Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,30
do now?”
Imani butts her head over the pretend microphone.
“We’re going to Disney World!” she cheers.
“If by ‘going to Disney World’ you mean going to another session and then a podcast, then yes,” I say. “Because that’s next on the schedule.”
As we meander back into the exhibit hall, I show Siggy and Imani the selfie I took with Janet, post the selfie, and show them my autograph book. Siggy says Mark was asleep when she called but happy to hear her voice (they’re such dorks), and Imani says Tishala is completely in love with the crown, showed their mom the photo, and they’ve already started building a “look” around it.
The live podcast we want to see, The Undead Listen, is going to be on fifteen minutes after Scott’s. If we time it right, we probably won’t even see him.
Which is how I want it. Today isn’t about Scott. It’s about Human Wasteland. And zombies. And why we love to be scared by them.
I’ve read some articles online that say that horror trends reflect our fears as a society. How the scary movies and stories that take hold in popular culture show us something about what we are afraid of or are grappling with.
Some people say that zombies represent our fear of “the other.” That zombies represent xenophobia, fear of the outside world, of being overrun by a horde intent on taking everything we have, even our lives, even our meat.
But I don’t think zombies ever meant that. Or just that. Because look at the movies. I mean, just look at Fight the Dead.
It was made in the late sixties, in a time of huge social upheaval, and the heroes are a timid white girl and a strong black man. The dead keep coming, they have been fundamentally changed, and the two heroes hole up in an abandoned gas station with other people—and in that moment, in trying to survive the night, they have to confront each other, confront prejudice, fight to even have a say about what they should do in a life-or-death circumstance.
In the end, death doesn’t even come from the zombies.
And this is what I think Human Wasteland understands about zombies, and about horror. What do zombies stand for? They’re not even human anymore.
That’s what zombies are: a loss. A loss of someone you thought you knew. More than that, a death. And then a transformation.
Into a monster.
I don’t know. Looking at the world sometimes, zombies make more sense than people.
We slowly walk through the aisles of the exhibit hall, passing countless tables of merchandise, and specialty shops. There’s an honest-to-God tattooist giving horror hounds tattoos; his book is impressive and I can’t say I’m not tempted, but my mom would kill me.
But maybe I could get my nose pierced?
We keep going and in the next aisle we see the zombie couple again. They’ve gathered a small crowd outside a specialty makeup booth.
The booth sells all kinds of makeup, but obviously the big hit is the various bite wounds and zombie effects.
The zombie couple are clumsily dabbing makeup on each other, rough swipes of neutral tan that look ridiculous, like the worst mortician in the world just gave up on making their corpses presentable.
The booth owner, a middle-aged white woman with dyed-bright magenta hair, good-naturedly takes the makeup out of their hands, gently turns and pushes them away.
“Go on,” she laughs, shooing them.
The man zombie winks at me as the woman zombie grabs his arm and together they careen to the next booth.
The crowd that had gathered starts to disperse.
Imani examines the makeup artist’s photobook, exclaiming over the beautiful-but-scary evil queen makeup, ominous threaded silver veins edging up her neck and onto her jaw under dark skin, special-effects red-iris contacts, the hint of blood edging the model’s mouth.
“Can I take a picture of this?” Imani asks the woman. “It’s beautiful and my little sister would love it! She’s really into cosplay and fantasy makeup and stuff.”
The woman agrees and Imani shows her some of the pictures she’s taken