Tag: Short story (Page 9 of 11)

Spain in the Spring, a short story by Evan L. Klein

July 10, 2015 / The Furious Gazelle Editors

Spain in the Spring

by Evan L. Klein

They walked along the sidewalk in the small town they grew up in. Owen was still young and Lenny was younger. Owen told him stories about the times he had been to France and his intentions of moving to Spain in the Spring. Lenny, who was only ten, had never heard of such things. He was new to the whole world being as small as he’d been. Owen told Lenny that on his twenty-third birthday he left for Europe and dropped out of school. He had, as he said himself, both wanted and needed to leave, no matter where he was going. The simple idea of always moving away kept him from sitting around.

“I’ve never been on a plane before,” Lenny said to him.

“That’s alright. I remember my first time.”

They got to a small bakery on the main street of town. It was the only place you could get fresh croissants and muffins which Lenny always loved.

“This feels like we’re in France, doesn’t it?” Lenny asked as they sat by the window.

“Not really.”

“Oh,” he said, embarrassed that he had said anything about it.

“France feels newer but older at the same time. It’s sort of the best place to go. But I’ve been there already.”

“We should go there together,” Lenny said, “you and me.”

Owen thought about it for a moment. “I could take you before I move to Spain. Unless you want to go to Spain instead?”

“Spain is dirty, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Spain is beautiful, even more than France.”

An Afternoon in Brooklyn by Joseph Giordano

June 26, 2015 / The Furious Gazelle Editors

An Afternoon in Brooklyn

by Joseph Giordano

There was a knock on the door, and I froze like the flash of a strobe. My Glock was on the metal-top kitchen table, and the apartment entrance faced me. I clicked off the whirr of the portable fan. Sweat clung the shirt to my back. I wiped my palms on jeans. I dropped behind a wooden chair and steadied my aim with the seat. My temples throbbed. The wall clock ticked like a metronome. I glanced at the fire escape outside the window. A car honked, tires screeched, and a woman screamed for her kid to get out of the street.

The knock came again. Louder.

Should I shoot through the door? Maybe I had time to shimmy down the fire escape?

The muffled voice of my landlady, Mrs. Scaramucci, came through. “Mr. Tomasina, I’ve come for the rent.”

Was it a trap? Her voice was calm. I stepped silently to the door and looked through the peephole. The lens stretched her face like a float balloon. She was alone. I slid the Glock into the small of my back and cracked the door.

Mrs. Scaramucci’s flower-patterned housecoat hung down to her calves where elastic hose bunched up around blue-snake veins and tassel-toed slippers. She smelled like damp mold.

“Mrs. Scaramucci, rent isn’t due until the fifteenth of the month.”

She gave me a sly look. “Two men showed up at my door, grande e brutto. The ugly one had a glass eye. They asked for you.” She wallowed in the news.

My gut went queasy, but I kept my face impassive. Beppe Lerma’s nickname was mal occhio after he lost an eye in a bar fight. He baseball batted his opponent into a paraplegic.

I focused on my breathing to slow my heart rate.

Mrs. Scaramucci tilted her head. “I told them nothing; maybe they were tax collectors. If you’re leaving, I want the rent.”

Scaramucci collected rent in cash. Paranoia about an IRS audit kept her from fingering me.

“Mrs. Scaramucci, I’ll pay when it’s due. I’m busy.”

She peered past me. I closed the door and turned the dead bolt.

I went to the front room of the railroad apartment and peeked at the street through the screen. Meat hung in the window of the butcher across the street. A few patrons entered the sawdust-covered floor. The owner of the corner bicycle shop replaced a flat tire. He had greasy hands. A red city bus rumbled down the street. The window glass vibrated, and I smelled diesel fumes. Alternate Side Parking was in effect. Cars had been shifted from the day before. A gray puff of exhaust belched from a black Lincoln I hadn’t seen. Its tinted windows were rolled up, but there were a number of spent cigarette butts on the sidewalk near the driver’s side. My stomach churned acid. Probably Lerma got a hit on my description at the D’Agostino’s where I shopped. Now he and his crew waited to pop me when I came onto the street. Continue reading

“Sylvia’s Birthday Party,” by Irving A. Greenfield

June 23, 2015 / The Furious Gazelle Editors

Sylvia’s Birthday Party

By Irving A. Greenfield

She would soon be sixty and decided weeks before the event to make a birthday party for herself. Sure, or afraid, that there wouldn’t be too many birthdays in her future she planned this one with meticulous care. The guest list – if it could be called that – wasn’t long. She always had a problem with friends. Being a gregarious person, she could make friends easily, but she never had learned how to keep them. So, the list was necessarily narrowed down to members of her immediate family: her mother, her brother Robert and his wife Anne; their two children, Larry and Donald; and her husband, Martin. There was another sister, Rose, a year younger than herself. But they hadn’t spoken to each other for close to eight maybe ten years. She wasn’t good with numbers unless they were related to the cost of item whether it was for clothing or something for the house – an apartment in Astoria, Queens.

