Zombies Ate My Homework – Part 3

Someone said yes. They moved back into the atrium near the office. Finally Clayton could no longer see the doors and he turned away and sat heavily on a bench. Several of the staff members ran off in different directions down the hallways. Alicia was seated on the floor not far from Clayton, crying silently. He slid off the bench and sat beside her, putting a large arm around her he held her firmly and leaned his head against hers. She didn’t push him away.

“It’s okay,” he said softly. “It’s okay. I’m so sorry about Jessie.” Unexpected tears filled his eyes and he sniffed them back. Jessie Henderson was quite a popular girl at school, and deservedly so. Clayton had known her since she had moved to town in the fourth grade and she was such a caring and genuine person that you couldn’t help but like and respect her.

Alicia began to regain her composure and she spoke quietly. “She tried to help them. Hanna and Sharon fell down and began having these seizures. I didn’t know what to do, we had just started running away when the girls fell down. They wouldn’t get up so Jessie went back and all I did was stand there and yell. She tried to drag Hanna, to pull her with us. But suddenly, the people, they started running at us and Hanna grabbed Jessie’s hand as she tried to get away. They ignored the girls but tackled Jessie, piling onto her like animals. I… I heard her screaming. That’s when I started running.”

Clayton was shaking as he held onto her, and he could hear the moaning and scuffling coming from the doors. The sound seemed to press in from everywhere, it was almost unbearable. The crackle of the public announcement system made them both jump.

“Attention everybody: this is an emergency. All students and staff members please make your way immediately to the gymnasium in an orderly and calm fashion. We will have further instructions for you there.”

It was Mr. Eldon, the school principal. He sounded scared.

Lyle stood fidgeting as Clayton and Alicia sat unmoving on the floor. Staff filed out of the office and some told them to head for the gym, others just ignored them as they rushed past.

“Guys, hey guys! We have to go, we’ve gotta go. Like, now!” Lyle was turning paler than normal and his hands were starting to shake. His head was on a pivot as he kept looking down the hallways and around the foyer.

“Yeah,” Alicia replied faintly, more to the floor than to Lyle. “To the gym?”

“Hell no! We have to go, like out of here! We can’t go to the gym or we’re all going to die. If even one person has, has…” he waved his hands as if trying to pull the right word from the air, “..is infected, then everyone in there is screwed.”

Clayton stood up. “They could just lock the doors and keep them out, stupid.”

“No, they can’t, moron. Did you hear what Alicia said? Whatever this is its not contact-based, its airborne transmission. Hell, we’re probably all infected already.”

Clayton put his mitt-like hands under Alicia’s armpits and lifted her to her feet as though she was no heavier than a pillow. “My truck is out front, we could…”

Lyle didn’t even get a chance to cut Clayton off because the sound of one of the windows in the front doors shattering caused them all to inhale.

“Back doors, now. If they’re clear, we run for it.”

Without another word they set off running. The sounds of scuffles and a violent commotion came reverberating ominously from down the hallway, pierced intermittently by high-pitched screams. Behind the trio another window shattered and they didn’t stop to look as they ran into the cafeteria. Clayton slammed the door behind them and the noise was thankfully muffled.

“What the hell is going on out there?” It was the unmistakeable voice of Mr. Thomson, the school’s cantankerous, well-aged cook, who was affectionately known by the students as the lunch lady-guy. He was behind the counter in the canteen, the metal screen rolled up above the counter, his apron on, and a big, cauldron-like pot just starting to steam on the stove behind him.

“What are you damned kids doing? Staging a revolt, eh?” yelled Mr. Thomson in that way that people who are hard of hearing sometimes do. He mumbled a few more inaudible things to himself as he eyed them suspiciously and began fumbling in a drawer.

“Listen, Mr. Thomson, people are sick out there!” Clayton was almost pleading with him. Mr. Thomson was one of the few adults he liked in the school. The wiry, old man would often hang around the gym during boxing practice and offer surprisingly insightful advice to the few people who would take the time to listen to him. Clayton and he had often shared boxing stories after practice or when Clayton would loiter in the cafeteria instead of going to classes.

“Something’s going on and people are going crazy and attacking each other. You’ve got to get out of here, or close up the canteen and lock yourself in there.”

The rest of the cafeteria was empty, the tables unoccupied, the lights dimmed. It seemed quite peaceful in comparison to the usual mayhem that was lunch hour.

