The Fall of the House of Hayek

A short story/poem about zombies helping the homeless.

Trigger Warnings: abstract descriptions of police brutality, assault, and zombies/cannibalism

There isn’t a lot of space left here. We’re all living in shoeboxes someone stacked together. Every Friday the cops knock over the boxes, hand out fines, take the person with the most fines to a different set of boxes. We spend our weekend staring into the sky. There’s nowhere else to go.

On Monday people come by with new boxes. They smile and they stack and they leave. They’ve seen the open sky with our eyes. We have nothing to offer them but they know that. A pile of discarded boxes stretches out behind us in the alleys and causeways.

Tuesdays we practice our quiet. No one wants to hear us, and if we are too loud the cops come early. There is no singing, no humming. We look for work quietly, but we don’t find it. Look for homes quietly, but everything is suddenly full, reserved, unavailable. There is no way out. We suffer in silence.

Wednesdays we beg. We ask awkward questions in mumbles. Maybe you could help us? Isn’t there anything you can do? Change to get us back on our feet? Don’t we deserve dignity? They are all too busy. They have the work we are supposed to look for. The houses we are supposed to own. They have no money and no space to spare. There is no dignity.

Thursday we cry. There is no way out. We are held in by piles frequented by matchsticks and nightsticks. They come from outside to taunt and poke, to pull hair and teeth, and reach for bodies. They throw words made of rocks and bottles. Promises of razorblades, barbed wire, tear gas, sleepless nights of wondering at our own worth after everything else is gone. We cry as they shout for us to smile. Our boxes stand.

Friday we scream. We sing, we chant, we march, we pound doors and rattle windows. We hurl back the world that has thrown us down. We stomp our feet and raise our voices. We overturn barstools and expectations. We throw shoes. We build barricades and communities. We share breath and knowledge and sometimes bodies. We live. The boxes come down.

There is no way out.

Sometimes when we stare at the sky we pray. Sometimes we hope for better things. Sometimes we hope for worse things. We do things to ourselves, but they’re never worse. Until they are. The things we do for ourselves are always better, but there are so few things left we can do. The silence and crying and screaming and marching. The boxes crumbling down. Everything is cold and hard and empty. Nothing fits right or feels right, or heals. We’re always sick here. It doesn’t get better.

When the other ones came through on Monday they were quiet. Some of them were familiar, leaving our shoeboxes long ago for other deeper boxes beyond. Some came back from the boxes cops left them in. We do not call out. They do not smile. We do not smile. We are silent together. When they walk past we follow them.

They walked through barbed wire and over barricades and we followed. On Tuesday they ate the landlords and business owners. They ate bank lenders and credit card distributors. They ate home owners associations, pay day loan barons, and spam kings. They ate ownership, money, and property. We moved forward behind them.

They walked over picket fencing and freshly watered lawns. On Wednesday they ate advertising agencies and beauty product designers. They ate dieting gurus and motivational speakers. They ate pundits, young professionals, and means testers. They ate propaganda, respectability, and beauty. There was further forward to go.

On Thursday they didn’t need to walk. Armies fell onto them, all machine guns and tear gas and billy clubs. High powered laser rifles, international sanctions, contras, agent provocateurs. Denied water, electricity, and food. Held against their will. They ate police, soldiers, politicians, colonies, apartheid. They ate power, control, and the state.

They ate everything silently.

They went everywhere.

We followed them.

When the others came we were with them. We saw each others faces. Heard each others voices. They are our dead. Our lost. Our taken. They did not eat us. They wanted only vengeance.