Simple Pleasures
From Pulp Literature Issue 47, find the opening chapters of a new story by Mel Anastasiou! Read an excerpt of ‘Let Me Tell You a Story’, from her forthcoming novel Younger Men. Want to know what happens next? Find the rest in Issue 47, Summer 2025!
Let Me Tell You a Story
by Mel Anastasiou
Chapter 1
The second Friday in September, Louisa made the whole staff of Westside Elementary School go on the Zombie Walk. Regardless of age or degree of fitness, regardless of skin sensitivity to makeup or religious objections to the occult, we all had to bloody our faces, rip our clothes, and go. When we looked dubious, she scowled around the staff room table. “You cowards, shape up. This is something you need to do for Hayley’s sake.”
“You’re all so kind,” I said. “But for the one hundredth time, Louisa, there’s nothing wrong with me.”
Considering Louisa’s small stature, unpopularity, and extreme good looks, I would like to think that all my teaching colleagues sat up and voted yes was due to the power of her crusading spirit. But later, when we were chopping our salads in the staff room kitchen, Apollo wondered aloud to Louisa whether it was entirely a good idea to use the undead to try to cheer up the recently divorced. He pointed at me. “Case in point, Hayley has cut her finger again.” Louisa slapped the knife out of my hand and chopped my arugula for me.
So, that Friday afternoon, we Westside Elementary staff left our classrooms to totter in ragged clothing, past office buildings and bus stops and parked cars, and join the Zombie Walk in shiny-glass downtown Vancouver, our pockets stuffed with tubes of fake blood. Louisa brought a bullhorn, and no sooner had she merged us with hundreds of other zombies than she took the whole thing over.
“What do you want?” Louisa bullhorned at us zombies.
“Blood,” we shouted back. I met Apollo’s eye under his baseball cap, and he gave me a guilty look. I knew why, too. Somehow being in a crowd of zombies made you actually want blood. I smeared a picture window with red paint. A woman at a computer on the other side shrank back. She could probably feel the bloodlust.
“I can’t hear you,” Louisa bellowed at the mob. “What do you want?”
“Blood.”
“When do you want it?”
“Urghurerearrr.” The wordless cry.
Tip your head to the side—right or left, just pick one and stick with it. Roll your eyes, hands out, and totter back and forth. That’s how you do the Zombie Walk. It’s simple enough, and simple pleasures can amuse, at least for a while. Then we saw the tourist bus.
Find the full story in Pulp Literature Issue 47, Summer 2025
And a reminder that there’s still time to bid on items in our Keep the Presses Rolling silent auction, which is open until November 29th! View everything on offer here and help to support our printing costs for the new year. Find editorial feedback, book bundles, vacation spots, classes and experiences, and more on offer!
Mel Anastasiou writes the Fairmount Manor Mysteries, the Hertfordshire Pub Mysteries, and the Monument Studios Mysteries. Winner of a Literary Titan Gold award and shortlisted for the Leacock Medal, Mel is also the author of two illustrated thirty-day workbooks on story structure: the steampunk-themed The Writer’s Boon Companion and The Writer’s Friend and Confidante. We’re delighted to present this story, which forms the first part of her novel Younger Men, due out from Pulp Literature Press in 2026. For news on published and upcoming works, visit Mel’s website, melanastasiou.wordpress.com.
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