Zombie Pink (13 page)

Gina sat on a cement block staring at the goose pimples on her bare legs.
Change of plans. Instead of trying to make it to
Cara's house, she would just stay put until morning.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Clarence Barnaby knew he had to schedule that cataract surgery.
He could barely get around by himself anymore, his eyesight was so bad.

Through the haze of his dim watery vision, he'd noticed that his neighbors across the street, a nice young family, had acquired a new pet... a dog of some sort that squatted in the lawn every day, underneath the big maple tree.

The dog appeared to be white and orange, and Clarence, always a dog lover, wanted to know what breed it was.

Sometimes he stared at the dog, trying to adjust his vision. But all he could make out was a blurry white lump with an orange stripe on the bottom. The dog appeared to be very well behaved, he must say. Always staying on one place, never barking.

Clarence kept putting off the cataract surgery because he just hated hospitals, gosh dang it! All those beeping lights and people in white coats running around.

He liked his nice familiar house and his nice familiar routine. Oatmeal for breakfast, Campbell's soup for lunch, TV dinner for supper...even though he was sure they would find out those
confangled
microwaves were dangerous.

Puttering around the yard during the day and watching Turner Classic movies in the evening... taking a nice long nap after lunch... sure his bones ached and he could barely see. Thanks to Lulu, though - or was it Nita?
What was his daughter's name again
? Anyway, thanks to his daughter bringing him groceries and cleaning up the place, he was content.

Clarence's daughter wanted Clarence to move in with her and her family. But Clarence liked his independence
, gosh dang it!
Most especially, he liked his little TV set up in the living room, with his comfy maroon and black recliner
always ready to flop down in.

Even though he couldn't see the TV screen very well anymore
, he liked to sit there and listen to old movies from his youth... a time when men wore suits and women wore hats and everyone had manners. Unlike these modern days of
vulgarity, rudeness and disrespect.

Clarence knew his daughter meant well. She was just such a busy body. Like the way she kept going on and on about some confounded red spot on his face. Cheese and crackers! He didn't care about that kind of thing anymore. Who was he trying to impress?

His wife, Gertie, had died twenty-seven years ago, and she had
been the only woman for him. Even though Betty
Dunloper
had tried to snag him with her boysenberry pie... he could not stand the fact that she just wasn't Gertie.

The woman could sure bake a mean pie, though....

T
he microwave beeped and Clarence shuffled over to retrieve his Macaroni and Cheese dinner. He picked up the
flimsy cardboard tray
with a dirty cloth that used to be white and was now dark brown.

Then he toted the paper tray over to his scuffed up table that was next to his maroon and black recliner. A bottle of root beer and the remote control awaited him.

Clarence clicked on the TV, but instead of Singing in the Rain
which was supposed to be on, there was some stupid news program.

"What in tarnation?" he grumbled.

Some hullaballoo about viruses!

Clarence clicked off the TV in disgust. Then, forcing his stiff legs to stand back up, he shuffled over to his DVD collection. His daughter - what's her name - had bought Clarence a DVD player for Christmas along with a collection of his favorite old movies.

Clarence couldn't read the titles anymore, so he just picked one. He groaned with the effort of leaning over to feed the DVD into the player. Then he shuffled on back to his comfy recliner and plopped back into it with a sigh of satisfaction.

The movie turned out to be Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, which made Clarence very happy. He laughed at Abbott and Costello getting mixed up with Egyptian grave robbers while he slowly ate his gummy macaroni and cheese.

About an hour into the movie, Clarence saw a parade of blue elephants march across the living room. They resembled old timey elephants, like
the kind they would use in an old
Disney cartoon.

These sudden hallucinations had been happening to him a lot in the last few days. He would see things...weird things. They would just appear right in front of his eyes, without warning.

Clarence blamed it on his poor eyesight
and advancing age. Just one of those things.....he was probably tired, that's all. Plus he had a gosh-danged headache to beat the band!

He had been getting some real doosies
lately. He didn't dare tell....what the heck was her name? Fiona? Carol? about it, though, or she'd probably........what was he thinking about again?

One of the blue elephants produced a trumpet and merrily tooted a cheerful tune. Clarence clapped his hands. It was a lovely show.

"Bravo! Bravo!" his creaky voice cried out.

He scratched a confounded skeeter
bite on his ankle and fell asleep in his recliner with a smile on his face. He was later woken up by a horrible choking fit. Clarence forced his tired old body out of the recliner, and braced himself to tackle the stairs.

The stairs were the main reason his daughter wanted him to move in with her family. His daughter and her family lived in a one-story ranch house.

Clarence slowly made his way up the stairs, stopping at every step to gather up his strength. He looked up into the dark hallway at the top of the stairs and saw a blue elephant there, waiting for him.

The elephant trumpeted, as if to say, "Hurry up old man!"

"I'm coming!" Clarence told the elephant. "Be patient! Gosh darn elephants."

H
is last hallucination had been a giant pink triangle with a cartoon face. The triangle kept threatening to sit on him. At least the elephants were more polite.

It was interesting to Clarence's old brain that he could barely see two feet in front of him, yet his hallucinations came through clear as a bell, as though he had 20/20 eyesight.

Of course, Clarence Barnaby had absolutely no clue that he was slowly descending into madness. He just accepted his odd visions as status quo...part of the aging process.

