Postfeminist Zombie Assassins Wear Wonder Woman Underoos
He can’t see the top and panty set—red, white, blue and gold—hidden beneath three layers of cotton button down, tweed, gray wool overcoat. She smiles, closing stretched, bruise-red lips over the rim of a neon-green appletini glass, sugar-rimmed.
She sets the glass on the make-shift party desk, letting the edge of her hand rest on plastic-wood coating even though it smells of coagulated beer and happy hour parmesan cheese bits. She stands, left leg on floor, and picks at the polyester panty wedged between ass cheeks, grasping at elastic edges through tweed and Hanes hosiery, getting most of it, accepting the rest as stuck.
He gives her time so not to embarrass her or come to her too quickly, so not to stifle the image of this strange dark-haired temp with bruise red lips, picking. He wonders if she is like this all the time, able to perform intimacies in crowded after-work office spaces with suits and ties and attachés like uniforms around her.
He moves closer to this girl-woman, still digging and watching those closest to her, stopping if anyone’s glance moves toward her. Starting again. He stops three desks shy so to fix another appletini, salt-rimming the plastic glass. He asks the nerdy tech guy, who is good for such things, to deliver it. He grins.
She accepts the drink, nods, gestures for him to approach, giving a flourish of hand and fingers that could mean confidence or aggressiveness. Her cheeks have a flush to them. He can see it now. The flush matches her bruise lips in a charming and natural way, and he wonders if her cheeks flush like this all the time or if it is because of embarrassment, wondering if he had seen her picking.
Thank you. She gestures to the appletini.
Your welcome.
She sips through bruise red lips, registering neither surprise nor disgust at the salt-rimming.
He had wanted more. A declaration of sugar preference, an indication of independence, a cringe, something, but she does not declare herself independent of the salt. She is a true temp, an adapter. She accepts the salt, drinks from the glass a second time, careful to sip from the already mouthed section of rim so to avoid new salt. She is a follower, mannerly, and it disappoints him a little. This one, he had thought, was a true blue ass picker. He had wanted her to be a true blue ass picker.
Do you prefer Romero or Boyle? She does not elaborate on the names or their meanings nor does he ask. Her face shows disappointment. He shrugs. They stand, waiting for another in. He tries talking about numbers. She tries Shelley. He tries the Lakers. She listens, adapting.
When they leave the office together, she tells him she doesn’t usually do this and she’s a little bit nervous and maybe he ought not to expect too much of her.
He offers to take her home, cringing at the ought not in her sentence even though it doesn’t sound so bad when his buddy says it and he wonders if he’s a hypocrite, a little shitty. A small release of her shoulders triggers a calm in the car space, as if his offering was all she needed to hear. She says: No, I deserve this.
He smiles, encouraged. Maybe she hasn’t fucked in months, years. Maybe days. Maybe she’s a wildcat. She deserves a right rolling, all right.
By the way, I liked the salt, she says this not watching him but instead watching the blur of lights and neon storefronts pass by the car window. She says: The salt was nice with the sweet.
#
They stand, bedside, and he pushes gently at her shoulders as if to indicate: take off your coat, lay back, let me do the work.
I prefer the other way, she says, and she moves, adapting her body to let him lay down first then she sits on top of him, straddling, letting the gray wool coat fan out around them. Square shoulders, puffed chest, she is a shero ready to disrobe.
I want to show you something, she says, and he feels himself hard already. First, you have to promise something. She puts a finger to his lips as he starts to agree—yes, yes, anything. You have to promise you’ll lie completely still.
I can lie still, baby. It pops out though baby is not usually his way. This girl woman has a baby way about her and he cannot help himself.
No, I mean it. Don’t move an inch. Stone still. Dead.
He nods, remembering the short, blonde waif from college who liked to play dead. For three nights straight, she lay still, feigning sleep, waiting for him to enter her, no sound when he pulled down the boxers he had loaned her, the underwear beneath. He could still hear, sometimes, the little moan she let escape, as he slipped inside her.
His chin moves to his chest then stops. Stone still.
She pushes to standing, feet at either side of him, wool coat now down over shoulders like a striptease, bend at the knee, unbuckle, unzip, pull his pants down. Rip open his shirt. He is stone still. Mostly.
When she stands over him, hands on hips in Wonder Woman Underoos, her bruise lips purse, unmoving—they do not quiver or tighten or tell of embarrassment. She is all Wonder.
I’m glad I found you, she says. I had thought I’d rounded you all up, but here you are hiding. Do not try to resist.
He almost nods again into his chest but now he is in complete awe of her.
I liked the salt, she says again, as a whispered aside as if breaking her character too loudly might break the mood and so she offers this quiet aside as a reminder to him that she is woman and not a superhero or an assassin. She winks.
She pulls the tie from his neck, unfolds the knot, pushes it roughly into his mouth and ties it again at his left ear, just below the lobe. There is a tenderness in the way she puts two fingers between the gag and his cheek.
So you won’t bite. She dismounts, walks to the closet, thumbs through his hanging ties, chooses an electric blue with Snoopies and Woodstocks, a conservative red and white stripe. It matches, she says. He nods, agreeably gagged, though the crimson red and navy blue are much darker than her outfit. She ties his hands to the iron bedposts.
I am the postfeminist zombie assassin. Do not try to escape, she says.
He watches her, eyes wide, pulling to test the ties, but subtly so that she will not see his nervousness. He tries to remember if they had agreed on a special signal, safe word, secret handshake. Just in case.
From her attaché she pulls long red boots and a whip, spray-painted gold, chipped in sections. She slips bare feet into boots, zips, smoothes hands up to knees. She coils the rope, running her right palm over the golden length then pulling it section by section into her left where she grasps it until the length of it lay in neat rings, collected by long fingers. With one long snap, she releases the coils into air, bringing the whip down hard onto the floor.
You’ve been a bad zombie. She flips her long dark hair and he imagines that she wears a Wonder Woman crown at the crest of her hairline. He decides to buy her one.
I’m going to teach you never to bite again. And her bad shero lines vibrate in tones through air and her fingertips on his chest. He tenses like a boy-man fresh from a Justice League comic convention defending the Wonder Twins as two separate individuals even though they metaphorically represent the same nature. They have different powers, though similar.
I’m not a zombie, he mutters through his tie gag.
I did not give you permission to talk, zombie puke! She whips him, hard across the chest, for his insolence.
He mumbles something, incoherent even to himself, just to feel the golden whip across his chest again.
Again.
He mumbles and writhes, aching for her because he is the bad zombie caught and gagged and waiting for Wonder Woman to fuck his brains out so he can eat them like a good zombie.
When she leaves, he is still tied to the bed. She says nothing, walks through the door, hidden in gray wool.
He thinks of her each day, while punching numbers and shopping Ebay for a Wonder Woman crown while his supervisor isn’t looking. At 5:01, he checks the temp lists. At 5:08, he walks to the nearest bar. By 10:59, he readies himself to walk home. 11:00 is his limit. Backtracking home, he watches for her, the girl-woman and her attaché filled with golden whipping and red boots. His Wonder lover.
Bio:
Rae Bryant
is a recipient of the Whidbey Writers’ Prize, 2009 editor nominated
for StorySouth’s
Million Writers Award, an M.A. writing candidate at Johns Hopkins and
editor of Moon
Milk Review.
Her fiction appears or is soon forthcoming at Willows
Wept Review, Word Riot, Pear Noir!, and
Bartleby
Snopes,
among other publications. You can read more about Rae and her
published fiction, poetry and nonfiction at www.raebryant.com.