The Tragedy of Buddy – Part 3

As they moved up the valley, all were happy to leave that glade behind. Rumours passed through the pack about giant bears from the mountains and Buddy heard occasional whispers of the name “Ahrrou”, the spirit wolf who watches over packs during the night. Whatever the creature was, the way it had looked at him made Buddy certain that it was no spirit. Also, it had left tracks and Buddy was no expert on the ethereal but he had a nagging suspicion that spirits did not leave tracks behind.

He kept his head down and tried to focus on the trail before him, but those glowing eyes kept flitting before his vision and haunting his mind. The pack ran farther than normal that day and it was a couple of nights before all the wolves were sleeping full nights again. All that is, except Buddy. He had lain awake for all of the next night, seeing shapes in the darkness and hearing things that were not there. Whenever sleep closed his eyelids those glowing orbs would reappear and he would jerk back to full alert. For several nights he managed to sleep, but only fitfully at best. He was becoming exhausted and knew that he was beginning to appear weak and scared. This made him angry, for no one else had seen what he had that night, and his anger drove him to boldness. As well, the woods were quieter than any of the pack had ever seen and prey was scarce. It was as though something had driven the other animals from their range. Hunger was beginning to gnaw at the bellies and minds of the pack and tempers flared.

By the end of that week Buddy caught a break. Running further east than any of the others he picked up the trail of a lone moose! Quickly he called the pack to join him and led them onto the hunt. Seamus quickly took the lead but Buddy stayed right along side him, ignoring the snaps and barks Seamus threw at him. Even he didn’t have the stomach for a fight right now and Buddy knew it. Within a day they closed in on the moose along the bank of a frozen creek. They circled it for a while, but it would not run and showed little fear and although it was large none wanted to wait long enough to wear it down. It may well have driven off a wolf pack before; but not one as large or as hungry as theirs. All ears stood on end, and white clouds of breath hung in the air as the tension mounted. No animals moved. Abruptly, Buddy led the attack. He was acting bold and daring, but really he was desperate; desperate for food, desperate to show strength before the pack, and desperate for a chance to undermine Seamus. However, no one called his bluff and though the battle was long and violent the pack eventually brought the moose down. Buddy had found the trail, led the hunt and started the attack, and he made sure that it was clear he was feeding in the first round. He was feeding above rank and as he expected this was met with a challenge, though not by Seamus. A younger, one-eared male stepped in to drive Buddy from the kill but was met with such aggression that he backed down to wait with his tail between his legs. Buddy did not want to fight him and was not sure at all that he could win a contest with the younger wolf, but he knew that if he did not hold his ground now, he would never get another chance to move up. He ate quickly, tearing at the hide and muscle, but Seamus never raised his head. He had done it, he had cracked the First Tier!

That night, full and happy, Buddy slept soundly and awoke the next morning with a new sense of strength and renewed drive. From that day on, he kept getting better. Feeding consistently with the First Tier, he also prowled with the front runners and he was proving more and more effective and reliable in the hunts. Weeks passed and the moon waned to darkness. Buddy strengthened his alliance with Samuel Whiskers, who was also in the First Tier, and began gaining support with the others as well. He still tried to make time for Old Constance when he could, as he missed their mealtime conversations, but staying at the top took work and he had little time for idleness.

March began and the sun was climbing higher every day. Their hunting forays were being met with more success now that and the nights were not so bitter. The pack moved into a neighbouring valley and began working its way up the river as the moon slowly filled out once more in the sky above them.

Lolita – a vignette

Lolita was from Tulita, but if you asked she came from Cambridge Bay. Neither was her name really Lolita and she told even fewer people that. It didn’t matter when you were a dancer, so long as you appeared exotic. That always kept the men entranced, young labourers and journeymen, down from the rock, earning their keep from the black of the sands. They worked long hours and long rotations, they needed to unwind in their proper time. Sleep, binge, rest with the family, to each his own. She entertained them for their money.

The quiet dignity she felt alone, peaceful at night in her warm bed was a thin shroud not even the harshest crowd could unveil.

Harry & Sally – Part 2

The sad gray eyes had slid down from the spot where his face has recently been and now examined him in his work. He continued to gather the papers. The eyes surveyed the ground around him, out of boredom, out of uncertainty. She did not know why she felt this far away from him. They were close, they always had been. The stress he brought home each night pulled her down too, only compounded by the stress she felt at work each day.