“Sparklers and Snakes,” by Jack Helbig

June 19, 2015 / The Furious Gazelle Editors

Sparklers and Snakes

by Jack Helbig

“There’s one. And there’s one. And there’s one. There’s one.” This is my sister, Gretchen snorting and counting bad perms.

“There’s another one!” laughs Bonnie. She sits behind me by the window.

“Bad perm.”

“Oh god, look at that one!”

Trish doesn’t say a thing; I notice she’s been very quiet this trip.

It’s the summer of 1975 and I just got my license last April. This is my first summer driving, and since my sister has a much busier social life than I do (this was the summer I discovered I had no friends) I have become her de facto chauffeur. The three of them squish together in the back seat of our second car, a 1964 VW bug.

We pull over onto the grass by the side of the road and I jump out, planning to open the door and bow theatrically as they emerge. I have done this before. I think it makes me seem kind of European and elegant, but it drives my sister crazy. “Cameron, we can do it.” she says, pushing the seat forward the moment we stop, reaching for the door handle from the back seat.

By the time I got around the car, Bonnie is scooching out of the seat, butt first. I don’t want to look like I want to watch this, so I turn around and look at the fireworks stands.

There were three of them. Set up under tents at the Shell Station, at the Clark Station, and next to the Hager Farms farm stand. This is the year before the bicentennial, so things are not over the top patriotic yet. But there is a large American flag flapping at the Shell Station. Under it on the pole is a Missouri state flag and a black P.O.W./M.I.A “You are not forgotten.” flag. The flag at the Hager Farms farm stand is smaller, but there are four of them, stuck in the ground at each corner of the tent. In front of the Clark station, there is a huge fiberglass man, originally Paul Bunyan, with a beard, stocking cap, and overalls, but his overalls and cap had been given red and white stripes and his beard was painted white. Uncle Sam as lumberjack.

“Sister Holly,” by Alex Haber

June 12, 2015 / The Furious Gazelle Editors

Sister Holly

by Alex Haber

At the far end of our street there is a cul-de-sac, a dead end of houses removed from our proper neighborhood. We gather in the woods behind the cul-de-sac in a clubhouse built at the top of a tree, titled with an old bar sign one of us stole from the rubble of a nearby fire: The Rusty Nail.

From our clubhouse we can see into the houses of the cul-de-sac. Two of the properties are owned by old hags, the ancient Agmon sisters, whose rundown houses face each other across the street. Other than to investigate the strange whirring noises that come from their bedrooms at night, we’ve had no reasons to study them.

The third house, painted pale yellow so that it stands out from the plain white others, and with large, uncurtained windows, belongs to Sister Holly. Sister Holly is the youngest nun we’ve ever seen – all of us students at the Catholic boys’ high school. She must be just a few years older than us, and she doesn’t teach, as far as we know. Each day she leaves her house in full uniform, heading to an unknown place: a convent in the city, we imagine, or some other queer religious institute. Our parents call her Sister Holly – the italics a tone in their voices – when referencing her.

“Poor Mary Miller,” says my mother to my aunt one evening at the kitchen table. Across the room my father sits in his usual chair, whittling a piece of wood into some sort of knick-knack. “That daughter of hers is going to end up in the family way.”

“A disciple of Sister Holly,” says my aunt.

Our street is full of these sayings, these innuendos, though we’ve never seen anyone at the pale yellow house but its owner. In the clubhouse we share our findings, trying to understand the young nun.

“Ms. Hamel said she’s had an abortion.”

“Who’s Ms. Hamel?”

“She works at the clinic.”

“You’ve never been to any clinic.”

“She got expelled from the convent. That’s why she can’t teach in town.”

“I’d confess my sins to Sister Holly any day.”

“Birthright,” by Diego Luis

May 26, 2015 / The Furious Gazelle Editors

Birthright

Mr. Weaver lost his hat. He felt it tumble backwards down his cranium and disappear into the dark. “Must have been an owl,” he muttered.

Motley grunted and drove the horse on. The reins jingled in his pale hands.

Mr. Weaver’s head felt cool. A harsh, autumn wind with an early hint of winter’s chill rushed his hair. He feared the worst for his appearance. He squinted at the night’s impenetrable black veil, thinking he saw little shapes flitting about in the corners of his vision. Mr. Weaver cleared his throat. “How much further?”

Motley mumbled something. He covered his eyes with a ragged hand, his lips moving inaudibly. His head swayed from shoulder to shoulder with each bump of the carriage. “Ten minutes more, I should think,” he said. He tugged at his collar.

