text: I looked around the store to see what else I could steal before I had to make a run for it. This was the first moment I remembered being aware of after I came back to life. Carlos (the name embroidered on his shirt) was rapidly bleeding out on the floor behind the counter. “You ... fuck.” he said, eloquent in his last moments. His eyes bugged out at me from his bloodless face, then he groaned and went slack on the floor.. I could still taste his blood in my mouth as I grabbed two packs of cigarettes and the pistol he’d used to shoot me. It didn’t help him a lot, but I thought it might come in useful when the cops inevitably caught up with me. Which I assumed they would, probably sooner than later. I tore open the pack of smokes and stuck one between my broken teeth. Rifling through the back of the counter, I found a box of bullets and stuck them in my coat pocket. It was the jacket I’d been buried in not that long ago, all torn up now from digging my way out of the coffin and from where Carlos shot me. Not that I blamed him, I’d been awfully hungry, living dead (you know how that is), I must have looked a fright. I went to check out my reflection in the mirror in the corner of the store. Oh. OH. Not good. Worse than I thought. I lit the cigarette sucked in smoke and blew it outta my nose like a retarded dragon. When I looked at my reflection, I realized exactly how much my clothing hadn’t held up, not to mention that I looked like a walking corpse. The jacket was filthy, my shirt had holes in it, I was covered in blood, but worst of all my pants were hardly even there. I thought about that for a second. I was dangling balls down south. I’d been Donald Ducking it when I busted in and ate Carlos. “Aw, I’m sorry Carlos. That was wrong, man.” I said, as if he’d been reading my mind. You should at least try to dress well if you’re going to kill someone, I think. It’s the little details that so many murderers overlook. “I ... umm ... I don’t want to kill the next guy pantless, so you don’t mind, right?” I said, unbuckling his belt. I waited for a response, half thinking he might get up and tell me to go fuck myself again. Carlos didn’t move. I took off his pants and pondered stealing his tighty whities too, but thought that might be too much. After sliding his pants on, I found his wallet and car keys. There was thirty two dollars in small bills and a credit card. Sweet. Was this a good omen? Probably not. Fuck me, right? I grabbed a crappy tourist t-shirt from the spinny rack by the door to the store. It had a picture of Devil’s Tower on it, with “Gillette, WY” written in a vaguely 80’s retro looking font. Somewhere in the back of my undead brain, I felt a memory stirring. Gillette Goddamn Wyoming. Why do I remember this place? I am pretty sure I didn’t spend much time here when I was alive, but I’m sure it was important to me for some reason. Was I buried here? Home is where you die, I guess. Fuck it, I would think about this more later. I stripped off my old jacket and shirt, marveled at how disgustingly dirty my bare torso was, and slid into the size large tourist t-shirt. I put on a windbreaker I found behind the counter, filled its pockets with my stolen items, and headed outside the store. Some asshole was pumping gas outside and waved at me. I waved back trying my best not to look like an inhuman monster as I walked quickly in the opposite direction from him. I’d noticed there was a Jeep logo on Carlos’s keys, so I headed over to a Wrangler that was parked towards the back of the little lot. I pressed the little beep-beep button on the keychain, and heard the car unlock. I got in and spent a little minute figuring out where all the controls were. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the guy at the gas pump staring at me. “Shit.” I thought. “That looks like a guy who’s gonna call the cops the second I pull out of here.” I thought about going back to kill him and eat him, but just started the Wrangler and pulled out. Where was I gonna go now? And ... how did I get here exactly? Look, reader. I gotta level with you, at that point I didn’t know. I ended up going to find my ex-girlfriend Janice. Not immediately at that point, but spoiler alert. As I’d later decide, I’m a ghoul. I drink blood to keep myself alive, mostly. So, sometimes people assume I’m a vampire. Not true. I love garlic. Much bigger dick than Bela Lugosi or that fruity Gary Oldman. No fangs. And the whole “vampire” label comes with cultural preconceptions and baggage and shit that I’d rather not deal with. If I’m really hungry sometimes I eat brains too, but fuck you if you call me a zombie. That’s just insulting. How it works is, I get my mojo from eating human life. So, the human brain or heart pack a lot of power for me. Blood, obviously. I can even just straight-up eat human flesh, but it’s more filling than you’d think and pound for pound it’s more trouble than it’s usually worth unless we’re talking about someone who really pissed me off. When you’ve been nursing a grudge there’s nothing quite like making eye contact while you devour some motherfucker alive. Oh, and in case you’re wondering ... yeah, eating babies is also probably a powerhouse ghoul move but I’ve never done that no matter what anyone tells you. Oh, and sex is its own form of power, but definitely not enough to keep me living dead on its own. Back to my first moments, though. I drove away from the gas station slash country store and headed for Interstate 80 going east towards the Black Hills in South Dakota. As I was driving, I couldn’t help looking at myself in the rearview mirror. In my gut, I could feel my body absorbing the blood I’d drank from Carlos. Ghouls like me don’t have a heartbeat like a living person but we do have blood moving through our body. After feeding on an empty stomach like I’d done, it repaired my body and I quickly started looking like a living person again. The transformation was amazing to watch the first time it happened. I couldn’t focus on driving, so when I drove by a small lake I pulled over the Wrangler into a scenic lookout and got out. I stripped naked and jumped into the water, washing myself off and going for a brief swim. The water felt cold and clean on my skin, almost like it was purifying me. I turned over in the water and floated on my back, looking up at the clear blue sky. I heard the muddy rumble of a large group of poorly-tuned American made motorcycles approaching. As they got nearer, I made my way to the edge of the lake and climbed out of the water. I put my clothes back on, positioning the Wrangler between myself and their approach. I looked at myself in the rearview mirror of the truck, and noted that I looked passably normal now. By the time I was dressed, the bikers had pulled into the overlook area and were milling around. I had been awkwardly sitting behind my Jeep trying to decide whether to go talk to them when a biker nodded at me and gave me a friendly wave to come over. Well, shit, that made me feel like I had to go over and talk to them. I started walking their way. As I got close, a heavily tattooed, bearded fat dude called over to me “Hey Brother! Have you heard the word of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?” he chuckled and smiled at me while a female biker next to him opened an ice chest full of bottles. “Come on over, and do you want a drink? We have lemonade, sodas, or water!” My emotions felt conflicted. They seemed charming enough, but proselytizing Christian bikers without beer? You heard me, WITHOUT BEER.