She didn’t want to feel like this. No one did. It was the unfortunate product of the lives they both lived, or so she believed. A voice would nag, and try and tell her that things could be better under the same circumstances. Then why weren’t they? Almost every night for weeks now he had come home late. She worked up to ten hours a day articling, but she’d still always manage to beat him home. That was her limit, ten hours, she wasn’t about to become a slave to her work. It was enjoyable work, but it wasn’t her life. He was supposed to be a more important part of her life, were he ever around.
“I’m sorry,” He had stood up now, papers rearranged, and his words had startled her out of her thoughts.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why should you?” the case fell recklessly from his hand again, but the clasp held. He moved slowly, carried like a wraith by a gentle and stuttering wind, and sat down next to her. The indent his weight made in the mattress pulled her unwillingly closer to him.

She adjusted herself away.

“Why can’t you say no? Why can’t you tell them that you’ve got a life outside of their felted walls? Tell them you’ve got me, and that I deserve some – more than some – a lot of your time. But I don’t get any.” The tired and troubled eyes reached out, pleaded, “I miss you.”

*

Sometimes you step out into the street and wish that unseen car were there, like a daemon out of some 19th century novel: A Frankenstein to kill you before your family, to just swiftly take you out of it all. More likely, of course, a car, to splatter you everywhere and make a horrible mess for the paramedics and the family memories alike. You wouldn’t kill yourself, at least I wouldn’t. I’m too afraid. You just wish some random event would come and let fate decide it for you. But God hates the weak. You can be certain that if you feel you deserve to die, you probably won’t. Instead life will slow, and each day and every sleepless night, will drag on.

*

It had been about six months now, since the work started piling on. He had finished school years ago, and was proud of the Certificate of Accounting and later Bachelor of Economics degree he had earned. They had always been to him a sign of permanence. People would leave him, happiness would fleet, but those pieces of paper, awarded to him, would always carry their weight. He’d thought, in his own graceful, thoughtless way, that the letters behind his name made him whole and vindicated his existence.
They’d both said they could cope, decided they would cope. As always, all is easier said than done. One fundamental block lay in their path. He did not come home worn out yet satisfied, instead it was an empty exhaustion. Many nights he would not sleep, sometimes his mind wouldn’t stop moving, crunching numbers and flying ideas. Other nights it was opposite. His mind would blank, and he’d lie for hours that dragged on for years unable to even close his eyes. He was unable to perform sexually. Their arguments became more frequent.

*

Dark like night and deep like the grave. That’s the kind of sleep I want. One so satisfying you wake from it as if from death itself, and reborn you feel nothing but joy. Each breath is a wonder, and each new moment a reason to stop and appreciate. Snow blankets the ground when it’s young, but suffocates when you’re old. And glinting frost in sunlight refracts the spectrum of your desires.

*

Harry awoke again and found himself not in his dream world but back in the real world. In the real world it was six-thirty in the AM, too late to bother going back to bed. The last time he remembered glancing at his alarm clock it had read 4:15 in bright red. He sat up into air that was too frigid, and swung his feet onto a floor that was too cold. The warm inviting body lay beside him, but its comforts were no match for the anxiety restless sleep brings. Awakened again by what stirs inside, he was left helpless. Like a child, frustrated and lonely, he sat. He did nothing. Not because nothing occurred to him, but because no action seamed worth doing. It was a most pitiful state.

A long wait ensued, and several bright red minutes ticked by on the clock. Finally, an urge to urinate roused him enough to bring him to move. The steps were meager, unnoticeable. In short shuffles they carried him to the bathroom.

Passing the mirror a loathsome figure looked him in the face, jaw askew. The circles under the eyes had grown since their last meeting, these two. He and an unkind reflection met far more often than either would like.

*
Harry walked in the office, ten minutes late as usual. His boss saw these late arrivals, didn’t see the late hours and endless nights. It worked against him. From inside the open door that read Rodney Hinkle bellowed a voice:

“Stevens? That you coming in late again?” Harry had passed the door, quickly returned to heed this beckoning.

