Every Day is Like Doomsday (22 page)

Nerves. Why do I have nerves? Innya wondered as
she walked to Evil Science even though she already knew
the answer. She would see Elliot there. He was her lab
partner. She hadn’t spoken to him since the unfortunate
kiss and now her very well laid plans were muddled with
emotions. She found herself completely unwilling to even
think about killing him. She wasn’t even willing to try to
kill him and make it quick and painless. She just didn’t
want him dead. She cared. And that confused her.

It wasn’t that the kiss had offended her, it was
more that his initiative had caught her off guard. But
even that wasn’t the unsettling part that even now
turned her stomach into a knotted mess. What bothered her was that she had never kissed anyone before
when she wasn’t using the kiss to manipulate him. She
had always used her sexuality as a weapon, one of many
in her arsenal and one which she needed to wield with
accuracy and skill. If she went around kissing everyone,
or letting them kiss her, then the power of the weapon
would be diluted.

Aside from that what really threw her was that she
had liked it. For one fleeting moment in time she had just
been a girl with a boy and it had been nice.

Nice? She didn’t do ‘nice.’ That was the kind of
thinking that got a Villain killed. In order to stay on top
of her game she needed to stay on top of her game, mentally and sexually.

Of course, she reasoned, that didn’t mean that she
couldn’t enjoy being wanted in a purely innocent and
natural way as long as she didn’t let Elliot know she was
enjoying it. And if she let herself get carried away she
could always resort to outright manipulation and blame
his attachment to her on that.

Okay, she thought, the plan is in place. She felt
pleased to have worked through her foreign emotions
before she had to face Elliot. As she entered the science
building she heard a voice behind her singing, “Innya’s
got a lackey. Innya’s got a lackey,” in the most grating way.

“And you’re going to have
another
broken arm,”
Innya said. Crusher’s face fell and she turned and went
back to Red and his cronies, pouting and cradling the
arm Innya had damaged. It was healed but obviously still
smarted. The group glared at Innya. She simply flashed a
huge grin at them and turned back to Elliot. But he now
had company: Vlad and Brain were sitting in Innya’s chair
and the one beside it, talking to Elliot. Well, at least Brain
was talking. Vlad was glowering, looking like a half-dead
and really pissed off about it Edgar Allen Poe. There was
no way this could be good.

“We were just leaving,” said Brain. “See you tonight
then, Zombie, and thanks.”
Brain sauntered off and Vlad, moving like a day-old
corpse, followed him to their usual seats in the corner of
the room.
“I don’t understand the two of them,” said Innya
and turned to Elliot.
“They’re actually very close friends. They have more
in common than you might think,”Elliot said defensively.
He didn’t look up from his hands, which were fiddling
nervously with a blue pen.
Innya smiled. “Do you think they make out, too?”
“Well, if they do I’ll bet one of them doesn’t run
away and disappear for two days, leaving the other one to
wonder what the hell happened.”
His voice was tense, his tone harsh. Innya liked it.
“Be careful, Zombie. Them’s fightin’ words.
“Are you really going to pretend that nothing happened between us?”
“No. I’m going to pretend that we had sex the first
night we met and so a little kiss isn’t going to bother me.”
Elliot finally looked up, completely confused. And
as hilarious as his confusion was Innya managed to keep
her face impassive because she was only half joking. It
was easier to keep the upper hand if she pretended that
she had had it all along which, before his big romantic
gesture, she had.
“So does that mean you’re not angry?”
“No. But it does mean that you will jump when I
say to jump and you will never try to make a move like
that on your own again.”
“Not a problem,” said Elliot, the grin she had come
to know spreading rapidly across his face in light of the
postponement of his imminent demise.
“Good. Now, what did they want from you?”
“They want my help. We’re all going to meet in our
room after classes today and they’re going to explain in
more detail. Something about me knowing more than
they do about mind control, considering I’m a Zombie
and all.”
Innya glanced over at Vlad and Brain. Vlad was
staring darkly at her and if looks could kill she’d be three
times dead already. Brain was grinning his beach boy grin
and staring at her with his sparkling blue, preppy eyes.
She allowed herself to admit that he was quite handsome
but he wasn’t even close to her type.
Elliot caught her looking at Brain and asked, a little
defeated, “You think he’s good looking, don’t you?”
“He’s an anomaly and I find that interesting.”
“What do you mean?”
“In the Villain world brains and looks don’t usually
go together when it comes to the male of the species.”
She gestured to their fellow students. “Just look at these
guys. The geniuses range in looks from just plain ugly to
ugly as sin to downright offensive.”
“What about the girls?”
“For the women outright superpowers tend to equal
homeliness. But brains equal beauty.”
“And where do you stack up?” Elliot asked.
Innya turned her eyes back to him, shocked that he
would ask, and he was trying so hard to keep a straight
face that she just had to make him crack. She leaned into
him, placed her lips beside his ear, and felt him shudder
as she whispered, “If you had to ask then you weren’t paying attention,” and pulled away. Elliot rubbed the goose
bumps from his arms and Innya added, “But I think
meeting with those two is a bad idea. You know nothing
about mind control. What are you going to tell them?”
Elliot shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I’ll make
something up.”
Innya smiled, proud of him and his little plot
despite her reservations. “You are learning, grasshopper.”
“Only from the best.”

