Our Undead (9 page)

The delirious girl
continues to thrash about, and then searches manically around the
floor. She spots the still beaming flashlight and scuffles over to
it, grabs it and looks sharply in the direction of the zombie who
is still floundering in between the door. With all the strength she
can muster, she fast pitches the flashlight toward him and just
misses. The flashlight slams into the face side of the door just
beside his head, and then hits the floor. She growls with rage at
her inaccuracy and looks around again for something else to throw.
When she finds nothing, her anger compels her to get up and charge
the ensnared killer, to tear him apart with her bare hands. But one
step on her bad foot, and she goes careening back down to the
floor, crying at the severe prick shooting up the whole right side
of her body. Her hands and knees take the brunt of the rough floor,
saving her face from taking the impact, while her stalker watches,
wants and wriggles.

It really is hopeless. The
pain from trying to run on her mangled ankle brings her out of her
unstable frame of mind. She cautiously turns herself around and
eases herself back down. There, she sits on the floor, out of
breath, looking into the eyes of the thing that killed her parents.
She is out of everything, out of hope, out of family, out of love,
out of energy and out of words. There's nothing left to do now. She
is tired, and if this useless zombie can't kill her, the next best
thing she can think to do is sleep. If by daylight the zombie has
somehow managed to break out of the door and kill her in her
slumber, so be it.

She lays herself down on her left side, curling her left leg
up into the fetal position, but leaving her injured right one
slightly extended. The sharp pain in it is in a constant ring. She
can still see our zombie, growling at her and reaching for her,
trying his best to get unstuck. It is the last thing the girl sees,
the last thing she hears before her eyes become too heavy, her body
becomes too relaxed, and she drifts off into sleep.

ELUCIDATION

It's a bright and beautiful
spring day. The girl with long blonde hair looks ravishing. Her
locks are luxurious and bouncing. They catch the light from the sun
and almost twinkle if looked at from the right angle. She sits in a
park on this beautiful day, in a light yellow sunshine dress on a
hill under a tree, in between the legs of a very attractive man,
the man of her dreams. They sit under a fully bloomed sycamore in
the plush green grass, her back laying against his well-built
chest, his strong arms holding her gently, but firmly. The day is
hot but perfect in the shade, and the grass blades tickle the
bottoms of her feet as she wiggles her toes and looks past them out
into a psychedelic swaying field. It is much like that scene from
one of her favorite movies, the sad one about the asteroid the size
of Texas. She runs her fingers lovingly up and down her man's tough
and smooth forearms. Their weight rests comfortably on top of her
belly and pelvis, their perfectly tanned skin glistening with a
modest condensation. She leans back into him, looking up into his
eyes.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
I could stay here forever.

He smiles down at her
softly, and then they kiss. As the passion builds, she turns
herself around fully and wraps her legs around his waist. From a
distance, the full height and lushness of the freshly sprung
sycamore tree, and field beyond it, is a sight to behold. They are
beautiful and so is the moment. Their passion intensifies and as it
does, the leaves on the tree begin to shift in color. They turn
quickly from green to yellow, from yellow to orange, from orange to
red, then from red to brown. Simultaneously, the sky starts to
darken and black clouds gather. Wholly immersed in him and giving
all her attention to her lover, she doesn't take notice of the
darkening sky or the dead leaves that have started to flutter down
all around her. She is so into it, and so is he. That is until one
of the fluttering leaves lightly tickles her cheek on it's way down
to the bed of grass, which has also turned into a brown
mess.

She giggles at the leaf's
touch and pulls her lips back for a moment. This is when she looks
up and sees the dying tree. Almost every leaf has fallen from it,
and the bark has become black and burned. It too, is chipping off
and falling apart like ash.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
W-what's happening?

As she speaks, her eyes
wander up the scale of the disintegrating tree.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
(sighs)
I don't
care. As long as I'm with you, I don't care what
happens.

She snuggles into her man,
trying to get more comfortable. The safety and warmth he provides
is all she needs. His lips are the icing on the cake. She lifts her
head from his chest to get a taste of them again, but before their
lips touch she is repulsed by what her heartthrob has become. She
screams and throws his arms off of her, then pushes herself roughly
away from him, rolling backward a part of the way down the hill,
ruining her elegant light yellow sunshine dress in the process.
Lying on her stomach, she looks back up the hill at her dreamboat
who has turned into a rotten, undead, man-eating corpse. It starts
getting to its feet.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
Ugh, what is going on?

When the transformed hunk
starts lumbering down the hill at her, the pretty girl gets up. Her
dress is stained with dirt and ash, and her hair is showing early
signs of some major stress. She backs away step by step as the
walker gets closer. The world she walks in now is a grim one, grey,
and the fields beyond the hill are charred with patches of fire
scattered about. The beautiful sycamore tree is now leafless and
crisped black. Glowing singes of orange course up and down it's
trunk and barren branches, like blood coursing through veins. Ash,
now flurries profusely from the black storm clouds
above.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
Stop. Don't come any closer.

The handsome zombie doesn't
listen and proceeds to close in on her. She keeps moving backward,
but there's no way her tiny, slow steps will be enough to keep her
out of the walking dead's reach for much longer.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
No! Stop! Just stay there!

