Actor at the Zombie Apocalypse Park Tries the Method
by Raja'a Khalid
Kate Molloy, Untitled (Transference), acrylic on canvas, 7 × 9.45 inches, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
Actor at the Zombie
ApocalypsE Park
Tries the Method
Raja'a Khalid | MAr 2025 | Issue 43
“Everyone at every minute of his life must feel something. Only the dead have no sensations.”
― Konstantin Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares
A pale evening sun seeps in and bathes his aching body as he reaches out for the glass of lukewarm water his beloved Mala has left by his bedside. His throat feels raw from all those primal grunts and groans and his arms are heavy as if clad in cold iron chains. He lifts himself into the costume, musty shreds of a t-shirt and jeans bleached under the skylight then streaked artfully in red ink. He moves slowly, pours himself in, lets his mouth hang open then runs his tongue over his cracked bleeding lips. One foot down and then the other, he rises, lifts his arms in front of him, hands curved into rigid claws, the strings of muscles in his fingers burning and tingling. He gives into the feeling and begins his slow walk to the kitchen where a sandwich has been left on a plate for him, but the beautiful Mala is absent. She pulls away from him these days when he goes this deep, tells him that he should begin the act when he gets to the park, that she’ll leave him for someone else if he won’t cut it out, that Hero—the new guy at the bar—has asked for her number. At this, he takes her head in his hands, slides his fingers through her black hair and scrapes his teeth on her skull. She struggles free each time, crosses her arms, taps her feet, rolls her eyes. I love you, he means to say, but the words that come out in his deep, raspy voice will be nothing but nonsense to her ears.
*
Hollowed out Mustangs and Dodge Chargers sit in the dark, their long dusty bodies lit from the glow of orange dripping like juice from six streetlamps, the only illumination for a square mile in this quiet corner of the city. Shrieks and nervous laughter tinkle in the distance and he follows the sounds one heavy step at a time. That's what they come for, the gangs of girls, their thin arms in spider web lace linked to make tenuous chains, to laugh that wet laugh with their lips stained black and to sing together sometimes, the words to that Alanis Morissette song, into the purple blanket of Dubai’s hazy sky. I couldn’t help it, it’s all your fault. Sometimes there are boyfriends with baggy jeans low on their hips and these tough boys don’t run at all, don’t play the game with him, but instead call him names like freak and dogface and flick the red hot embers of their lit cigarettes in his direction and so it is the girls he loves to chase. They tease him first, dare him with their bright eyes and beautiful knees and then they run on and he lets them because he loves watching that lightness of teen spirit. The nights have been humid and by the end of it all the damp glitters on their chests where shine little crosses they wear upside down to tell him discreetly to beware, that they too are in league with the devil. But he is part of a pack here, not a lone wolf, and he and others like him know the route to take to split the girls, to give them the cold-sweat thrill of their lives, to hear more of their squealing and those deep moans of relief when they make an escape for a little while. Until he catches up with one alone. That is when he knows he has won, when a pretty thing in Doc Martens stumbles in fright, holds out her hands in a T to signal a timeout, to tell him to stop because she can’t go on, because she needs to catch her breath which comes in short gasps now. If only she would listen to his story, hear about the path he took to get here perhaps she would give him her shoulder, show him those feelings she keeps so close to the surface when she is alone but that she quashes now because he is the living dead and she is just a girl out with her friends on a Saturday night. The pictures on his bedroom walls are still Daniel Day Lewis and Marlon Brando and back when he was a whip of a boy he had growled too, on the stage That one may smile and smile and be a villain. But now he is one of the infected and the virus boils in his blood and the pain of rigor mortis overcomes his muscles and he needs a pretty girl’s head in his coarse hands more than he needs her smiles. He finds one alone leaning on a chain link fence, pulling on her vape and moves towards her with his lumbering gait like a one-legged philosopher and she catches sight of him with her big eyes lined in black glitter, the crystal hanging on her velvet choker, the only star in the city tonight. She doesn’t run but exhales a ghost and when he steps into her cloud he breathes in her strawberry grace and looks at the blood trickling down her lips and her arms too are red and he has to admit that she is one of the hardcore, a believer and for a moment, just a moment a sigh escapes him because he loves with all his unbeating heart the believers, the ones that go right to the edge, live in the dreamworld with their fanged avatars, Death Eater tattoos and Neopets, the livewire fans as he calls them in his head. He growls at her but she doesn’t shrink from him but blows more of her fruity mist his way and begins—if you can believe it—a conversation by asking him his name. She flicks back her hair, crosses her arms like Mala does and tells him with a single raised eyebrow that she isn’t afraid. She’s already bored of the game. He considers stepping up closer, reaching out for her alabaster cheek, cracking her skull open, but he turns around, tears in his eyes and begins the slow walk to a lonely spot to remind himself that if there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that he isn’t the real thing.
Raja’a Khalid is a Saudi-born, Dubai-raised (and based) artist and writer with an MFA in Art from Cornell University. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee (2025) and her stories appear or are forthcoming in Vestoj, Jet Fuel Review, HAD, Maudlin House, SAND Journal and Yalobusha Review.
Kate Molloy (she/her) is a practicing artist and facilitator based in Dublin, Ireland. Her practice engages with painting, clay and installation work and explores the feelings of uncertainty and intuition that develop during the creative process.After graduating from Edinburgh College of Art in 2014, with an MFA in Contemporary Art Practice she was shortlisted for the Beers London Contemporary Visions VI in 2015. Having exhibited work throughout Ireland and the U.K, in 2019 Kate’s first international solo exhibition Controlled Emotion opened at Skinroom, Hamilton, New Zealand. In 2023 received the Arts Council of Ireland Agility Award. Previous member of Engage Art Studios, Galway and Wickham Street Studios, Limerick. Current member of A4 Sounds Studio, Dublin.