A Matter of Taste

By Jack Kilborn

“Finish your brains, Phillip.”

Phillip pushed the jellied hunk away, using his stump.

“I don’t want any more.”

Mom squinted in his general direction; her eyes had long since dried up and fallen out.

“Don’t you like brains? All little zombie boys need to eat brains. You want to become rotten and putrefied like Dad, right?”

“Arrgghhhhh,” said Dad. He didn’t have a bottom jaw, so pronunciation wasn’t one of his strengths.

“You know I do, Mom. It’s just...”

“Just what?”

Phillip folded his arms and picked his nose with the ulna protruding from his stump.

“Phillip!” Mom chided. “Manners!”

“Arrghhhh,” his father concurred.

Phillip stopped picking.

“I hate brains.”

Mom took a deep breath, and blew it out of the bullet holes in her lungs.

“Fine. Finish your small intestines and you can be excused.”

Phillip made a face.

“I don’t want to.”

“But Phillip, you love intestines. Don’t you remember when you rose from the grave? You’d stuff yourself with guts until they were slithering out of your little undead bottom.”

Phillip stuck out his lower lip.

“I don’t want to eat this stuff anymore, Mom.”

“Arrghhhh,” said Dad.

“See, Phillip? You’re upsetting your father. Do you know how hard he works, hunting the living all day and night, to bring back fresh meat so you can eat? It isn’t easy work—he can’t move much faster than a limp, and most of the humans left are heavily armed and know to aim for the head.”

Phillip stood up. “I don’t like it! I don’t like the taste! I don’t like the smell! And most of all, I don’t like eating people I used to go to school with! Last week we ate my best friend, Todd!”

“We’re the living dead! It’s what we do!”

Phillip’s father shrugged, reaching for the child’s plate. He dumped the contents onto the edge of the table, and then lowered his face to the organs and bumped at them with his teeth—the only way he could chew.

“I don’t want to be a zombie anymore, Mom!”

“We don’t have a choice, Phillip.”

“Well, from now on, I’m eating something else.” Phillip reached under the table and held up a plastic bag.

“What is that?” Mom demanded. “I hear roughage.”

“It’s a Waldorf Salad.”

“Phillip!”

“I’m sorry, Mom. But this is what I’m going to eat from now on. It has apples, and walnuts, and a honey-lemon mayonnaise.”

“I forbid it!”

“Arrghhhhh,” Dad agreed.

“I don’t care!” Phillip cried. “I’m a vegan, Mom! A vegan! And there’s nothing you can do about it!”

He threw the salad onto the table and shuffled off, crying.

Dad shoved a piece of duodenum down his throat, then patted his wife on the bottom.

“Arrghhhh.”

“I know, dear. But what can we do? Blow off his head and eat him for lunch tomorrow?”

“Arrghhhh?”

“Good idea. I’ll fetch the shotgun.”

Mom limped in the general direction of the gun closet.

“Waldorf Salad? Not in my house.”