was there. I was upwind of her; she could smell me. She let me…she let me violate her. Somehow, I felt that I desecrated Mother Nature. The same sort of feeling I got when Jen and I fucked for the first time at prom.
Bob and I go hunting, once and a while. He got me a new Glock the other week. What really brought me closer to god was when Jen and I fucked after prom. She liked it sort of violent. “Fuck me like an animal,” she said to me. She says it often still. It was a popular song at that time. Jen still loves that song. Now that mom is visiting Joe, Jen can stay here with me. You let me violate you, Jen.
Church is a desecration when God does not live there. Men of God bring the word of the American Satan, the only Satan. She brings me closer to being…God. Satan is tormenting God in this hell. I have to find a way out. I must learn to defile the demons. In high school, she said sex brought her closer to God like that one song…but I am God; she has always been near me.
I disconnected the house phone and changed my cell phone, after work today. I don’t want Joe to know what I did with the demon that replaced our mother. Joe was fond of the demon. She let me do this…I used an ice pick under the arm…right into the lung. I collapsed the lung so she could not make a sound. I gave her my hate. She tried to make me think I was someone else…I am God.
“This brings you closer to God,” the demon mother told me as we went to church. I will never give up my absence of faith. I called her a liar when I was twelve and my father laughed. Killing helped me get away from myself. Hunting helped me get away from myself.
Slob
God is good. Fuck, Fuck. Fuck. I told Jen the other day that Mom went to visit my brother in Detroit. Her skeleton has been dissolving in vinegar for a week now. It’s all soft and pliable. As a kid, my dad and I dissolved the turkey bones from thanksgiving in a pail of vinegar. She doesn’t realize that we’ve been eating mom for the last couple of days. Yeah, yeah: God is great.
The demons look me in the eyes. A cold stare, darkly their eyes tell me the plans for my demise. In the life of the deity, he must die in hell. What if God was one of us…He is and they kill him. Jen’s brother and I went shooting. He got me into guns. Like my brother, he is an advocate of the second amendment. They say my name to my face. It mocks me.
I take the bus to work now that my car broke down and I haven’t the money to fix it. I can’t get money from my mom…she never trusted me with her PIN number. I think the Asians were laughing at me on the bus. I’m such a slob that I spilled coffee on my shirt. I’m such a slob. Bob, Jen’s brother, was extra curious when mom went to Joe’s house. I fed Bob some mom-burgers the other day. I could hardly stop myself from laughing and spitting my sandwich all over him. I’m such a slob. If God were one of you, he’d eat his mother.
I’m sure Bob is a demon and thus Jen. Soon Bob will eat his own flesh and blood. But right now, I’m just a stranger on a bus being laughed at by Chinese people. I think they clean houses. When I get home, I’ll call the Pope in Rome and listen to the Rolling Stones.
You can find me in between.
All the lights are on and I’m the only one home. Someone must really save me from myself. Jen and I made love last night after we ate the prime cuts off of mom’s body. Until her dying day, she will think that we ate pork. She’ll be home in about an hour and that will be more than enough time for me to finish taking all the meat and organs off of the body. I’ll feed the dogs the heart and intestines. Help me. Help me.
Take me from this hell. We sat on the balcony and ate under the stars. Jen was so elated with Mom’s absence that she began to sing. Like an angel, she transported me out of this place. I want her with me forever but I’m God and she will die. Mom will be within me forever. Perhaps Jen should be food for God. Someone please save me from myself. It’s just as well…
Nothing is what it seems. We began to dance as she got home from work. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata played as we held each other. Almost verbally, I cried for her to save me but she knows her angel’s work…she places her finger to my lips to shut me up. Tonight we feast and tomorrow Bob will come over for the big game and burgers. That guy gives me the creeps. She believes my deceit with her true heart. Soon it will be a farewell to his arms. Take me from this hell.
I’ve deceived her for too long…She can sing me one last song, another day. I’ll have to get her out of the house…save me, save me. I’ll take Bob hunting. He has a GPS they will have to find him. The other demons will find evidence and see God in his true form. Satan will curse me once more.