Elliot sat on his bed and watched Brain and Vlad,
who were both sitting on Vlad’s bed. They had said hello,
exchanged stilted pleasantries and had since been staring
at each other for about a minute in silence. It was a little
awkward because Elliot was trying so hard to act as if he
really was doing them a favor.He also tried to adopt a bored
and disinterested disposition in regards to the black duffel
bag that Brain had brought with him. It seemed empty
so he was very curious as to what was inside but he didn’t
dare ask. It wasn’t Zombie-like to care about such things.

Eventually, Vlad nudged Brain and like a pinball machine in ‘tilt’, Brain came to life, turned on his
mega-watt grin and lit up his eyes with personality. Elliot
realized just how calculated Brain’s persona was and suddenly the danger of the situation struck him like a vicious
slap to the back of his head.

Elliot almost choked on his gum but recovered
quickly. “Do I need to have others? I think resurrection
is just fine.”

“No, no, of course it is, of course it is,” said Brain.
“We were just wondering how you got Innya to follow you
around the way you do. I mean, she’s hot so it’s no wonder
you’d want her for your own. But she was an iceberg to
everyone at this school until you arrived. We naturally
assumed that you were controlling her somehow.”

Oh, the possibilities were endless. Elliot could say
anything right now just to mess with them and though
Innya might be angry with him later were this to come
out, she’d probably at least appreciate the Villainy of the
joke enough to cut him a little slack.

Elliot let a slow smile spread across his face, pretending that he had been caught in an elaborate lie and
was pleased to find that instead of getting into trouble
over it, his handiwork was being appreciated. “You caught
me, boys. Ever since my first day here when she mouthed
off to Sarge and got sentenced to walk me around campus, I knew I had to have her. It wasn’t long before she
was mine, body and soul.” He paused, and then added just
to make them jealous, “And oh, what a body it is.”

“Great, great,” said Brain, “What we need to know
is, how did you do it? Can you turn it off ? Can you enslave
one of us and then turn it off so that we can know how
it feels?”

Holy crap, did they actually just ask to become a
part of his Zombie horde? It was a good thing he wasn’t
really evil and he wasn’t really able to enslave them or else
they’d be in trouble. He was starting to wonder if Innya
had vastly overestimated Brain’s brilliance because at that
moment he sounded deeply stupid.

He needed a way out of this predicament and
found that the lies were right on the tip of his tongue, just
waiting to be spoken. “At the moment it only works on
women, whose minds are weaker than men’s and therefore easier to control. However, I expect that my powers
will only grow until I am able to enslave all manner of
creatures, along with men and women, to do my bidding.”
He sat back as if satisfied with the eventual turn his life
would take. In reality he was just satisfied at being able to
think on his feet.

“Of course,” said Brain, thinking aloud, “It makes
sense that women would come first,followed by men.”His
voice faded as if he was deep in thought, then he snapped
out of it and asked, “Since you know what to do to put a
woman in a zombie trance and do your bidding we’d love
to get some pointers from you. As you may know, we have
been working on creating a series of subliminal messages
to insert into Saturday morning cartoons to enslave an
army of children and take over the world.”

