Tera Hightower, Dead Chick Walking
by Ace Antonio-Hall
He was drop-dead gorgeous and I, well I was just ... dead. I spent my whole summer vacation trying to get over my addiction for human flesh and he had finally found out. While Johnny Suko was in-boxing me adorable notes on Facebook before he went to bed, I was hiding in the shadows of the night, waiting on those punks, the Untouchables, to try and drag another girl into the alley. One-by-one, I surprised them suckers and ate their brains, their stomachs, their heart, and you don't even want to know what else. Even though I was trying to curb my appetite, I had no regrets. Until recently.
I mean the cops could never prosecute, no matter how many girls pointed them out in a line-up. Imagine an entire crew of gang bangers who had a mother or father for a cop or judge. Seriously, I had no idea the leader of that stupid gang was Johnny's brother until the night he finally asked me to the county fair and had a picture of his brother on his dashboard. I nearly died, again. What could I say? Hey, your brother and his stupid friends had a nasty habit of harassing teenage girls so I ate them. Oh yeah, um, can you get us some cotton candy when we get there? Yeah, right. I don't think so.
Those who knew me knew not to call me Tera. I got teased one too many times as a little girl being called Tera the Terror, and grew to hate that name, so everyone, including Mom and Dad learned to call me, Titi. I became Titi Hightower, their undead daughter, right after finishing my sophomore year in high school. That's when I died from a horde of complications from health problems caused by my anorexia and Mom had hired a necromancer to bring me back from the dead.
A little magic and a lot of prayers later, I rose from the dead, with a mean appetite like never before. I ain't skinny, no more—that's for sure.
Anyway, it was a scorching Monday morning—the last boring week before starting my junior year at Honolulu High, and I couldn't wait; not for the sucky cafeteria food or the pimple-popping gossip girls, who made an oath to butt in to everyone's business on the planet,uh-huh. I was so anxious to see my friends.They would never recognize me!
Dad had cut my hair from butt-length to shoulder-length. I went from black to dirty blond, from an A-cup to a B-cup (yay!), and my fave source of sustenance went from rice cakes to fresh corpse brains. I know, I know, it's kind of disgusting. Trust me, it's an acquired taste.
I was texting Alani, my BFF, when Johnny came ringing through the store's door:
OMG. Luv the HELLO KITTY top you insisted I buy. Wearing now. OMG??? Johnny’s at the window of my dad's shop! What should I do? He's come for revenge. I just know it!!!"
I didn't send the message, just absently laid my phone down on the shelf under the counter, right below Dad's gun, staring at Johnny. He always wore tee-shirts that were tight around his guns and loose around his pecs. His jeans always fit perfectly, making me watch him whenever he walked away with thoughts so perverted my mouth watered. He walked into my father's SURFIN' & SKATIN' store with a curious expression on his face.
“Aloha, Titi,” Johnny said.
He was tall, dark and sexy. His face looked as if it was sculpted by the Goddess Athena—as if anyone who caught a glimpse of his smile would fall in love with him instantly.
"Hey, Johnny," I said, cheesing.
Johnny passed by rows of boards while my hand eased under the front counter, reaching for Dad's .38 caliber handgun he told me to use only in an extreme emergency. Dad had been robbed three times in the past month by the Untouchables, and had bought a gun. Little did Dad know, I’d robbed them delinquents of their lives, and he wouldn't have to worry about them anymore.
Besides, I felt that someone coming in to kill me because he’d found out I killed his brother more than qualified for a reason to use the gun. A chill crept down my spine like an ignited fuse of dynamite racing toward an explosion.
I bit my lower lip, and lifted my chin. "So, uh, what 'chu got behind your back?"
"Um, it's uh, something I've been waiting to give you—something I thought you deserved."
My eyes widened. Heat flowed over my body like molten lava from my head through my blood, and my hand slowly eased back toward the gun, which was attached to the underside of the counter.
“Something I deserved?” I tried to sound calm, but my voice quivered when my fingers wrapped around the gun's handle.
“Yup,” he said, smiling.
I melted, from his undeniably mouth-watering smile he zapped me with and started pulling my hand back to my side and away from the firearm. Johnny's eyes narrowed.
Freak me, I blew it. He knew I knew. It's now or never, I thought.
But he was much quicker than I was. Good thing, too—for both our sakes.
“Flowers,” he said, pulling them from behind his back.
It was a bouquet containing a rainbow of beautiful colors with blues, greens, yellows, oranges, reds, pinks and whites. I gasped, with a grin as big as O'ahu seeing thirty-inch Bird of Paradise and Pincushion protea flowers stretching toward the Heavens.
