A GIRL WITH HEART

The axe laid heavily in Jeongguk’s palm as if it were dumbbells from his school's gym. He could hear his coaches sighs, “I didn’t know that I had allowed a kindergartener onto the basketball team! Ten more reps, and if you can’t do that, I might have to make someone else captain.” And Jeongguk had done fifteen more instead. He had always been an overachiever.

He looked down at the dried blood and it looked like arts and craft paint, and maybe that’s what this was. Maybe this was all an elaborate school play that he didn’t know he had signed up for. Jeongguk might just be Troy Bolton, he hummed the tune of ‘Bet on It’ and Jimin’s eyebrows knitted together in confusion, “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Getting my head in the game.”

Jimin pointed his knife toward the gas station and slapped at Jeongguk’s knee, “Stop being corny for one second and help me take out the shriekers.”

The corner of Jeongguk’s lip tilted upward, mischevious, “Not until you admit you’re my Gabriella Montez.”

Jimin put on his best cheerleader smile, thrusting his combat knife in the air like a pom pom and said, “No.”

A pout in response and Jeongguk shouldered his axe and got up from his crouch. “Well, if I die in there, just know that I think we would have made for a great theatre duo.”

Jimin shrugs and rises too, prepared at the side of the door. “Maybe in another timeline, we would have. But I’d rather be Chad and Ryan.” He gestures toward the inside. “There’s three in there. One behind the counter. If we get inside we’ll take the three in the aisles first - you can take two, I know you love a good ego boost.”

A smile, “You know me too well.”

And Jeongguk opened the door, what he didn’t account for was the bell that welcomed him like Pavlov’s dog; except he was the meal. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

The sounds of the shriekers were exactly what they had been named for - wailing like a banshee and alerting probably other of their kind nearby. One kid and two men, one of them even wore a trucker hat which looked oddly comical on his decaying body. Even in a time like this, Jeongguk giggled.

Jeongguk led Jimin in, “You take the kid, it’ll be easy because she’s basically your height.” Jimin didn’t have time to shove Jeongguk but he knew that he would pay the price for it later.

Taking a left into the first aisle, Jeongguk eyes the man that is coming toward him. Possible cause of death being the complete right side of his neck being bitten off - he couldn’t be 100 per cent sure, of course. The skin of his cheek was hanging off of his face like grated cheese and Jeongguk gagged in his mouth. He should refer him to a decently priced moisturiser.

A squeal and the walking piece of mould staggered toward him, hands outreached and the skin around his nailbeds had shrunk, nails looking akin to Wolverine - this was a stretch, but Jeongguk couldn’t help but give his adventures a more cinematic appeal.

“Come on, kitty, come a bit closer,” and by the time the shrieker was on him, Jeongguk had raised the axe above his head and crashed it down onto the trucker hat that was now adorned in browned blood. The axe had sliced the shriekers head until the blade was just between his brows, the sound of squelches made Jeongguk’s stomach groan; or maybe he was just hungry.

He kicked in the shriekers leg until he was kneeling and Jeongguk rested his foot on the shoulder which, he would admit, wasn’t much of anything as the bone was completely dislocated from where it was supposed to be, pointing outward like a road sign saying “Go away! My shoulder is like this for a reason!” With as much force as he could muster, he managed to remove his axe that was lodged in this man’s brain; blood sprayed onto his jersey and he groaned - Jimin had just washed it for him down by the stream.

He called out for him, “Jimin, look, you’re going to be mad but I just want to let you know it was completely Redneck’s fault. I got blood on my jersey.”

Jimin groaned and Jeongguk heard a knife dislodge from a head. He should feel guilty for hearing the child die, but he doesn’t. He never understood why he never felt remorse. Maybe it was because they were already dead, maybe because he felt like he was inside a video game - his reality had become too unreal for him. “Jeongguk, I told you not to get it dirty.”

“I know, I know.” And with a faux sensual tone, “If I don’t die in here I’ll make it up to you.”

Jimin was breathless from his kill but managed a breathy sigh, “You aren’t coming next to me until we find a shower.”

Jeongguk couldn’t respond because he was face to face - or more, face to nipple - with a shrieker that stood as tall as what Jeongguk imagined Sun Mingming would. “Okay, Jimin let’s just leave. I think leaving sounds good.”

Jimin smiled and scooted around the cashier desk toward the last shrieker, “Sorry, I would help but I remember you saying I should take the shriekers close to my height; that it’d be easier that way.”

It was then that Jeongguk wished his fast tongue would lay flat in his mouth, this was a lesson in ‘shut your mouth’, he assumed. Backing up against the wall, “Yeah, that sounds good. Sounds great. Spectacular, even.”

He could hear Jimin’s moment of impact as the steel of his knife met the soft skin of the cashier’s scalp and Jeongguk thought this might just be the end - a face-off between him and a shrieker that he was sure was 6’7 when his spine was still working as it should in his body.

A deep groan emitting from the corpse nearing him with big steps, Jeongguk remembered that he was in a play, he was Troy Bolton and he would kill the flesh-eating colossus that stood in his way. After all, he didn’t even have any lines of dialogue.

Jeongguk sprung and his axe collided with the pulpy skin of his knee, disarming the man and getting him onto one knee. “I do,” and he swung the axe into the neck. Except, now the axe wasn’t moving, jammed in the cartilage and muscle surrounding it. The jaw of the shrieker crunched, too close to the skin of Jeongguk’s wrist. “Fuck, fuck.” Crashing into the row of ramen containers, all of them falling like a tasty kind of rain.

