There’s no escape. (Image source: S. Bielanko Private)
You like The Walking Dead?
You’ll dig this, then.
But I have to write you this stuff quick and I’m not kidding at all, okay?! There are zombies EVERYWHERE here in my house, man. I don’t have much time. I’m edgy and my nerves are little shredded ribbons of impulsive reaction.
Never do they tire. Never are they satisfied, or their stomachs full. I think they might rest, might let me find my peace, the kind of moment a man needs in the middle of all this chaos and fire called life, but no. NOOOOOOO! They never rest. They just come and come and come after me, one wave after another, bashing up against my very existence with relentless strength and desire.
I am a parent. I am a zombie fighter. Trust me, they are the same exact thing.
1. The zombies stir before dawn.
My zombie-fighter life starts early. Say around 6am when the smallest zombie, the one I like to call Charlie Hustle, starts moaning and hissing at me from across my dark bedroom.
“Grrrrrraaaaaagggh!” I hear the chaos and it makes my heart freak out!
“No, NOOOOO!” I tell myself. “This can’t be happening!”
What did I ever do to deserve this kind of nightmare first thing in the morning?
I get out bed and, like an absolute idiot, like the WORST zombie hunter who ever lived (that’s me!), I tiptoe through the darkness towards the sounds of bashing fists and popping lips that all but whisper, “Come to me you big fat pork tenderloin son-of-a-b*tch!”
I never have my crossbow with me. Or my pistol. I’m just a fool, thinking maybe if I start my day off on the right foot with one of these zombies they will all change their tune and actually start to LIKE me!?!?
But, no.
2. Their fingernails grow four inches an hour.
As I reach into the littlest zombie’s lair, as I scooch down and put my arms into the black soup, the faint spooky blur crib monitor light reveals his tiny face leaping out of the darkness. His fingernails grow four inches an hour. I know this because yesterday I wrestled him to the ground and clipped them.
And right now, he swats me with one and opens up a wee stinging cut just beneath my left eye.
That’s how zombies say, “Good Morning,” you see. They leap out of the night and cut your face open.
Ugh.
3. There is no escape.
Later, after I’ve managed to survive a few more hours of this zombie plague I call my life, I lock myself in the bathroom.
I have to.
It’s afternoon and what that typically means is that the zombies are all kinds of pissed of. They’re sleepy. They’re hungry (they’re always freakin’ hungry).
4. They destroy your home without mercy.
I run from them all gathered in the living room, destroying my home, throwing things and attacking the furniture in an attempt to let out whatever Satanic steam is hissing up behind their eye sockets and making them nuts.
Once I get in there, in the bathroom, I sit down on the floor. I shake. I quiver.
“I just want to LIVE again!” I scream this out so spontaneously that I even make myself shirk. And then I hear them. The footsteps! “Oh God, no! WHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?”
Why did I make a sound?
BOOMP.
Oh no.
BOOOMP. BOOMP.
They’re.
Here.
They are outside the door, just a few inches from me, from my slamming heart and my tired eyes and my sad, pitiful soul. I can’t escape them no matter what I do, and now they are here outside this bathroom door.
I get in the shower quickly. I turn the water on and climb in the shower and I holler at the doorknob, which is now turning slowly this way and then slowly that way, a menacing sound if I’ve ever heard one.
“I’m in the shower!”
No response. The doorknob rattles.
5. They are easily distracted by Sponge Bob.
And then, just as swiftly as they found me, they abandon me for something else. For the scent of some other poor bastard. For the sound of Sponge Bob coming on down in the living room. I sit down in the hot water and let it pound me to a weepy little man-child soup. I am safe, for now. They were just toying with me. They were just making me their mental b*tch. I am their human slave and, dude, I know they will eat me eventually, but what can I do?
That’s the life of a zombie fighter.
That, my friend, is the life of a parent.