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Just another day in a #fake world, Chanine thinks to herself while she scrolls through her Chinder feed. The usual muscley-men with beards don’t appeal to her, and it isn’t until she comes across a new profile of an amazingly handsome, human Asian boy-man with a brilliant, million-watt smile that she decides that he’s her new boyfriend. By pure accident, she accidentally-on-purpose swipes up and “sooper-dooper-likes” his profile. By accident, of course.
Did she mention it was by accident?
Chanine might also be able to blame it on the thumb that has detached from the rest of her hand and flown across the room in her haste. Or, at least, she would have been able to do so had she remembered to reattach it before she went flying off the door. He had messaged her so quickly, asking to meet, that she almost forgot to even make sure her eyes were at least at level with each other.
Oh well, she said to herself. Hopefully, if he fell in love with her, he wouldn’t mind the oozing pus coming out of where her left nostril used to be.
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It was around 1AM when she arrived at the all-night foodtruck just outside of town where they agreed to meet.
She slurped at her smoogies-ade (with extra smoogs, of course) forlornly, worried she may have made a big mistake.
She hoped against hope he would be ugly in person so she could just go home. It was too dangerous for her to just be without a thumb for too long, what if she had to suddenly hold something else and one hand just wouldn’t do?
Suddenly, he came tumbling into view. Wow, he was lanky, she thought to herself. Chanine muttered a string of curses under her breath, because lankiness was her weakness. He also was wearing a white shirt with a thin black stripe down the front, and his messy silver hair was in disarray.
Yet another one of her weaknesses!
He greeted her jovially. “Hi-- uh, I-- well, um. Hello!” he practically screeched (brightly), although she was standing right beside him. She considered tearing her ear off just so he couldn’t yell into it. Instead, she stared at the large button attached to his sweater bearing some acronym that spelled “ZABT.” What in the world was “ZABT”?
“I know I’m loud, but I saw your profile and I’m just excited because I love you,” he said, all in one bellowing breath. “I’m Pork Chin Yodel.”
“Hi,” she said shortly, and stepped into the light of the streetlamp. He gasped.
“You catfished me!” he cried.
“No, I didn’t,” she cried back saltily, offended that he would accuse her of such a thing. She threw her smoogie in his direction but he was so tall she couldn't even throw it high enough.
“But your profile picture doesn’t look like you at all!” he pouted, pulling out his phone to compare. She swatted it to the ground with more force than she intended, and lost a couple more fingers along the way.
“THAT WAS ME BEFORE I DIED, SCREW YOU, PORK CHIN YODEL!” She stormed away, not caring whether her tears made her nose goo drip more.
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He searched high and low for the beautiful goo lady of the night, only stopping once to eat a hot dog and one carmelized, 20-pound onion bought from a vendor who grew them in her giant hair. A little while later/eventually, he found her behind another food truck, deleting her Chinder account and nomming on an old BBQ skewer she found on the ground.
“It’s okay, you know,” he said, gently taking her rotting hand and cupping it in his own very alive ones. Placing the two fingers she lost back in their sockets, he taped them there using the medical tape he kept in his bejeweled fanny pack, which was filled with glitter.
“ZABT stands for the Zombie’s Are Beautiful Too initiative,” he smiled, and looked so greasy she wanted to kiss him just so he’d shut up. “Diversity is beautiful and I think we should accept the Undead as a culture of their own. It’s not any of their fault, so why do we have to exclude people just because they’re not like us? I mean, most who stop the transition correctly don’t even eat humans anymore! They make their own cuisine - who knew human meat-substitutes could taste just like fried chicken when frozen, right?”
He went on babbling for another hour before she finally summoned up the will to interrupt. (But, well, it was also easy to simply tune him out and just watch the poetry in motion that was the different ways he could pull his face into so many different kinds of positions/expressions!)
But damn, was his handsomeness shining so incredibly much that she literally could not look away? It was like a train wreck. A beautiful, yappy trainwreck with twenty-thousand teeth and the brightest headlights ever... Was she blind? Or, did her eyes just pop out again? Drat.
No, they didn't. He was still talking.
"How are you sure I won’t just have you for breakfast?” Chanine grumbled, wondering if she would be willing to just let him keep her arm if she ran away now.
“That’s what I’m hoping, actually,” he said even more greasily, putting his arm around her. “I like my eggs over-easy, just so you know.”
She all but screamed, running away again, not caring that it probably would take a lot of her homemade glue to put that arm back in its socket again.
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Two hours later, she regretted leaving her arm behind. It was too hard opening cans of human meat substitute without it. What was left of her stomach grumbled grumpily. Then she looked sadly at her thumb on the table, and began to miss Pork Chin Yodel.
