I fall in love the moment she shuffles across the SuperMart floor, dragging her broken ankle through a pile of scattered Cheerios. She moves with such shambling grace, such putrescent poise, and her hair! Her tangled, blood-stained hair, half-torn from her scalp and swept across her left eye, gives her such mystique, such cadaverous charm that I know this is the woman I should like to share moans with.

Oh, if only my fluttering heart would be still! (Okay, yes, my heart has been stilled for a few days now. Run with the poetry, please.) There are butterflies in my stomach, or would be, if my stomach wasn't hanging out over the tattered remnants of my jeans, but I steel myself and shamble over to her.

I say, “Tell me fair creature, what divine (or infernal, as the case may be) providence has created you! If my eyes are glazed over and somewhat waxy, it is only because I can do no more than fill them with the sight of you! So, uh, you wanna go grab a bite to eat or something?” but, ugh, I'm mortified with embarrassment, it comes out a bit more like FRNNNNnnnnNNNGH and I'd forgotten to tuck what's left of my tongue back into my mouth and I get tripped up in my small intestine and end up putting the jagged bony stump of my arm straight through Tony the Tiger's face.

She doesn't even look at me and she just lurches past and turns the corner. I stare at her ass the whole way, and aside from the fact that part of her pelvis is showing through a jagged hole in the back of her jeans, it's the nicest ass I've ever seen. I could write such poetry about those reanimated buttocks.

I shake my stump to try to extricate it from Tony's open maw. Smooth move, Romeo. What sort of dweeb forgets to check where his intestines are hanging when he's talking to a pretty girl? My sort of dweeb, that's what. Even in life, I couldn't get a girl.

Like the time I asked Christina Wilfort to the spring dance. In retrospect, she was way out of my league, but I mean, what girl could resist a man in a cravat? I'd even asked my mother to wash my lucky underwear for me. Yes, the elastic is a little worn out from one too many wedgies, but my observations reflect a statistically higher rate of critical successes when my loins are clothed in them, so I knew Christina would have to say yes.

She didn't say no, in all technicality. What she said was “Stanley Studebaker, I'd drop dead before I'd ever be seen in public with you.” Huh. I wonder if she's seeing anybody right now.

Who am I kidding? I died a chubby virgin dweeb and it looks like I'm going to be a rotting chubby virgin dweeb for the rest of my unlife. I'm depressed and I'm hungry. I always get hungry when I'm depressed. My therapist, Mr. Mulvaney, used to munch donuts during our sessions. Asshole.

I finally shake Tony off my arm and I notice something on the floor a little further up the aisle. Oh, what have we here? A nice juicy foot, left-over scraps abandoned by some shambler or another. I know, I know, you shouldn't eat things you find on the floor, but the five-second rule? It kinda doesn't apply much anymore. And this one's still got a scrap of a sock on it. The cotton gives it a fun texture.

I lurch my way across the floor towards the foot and plop myself down next to it. Yum. Tasty foot. They're an acquired taste, you know. Breathers are usually scared when they're running away, and that means their feet are always sweaty when you start gnawing on them. Like I said, an acquired taste. Kinda gamey.

There's a shriek and a drawn-out moan somewhere at the other end of the aisle, and what doth my withering eye bespy? My darling carrion-bird is returning to me, a twitching breather bleeding out on the linoleum behind her! She's got his entrails in her hands, and she slides down beside me with a not-unpleasant squelch. My heart is quivering in my chest (Yes, I know, it's probably just a maggot wiggling through my left ventricle. Run with the poetry, please.) and I'm thanking my lucky underwear because she's offering to share a meal with me, with me, Stanley T. Studebaker, and I know it'll be just like that scene in Lady and the Tramp. You know the one. The foot? We'll save the foot for dessert.