Magpies in June by D.F. Paul

April 24, 2015 / The Furious Gazelle Editors

Magpies in June

by D.F. Paul

There are no endings and no beginnings; just uncertain lines that criss-cross events, connecting one to the other. Sometimes the lines are memories relived when they assert themselves upon us. Sometimes they are the imagination in search of meaning. Sometimes they are magpies.

A magpie is just a bird. It exists in black and white, without any shades of gray. Its lines are resolute, forceful. One color ends and the other begins. In that way, it exists outside the complicated rules we’ve attached to our lives.

But the magpie is supposed to be one of the most intelligent animals on the planet. Unlike most, it can recognize itself in a mirror. It doesn’t see some phantom animal that has appeared from nowhere. It looks in and it knows itself. It is, at least in some respect, self aware.

This is me.

* * * Continue reading

“Jerry, at the Construction Site,” by Samantha Kirby

April 10, 2015 / The Furious Gazelle Editors

Jerry, at the Construction Site

By Samantha Kirby

“This way,” Rich said, and made an abrupt right turn at the corner.

“This way?” I asked, shuffling a bit to keep up. “Why are we going this way?”

“Jerry’s working in the old East End Theater up here a couple blocks.”

“Oh.” Classic Rich. He was always doing this – stopping without warning: stopping to buy fertilizer or garden tools, stopping to have the car looked at, taking the long way round just to impress you with his knowledge of the back roads – always forcing detours, always springing his projects and his friends on you while he had you balled up as a prisoner in his fist. Jerry was at work for God’s sake. Rich pulled out his cell phone and gave him a ring.

“Hey man, whatcha doin’?” A pause. “Oh, nothin’. I was just down here by the East End Theater and I thought I’d stop by and say hey – can you spare a few minutes?” Another pause. “Cool man, I’m right outside.” I’m right outside. Why not we? Classic fucking Rich.

“So how’s Jerry doing?” I venture to ask.

“Oh he’s doing fine. You know Cameron just got married.”

“Yeah, I heard about that – isn’t she like….”

Rich read my mind. “She’s nineteen, yeah. They’re living with Jerry and Sandy.”

“And Uncle Nate?”

“And Uncle Nate.”

“That’s quite a crowd.”

“Well, that’s just how they’ve got to do things out in Moody.” I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but I let it slide.

Jerry was our dad’s cousin, and I had probably thought about him without his name being mentioned or without him being physically present a grand total of five times in my entire life, that of course being a generous estimate. I didn’t consciously avoid him, or at least the thought of him; it was a simple matter of him doing his thing, me doing mine. A simple, textbook example of two strangers who happened to be tenuously related, one of whom was to the other a representation of distant, half-baked imaginings, the other of whom was doubtlessly to the first just another absent name dropped at Thanksgiving.

The East End Theater was a relic from the 1930s, an ornate stone building stretching for half a block in either direction from its corner view of the last few numbered avenues of Northside. It had closed down in the eighties, just like most everything in this Southern city, when stalled progress turned standards of living belly-up and everyone who could afford it flocked to the suburbs. But recently urbanization had taken on a trendy hipster feel, and the children of the very same emigrants who fled the city to raise them in relative affluence were flocking back like chutes and ladders, revitalizing and restoring and trend-setting and envelope-pushing, and in just one and a half generations the city was making a comeback, baby. Problems never die, of course, but every nadir has its zenith, and we were on the upswing, you could feel it in the air. Jerry’s construction outfit was just the next sign: an old theater with an old history being converted into a new theater with an old history. At the current moment Jerry himself, a graying man in his early fifties, was stepping over its threshold.

* * * Continue reading

“Potential,” by Michele Markarian

March 24, 2015 / The Furious Gazelle Editors

Maya turned her key in the lock and stumbled through the door, tripping over a heavy object – backpack maybe? – that someone had placed in front of it. “Shit,” she hissed involuntarily.

“Is that you?” she heard a voice say from the bedroom.

“Sorry I woke you,” she whispered, trying to make herself sound as if she weren’t both drunk and high, which she was.

“Thanks a lot! You know I need to be up early for work! I’ll never get back to sleep,” said Jim, her husband.

“Sorry! Sorry. Can you keep it down –“

“I might as well read,” said Jim, turning on the light.

“Jim , are you crazy? It’s – it’s three in the morning!” Maya looked at her watch, surprised. She was starting to get a headache. Why had she let Shauna talk her into smoking a joint at 12:30am?

“I know what time it is. I assumed from your late arrival that you didn’t,” said Jim icily, picking up his copy of The Economist and flipping through it.

