At Least He's Not On Fire: A Tour of the Things That Escape My Head (3 page)

The final two cards of the Devil’s poker game were the remaining seven in the deck, and the two of hearts. Once again Wally had defeated the Devil at his own game.

“Take your pick, you can choose to lose to sevens full of deuces, or deuces full of sevens. Full house Devil, I win. I told you.”

The skin stretched across the Devil’s forehead popped with a ripping sound as two black horns pierced the flesh like curved obsidian stalagmites. They grew to a foot’s length in the blink of an eye as the Devil bared a mouth filled with razor sharp yellowed teeth. His pearly whites were long gone.

“I... do
not
understand. You should have lost.” The demonic face of the evolving, mutating Devil still had the capacity to show confusion. He looked left and right at the cards arrayed in front of him, trying to make sense of how he’d lost.

Wally leaned forward, almost apologetic in his approach. “Look, you TOLD me I’d win every pot I played until I died if I won that first hand. I won the first hand, and this was the next hand. You told me I’d win. The Devil’s in the details man, of all people to remember that, I would’ve thought it would be you.”
 

The Devil’s body exploded in crimson light, forcing Wally to shield his eyes. His forearm was bright red from the heat when he pulled it away and looked. The Devil had returned to his pinstripe suit wearing, dashingly handsome prior form. Presently he had both hands on his stomach, and was letting loose a laugh that shook the chandeliers in the casino. Wally didn’t know what to make of the situation, so he joined in on the Devil’s self deprecating laughter.

“So I did Wallace, so I did. You know, I must be getting rusty. This is the third one of these I’ve muffed this week. Man that’s frustrating. You people are getting clever. Too much cable television maybe.” The Devil smiled, and shook his head at his own folly.

“Yeah well Nick, I guess you can’t win them all, right?” Wally shrugged, offering up some comfort to Lucifer.

“Haha.. No Wally I guess not. Doesn't matter if I stack the deck sometimes or not. Good times Wallace. Oh hey, you know what’s funny about all this?” The Devil asked, half in a laugh.

“What?” Wally asked through a smile.

“I said you’d win every pot for the rest of your life, right? Hahahaha…” The Devil’s laughter was barely contained. Wally was reminded of when he was a young kid, and he came down with a case of the late night giggles. His mom used to call them “Wallygigglefits.”

“Yeah, and I plan on using that prize to gain fame, and fortune. I'm going to pay for my kid's drug rehab too, and bank some child support payments to get that bitch off my back. You also said that if I won this second hand, I’d get into Heaven too, no questions asked.” Wally sighed in appreciation of this tremendous victory over the Devil, and over evil. His life had finally taken the turn for the better he knew he deserved.

Absent of laughter, the Devil said, “Yeah, well, I’m a poor loser Wally. Plus I never said how many pots you’d have the chance to play. Have fun in Heaven. I'm gonna swing by Malibu and say hi to your kid on the way home.”
 

Wally looked down at the Devil just as his head came off his shoulders.

The Devil watched Wally’s head roll away down the casino aisle between the roulette tables and the craps tables. It bobbled sideways several times, and spun in a circle until it came to a rest against a velvet rope stand. Wally's eyes were stuck wide open, staring back at the Devil in shock. Lucifer stood up and licked the warm red blood off his hand like an infernal cat. Once he was clean of Wally’s vitae, he adjusted his blood red tie, and walked away.

“Can’t win ‘em all is right Wallace. A lesson I wish I could learn.”

Adrian's Undead Diary

When I was growing up in rural New Hampshire, my friends and I used to spend lots and lots of time doing three things; adventuring in the woods, playing Dungeons and Dragons, and watching the original zombie movies that kick started the genre.

When we weren't rolling dice, or going on long expeditions into the woods in search of adventure, we'd stay up late into the wee hours, hatching our plans in the event the apocalypse via zombie came into reality. I cannot emphasize how many hours we poured into these plans. To say they were extensive would be an epic understatement. These are some of my fondest memories and I'd relive them in a heartbeat if I could.

