Free My Life as a White Trash Zombie by Diana Rowland Page B

they simply held no interest for me. It was the segments of brain that held my attention. Most of the brain had been sliced into neat half-inch slices during the autopsy. It looked like pieces of bread pudding that had been soaked in raspberry syrup.
    Not that I needed the comparison. I didn’t have to psych myself up to eat a piece. The hunger took over and the next thing I knew I was on the second slice—and I felt good . I closed my eyes in bliss. It was almost like the kinda good that some drugs could give you—and I knew drugs—except that it was somehow . . . cleaner.
    So what if I was nuts? This was fantastic. The hunger was gone. More than gone. I felt sharp and clear and alive and completely sated. I felt awesome.
    My eyes snapped open. I could feel the puzzle pieces fall into place as the last bite of brain slid down my throat. I knew this feeling . The coffee-drinks . . . those gooey chunks with the same consistency, given to me by the same mystery person who told me to give in to my cravings.
    Holy shit. I’d been eating brains for two weeks. And loving it.
    I couldn’t make my mind figure out what that meant. I didn’t want to know what it meant. It had to be some sort of disease, right? I mean, anything else would be crazy.
    “Oh, man,” I whispered. “I am way beyond crazy.”
    There was still nearly half a brain in the bag. I grabbed a towel, quickly wiped my face and hands, ducked out of the cooler and snagged a clean and empty plastic container from the room where the tissue samples were kept. My pulse hammered as I returned to the cooler and stuffed what was left of the brain into the container. Whether I was crazy or diseased, I obviously needed to keep eating brains unless I wanted to feel like I was dying of hunger. If my heart was beating, that meant I was alive, right? Couldn’t possibly be anything else.
    So what if I’d seen enough horror movies to know what kind of creature eats brains. That wasn’t possible. There was no way I was . . . that.
    I shoved the container into a paper bag, then did my very best to clean everything up so that no one could possibly know what insanity I’d been up to.
    Am I insane? Or am I a monster?
    I had no idea which was the better option.

Chapter 8
    My stress levels were so high that when my cell phone rang I let out a shriek and damned near threw the bag containing the tub of brains into the air. Yeah, that would have been an impressive mess.
    I took a deep breath in an effort to settle my galloping heart, then yanked my phone out of my pocket. “Yeah?”
    “Yo, Angel. It’s Derrel. You okay? You sound out of breath.”
    Thank god I sounded out of breath and not . . . completely fucking insane . I took another long breath. Insane maybe, but at least I wasn’t hungry anymore. And I felt fantastic. Then again, the fact that I felt so good after what I’d just done was so fucked up I almost felt worse.
    No, I felt fantastic. No denying it. This was wrong all over. “Um, yeah, sorry,” I said. “My phone was in the other room, and I had to run from the cooler.”
    “Shit, girl, you could have called me back,” he said with a smile in his voice. “Anyway, I was checking to see if you were finished up there, ’cause I’m going to grab some late breakfast, and I figured I’d see if you wanted to join me.”
    “Sure,” I replied automatically, then felt a spasm of nerves. I just ate brains, and now I was supposed to sit down and eat normal ordinary food like a normal ordinary person?
    “Great!” he replied before I could take it back. “Meet us at the Top Cow Café over on Ninth Street. We’ll hold a spot for you.”
    “Okay,” I said faintly and hung up, then realized he’d said “us.” Who the hell else was going to be there?
    I looked down at the bag I had cradled in my arms. I ate brains. Holy shit. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was like an earworm running through my head. I ate brains. I’m crazy. Completely batshit