Looking for Gumbo

My name is Gumbo, the Charred Corpse. I’m kind of a big deal. I’m a zombie in the internationally-acclaimed “Hell’s Bells” haunted attraction. I’m a medium-rare burn victim who will turn your skin into a quilt. You won’t see me coming.

The other zombies wear masks. I don’t. When I auditioned for the role, Ghostmaster insisted I keep my face “au naturale.” He says that without makeup, I’m the scariest actor in my age-group. You have to be sixteen to get in the haunt business, but he let me slide past. I’m twelve. He can’t tell. Nobody can.

Every day after middle school, I hike down the interstate to Mccusker Farms. When I arrive, Goreface Slim hands me my skinsuit, Slicer the Clown gives me gas-station pizza, and Eustace Meniscus-Collarbone, the Cannibal Nurse, leads me onto the haunted trail.

Weak actors are assigned to the hay ride or the pumpkin patch. I work in Satan’s Anus. It’s a rusty shack full of undead crawlers and real fire. Ghostmaster calls it “OSHA’s worst nightmare.” According to legend, it’s where the dark lord sets people ablaze, like Mythbusters for demons. I’m the myth. I’m Gumbo.

I get inside and there’s a hallway with torches, mannequins on metal spikes, and agonized screams blasting through a boombox. I’m in Heaven. Most scare-actors jump out of a hiding spot. I don’t. I stand up against a wall, perfectly still beside styrofoam dummies that look like me. Then, when the gates open up, families flock into Satan’s Anus. I pick out a grandma, or a five-year-old, or a cute girl with blonde highlights. Then I explode. I dive onto the floor, frothing at the mouth, clawing at my charred skin and screaming “Lord, Lord, Lord!” I convulse on the ground, and the innocent bystander empties their pants. Rinse and repeat.

By midnight, the crowds die down and the monsters go dance around a firepit. Skeletons do the Cupid-Shuffle. Ghostmaster slaps me on the shoulders and says, “You’re going places, kid.” The whole thing is a dream, until Diana the vampire drives me home and I’m standing alone in my driveway.

My house is pitch-black, save for the orange glow in the upstairs window. The light flickers as two silhouettes dart back and forth inside. They’re tossing objects across the room. I feel the yelling before I hear it.

I’m Gumbo. I’m not afraid. I spit on the house key so it slides in quietly. I shift around the stupid loud glass door, then the creaky green one, and I’m sneaking up the steps. I almost make it, but my stupid bones crack, and my stupid face cracks when I smile, and I didn’t do anything wrong today, I promise. Sleep-time, sleep-time, sleep-time.

*

Mom insisted I get an after school job. She got ill after we moved back in with Dad. She only gets out of bed on special occasions. Dad protects her. Dad is the protector of the family. Without him, we’d have nothing.

When I’m on the haunted trail, Ghostmaster is glad for my face. When I’m in Math II, Cassidy, the student-body-president, wants me to cover it up. She made a neat little handwritten petition and got the entire class to sign it. I don’t know cursive. I’m Gumbo.

I sneak out the back door of my class and walk to work early. Slicer the Clown smokes behind the chicken shack. I sit beside him and he doesn’t ask questions.

In the evening, I find myself back at the end of Hell’s hallway, rubber claws bared, plastic entrails dangling from my chest. My burned skin glows in the firelight. The customers enter, and I become the night. Hillbilly tough guys saunter in with jaws full of dip and exit with permanent insomnia. A mother of ten stampedes over her kids in a break for the door. One man is so disturbed by my zombie-crawl that he calls his heart doctor right in front of me.

Hour by hour, I instill nightmares in the youth of America. Petition-signers from my math class shriek like little babies. I scare the smile straight off of Cassidy’s face and she leaves a presidential puddle in her wake.

Then a girl I’d seen at the eighth-grade graduation, a silver-blonde, comes through the door. She takes her time perusing the burned bodies and giggling at the severed heads. She’s gorgeous. But I’m Gumbo. I leap onto the floor, writhing in agony and screaming my head off. She laughs. Why is she looking at me like that? “You’re cute for a zombie,” she says. Before I can spit some trademark Gumbo game, she’s gone.

At midnight, I appear in my driveway and float to the front door. I feel fuzzy. Frank Sinatra is in my head. He drowns out the screams upstairs. I’ve got you under my skin. I go up the steps. I’ve got you, deep in the heart of me…

The music stops. The Protector stands in my bedroom. My wrestling figurines are all over the floor. I didn’t clean my room. I didn’t clean it, but I was going to clean it. I’m serious. You have to believe me. I’m clean. I’m good.

Stage combat ensues. I’m Gumbo. I’m not afraid. The Undertaker fears me. I’ve been practicing stunt falls. It’s all a show. Dad knows it. I’m on the ropes. I black out. When I come back to Earth, I’m alone on my bed. There are stars on my ceiling.