She was like a star in the heavens when we met. Our ten-year reunion has just passed. St. Matthias Catholic High School–well, she went there. I went to Downey High. St. Matthias is a girls’ Catholic school. I saw her standing there outside of the church one Sunday. For weeks I had been watching her, it seems she had been watching me too. All alone that day I left my mother and went to talk to you. Save me from myself, you were saying with your eyes. Or were you saying take me from this hell.
We danced out under the stars. We kissed and I could taste the remnants of Mom on her lips. The rosemary and thyme accented the natural taste the grill brought out. I needed very little salt to season this cut of meat. Help me, won’t you.
I walked home from work as usual. I could swear the demons were following me. Satan spoke through the music in the store. The subliminal messages are growing louder. I haven’t been driving my car. Every car has GPS and they know where I am going. I hardly leave the house since mom went to visit John. It’s silly that she would leave me alone after dad died just nine months ago. John says I’m mentally fragile and supervision is needed but I guess that is what Jen is for. Sing me, sing me…
Me thoughts are becoming more clear. Seeing into the ether is easy for me, now. Rain fell yesterday; I could see the blood mixed in. The innocent humans killed by Satan in this eternal hell where I will find myself again after the minions kill me for the amusement of Bill Clinton, Satan. This computer is being monitored and I need to unplug it from the internet. She came out for some air. Jen was singing outside of the Church one night. I asked her out next week. She goes out for air when the incense burners are used during advent. Christmastime is always magical. God must have answered my prayers that night. But does God pray to himself…wouldn’t that be masturbation?
She seems to dance among the stars all alone. This night will be the last night we make love. Nothing is what it seems. Earlier, she said I gave her the creeps before I shoved a knife in her neck. I deceived her for too long. Save me from myself.
American Dream
God is an American…I’m sitting in my basement with a gun in my mouth. The problem isn’t that God is an American. I am God. The U.S. controlling the world isn’t the problem. The problem is that this is Hell and Satan sits in the White House. Every four years the same Satan is elected. The problem is that no one can see it or if they do, they are demons themselves. Satan has always ruled Hell. I’m afraid of the world.
My girlfriend was a demon. Vinegar dissolves the calcium in bones. I’m afraid of the demons. The demons are Americans…and I’m an incarnation of God. No one sees this world for what it is…Hell. I exorcised her. I took her flesh as if it were bread and blood as if it were wine. The demons will be coming for me soon.
I really wanted a coke and some fries, not her blood and thighs. First my mom and now her…I afraid I can’t help it. The taste has become too powerful. I am the next American Jesus. The last one was Martin Luther King Jr. Look what happened to him. I’m afraid of Americans.
They began talking to me when I was thirteen. The television and radio screamed for God to come out of hiding. The cruel thing is that I created this hell where the death of God redeems the world of Hell. I stopped listening to the car radio as it grew louder. My girlfriend grew disturbed. I told her my mom went to visit my brother, Joe. Joe is a plumber in Detroit. Joe got me into guns…he’s patriotic and firmly believes in the Second Amendment of the Constitution…of the United States of America. I’m Afraid of Americans. The demons will murder me…I’m afraid I can’t help it.
My mother has three full bathrooms in her house. In the basement I keep a metal tub. Six weeks is as long as it takes to dissolve a human skeleton in a tub of vinegar. Flushing or pouring the remains is the next step. Keeping hot water running as you do this helps dilute the solution. I don’t need anyone to help me…I afraid I can’t help it. I need to get some Coke from the store today.