Then, it all came to her in a second of realization: he was THE Pork Chin Yodel - the CEO of Chinder Corporation, and the creator of the very app that brought them together!
He was clearly the one she was supposed to be with - their profiles had been so similar, uncannily similar - they even liked the same music, loved the same instruments, wanted to go to the same places… heck, he even got to do a lot of the stuff she had wanted to do herself when she was alive.
A surge of jealousy came rushing to her head, simultaneous with a surge of agony to her misshapen hearteu.
Would things have been different if she were still human?
A soft knocking at her door broke her out of her musings.
“Chanine, please open up. It’s taken me hours to find you, and I can only hug this arm so much, pretending the rest of you were with me!”
She opened her door just enough to look at him with her now-properly adjusted eyes. “Go away, Pork Chin Yodel. You may be my life now but if I can’t be with you properly, I don’t wish to be with you at all! You’re too perfect for me! I love you too much! TOO MUCH, DO YOU HEAR ME!?”
“Oh, Chanine!” He yodeled, and lifted his phone to show her. “You’re the only one for me! Chinder says so, so it must be true. Just because you delete your account doesn’t mean you can delete me! Anyway, accounts take 12 hours to be removed from the system. This is the future, the internet is too powerful now... and in retrospect, it may have caused the destruction of our civilization way back in the day, but whatever, my app changed everyone's life for the better - especially my own!
Chanine, my darling, my sweetie-pie, the rotten fish of my elephant heart! Do not evade me any longer, for even death cannot part us from the love we now share! For you are the very music of my soul, the city of my bustling internal organs, the White Falcon Gretsch of my life and eternal feels! Who am I now, without you? I AM BUT A MAN. A BOY-MAN. I FEEL LIKE A MAN-BABY," He wailed.
WITHOUT YOU, my stars do not light up my world! Without you, I am alive yet I do not LIVE. So keep yourself from me not, my gooey love, my sugarplum of honey-covered fleshy lump-lumps! Who cares! We share the same SKY BUT STAND ON DIFFERENT GROUNDS! And I know we STAND ON DIFFERENT GROUNDS BUT SEE THE SAME SKY...
But if you can stand my porky chin,” he told her, gently detaching his joints so he could wiggle himself through the door.
“And my yodeling,” he said, gluing her arm back where it was, adding her thumb last.
“Then I don’t care if you’re part of the undead,” he said, and kissed her. Her nose started to un-goo, and her skin began to become less green and withered.
Glitter and confetti fell from the ceiling and swirled around them! A magical harp played beautiful melodies and a unicorn flew through the sky and stood majestically atop a nearby hill! And when they both opened their eyes, Chanine was a regular girl again.
“Oh, Pork Chin Yodel,” she said romantically, as he kissed her once more and wrapped his strong arms around her newly-alive ones.
"Before you, I fooled myself into thinking I couldn't love someone that was not a deer or a British actor... or lasagna with extra cheese. But now that you hold me in your arms and embrace me the way you do, I see the truth! I see my future! I see you before me, the man-baby-boy-man of my dreams, my literal dream boy!!!
You are my cuppy-cake love of my life, the Muse-loving fan I wish to fangirl alongside for the rest of my existence. Your lankiness is the stuff of my dreams. I truly am grateful for creeping Chinder long enough to creep on you. I hope we can creep on each other every day from now on, and also creep on other people together every night, too.
You are my sun and though I know that star imploded several years ago I know the feelings we share will last far longer. I shall protect you from the antis of this world and will cherish your Loeyvelousness with my soul and what's left of our dessicated planet will learn of your Loeyed Loeylove with all its Loeying, Loeytastical Loey McLoeyness.
You have taught me what tru lov really, truly is - so I will travel the world with you, participating in slightly reckless activities with you by my side, for I love you more than all the things I listed in my first paragraph... put together! Yes, you heard me, Hom Tardy... I love Pork Chin Yodel!"
Pork Chin Yodel looked touched beyond belief, and tears welled up in his giant eyes, indicating how much agony and happiness he was feeling... what with the emotions building up in his many arteries. He hoped he wouldn't burst from how much beauty he was feeling, but part of him didn't care. We all suffer and die in the end, but at least now he knew he could die with slightly more happy circumstances.
“I love you, Chanine! Forever and always! Let’s spend our lives together in bliss, spreading the word of our ZABT success story of love," he yodeled softly.
And that they did, until ten minutes later when they both got hit by the rampaging unicorn because it was still only 3:54AM and like two dumbasses in love they were stargazing and didn’t see the hooves until it was too late.
The end. (Or is it?)