Royal oil is a wicked liquid with a gallant talent for drawing handsome ransom

“You smell like death,” she told the apartment door as it opened. Even through the hot cut of her wet nail polish, she could smell him. Something low and harsh and meaty. It happened, she supposed. “Destination: shower, babe.”

The glossy page of the magazine snagged against her sweater, and made a scraping sound as she smoothed it down. Halfway through a paragraph about skin cancer she realized she could still smell him.

“Babe?”

She shifted around on the couch and turned.

“Oh. Oh, what the fuck.”

He had been uncobbled, by the looks of it. The ripe swell of jaw that she had kissed goodbye and playfully pinched that morning was gone. Instead there was a loaf of underdone mutton, with the makings of a mouth. It was opening and closing in slow, shallow bites, and crooked ones. The molars seemed to no longer line up correctly. He was still dressed for work, dapper and sharp in his pressed white oxford and half-price chinos, the ancient worn-away stained-in-spots pair that she had been begging him for weeks to let her replace. All down his front and side was a lush gush of red, and dark red, and dark brown, and crusts and flakes and patches and clots. His dress shoes were still neatly tied.

He shifted towards her, and something made a noise like a bubble and a sigh, and she realized with abrupt sadness that it was his throat. Sound could not quite find its way out. He had never been very good at shaving, never, would come out of the bathroom with a scowl and nicks all up and around his face and neck. After a good giggle at his expense, she would offer graciously to kiss them all better.

Her lips trembled.

“Oh, baby. Oh, sweetheart.”

At some point between the seeing and the speaking she had stood and edged away, slowly, mindfully, but still she had the magazine in hand. It clattered to the floor like a bird as she reached gently around for her duffel bag.

“Oh, sweetie, this isn’t right. I’m so sorry.”

He gurgled, lurching. The couch clipped his hip and he stumbled. She watched, ripping the zipper slowly open and reaching inside.

“We should have stayed in, today. Both of us. We could have watched a movie.”

The coffee table barked his shin and he doubled over painlessly. Then kept moving. She pulled out the tennis racket, almost every bit as shiny and new as it had been that last Christmas.

“You could have picked this time. I know you don’t like the old black-and-white stuff, but I don’t mind comedies.” The racket came up for a moment, and quivered. Her face squirmed. “Oh, sweetheart.”

He reached out to her - still doubled drunkenly over the coffee table, working patiently to climb over - with his crooked molars opening and closing and opening and closing and opening, and he stretched his hand out and curled and uncurled his fingers into fangs and then she laid into his wicker-brittle skull over and over and over and sideways and across and over and over and then through it like a cavewoman. By the time she was done, her nails had smeared.

(despite my love of visceral description and violence in general, zombie stuff has never really fancied my tickle... Hmmmm.)