“I told you, we were celebrating Missy’s promotion. Besides, I wouldn’t have woke you up if I didn’t trip on whatever it is someone left by the front door.”

“Your kids’ backpacks!” snapped Jim. “Remember your kids? Peter and Connie? Remember them? Somebody’s gotta take care of them while you go off celebrating Missy’s big promotion.” He turned his back to her and started to read. “I’m going to be useless at work tomorrow thanks to you and your little corporate friends.”

“Sorry,” mumbled Maya. She couldn’t resist throwing in, “I think you’ll be able to rally for the hour. You can always come home and crash.”

“At least I’m helping people” Jim retorted. “How many lives has Stars of the Startups saved this month?” Stars of the Startups was the magazine where Maya served as Editor-In-Chief.

Just four that I care about, thought Maya. Yours. Mine. Peter’s. Connie’s.

“Exactly”, said Peter. “None, that’s how many.”

Maya’s alarm went off at six. Ignoring the throbbing of her head, she went into the kids’ bedroom – an office, really – to wake them up.

“Mama, I don’t feel good,” whined Connie. Maya put her hand to Connie’s forehead – it was warm.

“Crap,” she said.

“I don’t feel good either!” said Peter, who was seven years old to his sister’s five.

“You’re fine,” said Maya after briefly touching Peter’s forehead. What the heck was the school’s policy on fevers? It was bad to send a kid to school with a fever, wasn’t it?

“Go back to sleep, Connie.” Maya pushed the hair back on Connie’s forehead.

“Will you stay home with me, Mama?” murmured Connie.

“Um –“

“Mama’s taking me to school! Right, Mama? You’re taking me to school, right?” Peter jumped up and down on the bed.

“Let me talk to Daddy,” said Maya. She went into the tiny birth canal of a kitchen and took some eggs out of the fridge. “Jim?”

“What time is it?” Jim demanded from the bedroom.

“A little past six. Connie’s sick. Can you stay with her and I’ll take Peter to school?”

“Maya, you know I can’t miss work.” Jim rolled over onto his back. “You’re going to have to call in late.”

“Jim, I have a deadline.”

“Call in late. Aren’t you supposed to be the boss over there?” Jim got out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later, he came out, adjusting the strap of his crossing guard uniform. Maya put a plate of scrambled eggs and toast in front of Peter, and tried, as she did every morning, to pretend that her husband, with his PhD in Semantics, was gainfully employed in an occupation worthy of his potential. Potential has a shelf life. Maya had read that in a Margaret Atwood novel once. It rankled her still.

Michele Markarian’s plays have been produced across the United States and UK. Michele’s short stories have appeared in anthologies by WisingUp Press, Mom’s Literary Magazine, yesteryearfiction.com, The Journal of Microliterature, and the anthology inherplace.org. Her plays have been published by Dramatic Publishing, Heuer Publishing, Oxford University Press USA and Smith & Kraus. She has an anthology of plays, working title “The Unborn Children of America and Other Family Procedures” that will be published by Fomite Press this spring. Michele is a member of the Dramatists Guild.

Mindless Idiots by Sean Silleck

January 30, 2015 / The Furious Gazelle Editors

MINDLESS IDIOTS

By Sean Silleck

When the zombies first showed up, our building’s fire safety director told us to shelter in place. Then he told us to go to staircase A, where we must’ve waited half an hour. Then he told us to proceed to elevator bank F, so we did, a few of us glancing at our watches. That was the last time we heard from the fire safety director.

For almost an hour we waited in front of elevator bank F, and then Chuck, one of our associate creative directors, couldn’t take it anymore. There was a client call at noon, and he had to be on it. If the latest round of client changes didn’t arrive by this afternoon, we’d never be able to revise our pieces in time for next Friday’s launch date. We were already going to have to work really late as it was—even without the delay caused by the zombies.

In groups of twos and threes we started to drift back into the agency. We still had power and running water, so the zombie invasion couldn’t have been that bad. The kitchenette was well stocked. We had enough food and coffee to last a couple weeks, so there was no reason we couldn’t get back to work—as long as the client changes came in on time.

A few of us gathered at the window in reception to see what was happening outside. It was very quiet along the avenue, just a lot of paper swirling and twisting in the wind, half a dozen cars with their windows smashed in, and occasionally a couple zombies staggering along, searching for human flesh.

“They look so lost,” said Mindy, our account lead. “I almost feel bad for them.”

“I wonder if deep down they’re really just sad,” Brian, the junior copywriter, said. “You know, being undead and all.”

“It’s like they know something in their lives is missing, but they don’t know what it is,” commented Becky, an art director. “That’s why they’re so sad.”

“And they’re trying to fill the emptiness by eating human flesh,” added Regina, our new proofreader. “I do the same thing with Chips Ahoy.”

