“In,” he wheezed, his voice barely audible now. Together they crashed back through the living room door. “Block it.”
“Careful,” she mumbled as he moved towards the bookcase adjacent to the door. “My things…”
She began trying to pick precious items and heirlooms off the shelves—a trophy, a crystal decanter, a framed photograph of the three of them—but Simon wasn’t interested. Summoning all the effort he could muster, he pushed and pulled the bookcase until it came crashing down across the living room door, trapping them safely inside. Janice stood and looked at the mess. Simon collapsed. He aimed for the sofa but skidded in another rancid puddle and ended up on the floor. He was past caring.
They were safe. The house was secure.
After a while, he looked around the room. Something was wrong. He knew his eyes were failing, but he could still see enough to know that someone was missing.
“Where Nathan?”
Janice and Simon lasted another eighteen days together. They sat slumped on the floor at opposite ends of the living room for more than four hundred hours, longer than anyone else for several miles around, still recognizable when most others had been reduced to slurry.
It felt like forever; hour after hour, after silent, empty hour, they sat and remembered who they used to be and what they did and how they’d miss all that they’d lost. Had they been capable of feeling anything, the end would have finally come as a relief. More than a week after they’d died, first Simon and then Janice’s brain activity dwindled and then stopped like batteries running flat.
Nathan only lasted a day after going outside. His dad had been right about one thing: by staying indoors, in cool, dry conditions, their rate of decay had been slowed dramatically. But Nathan hadn’t wanted to sit there doing nothing. In his one long day, he played football (after a fashion), made friends with a frog, chased a cat, tried to climb a tree, and explored that part of the garden that Mum and Dad didn’t like him exploring. And even when he couldn’t move anymore, when everything but his brain and his eyes had stopped working, he lay on his back on the grass and looked up at the lights and the clouds and the birds and planned what he was going to do tomorrow.
Therapeutic Intervention
By Rory Harper
Rory Harper’s short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, Far Frontiers, Aboriginal Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Pulphouse, and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. His first novel, Petrogypsies, was published in 1989 and was recently reissued by Dark Star Books.
Harper currently blogs at the zombie-themed site eatourbrains.com, where this story originally appeared. Also of interest to zombie lovers might be his two zombie songs, “Fast Zombie Blues” and “Nothing Else Better to Do,” both of which are also available at eatourbrains.com.
Some of the major schools of psychotherapy are psychodynamic, psychoanalytic (e.g. Sigmund Freud), Adlerian, Cognitive-behavioral, Existential, and Rogerian or Person-Centered Therapy (PCT). In PCT, the therapist repeats key phrases that the client has said, which invites the client to elaborate and gradually reveal a wide swath of their thoughts and feelings. Author Blake Charlton, whose parents are both therapists, recently wrote a humorous piece about the first time he had a girl over for dinner, and how his parents would ask her things like, “Tell us about your relationship with your mother” and “So you’re disappointed that your mother works so hard in the city?” which finally led Charlton to exclaim, “No Rogerian therapy at the dinner table!”
Our next story also deals with a counseling scenario, albeit one that’s a bit more macabre. The author says, “Zombies are on my mind pretty often. I was also an addictions counselor for about seventeen years. A lot of my sessions bore some similarity to what takes place in this story—more so than you might think. There are a fair number of counselor in-jokes in this story, and one reader suggested that it be made into a short film for counselors in training, because of the way it illustrates proper responses to common issues, and illustrates how good counselors offer empathy and unconditional positive regard to their clients.”
Even if your client is a zombie.
Transcript of counseling session with Michael R.—May 12, 2019
Good afternoon, Michael. I see you have a new bucket with you.
Hi, Mr. Harper. You like the Hello Kitty on the side?
Very much. [Pause.] So, what would you like to talk about today, Michael?
Nothing much happening. Same old, same old, you know.
How’s your program going?
Um, work was pretty busy. I did a meeting on Thursday.
I think you told me last time that you might have found a new sponsor.
Yeah, he’s a good guy. Been clean three years now. You gotta respect that.
Yes.