In Hell, no one needs any one the demons just get off hurting those who cannot see. They are coming for me. The demons and I only hear subliminal messages: “God is an American”. History is not what you think…there was not conquest of a new world this is all just a fabrication. The Dark Lord masks his playing field. Suffering is the joke…I need a new joke. War and birth are Satan’s oldest jokes. Humans are conned into dying for a God that doesn’t control the world. There is no Heaven…this is Hell. A hedonistic, deplorable place and I created it. I was the architect of Eden and Adam was my creation to fill such a place. Eve was his companion but Satan came into the garden and bastardized it. After the first child was born…that was the knowledge. I was as enlightened as my creation they created. I came unto them as a stranger. Delighted in the birth of the first daughter of Adam, we named her Lucy. She was a fussy child but the twin Lucifer was quiet and sweet. I should have been suspicious of the quiet one. They grew and I created such things a genetic diversity. Death came to those later ones but Satan tempted his father and mother and a war raged between the first family. When Lucifer killed the sleeping sister and other brothers, I cursed him. But he eventually took over the world. Hell lives in Eden and has since I created the humans. Death is natural but I created these beings to know of life and thus death. That was the tree of life. Satan’s cruel joke is that when he ate of both trees he became the god of illusions. With knowledge comes power. If he has knowledge from the tree of knowledge and the tree of life, he can control everything. I’m afraid…
Simple creation, procreation co-habitation were my delusions. The illusion is not seeing those who cannot die. Death is a reality…wars and murders are a result of a carrying capacity in Hell. For a time, there were very small wars. But the lion has never slept beside a sheep. The sheep rest within the lion. I’m afraid I can’t help it.
Just for today, I’ll tuck this gun in my back pocket and go get my Coke. Anyway, I cannot die…my curse was to create beings so they could replace me and kill me, only to find out I can’t die. Rebirth is my curse. I created the world in six days and on the seventh, Satan plunged a knife into my neck bathing the green grass of Eden in blood. Only a minute later I gave birth to myself. Climbing out of my wound as a child, I saw his smiling face as he broke my neck with his foot. Several weeks of this took a strain on him and he changed his game. I’m afraid of the world.
Appendix…small outgrowth of tissue attached to the large intestine, subsidiary matter at the end of the book, extra stuff to be cut out.
Satan sits smiling in the White House. President Clinton is the figurehead this time around. My dad had this house built on Cheyenne St. One of the only houses in Southern California built with a basement. The only house I know of that has a stainless steel bathtub dissolving the skeletons of my loved ones. Bob will drown on the remains of my mother and his sister.
Like the adoring brother, he filed a missing persons report. One problem is that she is far closer to Bob than he believes. “This is some good burger”, he commented one afternoon. I seasoned it with some rosemary. I drained the tub and placed the goop into 10-gallon plastic jugs. I took them over to his house a couple of days ago. He is so grief stricken that he did not notice the jugs. He hasn’t mowed the lawn in weeks. I’ve been keeping up appearances. He says that I’m strong and the police will find the fucker who took little Juniper away.
I marinated the last of Jen for Bob. It was a special marinade with steak sauce. Key ingredient: Vicodin. As soon as he’s out, I’ll pour the slop down his throat and write the suicide note for him. I’ve been practicing his handwriting for years. He’ll drown in the remnants of my mom’s and girlfriend’s skeletons.
God hates gluttons.
Dear Editor
My name is Ruth Woods. In all of the filth my father has sent you, has he spoke of his eleven-year-old daughter, or what sort of brine or marinade did he prepare for me? No, he did not. He had picked out the wine even. It was a white wine… You published this “work” he sends from prison with no regard to the feelings of his victims. Judah Woods is a very sick man. My father is insane and sits in a mental ward for the rest of his life.
The past seven years have been trying for me. I wish to put this as far behind me as possible but I feel that the reader of this filth will see my father as a man who fought the forces of Satan. Most rational people can see the only evil at work was my father when he killed my family. I am currently appealing the courts decision so Judah Woods can be found guilty and receive the death penalty for his crimes.
The bluest sky will never seem quite right without my mother. My mother had the bluest eyes and it pains me to look into the mirror because mine are hazel, a lasting reminder of my relationship to Judah Woods.
Ruth Woods, Rosemary’s granddaughter.
Part 2: The Culling Flower, or, The Book of Joe
Chapter One—A Turd in the Genetic Loo.
Dr. Xander Weisz lives in Alamogordo, New Mexico. On Beverly Lane, he has a house with muted desert yellow paint. Inside the house, the walls are more vibrant. A red color scheme paints Mayan temples at the height of there pre-classic glory in the living room. Blue hues recapture the night sky in Chiapas. Moreover, greens splatter the kitchen walls. A jungle in the Yucatan he visited once in college is the inspiration for the mural. Most evenings he cooks his own meals in that kitchen. Today two Gigi’s pizza boxes are sitting on the countertop next to the stove.
