Friday, February 22, 2019

Midnight Snack


MIDNIGHT SNACK

It's roughly 11:45 PM in Stereo Falls. All the families are in for the night, all the children nestled away. Household pets are curled up somewhere nice and warm. Everybody in town's been in bed since nine or nine-thirty and will be up early to go to work at their offices, factories, and what have you. It's July as well so the kids either don't have to get up early or have summer jobs; none the less, everyone's in bed. Most houses in the neighborhood look the same; some with nice fences out front, some without. Everyone's lawn is cut the same as the person's next to them. All the neighbors’ hedges are trimmed nicely. All the cars, trucks, and minivans are washed, waxed, and sitting in garages. There's no trash in the street. There's no vandalism done to anyone's property. No stray animals roaming about. No homeless people waiting for their break. No barking dogs. No sounds from their downtown area since it's dead by six. Nobody's having trouble sleeping and everyone's in their nice little dream lands. The only thing going is a 24 hour gas station across town where the night clerk wonders why it's open twenty-four hours when nobody comes in after seven, but he doesn't say anything because he likes having a job. That and the train on the far side of town makes its nightly run. Yes, everything in Stereo Falls is pretty much the same all the time and usually runs entirely on schedule. ...But not tonight...
Tonight is different.
The recent rain has loosened the ground, enough for the Earth's flesh to be moved that is; and so it is moved. First his fingertips and then his fingers sprout up like weeds. His hands reach up to separate its soggy crust allowing an opening. The mud squishes between his fingers as he claws at the ground, pulling himself out of his grave. Like being birthed from an earthly cocoon. Of all things to happen tonight, a return from the grave wasn't on the list of 'might happens'. The living dead climbs out of the pit he once called home and aimlessly moves forward. He crawls along the ground, not yet able to stand, his mouth slowly creaking open. He's hungry. So hungry he couldn't rest. Couldn't sleep. And now he's out for a snack... A meal. The grave behind him, now a muddy hole with broken shards of coffin sticking up. The casket pieces have blood and bits of scraped flesh on the ends of them from his escape.
His fingers grip into the land in front of him pulling himself forward. Owls watch as this once-man crawls across the ground. Raccoons and possums keep their distance. A gurgling hiss comes from his mouth. What and who he once was doesn’t matter anymore. Lit by the moon, the slime of his decomposition reflects the light. His clothes are wet from his decay and torn from the broken coffin. At the nearest headstone he reaches up with the resistance of a rusty limb grabbing hold of its top. With all his might he pulls himself up and places one foot on the ground followed by the other. His stance stabilizes and he’s steady. Looking up to the night sky he lets out a horrific screech as birds vacate their homes including the watching owls.
His steps are forced and slowed as one moving through water. He walks forward slowly, one foot in front of the other with subconscious muscle memory. It’s coming back. His pace picks up. He grumbles and groans, although that sound might just be his stomach rumbling. The cemetery is cold and empty yet simultaneously full. He comes to a halt and slowly scans his surroundings, his home. Though there are enough people around him to form their own town he finds himself utterly alone, yet loneliness is not really on his mind…if he indeed has one.
After viewing his surroundings he spots the front gate of the graveyard and starts to march in that direction. The wind is slight, no doubt carrying his stench to the nearby neighborhoods. Flies and gnats crowd his space. Maggots and various insects drop from his body with every step splatting to the ground. His body creaks and his clothes slip with the wet sounds of the slime. He walks as though it’s his first time, unstable without much direction or solid footing. He reaches the gate and opens it, its rusty creaking sound catching his ears as he stops to look at it before moving on.