I released my trembling fingers from the gun that was a disastrous moment away from blowing a hole through his wonderful abs. “Johnny, they’re so cool. You didn’t have to.”
“Yeah, I know. But I had so much fun with you the other night at the fair. It's—it’s the least I could do. You know?”
I smiled. “Um, cool. Thanks.”
He turned around, and walked toward the door, and threw me a peace sign. “I'll catch you later. Coach will kill me if I'm late to practice.”
“So you did join that summer league!”
He stopped at the door, and turned toward me. “Yeah, it's a traveling team. It'll keep my game tight until basketball season starts in November.” He smiled, and I melted, again.Omigod, he was so cute.
“See ya, Titi!”
“Bye.” I felt stupid that my voice sounded a little too chipper.
Johnny left. I exhaled a long sigh of relief and closed the shop, locking the door. The second the door locked, I collapsed to the floor, sobbing. I didn't mean to kill his brother. I didn't mean to be undead. Why did Mom have to bring me back?
Each time I inhaled, my breaths became shakier until my body shook so hard, it convulsed, and streams of tears flowed down my cheeks. I really liked Johnny, and for the first time in my life, I’d finally found a guy—a cute non-dorky, non-jerky guy that liked me...and I had to die first to find him.
It would never, ever work and that made me feel like crap. I beat my hands against my legs, and cried, and cried, and cried, until I fell asleep, right at the base of the door.
An hour later, I awakened in Mom's warm and tender arms. She had come to check on me, and brought me some brains she’d gotten from God-knows-where. Mom drove us home, and I tore down on those tasty brains, telling her all about Johnny, and what I did. The whole time, she never interrupted with overly-negative opinionated comments but only smiled and nodded.
When we parked in our driveway, she waited for me to wipe my hands on a ton of napkins I found in the glove compartment, and then she leaned over and hugged me, long and hard. She loved me so much, and I loved her back. I loved her so much it hurt—and Dad, too.
“What you need,” she said, “is a nice undead boy from a good family. I think that Mrs. Bathory is raising her son tomorrow. I'll call and see if we can come over this weekend. Maybe you'll like him. You guys could go on a brained date.”
We both traded goofy glances, and then laughed, loud and hard. Dad met us giggling girls at the door with a plate of human flesh, marinated in his super spicy, totally awesome barbecue sauce.
“For me?” I asked.
“For Daddy's little girl,” he said, grinning. I was the most luckiest dead chick walking in the world.
The End
For Ace's novel, The Confessions of Sylva Slasher, go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
Praise for Ace Antonio Hall and Confessions of Sylva Slasher
“A treat for Buffy fans—but 100% Ace Antonio Hall's own twisted vision. Breathes new life into the living dead; run, don't shamble to get a copy.”
—Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of the WWW trilogy
“In a vast sea of zombie tales, Hall's tale is more than a cut above. He brings the entire genre to heel and treats us to one Hell of a ride.”
—Art Holcomb, writer of Professor Xavier & the X-Men vs. The Avengers, Marvel Comics
THE LOVE OF HER LIFE BECOMES THE DEATH OF THEIR LOVE
Sylva Fleischer is a teenager who works as a necromancer for a living. Wanting to get away from raising the dead for police investigations and demanding grieving families for a while, she goes on a cruise for spring break. Her vacation from the dead is short-lived when passengers on the ship turn into flesh-eating zombies. These are not the same simple-minded harmless zombies she raises and can control, so Sylva and her friends are trapped on the Pacific Ocean. Their only escape comes from a guy Sylva thought was dead: Brandon. It just so happens to also be the anniversary of his death, and she's still hurting from his loss!
The jerk! Why didn't he call to say he's alive? All those tears … for nothing.
Sylva doesn't normally hold grudges, but when someone plays with her heart they have to pay. However, with the fate of the human race on the line, Brandon convinces Sylva to join him in a secret mission, yet she can't shake the feeling that he's hiding something.
It didn't take long for her suspicions to hold true when it's revealed that Brandon has been romantically involved with the very enemy he now wants her to destroy. To top that brutal betrayal, the villainous female would rather kill Brandon than let Sylva have a chance to patch things up between them. Sylva is not the kind of girl to walk away from love without a fight, but with a strange virus threatening extinction of human life, she shoves her own feelings in her back pocket to face her greatest nightmare, and that nightmare starts with something that is eerily growing right inside of her own mind and body.
When The Heart Bleeds, Sometimes Your Friends Are All You've Got
