Good House Pets
by Michael A. Kechula
“Can I
have a pet zombie for my fifteen birthday?”
Billy asked his mom.
“No!
Those horrible things eat people’s brains.
Do you wanna wake up one morning and find all
your brains gone?”
“The ones
they sell at Zip-Mart ain’t like that,”
Billy said, showing her a newspaper ad.
She read aloud,
“Domesticated zombies make wonderful house
pets. Fresh shipment just received from Haiti.
Perfect gift for teenagers. Get your pet zombies
while they last. Just $29.95 each.”
Billy’s
mom acquiesced and bought one for his birthday.
Calling it Skip, Billy taught it to roll over,
beg, fetch Frisbees. Skip slept under his bed.
One night,
Skip jumped into Billy’s bed, pressed
against him and whispered, “I’m really
a girl zombie. I can make you feel good all over.”
“Really?
“Sure.
Wanna see?”
“Yeah!”
Billy’s
mom was alarmed when Billy didn’t get up for
breakfast. Knocking on his bedroom door, she
hollered, “Wake up! You’re gonna be
late for school!”
When he
didn’t respond, she peeked inside. Blood and
brains were smeared all over his pillow.
“I told
you zombies eat human brains! But you
wouldn’t listen! Now look what happened! How
the hell am I ever gonna get these stains out of
your pillow case?”
What happened
to Billy was repeated 5, 839 times that night
across America.
Zip-Mart made
a fortune selling blood-and-brains stain remover
for pillow cases. Parents were upset when they
discovered an ounce of stain remover cost twice
the price of a pet zombie. On the other hand, the
expenditure to remove the stains barely made a
dent in the marvelous life insurance payments
parents received for their massacred children.
At first many
parents were dismayed. However, they soon
realized having a fat wad of insurance money was
far better than having a disobedient, insolent,
slob of a teenager, who did nothing but destroy
domestic tranquility.
Pet zombies
became the hottest commodity in America. Parents
bought, sold, traded, and rented them at an
astonishing rate. Consequently, America’s
teenagers became extinct.
With no more
American teenage brains left to munch, all pet
zombies headed for the nearest ocean, walked into
the waves, and disappeared. Because they were
never taught geography, they didn’t know
that Canada and Mexico existed and had several
million teens available with ripe, tasty brains.
When CNN
announced that pet zombies had suddenly
disappeared from America, the world’s
parents urged Haiti to increase production. They
mourned when the Haitian government announced
that none were left, and no more could be
produced. The illiterate witch doctor, who’d
invented the pet zombie manufacturing process,
had died before learning his ABC’s and how
to write. Thus, pet zombie recipes existed only
in the witch doctor’s decayed brain.
So far, every
laboratory in the world has failed to replicate
them to meet 1-billion back orders.
Until someone
can devise a new way to create and mass-produce
pet zombies, parents will have to put up with
teenagers.
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