He walks down the road, step after step. He’s hungry, starving. His senses almost make him hungrier by the minute: the smell of living things in the air (cutting through even his own foul odor), the heightened sound of heartbeats and blood flow. His stomach grumbles. On his walk, he steps on garbage on the side of the road with no thought. He steps on a broken beer bottle that plunges up directly through his foot. No reaction, he can’t feel it nor does he notice it. The wound leaks fluids on the ground behind him. The Zombie’s done walking on the side of the road and walks clear over to the middle, walking in the same direction. The piece of broken bottle lodged in his foot clanks on the road. Raspy creaking sounds emit from his rotten decaying mouth. He sees something in the distance - lights. A truck is coming down the road. He’s lit by the headlights in all his grotesque glory. The Zombie’s eyes light up and jaw falls open. The car swerves by the dead man, “Hey, get outta the road, asshole!” His head turns briefly watching the truck fade in the distance before turning forward and continuing.
The being that used to be a man (perhaps even a respectable man) moves forward with thirst, with hunger. He can feel it, the only pain he can feel. Stopping dead in his tracks, his head creaks to his left and his body soon follows as he takes to the roadside woods. Any light from the moon or streetlights is gone, swallowed by the darkness of the woods. The Zombie walks through the sea of trees as the surrounding brush scrapes and scratches him in his passing. His clothes tear but he doesn’t notice, paying no attention. His stiffened hands come up slowly to pull branches out of his way. Birds flutter away. Woodland creatures scurry just sensing him.
Music plays up ahead, however faint. Alternative rock, not that he could distinguish genres if he’d even care to. He moves towards it with stronger strive, stronger drive. He gets through the woods to find a clearing where a car’s parked - the source of the music. It seems to be rocking, swaying a bit. Along with the music, sounds of passion and pleasure of human tones are heard. He walks into the clearing closer and closer to the car. Pulses are felt. The warmth and sound of the heartbeats radiate as his body senses it, feels it in the air. Sticks are stepped on in his trek snapping beneath his feet. Of course, the inhabitants of the vehicle don’t hear his movement over the music and their own movements.
He approaches the car, more specifically the backseat where he feels the energy coming from. Pressing his hands to the window, the bones of the tips of his fingers scrape down the glass. In an instant he smashes his hand through the glass to an audible surprising scream. He pulls back a young man by his short dark hair who yells out in fear. The guy’s head is pulled back out of the window while his date, a young woman, screams bloody murder. Their cries mean nothing to him; he’s a walking stomach on a mission to appease his hunger like a drug addict looking for a fix. The Zombie looks down at the man, shivering with hunger. The man can’t blink; his eyes frozen open with terror and his hair streaks white with fear.
The Zombie’s fingers dig into the man’s eyes and, with ease, he pulls off the top of his head splitting the man’s cranium in half. Within the car, the woman continues to scream and cry unable to look away. The skin splits, the ligaments and muscles tear and the skull cracks as the head opens. Blood spills out releasing the savory scent into the air. For someone, something, so stiff and fragile, the Zombie’s strength is remarkable as he tears the mortal man’s skull apart. He reaches in and plucks out the young male’s brain along with his eyeballs dangling before stuffing it in his mouth. He gobbles up the brain and eyes with the hunger of a man who’s been lost at sea. Blood and fluid runs down his rotting chin after the eyeballs pop in his jaws. Shoveling in his food, belches come in between mouthfuls.
The young lady continues to yell before finally getting out on the other side. She’s of average build, blonde, naked, and screaming for her life. With her adrenaline pumping, she runs not thinking of the pain of her bare feet on the sticks and rocks beneath her. The Zombie looks up and then over to her as its mouth creaks open. He lets out his blood curdling screech stopping her instantly. A paralyzing sting caused from its call, she learns the answer to a common question of “How do people get caught by such slow moving creatures?” Fear, debilitating fear.
She cries and tries to move but can’t budge. Her body tries to fight past this force that’s holding her as he approaches, each step with heavy footing. He’s right next to her. She sweats and cries in terror. Standing to her side, he lets out another screech, her eyes go white with fear. Her heartbeat rises and her blood races, pulsating out to the dead. Like her mate, her hair turns white from sheer fright. The pulsing energy tantalizes his senses. He bites into her neck with the same hunger and thirst as with the dish before her. He bites hard, pushing through the raw meat. The once-living-now-not-man pulls back tearing the flesh from her neck as her white body is painted red.
