RIPPED OFF By Stephen Hill

Steve brings us another in his take on the Zombie genre.
WARNING: If easily offended do not read.

RIPPED OFF

“Huh,” Phil muttered. Considering he’d just ripped his cock off, he was surprised by how calm he felt.

It’s not that detaching his dick during his daily wake up round of tug-the-pretzel didn’t concern Phil on some level, but a pleasant, boozy numbness had just smothered him from head to toe. Any feelings of pain or anxiety had been flushed faster than the gruel spilling from his ragged wound onto the bed sheets.

Phil remembered the pillow talk of a blonde pharmacist he’d banged last year. Before she’d finally swallowed his hammer, she’d talked about shock triggering the body’s production of “reasonably effective” pain-killing hormones. Reasonably effective? If he had them to thank for his current state of relaxation, thought Phil, his hormones had to give heroin a run for its money.

Through numbed indifference, he stared at the meat in his hand, wondering how something so familiar had become unrecognizable. As his johnson drained, its shape warped and flattened, turning his rigid bone into a bloodied sandwich bag. From its severed base, blue veins sluiced between his fingers like pasta through a colander.

The alarm clock wailed from the nightstand, and Phil slapped it off with his clean hand, almost knocking off an unopened box of Trojans he didn’t recognize. Should have picked up some band-aids instead, thought Phil, and surprised himself with a chuckle.

There was a watery belching sound from the hole in his lap, and the smell of copper wafted up his nose. Still no pain though, and any memory of last night was obscured by a thick belt of fog. Besides the Trojans, the only clue was an obnoxious trail of crumpled clothes. Stabbed by darts of morning light, it wove a drunken path from the door to the bed.

Must have been a bender with Greg and Derek, Phil figured, and - right on cue - his iPhone brayed from the floor. He flung his hand over the side of the bed and snagged it off the carpet.

“Talk to me.”

“Dude,” Derek began. His vocal cords sounded like they’d been attacked by a belt sander. “Are you calling in sick or what?”

“Considering it,” said Phil.

“And what about last night? Have you considered that?”

Phil could tell Derek was smiling. “No fucking clue what happened,” he sighed.

“Oh, so now you’re going to try and tell me you don’t even remember the zombie?”

Phil paused. “Zomb-?”

“Hey, no shame,” said Derek, cutting him off. “If I was into them, that zombie would be the first one I’d fuck the shit out of.” He hawked up what sounded like a fistful of phlegm. “That is, as long as I double-bagged my unit with a pair of those raincoats you picked up.”

Phil’s eyes swung back to the box of Trojans, sealed tight and forgotten, then down to the floor. The sun now exposed not only the heaving wrinkles of his clothes, but an ugly dress, worn and faded. Splashed with a flower pattern the color of puke, it twisted around the corner of the bedroom door in a mangled snarl. One sleeve was rust-stained and shredded. Black scars scorched the other.

“Uh, you still alive there, buddy?” asked Derek, and Phil hung up. The trail didn’t end at the bed, he realized. At the bed was where it started. Where it ended was his apartment’s living room. He’d just come back to get some sleep.

After all, there was only room on the couch for one.

The fog soon returned, wolfing back every memory in his infected brain. Engulfed in numbness for good, Phil found he didn’t care at all.