Standing at the couch is Dr. Serena Rainette. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata plays as the wind blows some napkins off the coffee table. She takes Xander’s hand and they begin to open all the doors and windows. Xander and Serena begin to dance on the patio. A breeze cuts the stillness. Starlight gleams off Serena’s spectacles.
Forty-three minutes away sits a small parking lot and a small building off Dunes Drive in the Whites Sands national monument. Underneath the desert is a system of tunnels connecting underground laboratory complexes.
Serena lives on the corner of Puerto Rico and Beverly. Xander lives three houses to the east. Serena wanted that house when she first moved to White Sands. Officially, she is a medical doctor at Hoffman Air force base. Xander barely exists outside of the fusion project. Much like the rest of the business world, the neighbors carpool. Until recently, Serena picked up other scientists in a 3-block radius; a geneticist named Bryan and a physicist Victoire. The four road together until Bryan got a raise and subsequent new car. Victoire surprisingly found Bryan far more suitable in his own car than when carpooling in Serena’s car.
Every morning Xander would take a leisurely walk to Allsup’s convenience store. He would walk west on 15th street and north on White Sands Boulevard. A pack of Camel filters and a cup of coffee were waiting for him at a quarter before seven every morning whether it was a workday or not. Serena would meet him there fifteen minutes later on workdays or when they were on call. Serena did not enjoy the smell of smoke in her car. Xander obliged Serena, and smoked on the walk before Serena showed up.
On this very night though, the two coworkers, friends and soon to be lovers, were celebrating their joint success. Since the two have exchanged pheromones for the last several years, the colleagues choose a more isolated location. The rest of the team is at the Compass Rose Brewpub. Every Saturday night everyone on the project goes there to have a drink and buy alcohol for Sunday. The city has yet to repeal a city ordinance outlawing the sale of alcohol on Sundays.
In their infinite wisdom, the scientists asked the owner of the bar if they could help him set up a perfectly legal program of prepaid Sunday drinks. Unbeknownst to the city government was this loophole. Since people are not paying for drinks on Sunday, the pub could serve drinks. Far and away, the program was a complete success and Sunday Mimosa brunch drove profits through the roof. Eventually, the city found a way to shut this practice down, not before most of the restaurants, eateries, and bars established a similar program. The downfall came from the accounting of the amount of drinks allowed through the prepaid program. Since no program gave its participants unlimited access to the drinks, the code enforcement lawyers argued these prepaid programs were tantamount to gift certificates. Ergo, owners still sold alcohol on Sundays, only the payment changed. Xander told the Compass Rose owner of this but it would be mad for any owner to allow patrons unlimited access to the consumable product.
For the last thirty years, scientists have been working on sustainable large-scale cold fusion to supply energy for secret government facilities. In case of a major disaster, cold fusion replaces the existing energy infrastructure. The one set back has been a workforce capable of withstanding a new radio wave generated which causes the alpha or beta brain waves to become delta deep brain waves. Therefore, a scientist could walk into a room with the cold fusion reactor and immediately falls into a deep dreamless sleep. A two-day coma followed but no lasting injuries except for impairments from the fall. No solution came along.
The government was far more concerned with global warming than they had let on. No solution came until Dr. Rainette stumbled and spilled formaldehyde, chlorophyll, LSD, methamphetamine and a vile of animal chloroplast virus (ACHV) unto a coworker. Why a biologist working in a government facility had the need for LSD and methamphetamine was a quandary even to Dr. Rainette, who mulled over these facts even now on Xander’s patio. In quarantine, the scientist went mad. His brain partially lobotomized itself. Because of the lack of food and the retrovirus known as ACHV, his cell and DNA structure changed into a plant human hybrid able to make it own nutrients. The microtubules of his cells came together to form centrosomes, these structures filled with chlorophyll and photosynthesis began in these chloroplast-like structures. The bone marrow began to produce chlorophyll and his blood, hemoglobin, began to transport oxygen out of the cells along with nutrients for other parts of his body. His skin became like a leaf. Dr. Woods fed his body the food created in his skin.
