Then And Here: A Zombie's Journey

'Jesus Christ, here we go again...'

Her large makeup laden countenance stared back at him with dead hollow eyes. Her cheeks were working overtime now and in fact were on vacation at this point, thought Felix Loop, 34. She chewed heavily and with her mouth agape. Felix watched disgustedly as the test gum inside her cavernous maw was tossed viscously from the right to the left in a manner that he thought was probably not unlike a cow chewing it's cud. Her high blonde wig was tight and in 1960's curlers that were a sky blue and did not remotely match her makeup or dress which were both heavy and loud!

Not that Felix Loop ever really cared about what people wore or how they fixed their faces up for public consumption. One could just as soon wear a pair of leather assless chaps, a chiffon T-shirt with sequins and top the entire cacophony off with a fedora made from rare peregrin falcon hyde for all he cared! Well at least that may be how Felix Loop used to feel before his job of six years at the local gum factory MyxoCorp. Felix Loop, 34 had found himself in the unflattering and unenviable floor position of Bad Breath Tester.

Felix tested on average about 150 mouths a day. He would begin from 6am to 2pm in the afternoon. The job did not pay well and gave him terrible nightmares about stranger's mouths chasing him and trying to eat him. Also, Felix' sense of smell had been altered after six years of people breathing in his face day in and day out. But that's not the worst of it. A simple trip to the grocery store can always turn ugly when he gets in line to pay. Inevitably displayed flanking either side of him would be walls of gum encroaching upon him as though he were Pharaoh crossing the Red Sea and at any moment they would come crashing down and bury him alive under peppermint and spearmint. What the hell is spearmint anyway? He thought to himself.

Felix realized that the 'cud-lady' had stopped chewing and was waiting for him to give her the go-ahead. He nodded and tightly closed his eyes. He could hear her throat open up and greedily swallow the air in front of him. His fingers gripped the cold hard and unforgiving plastic arms of the chair he sat in and Felix braced himself.

Whoosh!

Her breath rushed at him like a swarm of angered Africanized Killer Bees. His hair tossed in the maelstrom and he swore that he felt tears coming. He inhaled it deeply and kept his lunch in check. Four seconds later the assault was, and no thanks to god, over! On his "Effects of Product Checklist" he marked "No" for the "Wintry Breath" question. OK, four more good inhales from 'cud-lady's' breath and he could move on to number 86 who was already diligently chewing his gum and life away obviously over eager to breath directly into Felix' face to some kind of personal satisfaction. God help me, he thought, but for Felix Loop there was no god and only a lackadaisical tabby cat mooching off him and his shabby apartment on Wallow St, NowhereLand U.S.A.

(to be continued...its 2am and i've been writing this half asleep as it is)