Incall Only - Must Have Flesh - Chapter One

“So, what do you want to do?”

I remember specifically the day that my high school guidance counselor asked me that question. I remember how her office smelled of old wood and moldering files. It had been early in the autumn of my junior year and the oak trees that lined the street outside had seemed to go from a Kermit The Frog green to scratchy brown in the time it had taken me to remember my new locker combination.
I had been pulled out of study hall so that Mrs. Amato could ask this question and then “guide” me toward that end. Funny, I think, now some twenty years later, that I remember all of this in exquisite detail but I can’t for the life of me remember what I said.

“What do you want to do?” she asked again, leaning forward to bring her pointed, Mediterranean face closer to me, her pen (A Bic crystal-barreled, medium point, the ink 75% expended) poised over a blank sheet of lined paper atop what I could only assume was my permanent school record.

I blurted something knowing that the longer I hemmed and hawed the longer I would be under her scrutiny - a place that for a kid like me who worked best under the perceived veil of innocuousness, was uncomfortable, indeed.

Whatever I said resulted in a flourish of activity on the part of Mrs. Amato, who was already by nature a whirling dervish, after which I was presented with the admission brochures from five colleges, various flyers advertising college fairs, and just for good measure, the recruiting literature from the Coast Guard and the Air Force. I was then served a lecture that included dates, times, and the letters “S”, “A”, and “T”.

I nodded. I agreed to look things over. I agreed to come see her again if I had any questions. I was released back study hall. On my way there, I deposited the ¼ inch pile of literature in the locker of some hapless freshman who had yet to purchase a lock for his locker.

I did well avoiding her until graduation and since have held several jobs, none of which I had foreseen while sitting in hard-backed oak chair in Mrs. Amato’s office. If I had not been under the gun and had had a moment to think about it, I would have answered “a writer” and perhaps I would be firmly ensconced in the brickloft apartment in Soho I had dreamed about as an angsty teen and I would be writing this at a modernist desk with an expresso maker nearby. Instead, I make do with a second hand laptop on a folding table that is crowded by a saltshaker, a gladware container of Cheez-its and two diet coke bottles, (one empty, and one mostly full), a pack of cigarettes, a lighter and three empty coffee cups.

Obviously, this is all my fault. My choices in jobs and the state of my writing environment. My latest legitimate job would make an entertaining blog, but not much more. Massage therapy. Who saw that one coming? I didn’t. My unofficial job is the one I feel most compelled to write about despite the danger to those involved should this information get out. I am the researcher, compiler, and archivist for an unlikely group of freedom fighters that make up P.R.T.Z.L. The Philly Resist the Zombies League.

If what is contained herein is found by the wrong people, they’ll kill us and destroy the evidence. That much is true. If you find this and we’re dead, tell the world. Humankind has a right to know. Don’t worry about them finding you and killing you. If we’re dead, there’s no more hope for mankind, anyway.