“Don’t waste your pity on a bunch of mindless idiots,” cut in Chuck, with a frown. “We have work to do, people—or have you all forgotten we’re launching next Friday?”

He was right—there was so much to do. First, we had to barricade all the exits in case the zombies got into the building and up to our floor. Then we had to route the new logo, which the client had approved last week with one major change.

The client, a large west coast–based juice company, wanted the mauve slash at the bottom of the logo made darker, so it more closely resembled the color of acai juice. They felt that mauve was closer to the color of pomegranate juice, which was not one of their products. Of course nothing could have been further from the truth. Everyone knows that pomegranate juice is a deep red, not even remotely mauve, but the client was firm—the logo had to change.

Which totally sucked, because it was on every piece we were creating.

No one in the agency had been in a good mood, even before the zombies showed up.

At exactly noon we all shuffled into the main conference room for the client call. After the usual banalities, Joe, the client’s director of marketing, said:

“So, are you guys all okay? We’ve heard about the zombies. It’s all over CNN.”

“Thanks so much for your concern,” replied Mindy, leaning close to the speakerphone. “We’re fine here. No worries. We’re still really excited about next Friday’s launch.”

“Oh, that’s such a relief,” Joe said. “We were really worried. It’s just … if we have to delay the launch, we’re going to be in really big trouble. Tropicana is putting out two new products next month, and if our campaign isn’t out in the world by then, it’s going to be real tough catching up.”

“Oh, no worries,” Mindy repeated, smiling really wide, even though the feed was audio only. “We’ve got your back, Joe. And, by the way, the new logo looks amazing. The dark mauve was absolutely the right call. We’ll send you a new PSD by end of day.”

“Great, perfect. Thanks, guys,” Joe said. “Anyway, we know you’ve got a ton of work, so we’ll keep this short. We just have one more comment, and we’re hoping it’s not too late to work it into the single-page ad.”

A tense silence descended over the conference room. This was the moment in a client call that everyone dreaded, the moment a client decided they wanted to do something not in the original scope of work. Something that meant another all-nighter for us.

“If you’ve got any ideas, we’d love to hear them,” Chuck said, and then shook his head, mouthing the words, “what the fuck?”

“Well, we’re thinking—you know how in the ad, there’s the girl in the park, and the sun is shining behind her while she drinks our juice? Well, we’d love to get a dog in there. Cheryl, who’s here with me, was looking at some numbers earlier, and she saw a clear response spike in ads that have dogs in them. People really relate to them, you know? Cheryl, do you want to speak to those numbers?”

“Hi, guys, Cheryl here,” Cheryl announced cheerfully. Cheryl was the client’s chief marketing strategist. “Just want to say that we think the team over there is doing a fantastic job. We love the campaign so far, we really love it.”

“Oh, that’s so nice to hear,” Mindy said. “Thank you, Cheryl.”

“You bet. So, yeah, I was going over some numbers this morning, and it just hit me, so clearly, this spike in response rates to ads that have a dog in them. Just, like, wow. You know? Everyone loves dogs. Of course, we know it’s too late now, but down the road, maybe in Q3, we’d love to do some kind of viral video with dogs playing with each other, and just, you know, jumping around and doing really silly things. That could be a lot of fun.”

“Great idea,” Mindy said, wincing. “We’ll absolutely put a brief together. But let’s get back to the single-page ad for just a moment. What kind of dog were you thinking about?”

“Well, I ran some additional numbers,” Cheryl said. “Of course retrievers are off the charts, but since we’re more of a niche juice, and have a very loyal customer base that our research shows has a very independent streak, we think something like a Boston terrier would be the perfect thing.”

“A Boston terrier?” Mindy said.

“Is that doable?” Joe asked.

“Well, you know we’ve already done the photo shoot,” Chuck said, grinding his teeth. “And with the zombie situation, we’re probably not going to be able to set up another one in time to make next Friday’s launch date.”

“Oh, we don’t want another photo shoot—the budget’s getting a little thin at this point,” Joe replied, with a laugh. “No, we’re just wondering if it’s possible to do the dog digitally, you know, add another layer to the PSD file—something along those lines.”

Becky, the art director, looked like she was going to be sick. “I can see if I can dig up some stock images,” she said, weakly. “I could probably have a few choices to send over by end of day.”

“That would be fantastic,” Joe said. “Becky? Is that Becky who was speaking?”

“Yup, it’s Becky,” Becky said.

“Thanks, Becky, we really appreciate it.” Joe cleared his throat. “So that’s all we’ve got for now. We’ll hang around long enough today to look at the next set of revisions, and then get any comments back down to you by this evening. How does that sound?”

“That sounds like a plan, Joe,” Mindy said. “Thanks so much.”

