"Hardboiled Stiff" by Michael Hemmingson (BADASS HORROR)

Hemmingson Zombies Fuck

Note: If you’d like to read these stories, they are all available in BADASS HORROR, the second Dybbuk Press anthology.

I was going to write about Job Chapter 23, invoking October 7, a seemingly absent G-d and human atrocities, but that's sad and everyone is writing about October 7 today. Also I'm Jewish and October 7 is always on my mind. If I really wanted to commemorate October 7, I'd go out and get arrested assaulting a Nazi at one of those bullshit pro-Hamas protests. Instead, enjoy an article about Michael Hemmingson's zombie detective story, the one that inspired me to write “The Xmas Video.” (available on Kindle and Audible).

Hemmingson starts this story with a zombie crawling out of his grave, trying to hitch a ride and eating brains of a sympathetic motorist. At which point, he remembers that he's a detective named Arthur Gideon with an office and a secretary. When he returns to his office, his secretary flirts with him and that's when I remember that Hemmingson writes erotica with Blue Moon books, those paperbacks with lingerie clad women on the covers. So I'm thinking “Is Hemmingson going to have the zombie detective fuck his secretary?” And yep, a few pagers later, we get zombie/human sex.

Years later, inspired by this story, I wrote “The Xmas Video” depicting a group of friends who get together every Xmas to watch zombie porn. One friend's family has a zombie ranch in East Texas and they need to do something with the zombies when they aren't licensing them to the military or birthday parties. It's the most disgusting thing I've ever written and I'm still proud of the Creative Writing teacher comment: “You obviously have talent but why are you writing THIS?” Up until then, he was always talking about how we should be free and fearless in our fiction.

Hemmingson follows up the zombie/human sex with the secretary telling a long story about realizing that she was into necrophilia. Her high school boyfriend died in a hit and run and she held onto him until the paramedics pried her away. She wasn't grieving over his corpse. She was horny. Just holding him gave her multiple orgasms. Then she tried working in mortuaries and funeral homes but they fired her for obvious reasons.

I'll write more about Hemmingson as a writer and person when I write about his short story collection This Other Eden, but I have to wonder if he ever wrote non-disgusting sex scenes. For a man who wrote erotica professionally, did he even like sex? I've read a few of his books and I never got the impression that he was writing horny. Most of his books were neo-noir with doomed protagonists with incidental or disgusting sex. In Drama, his playwright protagonist leaves a happy horny girlfriend for a crazy woman who likes ass play complete with shit eating. Hemmingson makes a point of letting the reader know that his characters are eating shit.

Besides the necrophilia and horny zombies, this is a classic detective noir where our hero takes a high paying missing persons job, only to get in way over his head. It takes place in the late 1960s, so we get corrupt senators, hippie orgies, Vietnam War conspiracies and Florida. It's so grounded in the detective tropes of Ross McDonald and Raymond Chandler, that it's almost easy to ignore just how nutballs the story gets. Want to shake up a tired cliché? Just add horny zombies.

Hemmingsonn also has the wisdom to take his time revealing the plot. Opening up with a confused zombie crawling out of a grave and trying to figure out what happened as he eats brains is a particularly smart move. The story is so classic that it's derivative. A detective is hired to find the wayward daughter of a wealthy politician. Before he finds her, he gets hint of a major conspiracy. Just as he's about to approach her at an orgy, something happens and he needs to deal with the greater machinations of the villains.

Countless detective novels and movies have done this plot. In fact, The Nice Guys used this plot because it knew that it was going over old ground. There are many reasons to love that movie – the chemistry between the actors, Russell Crowe's tough guy act, the dialogue, the set pieces, Ryan Gosling squealing whenever he gets hurt, etc. No one loves that movie for the plot twists.

Grounding the story in Detective Gideon struggling to remember his past helps the reader to enjoy the detective story when it's finally introduced. Knowing that Gideon's search for the senator's daughter will lead to an unmarked grave lends tension. By the time Gideon is caught up, the reader can enjoy the answers which involve an experimental drug that turned Vietnam War soldiers into zombies. Of course, the politician was involved. Yes, his daughter ends up with the zombies.

This story is too pro-zombie to be a scary zombie story, but it is an audacious zombie story. Few zombie stories frame the zombies winning and taking over Florida as a positive. It's definitely a fun zombie story. As the zombies take over, our hero bites his secretary so she can die and rise again. Then they can have mutual zombie sex in a zombie world.

Come on Zombie. Let's go party.

Again, this story is in BADASS HORROR. Feel free to buy a copy and read along.

The aforementioned zombie porn story “The Xmas Video” is in my collection Sugarplum Zombie Motherfuckers. I know it’s a bit early for Xmas stories, but it’s an enjoyable collection.

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