Joe, one of my best friends (and still one of my best friends, going on 25 years later) loved my ability to be a dungeon master and loved the silly short stories I wrote for creative writing class, and he begged me for years to write a story about all of our old zombie survival plans. "Do it," he said a thousand times, mimicking a goon from Goodfellas.

In the summer of 2010 I had a chance meeting with the godfather of the zombie craze at Rock N Shock in Massachusetts; George Romero. Ten minutes with George was one of the coolest things I've ever been able to do, and when I left the show that day I said to myself, "Self, write Joe that story. If George and friends can do it, so can you." I won't tell you about how I pulled up my shorts to show him a tattoo on my thigh. Nope, that's not coming up in casual conversation.

I started writing a day or two later, after coming up with a loose plot incorporating some of the ideas we hatched as kids. In a single night I wrote 25 pages of what would become AUD, and I sent it off to Joe with the message: Here bud, here's that story for you.

My intention was to write a chapter or two a week, send it to Joe, and we'd have fun with it. After Joe read the start of it, he wrote me back and asked, "What are we doing with this, because it's good, people will like it, and you should share it."

I fought him at first. Me? Share my writing? Fuck that. That would invite criticism and ridicule. He wouldn't take no for an answer, and he built a website, and we started to post the entries and such, and the world was introduced to Adrian Ring. Day one we had 23 visitors, and 444 hits. I'll never forget those numbers.

AUD exploded. Within days we had fifty regular readers a day, and within weeks a hundred. A month saw us reach a few hundred, and within six months we had thousands of daily readers, all chomping at the bit for me to post the next entry in Adrian's journal.

Now, it's published in book form, and is being translated into German by Voodoo Press. Audio books are in process. It's been read by over fifty thousand people, and book one, Dark Recollections, has a 4.81 average review on Amazon. The subsequent books in the series are even higher rated.

I've got shirts now, hats, stickers, and more. It's a thing.

Adrian is flawed. He begins the story arrogant, cocky, and sure he's the best person for the job. He's wrong, but he'll figure that out in time. He's also funny. And foul mouthed. But he loves his cat Otis, and reading with him, inside his head as he spills it all out in his journal you'll learn to love the big guy, whether he deserves it or not. Alongside his entries you'll find short stories inserted that expand the scope of the world of AUD, and fill in the blanks that Adrian couldn't know about. AUD is raw. It's spiritual in a way that's hard to describe. It's changed lives, and more than mine. It's fan base is rabid. I'm a lucky guy for having written it.

Here's a sampler of the start of Dark Recollections, the beginning of the eight book epic of Adrian's Undead Diary.

Enjoy.

September 21
^st

It’s pretty fucking cold out tonight. The big ass plastic thermometer on the tree outside says its 35F out tonight. I’m glad I figured out where the emergency generator is here, otherwise I would be freezing my balls off now. Despite the fact that this place was kind of a bitch to clear out, I’m glad I did it. It’s got everything I need to survive for a long time.

I don’t even really know where to start. It’s a Tuesday today. At least I know what day it is. Someone in the main office building was wise enough to buy their calendar early this year so it’ll be easy for me to keep track of the days until the end of next year. After that I guess I’ll have to use some of the graph paper and make my own calendar. That’s being pretty optimistic though. The way the last few months have been I’ll be goddamn lucky to make Christmas, let alone next Christmas.
 

I decided to start writing this mainly to keep track of my daily activities and to have a way to purge my nugget. Frankly I talk to myself way too goddamn much to be mentally healthy and I was always told that writing a journal helped. Sooo.. let’s call this my journal. Thank God for spell check. I also realize that now is not the best time to be writing. I’m using up some of my gasoline to run the generator, which is basically a waste, and honestly having any lights on at night draws them in. Moths to a flame as the old saying goes. But I can’t sleep and I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time now. Having the electricity back has set a fire under my ass to do this.

My name is Adrian Ring. I lived what I would now call as only a moderately successful life. I was happy, but I had pretty low standards. I had a girlfriend, I had a small condo downtown, I still have my cat (score!), and I have thus far avoided being eaten by the undead. Surprise! There’s the twist in the story. I fucking love horror movies. Like seriously. I watched well over a thousand of them and always used to plot and plan should zombies ever rise from the dead and take over the world. Irony in all that is that when the shit hit the fan it happened so fast that any kind of plan would’ve been almost impossible to execute.
 

