You Kill Me by Milo James Fowler

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You Kill Me




by Milo James Fowler



Looking at you now, it’s tough sometimes to see the person I fell in love with. Your eyes, once hazel with enough blue in them to capture my attention, pulsate blood-clotted, staring at me with a hunger different from what overcame us in the back of your Toyota 4Runner all those years ago. Your lips, soft and tender back then, crack like dry plaster, gaping at me from where I’ve got you trussed up to the oven door. You grunt words I can't understand—maybe not even words at all. Primal needs.

Hunger. Thirst.

You lunge at me when I let my guard down. I smack your arms away with a broom, prod you back to your filthy spot on the kitchen tiles, moldering in excrement. Can’t expect you to use the bathroom; can’t let you loose for that. But I’ve grown accustomed to your smell.

“To have and to hold, ’til death do you part,” the minister said. Three years ago already?

Time sure flies during a global pandemic.

We’re safe here on the fifth floor. The infected freaks sweep through our condominium complex like a stampede of ravenous cannibals, devouring the remaining old and decrepit survivors in the first-floor apartments too weak to fight back.

We worked with our neighbors wielding pickaxes, sledge hammers—one of them owned his own construction company; we owned a broom and a hacksaw—breaking down the outdoor stairwells, boarding up the windows of our units, blockading doors. We shut off the power so no fool would turn on lights in the middle of the night and alert the freaks to our presence. We stockpiled earthquake provisions (protein bars and water) thinking we’d be able to wait it out. Help would come.

But it’s been months now.

Remember that night? When you heard the baby crying?

“We can’t leave it out there!” you shouted at me, your shoulders tight with innate male bravado. You started tearing down the blockade we’d arranged so scientifically against our door. “Listen to it!”

I pulled at you. “They’ll hear it—”

“We’ll get to it first!”

You opened us up, exposing us to that cold night, clutched your hacksaw and crouched low, crept outside into the black.

“I can see it,” you hissed, peering over the railing. “Look!”

My gaze swept across everything you’d moved to open the door. How would we put it all back in time—before the freaks noticed what we were doing?

“See?” You jabbed an index finger down toward the third floor, impossible to reach since we’d destroyed the exterior stairwell in that neighborhood bonding exercise six months prior.

Six months of rationed water and protein bars. No wonder you started craving something else.

You would have starved to death if I hadn’t used our hacksaw, starting with my toes, cauterizing the wounds with a frying pan so hot it glowed. You popped pieces of me into your mouth and crunched and munched, licking your chapped lips after each bite. You wanted more.

All I could give.

The baby was in a car seat that night, abandoned. You tried to reach it, climbing down over the blockades we’d made, contemplating a jump to the landing below. The infant wailed louder when it noticed you. Its savior.

So you thought.

It stopped making noise once you were within reach and launched itself like a demonic monkey, fastening itself to your face. You screamed and clawed at it while it sank infected fangs into your cheek, tearing at your flesh. I climbed down wielding our broom handle and beat it until the skull caved in. Like a limp doll, it dropped to the concrete below with a splatter of crimson.

Shrieks echoed from the parking lot. They’d been waiting for the baby to draw us out, some kind of snare using one of their own (They were breeding?) as bait, and now they charged at us en masse.

You clambered back to our floor, struggling across the blockades while your ravaged face drained blood, thick and black. I reached for you, dragged you inside, and together we restacked the furniture tight against the door. Just in time. The freaks slammed their full weight into it, screaming shrill, wild insanity.

They were hungry too.

“You kill me.” You looked me square in the eye. “Don’t let me get like that.”

I nodded, but I couldn’t.

I can’t lose you.

My legs are almost no more. The dining room has become our little butcher shop of horrors. I’ve gotten better at cauterizing my wounds quickly—less blood lost that way—but I flirt with unconsciousness. It hurts like nothing I’ve ever imagined, sawing off chunks of myself.

But it keeps you here with me.

“You kill me”—the last thing you were able to articulate, rasping out of swollen lungs as the infection spread, your arms bound with bed sheets to the oven and the refrigerator like some postmodern Samson. “Do it. Promise me.”

I nodded.

You get overeager sometimes and thrash around in the kitchen, struggling to rise to your feet and rip the oven door off its hinges. I have to beat you into submission with our broom. I’ve gotten pretty good at jabbing the handle’s end into your groin; it subdues you quick enough.

I can’t cut much farther up my legs. What next—my left arm? I still need my dominant right for the hacksaw. And the broom, when necessary.

Like now.

"Down! Get down—you know better!” I poke you again in the chest once you’ve settled, cradling your crotch.

A foreign sound approaches, chugging above our unit. A volley of shots ring out; screams echo in the parking lot. An authoritative voice shouts from the helicopter on a loudspeaker.

They’ve come. We’re saved.

I crawl into the kitchen, dragging what’s left of me into your arms. You get excited. Your first bite tears open my throat.

They’ll shoot us both when they break down our door. But they’ll find us together. Like this.




Milo James Fowler is a teacher by day, writer by night. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in over 25 publications, including Daily Science Fiction, Bards and Sages Quarterly, and The Best of Every Day Fiction. Stop by anytime: In Medias Res.