“Sounds reasonable,” said Elliot. Sounds reliably
insane, he thought.
“What we would like for you to do is just watch
some of these videos we’ve brought along and let us know
if we could do anything else to make them really pop.The
messages are tuned to work in the brains of children so
you shouldn’t have any fear of viewing them.”
Elliot hesitated. For the first time he wished he had
asked Innya to be there because even though he really
wanted to have some friends he knew that he couldn’t
trust anyone. Still, a lifetime of being eager to please
couldn’t be denied and he agreed to help before he had
even fully made up his mind. Immediately his heart
started to bash itself to death against his ribcage. He was
more than a little nervous at what he had just gotten himself into but he bit his lip and stuck it out, determined to
prove to Innya, and to himself, that he could hold his own
among the Villains.
“I’ll do my best to give you constructive criticism.
Go ahead and pop the first one in.”
Brain opened up the duffel bag and there were two
discs inside, one with a blue dot on top and one with a
green dot. He picked up the one with the blue dot and
stuck it in Vlad’s DVD player, then sat back on Vlad’s
bed. Elliot stared at the screen and in a moment a clip
from a Barney show came on and Elliot groaned.
“Really? This is what you’re going to make me critique? For one, I hate this show and so should everyone
else with half a brain. Now these songs are going to be
stuck in my head forever.”
“Just shut up and watch it,”insisted Vlad, which was
the first thing he had said during this whole exchange.
Elliot turned back to the TV and watched. He
didn’t see anything strange at first but a few minutes in the
sound appeared to fade out. He wanted to say something
but he found he couldn’t really move. His jaw went slack,
his eyes widened, and suddenly the world of the room
and the TV seemed very far away. He was aware that he
was still in the room but it felt like a dream. He was not
in control of his body or his thoughts. After a moment
his own panicked mental ramblings became interspersed
with thoughts about the nice purple dinosaur and how
lovely it would be to try to take over the world.
Like an echo though a distant tunnel Elliot heard
Vlad ask, “Is he out? Did it work?”
Brain got up and stood right in front of Elliot’s
unblinking eyes. Elliot wanted to punch him in his
handsome face but the impulse was overridden by the
subliminal programming. He couldn’t do anything.
“Oh yeah, he’s toast,” said Brain, and Elliot suddenly had a craving for pumpernickel bread. Brain stood
up and asked, “So now what?”
“Now we get him to call that girl and make him kill
her while we watch,” said Vlad darkly.
“Um… That wasn’t what I had in mind.”
“This is my experiment,my project,so you do as I say.”
This was the most Elliot had ever heard Vlad say
and though his accent was harsh Elliot understood everything. He didn’t want to kill Innya. But quickly on the
heels of that thought, came the impression that killing
Innya sounded like a good idea. And afterward maybe
they would let him have some pumpernickel bread before
he took over the world for them.
“I think we should test his powers, make him jump
off of the roof or something and see if he comes back.”
“After he kills the girl. She is awful.”
“But this would be more interesting: one, it will
really test our programming if he will override his body’s
innate desire to live and actually jump. And two, it will
test his powers.”
A moment later Vlad said, “Okay. Let’s go up to the
roof. Stand up, Zombie.”
Elliot stood without conscious thought. He did not
want to go to the roof because he knew that he would not
make it down alive, or even undead. He’d just be regular
dead, which would kind of suck. Then again, a walk in
the fresh air would be nice and if he happened to fall
then he supposed that would be okay as well. He fought
against those implanted impulses and once again wished
he’d made Innya come with him.
“Walk into the hallway, Zombie.”
Elliot walked to the door, opened it and went
through it. But just as he completed the required action
he heard a commotion behind him. Because he hadn’t
been told to he wasn’t able to turn around and see what
was happening. Unfortunately his view of the hallway
was obscured like tunnel-vision, so he wasn’t too happy to
be out there either, not in control of his body.
As if they were coming from a room down the hall,
he heard muffled punches landing, furniture breaking,
scuffles and mattress springs and screams and shouts.
And then it was over. He had no idea what had happened
but eventually he heard Brain say hoarsely, “Come into
the room, Zombie.” Elliot obeyed and wondered if they
would let him watch some more of the nice purple dinosaur before they told him to jump off of the roof.
Elliot’s body turned on its own and walked clumsily into the room. Vlad was in a heap on the floor and
Brain was sitting on the edge of Elliot’s bed with Innya
standing beside him, a wire hanger around his neck and
biting into his skin. She wasn’t smiling.
Innya jerked the hanger and said, “How do we put
him back the way he was?”
“The disc with the green dot,” choked out Brain.