Right now, his main objective was to get up the gosh-dang stairs so he could go to the bathroom and collapse into his nice warm bed with the thick plaid blanket of his boyhood.

He used to take that blanket with him on camping trips, up in the Great Smoky Mountains....

He finally completed the trek upstairs. The elephant was waiting in the bedroom, he could see.

"Just a minute!" Clarence called out to the giant cartoon elephant. He ducked into the bathroom that had been cleaned today by that woman...who was she again?

Wait...what was he thinking about?

The light in the bathroom seemed way too bright for his poor old eyes.

Clarence squinted his eyes in pain. Suddenly, something seemed very funny to the old man. The toothbrush in the green cup on the counter was dressed in a business suit!

The old man giggled.

"You got a job?" Clarence asked the toothbrush.

"On Wall Street!" the toothbrush replied, smiling cheekily with it’s
bristles.

The toothbrush then produced a tiny briefcase.

Clarence was impressed. He thought the toothbrush would make a fine....what did they do on Wall Street again?

Clarence started laughing. The toothbrush suddenly
sprouted
legs and danced a jig inside of the green cup. Then the old man started coughing again.

He couldn't do anything anymore, it seemed, without these gosh danged coughs taking over his entire body, making him feel like he was drowning.

Fresh air. He needed fresh air.

”
GET OUTTA MY WAY, YOU DUMB ELEPHANT!" the old man bellowed, as he stormed into the bedroom and made a B-line for the open window.

O
utside, the wind had picked up and the sky was darkening. Clarence stuck his head out the window and hacked away. Then he saw some trees coming to life on the neighbor's lawn across the street, so he quickly pulled his head back into the room and saluted the blue elephant.

The elephant saluted him back. Only now, the dumb animal had
made himself at home in Clarence's nice comfy bed! That was going too far.

"Inconsiderate!" Clarence grumbled, as he tried to push the elephant off his sacred boyhood blanket.

"Leave me alone! I'm tired!" the elephant whined.

A loud rumbling noise erupted out of the elephant's rear end.

"Ahhh, that feels better," the elephant cooed.

"NOT ON MY BLANKET YOU INGRATE!" Clarence bellowed. "WHY DON'T YOU GO BACK TO THE CIRCUS?"

Something crashed downstairs.

More elephants! The old man thought. They must be having a party.

"Zippitee
-doo-da!" Clarence exclaimed.

He heard the other elephants loudly thumping up the stairs. Soon, they were all in the old man's stuffy bedroom that smelled of mothballs and bad breath, all five of them, slowly circling around him...

"WHAT DO YOU WANT, YOU DUMB ELEPHANTS?" Clarence bellowed, almost wishing the pink triangle was there to sit on them.

The elephants weren't listening.

"I hope you cleaned up your mess!" Clarence told them, using his stern voice.

One of the blue elephants, the biggest one, flipped his bright blue trunk menacingly.

"Stupid old man!" said the elephant.

"I beg your pardon!" Clarence said, his dignity bruised.

Clarence held up his index finger, as though lecturing a naughty young child.

"How rude! You..."

Then the big blue elephant thrust one of his gleaming tusks right into Old Man Barnaby's scrawny chest.

The other elephants joined in, trumpeting and stabbing, laughing
the whole time like it was great fun. Clarence passed out for a while, blissfully sleeping, just as he had wanted to do, on the well-worn plaid flannel blanket of his youth.

A few minutes later, he arose. When he looked down at himself, he was amazed.

Why, he had turned into the mummy from the Abbott and Costello movie. How wonderful!

Where was that Lou Costello, anyway? Clarence would find him.

And then he would eat him. He would eat Lou Costello alive, bones and all!

Clarence laughed hysterically. Only it didn't come out sounding like a laugh. It sounded more like a low guttural hiss.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Daniella's life was an upper middle class dream come true.
Her husband, Byron, made enough money as a dentist to pay for two full weeks each summer at their favorite vacation destination, Key West, Florida... at a very
ritzy hotel.

When Daniella was growing up, the only vacation she ever went on was to visit her grandmother who lived in Pinew
ood Village, NJ....near the shore, although they never even went to the shore. The muddy little lake in the retirement village was supposed to be thrilling enough.

Plus, now - in Daniella's new and improved life - she
didn't need to work. She was free to be a full time mommy
,
a job she reveled in.

Shady Oaks was the perfect midwest neighborhood for
families. Besides being super close to the local Maybelline’s, a favorite retail haunt of young moms, there was a club house, a pool, a lake, tennis courts,
pre-school, and of course, the nine hole golf course Byron loved so much
.

Daniella loved all the classes and events that were available for young moms and children – like the Halloween party every year and the Christmas pancake breakfast with S
anta (cheerfully played by Doug Morgan, a long time rather paunchy resident of Shady Oaks).

Most of all, Daniella appreciated the Mommy and Me Club every Thursday morning in the
clubhouse activity room.

So, Daniella's life was just about perfe
ct.
Her life was everything she
could have dreamed of when she was growing up in the blue collar town of Piscataway, New Jersey. She was living in a nice house in a safe neighborhood with a perfect family,
friends, and no money worries. She even had a
brand
new career she was embarking on.