It was bound to happen I guess. I feel like crawling under a porch to die. My whole fucking life I have to be this way. Humiliation doesn’t come close to describing it. My head is throbbing from the buckets of moonshine I sucked up last night just to calm down. Just to get to sleep.

I was going to work yesterday and I turned the corner and right there was a biter at the door of Coach’s. A dude named Slade was there and he took that one down pretty fast, not a lot of blood and I managed to turn away fast. But I still threw up, mostly because those things are so rank. I was sitting there on the curb trying to breath right and calm down, I didn’t even hear the other fucking zombie until it was real close, too close. I stood up and took the swing, I had to do it. And like you’d expect with a crowbar its head busted into bits. It fell to the ground, and then I looked down and saw I was covered in blood. And then of course it happened.

Narrowing vision, cold sweat, clammy skin, spinning sensation, lightheadedness and yep, passed out. Right there in front of Coach’s, right there in front of people. I sprawled there next to the biter I’d just put down because a loose wire in my brains makes me pass out at the sight of blood. Such a manly affliction. And beyond the shame of a lifetime, what if there had been three of them? Or thirty?

I woke up groggy like I always do but the panic started fast, I still had the blood on me and when I wiped my face it was sticky. I don’t know why I didn’t pass out again, I think the panic kept me awake but I was going mental right there in the streets. The only place I could think to clean up was the pond that I go to when I’m hauling water to the Eights. So I ran all the way there wobbly and hardly breathing and when I got there I just sat down in the water, clothing, pack and all. I must have looked like a dolphin dipping my head in the water over and over like that. When I could focus on things around me I saw that I was followed by a girl I’d met named Wheels. She did it out of kindness and concern for someone she hardly knows and I’ll always remember that. But I was so humiliated, felt like a baby in the tub. She was very cool about it all. Cooler than I was.

So yeah I drank myself to oblivion when I got home. Now that people know, now that they have seen it happen, they aren’t going to trust me to have their backs. I’m a liability with this phobia I know that now. But what the fuck can I do. The shrinks told me it was because of an accident I saw when I was five, there might be genetics involved too but who knows. Whatever the cause, damn near every time I see blood my blood pressure drops and my brain loses oxygen and shuts down and I fall on the fucking floor like lumber. I can’t even believe it happened right there in the center of town. How can I even look at these people now? I’m just going to stay in the cabin today.