“Thank you. Now get the hell out of here and if I
catch you experimenting on either of us again I will not
be so kind.”
She released him and he stood, the hangar still
wrapped around his throat. “What about Vlad?” he asked.
“He got what he deserved. I might even call the
Infirmary once Elliot is back to normal but no promises.
Don’t mess with us again, No-Brains.”
“But it worked,” he said and though Elliot couldn’t
see him, he heard the smile in Brain’s voice, then Brain’s
footsteps as he left the room and walked down the hall.
Innya walked up to Elliot and put her nose to his.
Elliot wanted to hug her but he couldn’t move his arms
because she hadn’t told him to do so.
“You are really, really stupid.”
In his mind Elliot nodded. On the outside he stared
blankly forward.
Then Innya smiled. “You know, I think I could use
you like this for a little while.”
Oh no, Elliot thought. He would have groaned if
he’d had control of his voice box.
“I’ll be right back.” And then she was gone from his
line of sight.
He heard her moving around in the room, followed
by the sound of something heavy being dragged across
the thin carpet. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw
Innya pulling Vlad’s comatose body out into the hallway.
Once she had him out there she dropped him unceremoniously and came back into the room and shut the
door.Then she was out of his sight again but he heard her
dialing her cell phone and saying to someone, “Vlad the
moron tried to brainwash and mind control his roommate. He’s out in the hallway badly in need of some
medical attention.” There was a pause and then, “No, it
didn’t work. Thanks.”
Then Innya was standing in front of Elliot again
with a look in her eyes that said she had an idea and
Elliot probably wasn’t going to like it. It was somewhere
between “Aha!” and “I will kill you”. Elliot would have
been shaking in his skin if he’d been able to.
“Remember how I told you that you had to jump
when I said jump and not try anything unless I tell you
to? Now I am truly in control, just the way it should be.
So this is me telling you to jump. First thing’s first, Zombie, put your hands on my hips.” Elliot’s body obeyed. He
raised an internal eyebrow at this new turn of events.
“Zombie, kiss me on the lips.”
Elliot leaned in and gave her a peck kiss. He was
pleased to know that even if he couldn’t control his body
he still could feel things happening to it. Her hips were
bony beneath his hands and her lips were warm and smelled
faintly of strawberry lip gloss.Of course,if Innya hadn’t been
there that meant he would have felt it hen his body hid the
snow-packed concrete after he’d jumped off the building
but he chose not to think about it at that moment.
“That was pathetic. Zombie, kiss me passionately
on the lips.”
And Elliot did. There was much lip contact and a lot
of moisture and vigorous tongue movements. At least there
was one part of him that didn’t need to be told what to do.
Innya pulled away and said, “Zombie, stop.” Elliot
stopped and stood there, looking at Innya, unable to
match her smile with his own.
“Not bad. A little messy for my taste but I suppose
if you had more control over your face that might not be
an issue. So let’s fix that.”
Innya left him standing there and he heard her eject
the programming DVD from the player and insert what
he hoped was the deprogramming DVD. “Elliot, watch
the TV,”she commanded and Elliot turned to obey. Elliot
sighed in his brain as a second Barney video began to
play. But even though he was irritated to be listening to
yet another Barney song that he’d never get out of his
head, after half a minute he was once again in full control
of his body.
Elliot looked over to Innya, who was standing
beside the TV and watching him, waiting to see what
his first order of business would be now that he was in
control of himself once more. He locked eyes with her,
knowing exactly what he wanted to do, but he hesitated.
He wasn’t sure whether it was the way Innya was looking
at him, as if she were issuing a challenge to his very manhood, or whether losing control of himself for a time had
changed him, but he suddenly felt as though he needed to
assert himself as Elliot. And for a welcome change only a
very tiny part of him cared how Innya reacted.
Elliot shook his arms and legs out to get rid of the
last vestiges of the mind control. Then he looked over to
Innya and decided to wipe the smirk off of her face once
and for all. Though he was once more in control of his
limbs he felt as if he were under the thrall of some larger
emotion as he approached her, took her in his arms and
kissed her hard… right on the corner of her mouth. He
quickly corrected his aim before she could berate him
for it and suppressed a gasp when she wrapped her arms
around his neck and kissed him back even harder.
Too quickly for his brain to process what was happening, and therefore too quickly for him to second guess
himself and screw things up, they undressed each other
and made their way into Elliot’s bed. Right around then
Innya started giving him orders that he was more than
happy to comply with.
And that was how Elliot lost his virginity.