You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The garage sale Apocalypse.
The moon goes down beyond the horizon as the sun comes up in a morning blue haze.
I hear the birds chirp and the morning chill gives way to the 1st light of the sun.
I push the garage door button and the electric motor on the ceiling starts.
The garage light comes on and the door slowly rises.
The morning is calm. But I know this will not last.
We start dragging full tubs onto the driveway.
Plastic crates filled with Halloween spiders sell for $1.
We roll out a hanging rack with expensive women’s clothing, most of which is designer quality. Nothing is selling for more than $5.
We drag the plastic tubs filled with costume jewelry and worn cowboy boots across the aggregate driveway.
The sound is loud, like a lap at Daytona.
The roar of plastic grating on gravel is amplified, reverberated by the the close proximity of the other homes.
I watch as black birds scatter from a tree limb.
It’s a harbinger of things to come, like a macabre slap in the face from Edgar Allen Poe.
Like ringing a dinner bell in the grave yard ether, the zombies awake.
I see the slow procession of pick up trucks drive by.
The maniacal miscreants leer out the window with a death stare.
They are emotionless, pale faced cretins, drawn to a tub of discardables like sharks drawn to chum.
“Here they come,” I say aloud.
One car parks and fat women wearing sears and roebucks stretch pants get out.
They waddle as they walk onto the property, their eyes darting from tub to tub.
I watch as an Oldsmobile with out of county tags drives by slowly.
The zombies within are undead. They leer at the driveway, scanning the proximity, looking to infiltrate the quiet streets of this suburbia.
One after another, the undead spill out of their rusted vehicles and advance. They are slow, methodical, zombie like. They walk with eyepatches and peg legs and gigantic granny panties outlined under stretch pants.
They are fat and woefully unexercised. They wobble up the sidewalk, pennies and quarters stuffed into double sealed plastic baggies.
These garage sale zombies are awake, roaming the Earth, hunting for deals, scouring for a bargain.
“How much for that Christmas Wreath?”
“Seventy five cents.”
“Will you take fifty?” the zombie retorts.
I think of a response.
Go to hell you cheap piece of filth. Crawl back in your coffin car of stench and drive back to the ridiculous county you call home.
“Yes. We will accept .50” we respond with fake smiles.
The woman with the gigantic t-shirt bought from a garage sale ions ago pulls out two quarters and reluctantly drops them on the table.
The zombie woman leaves the driveway. She is readily replaced by another of the undead, and still more are driving by.
I see a pick up truck with no muffler. It is loud like ear muffs made out of chain saws. The truck drives slowly like decomposing meat. I watch as a toothless zombie hangs out the window. He leers at our property like a peeping Tom outside an all Catholic girls school.
“How much is this nutcracker?” A zombie woman with three chins babbles.
The sticker says $1.
“Would you take less?” her voice is sour like a bowel movement in a Vietnamese fox hole.
I stare into her zombie eyes full of contempt and avarice.
She is a dyspeptic belch of undead.
I watch as other garage sale zombies rummage through a box of books.
I wonder if they can even read.
I feel my stomach rumbling with consternation and dyspeptic angst.
I suddenly have the urge to guzzle a gallon jug of Pepto-Bismol and top it off with an Alka-Seltzer chaser.
One mutant leaves and another undead shopper replaces him.
These are the ass stains of humanity, the dumpster fires of citizenry, the hooligans of financial insolvency.
For hours I will watch the zombie parade slither up and down the sidewalk like so much stink in a sanitation plant.
One man’s treasure is another man’s trash, they say.
But to the undead?
A garage sale is a carcass and they are the buzzards from hell.
We’re taking the little broken nut cracker to the dump. You want it? It’s a dollar! Take it or leave it heathen!
7 am becomes 8 am. 8 am becomes 9 am.
The sun rises in the blue sky and the zombie apocalypse of garage sale indignation festers.
We sit in the shade of the open garage. I’m in a lawn chair, sunglasses on, cup of coffee in my hand.
Sadly I’m hung over like a grizzly bear that’s been shot between the eyes in a Quentin Tarantino movie. My brain is raw, uncensored. I am disgusted by the zombies and my recent inebriation is only serving to make me angry. I feel nauseated like I spent the night inhaling unfiltered Camel cigarettes, dragging on the cancerous stick through the wrong end.
I watch zombies hold up size 6 shirts against their mastodon sized form.
You actually think you could get that shirt over your head? I want to scream.
You are a prehistoric citizen of lard.
Please!
It’s absurd like putting braces on a British soccer hooligan.
“Anyone want this car speaker?”
The zombies look at the gigantic thumper amp priced to move at $100.
There are no takers.
This crowd of undead wants .75 nut crackers and prices lower than dirt.
The visage through my Ray Bans is that of corpulent slithering scuzz. It is unsettling, nauseating.
I don’t want the zombie shoppers to touch me, to drool on me, to transform me into a member of the shopping undead.
Just put the money on the table heathen. Don’t touch my skin.
I have cottonmouth and a short fuse and no tolerance for zombies who want to buy Nutcrackers for less than a dollar.
Crawl back in your dumpster you old toothless woman. Set yourself on fire! Get out of our driveway! Get off my lawn!
Clint Eastwood would have none of this.
I’m hung over and angry and my head feels like some one used an ice scraper on my raw brain.
It’s a zombie apocalypse going out of business sale. Out of county losers are sifting through our trash like a cat burying poop in a litter box.
“How much for the plastic spider?” A zombie bellows.
“A dollar.”
There is a pause. The zombie’s brain is churning, thinking; “how to get the spider for free.”
I stare at the woman with the gigantic Titans T shirt. It’s like staring into the sun. My eyes burn. I’ve never been this close to the apocalypse, to the end of time.
A simple Home Owners Association post has summoned them from the crypt.
And like cockroaches feeding on adrenaline, they are oozing into this neighborhood, a zip code they could never afford to live in.
“Will you take .50” she asks.
I watch as filthy coffin cockroaches come out of her mouth like demonic death vomit.
My brain is on over load. It is an open air Cadillac and it is going over a cliff in the middle of the Arizona dessert. Some where Thelma and Louise are smiling and I’m suddenly wearing an erotic cat mask on my face. It’s a mardi gras from hell and I’m howling at the moon drinking a cup of Starbucks and secretly hoping to shove a barbie doll through someone’s skull.
“No. It’s a dollar. Take it or leave it.”
The zombie stares at us. It is not happy. The undead juices stew in her fermenting brain.
“I’ll have to go back to the car and get a dollar from my husband,” she says her breath full of putrid poison.
Yeah, zombie lady. You do that.
The zombie garage sale.
Coming to a neighborhood near you.
Life’s Crazy™