The shrieker began to rise and Jeongguk gripped onto the handle of his axe fiercely, wiggling it. But he knew it wouldn’t come undone, it was deep within the neck tissue and it would stay there. Backing up, Jeongguk’s mouth gave and distorted in a silent sob. This wasn’t how he was going to go. He didn’t even have a witty one-liner.

With one step, Jeongguk’s sneaker caved in on a package of ramen, his ankles buckled and caused him to fall on to his tailbone. Throbbing pain exploded from both his coccyx and foot, pressure feeling like a boulder resting on both of the affected areas. For a second, he forgot about the fact that he was indeed about to be eaten alive by a discount version of Seo Jang-hoon. How could something he had loved so much like ramen betray him like this?

The shrieker had already toppled on top of Jeongguk, a heavy strain across his body. He had never been this close to one; he could see the wrinkles of sunken skin, the eyes that were clouded and were flat in the sockets. He had forgotten that they were dead, it seems, because Jeongguk was surprised seeing the death in his eyes. He imagined Jimin. Jimin’s soft, kind ones. He never wanted to see death in its place.

Blackened goo falls from the cavity of the shriekers mouth onto Jeongguk’s chin and his mouth moves wildly, body fighting against Jeongguk’s arms that struggle to keep the man off of him. His fingers tear into the flesh surrounding the jaw; teeth so close to Jeongguk’s arm that he could feel the cold breath against it like winter air. His hair stood on end.

Just as Jeongguk’s muscle began to atrophy, the blade of a knife cut straight through the shriekers eye, inches from Jeongguk’s cheek. Dislodging, a cavity of rotting flesh was left in its place. Jimin pushed the body off of his friend and offered his hand, “I just wanted to make you sweat a little.”

Taking his bloodstained palm, “You’re a dick.”

“A little. But you didn’t think you would get away with the height slander, did you?”

Jeongguk laughed - not really a laugh, more forced and breathy. He could barely stand on his left foot. “I could have finished him myself. You know action sequences need to be lengthy in movies, I was just appealing to the audience.”

Jimin tucked his knife into his belt and made for the canned goods, “Oh, yeah, I’m sure. Is this movie you’re starring in a romance?”

Jeongguk limped over to him and picked up a can of kidney beans, raising an eyebrow at him. “It could be.”

“I’m covered in a lifetime’s worth of blood and gore, are you sure about that?”

He smiled and looked at his friend. Blonde hair almost black from the guts that have covered each strand, bloody palm prints on his face. Yet, despite the horror that occurs each day, the pain we have both become so accustomed to; he still wore a pretty smile. Not the kind you would see on daytime television, not the kind of smile he had while performing his cheer routines at school - one that looked kind, bright.

Jeongguk crossed the gas station aisles, ignoring the pain that sparked in both areas of his body and made his way to the packaged goods and picked up a chocolate bar. “It’s no bouquet of roses, but you always liked white chocolate.” Jimin took it with a groan and just about fell to his knees.

“I don’t care if this is expired, I don’t care if it’s melted. This is all I need to survive another year.”

Jeongguk, “Yeah, that shit has enough sugar to let you last a decade.”

He had barely finished his sentence by the time Jimin shoved the bar into his mouth, fists pumping at the ground at the sheer excellence of the taste. It was as if it was a gourmet filet mignon that had just left kitchen quarters. “I’ve never tasted anything like this.”

“It’s probably the mould.”

Jimin gave Jeongguk a look of disgust and got to his feet, brushing off the dust from his uniform as if it wasn’t caked in gore. “Time to hit the road again?”

Jeongguk should have told Jimin about the pain that flared in his ankle, but he didn’t. He just said, “Time to hit the road again.”

The house was squat, timber columns being bitten raw by termites were the only thing that kept the house from tipping on it’s side. A porch held a swing set that groaned when the wind blew past it; the paint job was fairly feasible if given time to cover the hole in the living room wall.

Jimin knew that this house would not be sold, but he still tried. “Would you like a tour of the inside? The ensuite connected to the master bedroom is made of marble, walk-in-wardrobe, the lot!”

“Oh, that sounds great,” The woman looked to her husband. “But, I think we should keep looking.”

She was trying to be polite, her offering. She didn’t want to tell Jimin that the seventh house that they have visited is still not the one. Jimin couldn’t blame her; he was sure there were squatters in the guest bedroom.

But Min Yoongi was leaned idly against the cream exterior of the house opposite of them, the couple listening eagerly to whatever rolled off of his tongue. Jimin looked at his own client and startled when he knew what he had seen in her the day they had met - Yoko Ono circa 1969, when she and acidic husband banded together in protest.

And it seemed akin to what Jimin’s clients had staged today; a full blown riot against bad housing. It wasn’t, but Jimin enjoyed the thought of it anyway. The realtor’s mind grows bored after each estate, Yoko Ono and the citrus were bound to cross his mind at least once.

Jimin hummed to ‘Blackbird’ as he showed the couple to their car, setting the date of their next meeting - another house, another riot against the Capital; the Capital being Jimin.

He eyed Yoongi from across the street, he had shaken his client’s hands and he was smiling - the goofy kind. The kind of smile Jimin rarely sees of Yoongi. The asshole had made the sale.

Yoongi opened the car door for the newfound property owners and again, flashed a gum filled smile. Oh, how Jimin despised it. His big, dumb smile. The cash in his pocket, God! Could the man be any more patronising, walking around with the wad of cash spilling from the contours of his weathered jeans? Maybe with the money he could afford a new pair, he needed it.

And just when Jimin begun to whisper curses under his breath, Yoongi looked over to him and smiled. He smiled because he knew he had won this round, as if this was a competition.