Eve

Chapter 2

Turning right on the alleyway and cross the side door, I climb the narrow staircase to apartment 015.

"Jeff. Jeff. Jeff!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming, don't knock the door down."

Jeff greets me with a grumpy expression on his face, stepping aside to let me in.

"Any food out there?"

I step in and throw myself on the ripped couch, tired. "Saw half a torso and an arm on a Seven Eleven parking lot."

"Did you take it?"

I don't answer.

"You didn't take it, did you?" Jeff asks, closing the door. "You could have brought some for us, at least."

"Shut up, Jeff."

Jeff is not a vegan. Neither are Kathy or Toby, my other roommates. They do, however, share the decency of only eating people who are already dead.

Or so they tell me, at least.

"You gotta eat, Eve," Kathy tells me, crossing her bedroom door and making way for the mirror. "You look like shit."

"It's true, you do look a little too skinny," Toby contributes from his mattress on the corner of the room. "Still hot, though."

"I'm not eating people," I say. "And shut up, Toby."

I don't participate in this 'as-long-as-they-were-already-dead-it's-fine' logic of them, but I don't condemn it either. It's gross, but at least they're not hurting anyone.

And, to their benefits, they don't get the constant headaches like I do. The legs weak all the time, the bad skin (even for zombie standards) that comes from zombie vegan malnutrition.

Seriously, picture a 500 calorie diet forever. Now take 450 calories from it. And fill that 50 calorie limit with pigeons and rats.

That's being a vegan zombie. That's being me. So excuse my language here and there. There'll be some fucks and shits and and stuff like that. Don't hold it against me, I'm a nice girl.

You'd be cranky too if you were always hungry.

"You could at least eat dead people, like we do, Eve," Jeff says, pouring himself a glass of blood. By his side, a limbless, pale human carcass rests on an old metal desk, its chest and abdomen carved here and there from a week's worth of Toby, Kathy and Jeff's meals.

"I had a friend who tried the whole vegan thing," Kathy continues, putting on earrings, still on the mirror. "Went crazy from the hunger. Couldn't talk, couldn't walk straight. It was pretty sad."

"What happened to him?" Jeff asks.

"He died."

"Well, he wasn't exactly alive before, was he?" I argue.

Getting up from his mattress, Toby makes way past me to the body on the table. "If Eve doesn't want to eat, fine. More for us. Heey!"

Toby pulls his hand away from Jeff's slap.

"You've had more than your share last night, Toby," Jeff says. "This has to last us all week."

"But I'm hungry!"

Jeff pulls a dirty sheet over the body. "Then call Domino's. This is for me and Kathy."

On the mirror, Kathy's trying out different dresses, posing them in front of her body and looking at herself from all different angles.

"Ugh. Nothing looks good with rotten skin."

I close my eyes so I don't have to roll them.

I gotta find some food.