50 Shades of Gray Matter: Book 2 (The Swordsman Series)

Book 2 Excerpt

I realized the intuitive manner in which I killed the undead... it was a bit like how dear Uncle Louie taught me how to find a woman's G-spot.

All those years back, seems like a lifetime ago, we'd be sitting out on the wrap-around porch of the home my grandfather built. Usually, it was late, and the rest of the family had fallen asleep— Uncle Louie and I weren't the sort that felt compelled to sleep our lives away.

We'd be out there, the cicadas crackling with their love song in the moonlight, Uncle Louie'd tap his pipe out— 'cashed another one,' he might say and smile.

Then as the pipe would be filled up again, he'd dig into his tobacco pouch and, there'd that smile. And, as he'd done like so many times before, Louie would say, "This always feels like a woman's vah jay-jay, this bit here. Soft, a little damp."

(Note: oddly, my uncle was an adamant Oprah watcher. Not sure if he watched for the same reasons most others did, though)

I was seven and didn't really know what he was talking about— wasn't much of a smoker.

But now those totally inappropriate conversations of my youth would echo in my head as I slaughtered yet another undead gimp— my uncle's words like prophetic instructions of how to quickly put one down.

Now, as I said, they were not originally intended to be a simple, pragmatic method of killing zombies.

He'd instead detailed to me, given me a verbal map, on how to find a woman's G-spot— but they served me far, far better as a path to ripping a gimp's brain out of its skull.

"Ya go in, up to the hilt with your fingers," he'd say, his hand grinding into the tobacco pouch far longer than necessary. "Arc up like you're sayin 'Hey, come here, darlin'. Come here.' Then give 'er a little tug every now and again."

Yep, that was my move. Come here, darlin'. Then I strip the brain from the top of the spinal column and pull it out through the soft palate.

Funny, all those years armed with that knowledge... it did bunk-all for me when trying to find the G-spot.

But damn good for zombie killing.

As I walked in the midday sun, heading toward the CDC— we were nearly there, less than a quarter mile away now— I wondered if Uncle Louie was still around or if he'd gotten bit and turned gimp.

We sort of lost touch in the years after he moved to the outskirts of town.

Every few months he'd call and say something like, "Hey, why don' chu grab a bunch a quarters, and we'll go see some movies!"

But, my mother would get on the phone and that would be the end of that.

And since my family lived within 2000 yards of a public school, Uncle Louie couldn't risk violating the court order, so I didn't see much of him in my later childhood.

My eyes watered a little as this thought hit me: Uncle Louie was a little bit like my Mr. Miyagi.

Right?

See, here I think I'm learning about G-spots but no, no. Ha! Uncle, he was teaching me how to survive an undead apocalypse and didn't even know it!

Amazing.

And— funny now I think about it— like Mr. Miyagi, Louie had a whole "wax on/wax off" thing, but I'm pretty sure that was exactly what he intended it to be and nothing whatsoever like the movie at all. And nothing I'm emotionally strong enough to repeat, frankly, so I'll end that little digression right there.

FSGM is parody. Each book will be novelette length— around 10000 words.