The Zombie Apocalypse, “Shark Week,” and My Great-Grandmother’s Vengeful Ghost Screams

by Lindsay Miller

My girlfriend and I have been going through a rough patch lately. In fact, we were on the verge of breaking up, then we decided to stick it out, but then the zombie apocalypse broke loose and suddenly we both had a lot on our plate and not much energy left over to process and get our relationship back on track. I just found out that she was bitten by a zombie, but has been covering up the wound (which is about two days old and looks really nasty) while she tries to figure out a way to cure the virus. I feel betrayed by the fact that she withheld this information from me, especially when she knew that one of the biggest issues in our relationship was her being unwilling to share. Is there any hope for us, or should I just cut her head off and move on?

It’s incredibly difficult to repair a faltering relationship even under normal circumstances, much less while you’re trying to fend off legions of the undead that hunger for your flesh. Kudos to you for trying to make it work — -that takes maturity and commitment — -but there’s also something to be said for knowing when to let go.

The fact of the matter is, if you don’t have time to put into maintaining your relationship — -whether that’s because of your job, your new baby, or the necessity of sleeping somewhere different every night so that lumbering hordes of what once were human beings don’t track you down and devour you — -then you shouldn’t be in that relationship. Your relationship is supposed to be a source of strength and support, a safe haven, but it takes time and energy to build that haven, just as it takes time and energy to build a zombie-proof fort out of scrap materials every night. If you don’t have the emotional resources to build your relationship back up, it’s going to fall apart the first time you two get into a fight or a ravening corpse rips off one of your arms.

Lots of unhappy couples stay together because it would be too hard or too inconvenient to break up, convinced that if they wait long enough, they’ll find the perfect moment when a breakup will be easy and painless. Unfortunately, that moment doesn’t exist, and neither does a cure for the zombie virus.

The fact that your girl hid her bite from you is a red flag, especially since you’ve already discussed your need for her to be more emotionally forthcoming. If you let this situation fester, you’re going to end up with resentment, suspicion, and possibly her gnawing your face off in the middle of the night, and breaking up at that point will be even more painful. Walk away now, while you still have some affection and respect for each other and she retains her comprehension of human speech. Don’t give in to the temptation to keep your options open for a future reconciliation. Sever your ties — -and, just to be on the safe side, her spinal cord.

So, dilemma: I’m in high school, and there’s this girl I really like. I mean, she is SO pretty and smart and just thinking about her makes me blush like a total weirdo. She doesn’t have a girlfriend — -or a boyfriend. I mean, I don’t actually know whether she’s gay. So that’s obstacle 1. But then also, her sister died last year under some kind of mysterious circumstances that may have involved the most popular girls in school. I’ve seen her staring at some of them really intently across the cafeteria — -so maybe she’s queer? Yay! But maybe she already has a crush on someone else? Boo! BUT, that whole clique of popular girls seems to be dying off in gruesome fashion, one after the other, so maybe she’s available after all. Should I ask her out or what?

Oh, man, crushing on a possibly-straight girl who may or may not be a bloodthirsty, cheerleader-eviscerating murderer — -who among us hasn’t been there? I’m flashing back to high school right now. The sleepovers when we’d braid each other’s hair and I’d be hypnotized by the freckles spilling down the back of her neck, then she’d disappear sometime in the middle of the night and return wearing different clothes than the ones she left in, and the next day another dismembered corpse would be found in several different mailboxes — -God, those were the days. Just thinking about it makes me want to dig out my Eve 6 CDs and double-check the locks on all my doors and windows.

It’s so tempting when you’re in the throes of an all-consuming infatuation to latch onto any possible hint that your crush might be gay, no matter how subtle or ambiguous. Sure, her gazing at the cool girls during lunch hour might be a sign of inexpressible same-sex longing, but she might also just be trying to calculate the tensile strength of their skulls. More importantly, the fact that you mention things you know about her and things you’ve seen her do but not how she behaves toward you when you two interact makes me suspect that you haven’t interacted yet, and that your attraction to her has far outpaced your knowledge of her as a person.

So: get to know her as a person! Invite her to sit with you at lunch. Ask her to hang out after school (assuming she’s not busy with chainsaw maintenance). Take an interest in her hobbies, whether it’s training rats to consume human flesh or making meticulous collages out of violent newspaper headlines. Find out who she is in real life, not the fantasy you’ve constructed around her. Be prepared to discover that she’s flawed — -we all have some skeletons in our closets. Don’t touch the skeletons.

And if you hang out and talk and she doesn’t seem interested, try not to take it too personally. I know your first experience of romantic rejection can make you feel like your heart is crushed, but it’s better than having your heart literally crushed, possibly with a sledgehammer. Also, if she does agree to go out with you, don’t suggest that you have your first date on Halloween. I’m guessing she’s busy.

I’ve been a vampire for a few years. My girlfriend knows and she’s cool with it. The thing is, I would really like to go down on her during her, you know, Shark Week, for obvious reasons. She’s not into it, because she says she gets super sensitive and being touched is uncomfortable, and also because she doesn’t feel sexy when she’s on the rag. How do I convince her that she’s INCREDIBLY sexy to me all the time, but especially then? (She won’t let me drink her blood the rest of the month, either, because she says it’s “creepy” and she “doesn’t want vampire hickies.”) I’m going crazy waiting for her to satisfy my bloodlust!

