Saturday, October 29, 2011

Zombies' Revenge - All Hallow's Eve Debacle

They wanted revenge.  They came to destroy.  They had died young and the night would not pass without them exacting a price.  The Harvest Moon hung low on the horizon.  It would not rise in the sky, just as they would not return to the ground that suffocated them, until they carried the body of the one who had killed them.

This is a night of chaos.  This is a night of balance.  Sleep well in your beds and munch your colorful candies but if you have not received expiation for your sins, be watchful - do not sleep - or they will possess your body.  Your soul will wander through the dusts of eternity seeking shelter - which will not be found.

Storm Rider had killed thousands of God's creatures.  He was unrepentant and walked the earth still - an avenging spirit without mercy or reason.  He had tricked my friend and client so that she gave him her body and her love.  When she realized that he was a member of the undead, that he wanted to sustain his lifeless vessel with her blood, she'd turned to me for help.  My love, Cairn, understood one such as he. They were powerful and vicious adversaries, equally matched. Storm Rider travels the earth still.  Everyone is a potential victim - each soul is at risk.  Until they decided to stop him. And Hallow's Eve was the only night when the fragile veil that separated the two worlds would briefly open and the living and the dead were free to communicate or destroy.

They passed in whirling flashes during the day. Storm's speed was unsurpassed but his self-absorption was legendary, so he easily forgot the strange phenomenon, until they clustered at dusk, on the wind ridden moor, where he sought his nightly prey.  Their numbers were astonishing;  their eyes vengeful hells; as they walked as one towards him.

He laughed into the wind. Storm's chiseled muscles flexed in anticipation of the first contact.  His black hair whipped in a dark cloud around his craggy face.  White teeth, like ghosts, crowded in his mouth - and he lashed at them with a strike of lightening and laughter that chilled mortal men.  Still they advanced with open mouths and hands curled like claws.

Lightening scarred their ashen faces, and the fierce winds slowed their pace, but they were relentless and advanced still, towards their killer, for tonight, the killer was the prey.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Dead Redheads and Human Hearts



     What had been a vibrant, young woman that morning, was soon a mass of gristle, carved bone and liquidated organs.  I ran the water to slough the remaining blood, liquids and smaller bits down the drain.  Curiosity led me to save her heart for last.  It was a curious thing, the heart.  It caused so much suffering for humans.  I’d always wanted to taste the heart’s forbidden fruits, and wondered if in so doing, I’d share some of the humans’ heart driven experiences.  For fun.  For a change.  I snipped a piece of her heart and bought it to my mouth.  Nothing had passed through my lips for the past five hundred years other than blood and the most exquisite alcohol. 
            It was chewy, not altogether an unpleasant texture.  And then I had to steady myself against the wall, for I was filled with a euphoric sense of wellbeing and a power that surpassed even my supernatural abilities.  I’d heard humans talk about heroine.  I imagined that I experienced similar sensations to that.  I felt the theatre rumble as the storm surged in response to my experience with the redhead’s heart.  And I took another snip and savored that bite more than the first.  I slid to the bathroom floor and grasped a handful of her hair.  I bought it to my lips and inhaled the lemon verbana fragrance.  I was hungry, perhaps hungrier than I’d ever been.  And I felt reckless.  That was not a good thing.  I fought to maintain some composure.  I had work to finish. 
            Time passed in indivisible segments, so that I could not determine which was the minute and which the hour.  But I know that I lay like that with her hair beneath my nose for a long time - perhaps an hour, maybe more. When I at last roused myself I went to my Rolex and saw that it was almost dawn.  I’d not joined Jasmine at the hospital.  But the worry and tension seemed to dwell in another universe.  I didn’t want to dispose of the rest of her heart.  But I dared not take another taste.  It was time that I’d finished the job and left. 
            I took the saw to the remains of her heart and was shocked when I felt tears in my eyes.  I ruthlessly shred the muscle and dumped the remains in the juicer.  I followed methodically with what remained.  Originally I’d thought to package her remains in the bags that I’d bought with me, and fly over the skyline, dropping plastic graves in the Hudson and East Rivers.  But the juicer seemed just the thing.  It was so much tidier.  I then flushed her juiced remains and she would ultimately join the river in her last journey. 
            My last chore was to burn her hair.  I took a match to the coppery curls and watched the flames in the bathroom sink, before I extinguished the sooty remains with water.  I did not know if my eyes stung from the smell, or from my new experience with tears.  I would not dwell on that.  It was a job well done.  I disinfected the tub, sink and toilet bowl and exited the theatre, walking into the violet dawn towards Jasmine’s apartment.