Terrified, her hands cover
her face, now drenched in tears. The ghoul is only but a few feet
away from her now, and it raises both arms in classic zombie-like
fashion, ready to take hold of it's victim. The hopeless, horror
filled girl just continues moving back, whimpering into her
hands.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
Please… Just stop…

And just as she is about
to be taken…
**THUMP**
…she backs into something. She removes her palms from her
face and looks up, surprised to find that her zombie boyfriend is
gone. She looks around and sees that she is no longer in a field.
It has been replaced by a small room, lit with one lamp sitting on
a table beside a bed that is pushed up into the center of the wall
to her right. A closed door is to the left of her on the wall she
bumped into, and a closed window is on the wall opposite to
her.

Outside, it looks to be
nighttime, but nothing can be seen through the fogged up glass.
While looking at the window, she catches something in the corner of
her eye. There is a girl sitting on the bed where there had not
been one before. A young girl with blond hair just like her own,
but shorter. This mysterious girl is crying into her palms, keeping
her face concealed. As if forgetting where she had just been,
backing away from a flesh eater in a smoldering field, the girl in
the dirty yellow sundress gives into her curiosity and compassion.
She slowly approaches the weeping girl.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
Hiiii… Hello?…. Excuse me, what's the matter? Is
there something I can help you with?

The seated girl brings her
head up out of her hands. Streaks of mascara have run their course
down both sides of her face, and have also left their black stains
on parts of her hands. This crying girl is familiar to the dreamer.
She gets the unquestionable feeling that she's seen her somewhere
before, and that she is in need of help.

WeepingGirl:
My father, he's…

Feeling a deep concern for
this crying girl whom she doesn't quite remember, the dreaming
teenager brushes off her dusty sundress and takes a seat beside
her. She lays a supportive hand on the sad girl's
shoulder.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
Your father what? It's okay. You can tell
me.

WeepingGirl:
No! It's not oookay!

The weeping girl's outburst
frightens her supporter.

WeepingGirl:
He's not even my father anymore… He's …
he's…

Just then, the room door
flies open, banging against the wall. The sound makes both of the
girls jump this time, and the one with the longer hair turns to see
who is standing in the doorway. The other begins weeping
again.

WeepingGirl:
Oh God, he's here!

When she sees the figure of
the zombie standing in the door, the sight is more confusing to her
than scary. She gets up from beside the crying girl and stands
beside the bed, watching the zombie in a sort of trance.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
That's not your father… That's
my
father…

There she sees an undead
version of Gary looking back at her with a blank expression. Her
eyes begin to water.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
Dad, what happened to you?

Instead of answering her,
he starts in her direction. She shakes her head in disbelief until
she realizes that she has to get out. Her dad has turned into some
kind of monster, and this cramped room is not safe. She has to
leave, and she'll have to take this girl with her. Even though the
girl is obviously out of her mind. She doesn't even know who her
own father is, but that is no reason to leave her
behind.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
Look, that's not your father, but I think we
should--
AAH!!!
Mom?!

Sat in the same spot where
the young girl had been crying is the undead version of her mother,
Mariam. With her undead father approaching from the door, and her
mother now on the bed, she has no other option than to try for the
window, so she rushes over to it and looks outside. There is
nothing but a thin mist hovering in an infinite plane of blackness.
She tries to open it, but can't find a lever or latch, or any sort
of grip to make the thing work. She notices the lamp on the bedside
table, runs over to grab it and after a second of thought, smashes
it into the window. Glass falls all over the inside of the room,
and she tries to escape out of it.

Cutting her bare feet on
the shattered glass is unavoidable as she runs up to and starts
climbing over the sill. She makes it half way out, but when she
does, an invisible force yanks her back into the room, holds her in
mid-air and drops her. She comes down hard on the floor peppered in
broken glass, but gets up quickly when she sees that her undead
parents are closing in on her. She tries for the window again,
ignoring the spikes under her feet, and again, gets half way out,
but once more, some unseen entity yanks her back inside. This time,
it throws her aggressively on to the bed. She scuttles herself up
quickly and falls off the mattress past her mother near to the
shattered window. She picks up the strongest looking shard she can
find among the myriad laid about the floor. Her zombie parents are
truly creeping, but are almost in range of her as she backs herself
up into the corner of the room furthest away from the
door.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
Mom… Dad… I don't know what happened, but
I'm
sooo
sorry.

She grasps the glass shard
tightly with both hands, takes a deep breath and lashes out in a
downward stabbing motion. The first to taste the sharp piece of
glass is her mother. The point enters just above her mother's left
eye and a splash of thick blackened blood squirts the girl in her
face via splash back. She yelps in disgust and wriggles the
transparent weapon frantically to get it out of her mother's skull.
When she succeeds, her mother falls to the ground, squawking and
twitching in distress. One down. She turns her attention to her
father.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
I'm sorry, dad.

Her grip around her weapon
intensifies again, and she performs the same downward stab for her
father. He joins his wife twitching on the hardwood floor less than
five seconds later. She looks down at them both, almost
hyperventilating. It's nauseating, the adrenaline, the shame, the
sadness of seeing her parents like that. They looked like an
ineffably disgusting version of fish out of water, flapping and
flipping around before her.

Should she leave them that
way? No. That wouldn't be respectful. But can she finish the job?
She
has
to. It
takes a few seconds to muster up the courage, but she inhales
deeply, and then bursts into a fit of screams, stabbing the blade
of glass down, again and again. More and more black blood sprinkles
up into her face after each saving gouge, but the adrenaline
channeled throws her into a violent over-kill. By the time she
exhausts herself, her parent's bodies are
unrecognizable.