Cheating

This is the first part of my first attempt at NaNoWriMo. I read it for our cheating prompt recently.

Usually when I head to Dr. Stone’s office after work I walk down Washington to 4th and go right into the building. Today I decided to walk down Morrison and walk past Pioneer Square because there’s always something interesting happening there. Religious freaks, free Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, bad swing bands, it can be found in Pioneer Square. It’s one of my favorite spots to take my lunch break or to decompress after a stressful day of work. I admit it, it’s not the free food or music I live for, it’s the people watching. Nothing makes you feel more normal than watching crazy folks do crazy things in a small space. It makes you feel perfectly normal especially before a long and grueling session with Dr. Stone. Though it was a Tuesday in mid-April, there seemed to be a zombie crawl happening in the square that day. No less than 100 people dressed all in black with gray skin were wandering around groaning. You would think that a zombie crawl would occur closer to Halloween but, this being Portland and all, we have to keep our city weird. The “Keep Portland Weird” campaign is one of those things that just drives me absolutely batty. I mean, how organically quirky can one be if they are constantly reminded to remain quirky? Besides, the whole “Keep (blank) Weird” actually started in Austin Texas and has expanded to cities other than Portland such as Ann Arbor Michigan, Missoula Montana, and Arlington Virginia. When I think weird cities I often think of Arlington, Virginia with its Pentagon and its National Cemetery. Nothing screams weird like unnamed soldiers! Besides, the people I’ve seen who are driving cars with “Keep Portland Weird” bumper stickers or the people I’ve seen wearing “Keep Portland Weird” T-shirts are the antithesis of people I would call “weird”. They are usually soccer moms or aging wanna-be hipsters who aren’t ready to let go of their youth. As I stood off to the side of the mob I noticed more and more zombies joining the mass and wondered if something was going to happen. There didn’t seem to be a leader and the zombies didn’t appear drunk yet so I couldn’t figure out the point of this flash mob. Besides, there seemed to be zombie children at this event. Not much more creeps me out than the thought of a child trying to get me and turn me into one of them.
I didn’t have to be at Dr. Stone’s office for another 20 minutes so I had plenty of time to linger and try to figure out what was happening. In the next few minutes, the square completely filled up with zombies. It was turning into a bad 60s horror film with undead creatures limping about, avoiding eye contact, and groaning the occasional “braaaaaains”. Five minutes later a whistle was blown and the zombies disbursed. Within a minute or two, there was not a shred of evidence that a zombie flash mob had ever existed. The square was eerily quiet with us un-undead folks shaking our heads and laughing to ourselves. Did I really just see that or did I just imagine it all? was the look on everyone’s face and I can assume mine as well.
I don’t think that I could be a very good zombie. For one thing, I’m a vegetarian and I don’t think that Morning Star has invented the brains line just yet. Ethan once wrote a paper in college that 60s horror movies ruined the zombie name. He argued that zombies would never waste a whole human being just to eat his/her brains just to discard the rest. He was pretty sure that the zombies would take part in the vital organs as well as the other fleshy delicacies that the human body has to offer. Ethan! Ethan would have loved this, I can’t believe I didn’t think to take a picture of this for him. I pulled my cell phone out of my courier bag to call him to tell him all about it but then remembered that Maggie asked that he not talk to me anymore. And vice versa. Ethan met Maggie a year and a half ago when we were still dating. In fact, she’s basically the reason Ethan and I are not longer together. It’s hard to maintain a monogamous relationship when you find out that your boyfriend is screwing the temp receptionist at his insurance company. We had been together three years and about nine months when he admitted his affair. They had been sleeping together for six months at that point and she was three months pregnant. Ethan was never sure if he wanted a family and my apprehension towards bringing life into this world was always a point of contention between us. His sleeping with another woman was a slap in the face, knocking her up was like getting hit by a truck, his marrying her two months after that nearly caused me to kill myself. That’s not why I’m in therapy either.