Dead and Wearing Green

She was wearing that green dress when I first saw her, five years ago to the day. Flowing meadow fabric draped over long legs, thick auburn hair flowing down her back. That smile. Of course, she is still beautiful now. But now she is no longer alive.

For most people they would no longer be able to find loving feelings for a zombie. But I am different, you see. I have a special kind of memory, and can remember everything, in every detail. My brain allows me somehow to superimpose these alive memories onto what is currently not alive, so that to my mind, blonde hair masks dying, blood-soaked clumps which hang from a shrivelled, balding scalp, poured lifelessly over ripped apart shoulders.

When I look into her eyes, I see the sparkling blue windows I always saw, not the half-blind, cloudy oval nightmares that reveal a damaged soul.

Her teeth still gleam, not revealing to me the rotted, broken stumps that have chomped down on human flesh many times. Well, she has to eat of course. I have to help her. It's not easy, and it's not pleasant. In those wetly ravenous, violent moments, I see flashes of the monster she has become, and I shudder. It doesn't last long thankfully.

We walk and we talk, and I hear her delicate sing-song tones, narrating hilariously bizarre tales of her day-to-day life, not the drawn-out, depressing groans other people hear. Other living people seem to keep their distance, giving us a wide berth. But I do not care. I have no time or space for other people's judgement of our love.

And I do love her, of course I do. I can't switch that off. My brain won't allow me to. The contagion that overtook her, destroyed her from the inside out, one year ago, as it did so many thousands of thousands of others, was so abominable, so utterly disgusting, that had I seen her as she really was, I would either have been enfolded into a possibly comforting breakdown I could never recover from, or run screaming into the void.

I have guilt. Of course I have the normal guilt caused by one imperfect human having a relationship with another imperfect human. But also - I survived, you see. I wasn't taken, and I feel so strongly about her, and about our love, that my one mission in life is to keep her alive in my mind, to not allow the memories and the beauty of her to devolve into undead rotting flesh and sticky depression. She is supposed to stay as she was, captured and contained and protected, like a delicate butterfly bringing pleasure to a collector. A beacon of beauty in this fallen world.

The world is over as we know it. I do understand that. Over half the population are infected, easily spreading the sickness to the healthy, merely by touch, not even a bite needed like in the movies. I swear that some people have been infected just by close proximity, making me (and the world's scientists) wonder if the disease is airborne to some but not others. Officials are working hard to isolate and contain the infected in huge, high 'pens' which to me seems inhumane.

My love IS alive to me, I will not let her be leashed and captured like a rabid dog. She is mine, and I hers, and I will continue to walk the earth with her, holding her hand, though she does occasionally forget herself and try to bite one of my fingers. However, with a playful tap, she remembers herself and behaves. That's love of course.

I know she knows who I am, remembers our sweet life and many adventures. She always did want to travel more, and I made her a promise a long time ago that we would travel the world together. I know she loves me. And I couldn't wish for any better travel companion.