“You bet,” Joe said. “And be careful, guys. Let us know if the zombie situation gets worse. We’d hate for anything terrible to happen to you.”

“We really appreciate the concern,” Mindy said. “But we’re fine. We’re a hundred and ten percent committed to hitting next Friday’s launch date.”

As soon as the clients had ended the call, Chuck threw up his hands. He was incredibly angry. He looked like he was ready to join the zombies and start eating human flesh.

“Mindless fucking idiots,” he seethed. “Add a fucking dog! What a load of horseshit.”

“It’s going to be really hard to put a dog in the ad,” complained Becky, her fingers working nervously through a clump of her bright red hair. “We’ll have to put the art back into retouching. It’s going to take days to get it back.”

“Let’s keep what we’ve got, and just try to mock up a basic dog option,” Mindy said, in her soothing account person’s voice. “Just a new PSD for now. We won’t worry about retouching until after we send it to the client.”

This helped calm Becky, at least for the moment.

Back at our desks—all of us with two or three jobs in our queue—it was really hard to concentrate with the moaning of the zombies outside. It was a creepy sound, both menacing and forlorn. A lot of us had already been having concentration problems, ever since we’d moved into the new office with its open-floor seating plan. The concept was supposed to foster creative thinking and team unity, but all it really did was shred people’s nerves. The distractions were constant. Someone’s phone would start ringing while they were away from their desk. Or someone would be playing music from the 80s loud enough for you to know it was the Go-Gos but not which song. Or someone would actually have a conference call and speak in a horrible whisper.

With the moaning of the zombies on top of everything else, we were really struggling to get our work done.

Sometime around dinnertime, just as we were signing off on the last piece to incorporate the new logo, Chuck called us all into the conference room and laid a printout of the new logo on the table in front of us. We all waited nervously for him to say whatever it was he was going to say.

“It’s no good,” he said, finally, chewing on his lower lip. “It looks like shit. The dark mauve is ridiculous.”

He was right. The lighter mauve had worked really well with the other colors in the logo, but this darker tone somehow unbalanced the whole thing. The anxiety around the conference table was palpable.

“It’s what the client requested,” Mindy pointed out, her eyebrows arched. “I don’t think it’s that bad, Chuck. I think we can leave it.”

“Mindy, it’s a piece of shit.” Chuck put his hands on his hips and shot her a challenging look. “We took six months building the first logo. We put it through market research. It went through like eight client reviews. You change one color, and the whole thing goes down the shitter.”

“Then we should have expressed our concerns earlier.” Mindy spoke softly but firmly. She couldn’t have weighed more than 105 pounds but she was tougher than anyone in the agency. She ran a marathon every weekend, usually the kind where you had to swim through muddy culverts and crawl over barbed wire. To her, the zombies were probably just a minor irritant. “It’s too late to revisit this now,” she said, looking hard at Chuck.

“I did express my concerns. But no one listened, as per usual.” Chuck threw up his hands. He looked really pale and unhealthy, probably from working such crazy hours. He glowered at Mindy with bloodshot eyes. “But I’m only the ACD, so what does my opinion matter around here?”

And then he stormed out of the room, grumbling to himself.

“You don’t have to bite my head off,” Mindy called after him, angrily.

“He’s right,” Becky said in a small voice, after we’d all listened to Chuck rage down the hall and loudly slam his office door. “It doesn’t look good.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mindy said, in a harsh voice. “It’s too late. Someone should’ve spoken up rounds ago. I don’t have a problem with this logo. It’s exactly what the client asked for.”

That was the end of the discussion. None of the rest of us had any desire to go toe to toe with Mindy. It was only the art people who cared about the logo, truth be told. The copywriters, account execs, proofreaders and project managers didn’t have any thoughts about anything other than how to survive this launch. We were all at our wit’s end. If the tension in the agency got any worse, someone really was going to get bitten.

And then we found out that the zombies had gotten into the building.

A little after eleven, Brian, the junior copywriter, stood up from his desk, a weird expression on his face. “Did you guys hear that?” he said. “What the fuck was that?”

We all gathered around his desk and listened. For a moment there was only silence. Then we heard it. A scraping noise, coming from the floor below us. It was accompanied by a banging and a grinding. Then we heard the moaning, and we knew.

“Shit, they’re in the office downstairs,” Regina, the proofreader, said. “That means they’re probably in the stairwell.”

We all rushed over to stairwell A. Sure enough, we could hear shuffling, lethargic footsteps on the concrete steps on the other side of the fire door. Accompanied, as usual, by the despondent moans of the walking dead.

“They’re going to get in,” Regina cried, backing away from the door, one hand to her mouth. “We can’t keep them out.”