Government scientists developed the ACHV retrovirus after working on a cure for HIV. Science often learns from its mistakes. HIV was isolated, studied and raked. Researchers placed HIV pieces into cauliflower having cauliflower mosaic virus, CMV. The CMV-HIV infected cauliflower attracted aphids like the control CMV plants. Scientists tested the aphids. Finding a new virus, the aphids came under scrutiny by the researchers. After examining live infected aphids, scientists found they need no food and their life cycle was indeterminate given they received water and sunlight. Pulling a wing off only caused a new wing to grow a minute later. The aphids also began to exhibit communal like behavior. The scientists dubbed the new virus ACHV. An open wound allows ACHV in as much as ingestion. Because LSD can be absorbed through the skin, ACHV found its way in. Dr. Woods went mad before quarantine and slashed himself with shards of glass having ACHV and methamphetamine on them.
Dr. Woods obtained nitrogen and carbon dioxide from the air and water from the little he was able to drink in isolation. He really didn’t need to exhale anymore seeing as his skin let out oxygen–although inhaling brought extra gases into his lungs for storage and use later, much like fat cells. Continuing to breathe out of habit, Joe felt this set minds more at ease. No longer requiring food, he became the perfect worker. He was now smart enough to carry out complex tasks but subservient enough to not question any order. The scientist would cut off his own finger only for Dr. Rainette to see him regenerate the limb. Measuring his brain waves showed a constant Delta deep wave even though the scientist was awake, conscious and responsive. The only requirement of the zombie, which was an autonym, was an hour of sunlight and a gallon of water every two hours.
One day a cold fusion technician failed to shut down the reactor before opening the door and everyone in a five-mile radius fell into a two-day coma. The zombie was able to close the reactor door and call anyone with black operation level clearance outside of the sleep zone to take care of the personnel. A common misconception about radio waves is that they go on forever like light. They don’t. Why would every city on this planet need so many radio antennas? The most powerful antennas rarely penetrate the ionosphere. No strange green man is watching Hitler at the 1934 Olympics.
Anyone in the White Sands scientific complex who receives a terminal diagnosis can petition to become a zombie. As of 2001, 50,000 zombies staff cold fusion reactors around the world.
In July 2007 zombies will walk on Mars and set up cold fusion reactors on the moon. Because of the accidents in the two separate projects, Xander and Serena will head the new combined project. As Serena and Xander dance on their wedding night beneath the sky, the zombies’ mere presence on Mars will have created an atmosphere. Except for their intense green eyes and altogether bizarre lack of hunger, zombies will look like you and me. The DNA changes will somehow compensate for the green hue of the chlorophyll containing skin cells, thus increasing melanin and making the zombie skin tan looking and eye color vibrant green.
However, tonight the first zombie manually calibrated the fusion reactor. The year is 1998 and Xander is a colossal imbecile. So stupid in fact that the first zombie stayed in the reactor room for twenty-four hours deprived of natural sunlight. Testing was only beginning on Dr. Woods, zombie one, he was responsive to sunlamps but the extended combination of boredom and the radio waves produced by the fusion reaction changed everything.
As a young man, Joe was fat. The more he delved into science and proper exercise, the more weight he lost. Boredom and being dumb caused Joe to eat. Joe’s parents weren’t just botanists but they were Sadists also. Joe’s full name was Jujuba Woods. Jujuba is a Chinese tree. Not that the cruelty of his parents was lost on him, it wasn’t, but for the past month or so he felt that fate was the cruelest bitch of all, today he wasn’t just named after a tree he was a tree. Joe was bored. Joe found some food in the fridge. He consumed it for no reason other than boredom. Most plants in the world don’t eat.
What had happened to Joe a month ago had changed how his body functioned. How would Dr. Jujuba Woods metabolize the peanut butter and banana sandwich?
“Does this make me a cannibal?” Joe asked himself. Joe had been a vegetarian most of his life. He had consumed almost no dairy products, either. Feeling indifferent, being a zombie and all, Joe ate the sandwich, drank water and sat under the sunlamps. Knowing how Joe came to be a zombie was far easier than figuring out how the docile photosynthesizing creature became a killer.
