Night of the Living Designers

...or How the Zombies Ate Our Living Room

Zombies are very subtle when it comes to stealing accessories and furniture. You'd think we'd hear them break the door down getting into the living room, or their moaning as they drag out our Victorian tchotchkes, but no-zombies are very subtle.

Things started disappearing from Chestnut House a couple of weeks ago. At first I didn't know who to blame. A deer head here, a fireplace screen there, paintings, pictures, pitchers...soon the house was stripped of all personality, Atticus notwithstanding.

Last week our friend Shawn and I snuck into Ron's Coterie production of Night of the Living Dead. Mystery solved. Those pesky zombies had drug all of our worldly goods down Grand Boulevard, into Crown Center, up the escalator, (a fact-zombies cannot climb stairs due to rigor mortis, which is why our top two floors were spared), and had recreated Chestnut House onstage. When we arrived, they were in the midst of violently attacking the actors in an exact replica of our living room.

As my tender taxidermy looked on, stage blood flew over our favorite antiques. A picture of my Great-Grandmother Moran smirked knowingly from her perch on the wall as body parts flew and Molotov Cocktails exploded around her.

During a particularly gruesome scene, where a twelve year old girl gnaws on her father's severed arm while stabbing her mother with a garden trowel, Shawn leaned over to me and whispered, "Have you thought where you are going to hang that lovely pastel floral when you get it back?"

The scene before me looked as if Clive Barker had been named editor of Architectural Digest. A room full of beautiful period details, with just the right bits of teeth, hair, severed digits, and rotting flesh to give it a nonchalant, lived-in look.

Speaking of "particularly gruesome", Ron and I are preparing to thaw and eat our year-old wedding cake on our anniversary Tuesday. I have been dreading this moment for the past 364 days.

When they call the one year mark the "Paper Anniversary," they refer to the bags you have to keep in your lap just in case eating a cake that's been frozen for twelve months doesn't sit well on your stomach.

After the Coterie show completes its run, my only request is that the zombies are as quick and efficient returning our things as they were carting them off, and that they clean off the bits of brain before bringing anything back into the house. I don't know how to get brain stains out of the carpets, but I can tell you the last time I had to clean them up, club soda didn't work!

Until next week-

Jon (and Ron and Atticus)