“The door is really well sealed,” Brian said, checking the bike chain we’d fastened between the door handle and a thick water pipe next to it. “No one’s getting in this way. We’re fine.”

“They won’t go away.” Regina’s eyes had taken on the classic thousand-yard stare. Her mouth was as round as a donut hole. “Their desire is insatiable. And we’re the object of that desire.”

Brian shook his head. It was hard to tell whom he was more annoyed with, Regina or the zombies. “It’s a fucking Kryptonite lock. Schwarzenegger couldn’t get through that door.”

It did look pretty solid. We all took turns giving it a shake, and then exchanged encouraging nods.

It was a charade, of course. As we shuffled back to our desks, staring wide-eyed at nothing, we all felt incredibly self-conscious, knowing that an inch and a half of steel was all that separated us from a horde of flesh-eating zombies. It was going to be a really long night.

We worked as long as we could, and then took turns going into the small conference room, which we’d turned into a nap room. We’d already used it once as a nap room the first time we worked overnight, three or four weeks ago, finalizing the launch pieces ahead of the first client review. We just had to put the cots back together again and lay out clean blankets. Half of us slept (or tried to sleep), while the other half stayed awake to watch for zombies and field any client calls that came in. None of us got a good night’s sleep. When the light of dawn finally showed through the main window, we were all half dead.

After breakfast, there was more bad news. Becky couldn’t find a Boston terrier in any of the stock photo databases. All she could come up with were a pug, a French bulldog, a miniature boxer and a black and white Chihuahua.

“Wait, that’s not a Boston terrier?” asked Mindy, standing to one side of Becky’s iMac and pointing at the image of the French bulldog.

“No, it’s not.” Becky shook her head, sadly. “I double checked the database. It’s a French bulldog, for sure. Not a Boston terrier.”

“Okay, because it looks exactly like a Boston terrier.” Mindy nibbled distractedly on her thumb as she spoke.

“Boston terriers have a longer nose,” Brian offered. “And their ears aren’t as wide. My aunt had a Boston terrier once. They’re great dogs.”

“Can you call her?” Mindy spun around toward Brian. “Can she email us a picture of it?”

“She died years ago—my aunt, I mean.” Brian shrugged, and then frowned. “Hey, you don’t think she’s a zombie now, do you? That would be really fucked up.”

Mindy rolled her eyes and turned back to Becky’s computer. “Fuck it,” she said. “Let’s go with the French bulldog. The client will never know the difference.”

“Are you sure?” Becky asked, in a nervous voice. “What if they do notice? I don’t think we should lie to the client.”

“I don’t care. Just do it.” Mindy tore a long hangnail off her thumb and then spit it across the room. “I don’t give a shit anymore.” She stalked back to her desk.

While Becky worked on getting the French bulldog into an alternate version of the single-page ad, some of us gathered by the window to check on the situation outside.

Someone had noticed that one zombie never left the block, but instead wandered from one corner to the next and then back again, as if he were pacing. He was an older guy, judging by the white hair and the curve of his spine, and he was dressed in a pinstripe suit that had lost one sleeve and one pant leg. Even though he was undead, he still had a kind of dignity in the way he shuffled up and down the street—you could easily imagine him walking with a cane. We called him Winston.

“I wonder where he used to work,” Regina said. “Looks like a lawyer.”

“I used to see him getting a sandwich in the corner deli,” said Rasheed, our senior website developer. “Like, every day almost. The same sandwich, ham and provolone on rye. He was like clockwork.”

“Yeah, probably a financial guy,” commented Brian, leaning his elbows on the sill. “Those guys love a good routine.”

“Maybe that’s why he looks so unsure of himself,” added Kendra, one of the administrative assistants. “Deep down he doesn’t know what to do, because his routine is gone. That’s why he can’t leave the block. He thinks he needs to order his sandwich.”

“I don’t think he was in finance,” commented Angelo, a freelance production guy. “I’m pretty sure he was in advertising. I think I remember him from when I worked at McCann. He was one of the senior partners.”

We all agreed that, whoever he was, Winston was probably very sad, and we all felt kind of sorry for him, at least until Chuck came lumbering down the hall, grumbling and grunting, and sent us all scurrying back to our desks.

The work was endless, or so it seemed, and at this point, completely brainless. The new logo had been placed in every job, so now we were just checking to make sure nothing had fallen off in the process. It was just proofreading now, checking for bad line breaks and shifted art elements. The content of the pieces was all set. We figured one more round, and then we’d have a group sign-off and basically be done. We’d hit next Friday’s launch date with no problem.

Over the next 24 hours, the mood of the agency improved dramatically. Becky was able to create a pretty good alternate version of the single-page ad—the dog really looked like it was trotting happily along next to the lady drinking juice in the park. Anyone who didn’t know would’ve thought the dog had been there all along. And we hated to admit it, but the client was right. We all felt better seeing the dog in the picture. It made the whole ad warmer and fuzzier.