I was at work the night it started. I used to work third shift at a private school as a dorm supervisor. It was out of the way up in the hills outside of downtown, and only had about 100 students. Over 100k a year to attend. Very elite, very snooty, and basically the best job you could ask for.
 
I had 9 hour shifts where I basically just made sure the kids didn’t run away, and had their needs taken care of. Most nights I would do maybe an hour of work. I spent the rest of the time fucking around online looking at stupid videos and screwing around on the big ole f-book. God I wish I could update my status right now. Something really witty like “hasn’t been eaten yet, so is pretty stoked.” Or maybe something like, “wishes he grabbed more bullets when he raided the gun store in town.” I dunno. Something cool.

Anyway, I was at work when it all hit. Working nights meant I was totally alone aside from the three other overnights and the sleeping kids, so when I checked the news websites and saw the few updates about “zombie hoaxes” I laughed. After a few hours more and more popped up on other websites, but I didn’t take it too seriously. After all Halloween was coming up soon I figured it was some kind of stunt to promote a new movie or tv show. It wasn’t until the morning when half the day shift people didn’t show that I really realized something was up.

I went home as I normally do, and nothing seemed amiss. I called my girlfriend on the short drive home and we chatted. I asked her about it and she basically said she thought it was a hoax or some stunt. She was still half asleep though, so who knows what she really saw or heard on tv. Plus she was getting ready for work herself. She was gone by the time I got home, and I never saw her again. I think she was killed at work, or maybe on the drive home from work. I’ll never know. The cities are far too dangerous for me to attempt to go to, and to be honest, as much as I loved her, it scares the shit out of me when I think of getting eaten alive. If you can read this babe, I love you.

I went to bed after watching a few minutes of the news and eating a banana. I can still remember the weird vibe on the good morning shows. Kinda tense, but sort of laughing it off. I can still remember the look on the dude’s face as he reported it, kinda like he was waiting for an “april fools!” to pop up on his teleprompter. Never came I guess. So I went to bed.
 

I slept pretty good until about 3pm. I remember distinctly waking with a start, jarred awake. It took me a few minutes to piece together what actually woke me up, but the second gunshot kinda solved that riddle. It came from outside my window in the condo complex and I knew instantly something was very wrong.

My curtains are taped right to the window frames to block out the light, so I pulled on my gym shorts and hustled downstairs to look out the glass slider on the back side of the house. The action had ended by the time I got down there, but about thirty feet from where my place is I could clearly see a dead body laying in the parking lot. Have you ever seen someone take a shotgun blast to the head? Its horrible. There’s no head left to speak of, first off, and secondly the body just empties the blood out of what’s left of the head. More of a neck by that point really.
 

The body, a woman incidentally, was kind of laying towards my place, kinda downhill, and the blood was running into the mulch at the foot of the pine tree right behind my place. I’ve seen dead bodies before, I’ve been around violence plenty of times, but this was weird. It was in my neighborhood. You know, your sanctuary? I imagine the way I felt looking at her head-stump empty was a lot like watching your house burn down, or coming home to realize your house had been broken into. I felt violated. Anyway, I grabbed my sweatshirt, my cell phone, slipped my sandals on and sprinted out the back, dialing 911 as I went. I tripped over a root from the fucking pine tree and ate shit on the way, but I got there.

She was dead, of that there was no doubt. Her head was absolute demolished. She was wearing a garish flowery pattern shirt that looked a lot like the kind of shirts that a pediatric nurse would wear. She definitely had pants that looked a lot like those greenish scrub pants you see nurses wearing. I made my decision. Headless shotgun woman had been a nurse only a short time ago. At that point I realized my 911 call wasn’t going through. Getting the all circuits’ busy bullshit, which instantly set off my oh-shit radar. My groggy ass brain finally started to put two and two together. The zombie shenanigans from last night may not have been a hoax.