There are always stars on my ceiling. 

*

A lady in blue comes to our house. Dad tells me to “deny, deny, deny,” or she’ll take my mother away. She asks me about my face. I tell her to fuck off. I’m Gumbo. Dad buys me a Nerds Rope.

It’s Halloween, the best night of the year. My ears are full of ghoulish dubstep. When I show up to work, Ghostmaster swings me into a dance-circle. “Give ’em Hell, kid!” he shouts. I do the Wobble with a werewolf. I’m part of the pack. I find myself lost to a sea of clowns and demons and freaks.

The clock strikes eight. I enter Satan’s Anus with a reason to live. A conga line snakes into the hallway, my hallway, and I brace for the moment of truth. First in the scare-line is the Clemson football team. Linebackers and hotshots. I crawl underneath one. He leaps into an a-hundred-yard-dash. A police officer is next. He hides behind his four-foot-tall girlfriend. I wait until I’m behind him and reach for his gun. He squeals. I growl my head off and politely ask that he doesn’t press charges.

Suddenly, just when I’ve gotten a flow going, she’s back. The silver-blonde barges in for a second night in a row. Her two friends are locked together, bickering about the fog machine, but she stands with quiet determination. She’s not here to be scared.

I do my usual gyrating. I crawl towards them on the ground, gnashing my teeth. Her friends double over backwards. Not her. She stands still, looking me dead in the eyes. “Hrrrr–hey there,” I say in a gargled zombie growl. “Hey Cutie,” she replies. Relax. Stay in character. You’re Gumbo. “Arrgh, uh… what’s your–” Before I can finish, she springs into my arms and squeezes me tight. Her friends start laughing.

You can’t hug a scare-actor. That’s illegal. That goes against the Monster Code of Ethics. Pretty sure that’s how undead chlamydia is spread. I haven’t had health class yet. She’s bullshitting anyway. She’s trying to win a bet. I used to moon zombies at the Woods of Terror. She’s just mooning me with her hands. Then she tears free from my embrace and crams something into my fist. It’s a phone number.

*

I’m on the landline for seventeen minutes. Her name is Leigh. We talk monster movies. We’re going to watch Constantine together. I’m dying to stay on the phone. The garage door opens. My heart pounds. I say goodbye and slam the receiver down. Dad brings home Papa John’s for dinner. He’s going out with his work friends tonight. He tells me to behave for once. I nod. Then he’s gone.

I go upstairs. Mom is still in the bed. I tell her I’m going on a date. She smiles with her eyes and not her face. I walk into Dad’s forbidden closet. I hear her protest from behind. But I’m Gumbo. I need to be spiffy. I try on his khakis and a striped gold button-down, Versace-brand. It almost fits. I look fresh. Like a protector.

I dance into the bedroom and strike a pose for Mom. She almost laughs. I grab her hand and tell her it’ll be all right. I tell her I’m Gumbo and I’ll buy her a haunted house in Des Moines and scare the money out of rich guys’ pockets and we’ll be home again. There’s life in her face somewhere.

Then I hear the front door open. My heart stops. Dad’s wallet is on the bathroom counter. He thunders up the steps. I back away and fall into the bathtub. The button-down gets caught on the faucet. It tears open. Golden Versace logos are split down my chest. I’m dead. “Lord, Lord, Lord.”

The Protector stands at the end of the hallway. He stares into my soul. I’m unclean. He grabs the curling iron off the counter. He promised he’d never pick it up again. Protectors break promises. I get caught by the wrist. Before I can move, he does the work. I see white. I feel white. Somebody screams. It’s all distant in my head, just another day in Hell’s Bells. I’m looking for Gumbo. I’m looking, but he’s not there.

Suddenly, the Protector loosens his grip. I yank free and sprint down the hallway. An earthquake follows behind me. I make it down the steps, out both stupid doors and onto the sidewalk. I don’t look back. I’m Gumbo. I’m not afraid.

I run for miles, hopping fences, zig-zagging across the median until I’m at the Palladium Theater. I’m out of breath, five minutes early. I’m a sly-dog. I tuck in my tattered shirt and hike up the khakis. The koi pond outside glows orange in the setting sun. Teenagers are gathered around it. One silver-blonde head shines more than the others.

I approach her. People are staring at me. There are no monster dance-circles. I feel the weight of a hundred gazes. Leigh watches the fish, paying no attention to me.

Then she looks up. Time stops. We’re locked on each other. She traces my burns with her eyes. I watch her go from confusion to astonishment to a painful understanding. She knows I’m real now. She knows I’m Gumbo. She walks away.

---

Walker Lyon is a Junior at Appalachian State obtaining a bachelor’s degree in English. After bicycling four-thousand miles across the country, he decided to write stories that capture the modern American experience.