When Mindy hit the send button on her email, we couldn’t help applauding.

It was then, for the first time, that we could start thinking about the end of the launch—about getting our old lives back. The zombies didn’t even bother us so much. Listening to the creepy shuffling and moaning sounds coming from stairwell B—in addition to stairwell A now—we weren’t as freaked out as we’d been before. We could deal with it, knowing we didn’t have to stagger back to our desks and bury ourselves in half a dozen jobs. And we were no longer so worried about running into Chuck in the hallways and getting chewed out for not working hard enough. The work was done.

We all assumed the next client call would be a breeze, just a final approval of all the core launch pieces, but we could tell immediately by Joe’s tone that something wasn’t right. He spoke in a dull, lifeless monotone.

“Hey, guys,” he said, glumly. “Oh, boy. You all are going to kill us.”

Everyone in the room exchanged at least one glance. We all had that bloated feeling in our guts that accompanies the realization of imminent doom.

“What’s on your mind, Joe?” Mindy asked, clutching herself around the middle as she leaned in toward the speakerphone. “I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

“I’m afraid it is, Mindy,” Joe said. “Turns out you guys had it right the first time. Looking at the latest revisions you sent over yesterday, it just hit us all at once … well … the logo just doesn’t work anymore. The mauve is too dark. And, you know what? That’s totally on us. We don’t blame you guys at all. Absolutely one hundred percent our doing.”

No one on our side said a word. We were too shocked. A couple of us wore weird smiles, little rictuses of death, as Joe’s words slowly ate their way through our brains.

On the far side of the conference table, Chuck leaned all the way back in his chair and stared open-mouthed at the ceiling. He looked like someone had just killed him.

“Ah, so, we were just wondering,” Cheryl cut in. “Did you guys archive the last round? Would it be that hard to just go back to those versions? Like, use Time Machine or something? Is that doable?”

Mindy was the first of us to speak. She looked like she’d been infected with some sort of wasting disease. Her eyes were wide and unfocused. The color had drained out of her cheeks. Her shoulders were unevenly slumped. “It’s just, we’ve been through several rounds since we swapped out logos,” she said, tonelessly, into the speakerphone. “So, actually, we’d have to create a whole new round, and then load in the old logo, and then review each job carefully to make sure nothing fell off or that any of the current logos were missed—so we’re looking at a fair amount of work here. At least if we’re still thinking about next Friday’s launch date.”

“We’ll absolutely pay for the overtime,” Joe said. “A hundred and ten percent.”

“Oh, God, yes,” agreed Cheryl, in a slightly hysterical voice. “Whatever support we can give you. We’ll be here till at least six o’clock tonight, so don’t hesitate to run some ideas past us—any best practices you guys have that might help us all work smarter, not harder. We’re all ears.”

“Thanks, Cheryl. That’s very kind of you.” Mindy grimaced as she composed her next words. “We’ll do whatever we have to do to hit that launch date—no worries there. It’s just, you know, any more changes, especially global changes, and we’re not going to be able to make that guarantee. You know?”

“We hear you, loud and clear,” Cheryl said. “This logo thing is totally our fault. And we really appreciate you guys taking the time to make the fix. Thank you so much. We won’t have any more changes, we promise. Let’s just get this done, and hit that launch date next Friday. What do you say?”

“Yup, sounds great,” Mindy intoned.

“We just have one more question,” Joe said, after an awkward moment of silence. “We got the alt version of the single-page ad—thanks very much. The dog looks great, but we just wanted to confirm, are you guys sure that’s a Boston terrier? We think it might be a French bulldog.”

Mindy looked like someone was chewing on her leg. She bit her lip so hard a small trickle of blood ran down over her chin. She wiped it away with the back of her hand and took a deep, wheezy breath.

On the other side of the room, Becky got up without a word and tottered out of the room, one hand held out in front of her, as if she’d lost part of her vision. We all watched her go, our mouths slung open, but none of us spoke. What was there to say? We weren’t going to make the launch date next Friday—not if we had to update the logo again. We all knew it, but of course we weren’t going to say it to the client. We couldn’t. So we all just looked at each other, swaying from side to side, our arms dangling, our brains numb.

Then we heard someone coming down the hall, a slow but steady pace, one foot dragging behind the other, and we all turned at the same moment toward the open conference room door.

Somehow, even before he appeared in the doorway, we all knew it was Winston.

Sean Silleck has worked in advertising for over a decade, and so far has not had to resort to eating human flesh. He has been previously published in the Brooklyn Rail, Short Story Library and Pantheon Magazine, and is currently working on a novel about the first advertising agency on Mars.