Do you want to convince her that she’s sexy because you want her to feel more comfortable and confident in her body, or because you’re hoping that if she feels sexy she’s more likely to let you consume her life force to fuel your own immortal existence? Be really honest with yourself here. Trust me, there’s nothing more transparent than a sexual partner who only gives compliments when she thinks she’s going to get some of that sweet, sweet booty (or B-positive).

If your main concern is your girlfriend’s insecurity and how you can overcome it, work on expressing your attraction to her in a context where there’s no explicit or implied expectation that she’ll reward you with sex or blood. If, however, your main goal is convincing your lady to satisfy your various hungers at any cost, I’m afraid I don’t have much advice for you.

People’s sexual boundaries are not obstacles for you to find your way around. They exist independently of you, and they’re often immutable. Your mission should not be to cajole your girlfriend into letting you drink her blood; it should be to find activities that are satisfying and enjoyable for you both, even if that doesn’t involve blurring the line between cunnilingus and cannibalism.

The question is never “How do I get my girlfriend to do a sex thing she doesn’t like?” It’s “Can I go without this sex thing my girlfriend doesn’t like — -at least for the duration of her mortal life?” If your relationship isn’t strong enough to console you at the thought of going another 40 or 50 years without feeding on someone you’re romantically involved with, it may be time to break up.

My girlfriend is amazing. We’ve been together for eight months and we NEVER fight, the sex is great, we talk about the future all the time and I can totally see us getting married and adopting two babies (a boy and a girl but we’d give them gender neutral names and dress them in gender neutral clothes). I’m trying not to rush things but it just feels so RIGHT, you know? I’m ready to U-haul it up.

Here’s the thing: My parents died when I was young and left me financially independent in a huge, old house (which has been the site of at least one horrifying murder per century since it was built in the 1600s). Her parents didn’t exactly cut her off when she came out, but they’ve been distant and she can’t go to them for money. She is living in a tiny, crappy apartment while she tries to pay off a mountain of student loan debt.

I want her to move in with me. When I suggested it, she said very firmly that she didn’t need to me to take care of her and I haven’t brought it up since, but I still think it’s a good idea. We could get a new place together, I guess, but my parents’ house has sentimental value, and if I’m away from it for too long I start sleepwalking and wake up in unfamiliar places with aching muscles and a feeling that I’ve done something unforgivable. I know my girlfriend is worried that it will shift the power balance in our relationship if she lives in a place that I own, but honestly, I’m not offering out of charity — I just want to wake up next to her every time my great-grandmother’s vengeful ghost screams in the night. I want to do little everyday things together like make breakfast and clean those mysterious reoccurring bloodstains off the ceiling. Is there any way to persuade her that this is the right move for our relationship? Also, how soon should I explain to her why she can never, ever go in the cellar?

Is it possible that your girlfriend said “I don’t need you to take care of me” because she’s not ready to cohabitate, and she wanted to let you down easy? Maybe she needs more time to get comfortable with the idea of sharing her life with you and the spectral child with no mouth who sometimes appears in your bathroom mirror. Or maybe she really is concerned that accepting your offer of a free place to live will result in her losing control in the relationship and sometimes feeling a disembodied hand caressing her face as she tries to sleep. There’s really no way of knowing unless you two talk this out.

I know it’s scary to bring something up again when it got you shut down before, but communicating about your hopes for the future is the best way to make sure you have one. Tell her how you’re feeling — that you want to live with her, that you think your parents’ house is the best available option, that you’re not trying to make her feel obligated to you, that the whispering behind the cellar door is just her imagination.

Be honest about what you hope to get out of the arrangement and what you’re willing to compromise. Can you redecorate? Maybe paint over the arcane and indecipherable writing that covers the wallpaper in the hallway? How will you deal when you have disparate work schedules? Can you promise not to take it out on her when that purring noise that sounds less and less like a cat the more you listen to it keeps you up all night? Living together requires an enormous amount of discussion, negotiation and teamwork; you both need to be prepared for that. You’ll probably need to let go of the “we NEVER fight” thing, too. If you move in together, that’s going the way of the dinosaur and those birds you keep finding on your doorstep. Which is fine — all couples eventually fight, and learning how to do it without hurting each other or your relationship is a crucial life skill.

But even if you talk about it openly and are ready to compromise, she might not want to move in with you right now. She might not feel you’ve been together long enough for that level of commitment; she might be someone who needs her space and will always want to live alone no matter how many years you spend together. Or she might just be unwilling to live in a house where the rooms constantly rearrange themselves while she’s sleeping. In that case, could you rent out your parents’ house (making sure to stipulate “no cellar access” and “landlord is not responsible for removal of immortal snakes” in the lease) and get a new place for the two of you?

Ultimately, this is going to come down to a frank conversation about what both of you need and how you can find a solution that’s mutually satisfactory. If such a solution doesn’t exist, it will be painful, but it’s better to find out now, before you invest even more time and energy in a relationship with no real future. In that case, all you can do is say goodbye and go your separate ways — her to her tiny apartment, and you through that small door in the back of the broom closet that you’ve never noticed before. I wonder where that door leads?

Lindsay King-Miller is also on Twitter, and you can peruse the non-zombie-apocalypse-related AAQC archive here. Do you have a question for her?