He continues to chew at her neck before pulling at her head. The spine gives him some resistance but he tugs harder, breaking it off at the neck. With her body still standing frozen, stiffened with fear, he tears into her head eating out her brain, eyes, and then the rest of her face until there’s nothing left but a naked skull. The empty cranium is tossed to the side and he tends to his hunger eating the rest of her from the neck stump on down. He takes the headless and lifeless body down to the ground to feast. The sound is wet and messy as he slimily gorges on her flesh. The cartilage is tough but he doesn’t care; his jaws power through it as he does with the tendons. The suit he was buried in is now not only torn up but covered in blood, the blood of the youth. It would appear to be a picnic for the Zombie as he eats this woman’s entire being (save for the bones) in this open clearing in the woods.
It doesn’t take him long to finish the first course of his meal and she’s down to a bare skeletal structure. His breathing, if one could call it that, has elevated in his excitement for feeding. The bones are wet but anything that once covered them is gone. He leaves her skeleton a pile as his bloody mass turns his attention back towards the young man with the mangled head dangling from the car window. Approaching the car, he pulls the rest of the man through the window down to the ground and drops down tearing into the man without a future’s flesh. More of his blood pours when the skin is broken and the red is vibrant against his naked white skin. The Zombie tears large pieces of meat off of the man’s person by the handful. The sound is slimy, wet, and thick as it often does with the tearing of raw meat. He rips through the human with ease and the meat peels like bloody Velcro. Lapping up as much DNA as he can, the Zombie chews through the muscle before digging into the organs; everything from his intestines to his genitals.
Blood leaks from his less-than-whole stomach and digestive system as he continues to eat. If his meal continues to fall through his rotting body he may be hungry again sooner than expected. He must be able to feel it as his hand drops down to wipe and scoop up excess to once again swallow it. Not wasteful by any means, he drops down to lick blood from the dirt and rocks before going back to his food.
His head pulls, cocking to the side, jerking meat from the bone with his jaws. He eats like a sloppy child smacking on his food. He chews through fat without trouble and, when he’s through with the skeleton’s coating, all that’s left of the bloody skeletal structure is bloody cartilage and ligaments in which he sucks and picks out to finish it off. Much like the man’s pretty date, all that’s left of him is a pile of bones sucked dry by the hunger of the night lit by the moonlight. Coyotes couldn’t have picked them cleaner. It won’t be long before the insects have their way with the dry lifeless bones on the ground. The smell of blood fills the air and will no doubt attract wild animals as well as bugs. This was certainly not the night the youthful couple had planned for the evening.
So, with his belly full, it’s time for rest and he turns back towards the woods. The Zombie treks back through the scratchy brush without the drive he once had when the dead was awoken by the hunger. He crosses that familiar road beneath the streetlights leaving slimy footprints and blood trails behind him. He sluggishly moves down the road. Back at the gate, upon entering the cemetery (this rest home for the deceased), he stops and scans the land before turning back and shutting the gate with its rusty squeak. Slowly, he saunters through the graveyard back to the hole from whence he came. At his grave he looks at the headstone attempting to make sense of its writing, cocking his head. He crawls back in the dirty, muddy hole pulling dirt back over him. After his craving for a midnight snack is taken care of the Zombie is now home.
…And graves over, in this very cemetery, at another seemingly peaceful plot, the earth begins to separate and the ground’s surface breaks open.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally titled The Zombie, I wanted to do a zombie story that didn't focus on survivors in a zombie apocalypse or even an outbreak but on a zombie itself going through its motions. This was set to be the first story in Stereo Falls.

No comments:

Post a Comment