“Good, gave me more time to set stuff aside from you.” The hulking man smiled a mischievous smile. He lifted a large stack of file folders neatly labeled and loose sheets tightly stacked and came around the desk.
“Enjoy,” was all Harry’s boss said as he handed them the papers. His smile faded into serenity. The hulking Rodney slipped his feet pleasantly onto his desk, his hefty burden now passed on the his unfortunate underling.

Harry & Sally – Part 1

The beings portrayed in this story are no more real than you or I. Their names have been left unchanged to reveal their identities.

I drive a piece of shit and so do you. We all drive pieces of shit, do useless shit. I’ve come to accept it and so should you. I’m pissed and stuck in my car and beaming my negativity at all you suckers around me. Is it ironic that I always get caught on my way home from work in the throes of the theater crowd? That’s a stupid question. The real question is why I feel I have to take it out on the poor sap stuck in front of me. He’s just like me, and me, like him. Just like that obese guy to my right, looking like a trained and overfed monkey in his tight suit. Or the crazy blond in the red Honda up ahead, she looks almost as unhappy as I do. I’d hate to be her. I’m happier knowing. That was the trouble, the sheer uncertainty. As I often sit here like this, somewhere on the wasteland between what I call work and what I call home, I wonder. I wonder if I always feel like this. If it’s just me or a product of my situation, if all the people around me feel like I do.
But I realize I have my ups and downs, most people do. The awkwardness is the worst, when you forget how to interact, forget what normal is. You still feel obliged to do it, but it’s just one of those days. And you can’t help but ask yourself: Are they strange or am I?

*

He hadn’t always been so morbid, or so people told him. He was just a regular guy, and to look at him you wouldn’t think anything wrong. Like so many the turmoil in his head wouldn’t leave him alone. He sought conflict, but only the kinds he could blame on others. He bred distrust within himself, he even carried himself in a hardened manner, but soft. An ugly slouch pulled his back down into and deep concave, the caricature of a drunken boxer. The deeper he sank, the darker his mood. It made his chest a gaping hole, making him look as though the world had delivered some blow from which he never was to recover.
He told himself that the doldrums of everyday life were the weight upon his soul. When he got home that night he shuffled through the door of his small studio apartment, shared with one, and dropped his coat half a world away from the rack. Sad, huge, grey eyes greeted him from the corner of the queen bed, on the threshold of the kitchen. These sunken holes called eyes sat deep in the darkened eye sockets of a soft round face and a slender figure aged and curved beyond its years.

“You stayed late again,” a tired voice harkened from behind those eyes.

“I had too,” replied the saggy silhouette, still standing in the doorframe, bag in hand.

“You always have to. Ever occur to say no? Or maybe ask for overtime?”

“It’s expected of me, what do you expect me to do?” He shuffled a few feet forward and let the worn leather case fall to the floor. The old clasp gave and the hinges swung open, revealing a flurry of creased and disorganized documents. “Shit.”

He bent down to gather them up, shuffling into neat piles and restoring them to the case. Such neatness seamed inappropriate within the general hubbub of the apartment. It was small and they were young. A few days worth of dishes littered the deep blue countertops of the kitchen and rain splattered the large window that sat above the bed. Closer, in the hall, shoes were strewn about and the closet lay open, stuffed with more jackets and other clothes than it had ever been intended to take.

When Sally Met… Part 3

“Yeah, you look pretty much like I expected.” Sally said, confirming the large, old-man-like being’s point without realizing it.

“So I’m not dead then? Huh, good to know. Where are we?” she asked, looking around at the dingy office.

“People always seem so obsessed with that. Life versus death, dead/alive,” it said, moving its hands up and down like a scale as though weighing one against the other. “Matter remains fundamentally unchanged and energy persists, I do not understand it, the interest in that dichotomy eludes me.”

It paused for a moment, stroking its enormous beard. “Do not get me wrong though, life is quite interesting. The directed application of energy, the active pursuit of matter and energy, the effort for self-preservation; that’s completely unique you know?”

It looked at Sally and then continued. “Of course, ultimately all of life’s actions are completely predictable on paper. It is more of an unforeseen inevitability really, one that results from the rules I put in place, rather than anything out of the ordinary. ”

“Oh,” said Sally.

“But getting back to your question, ‘Where are we?’. We are in a small universe separate from your own, and free of the constraints of its dimensions. Its kind of a caveat really, something I appended to the system code recently so that I could interact with certain aspects of your universe more directly, including people.”

“Uh huh. Annnnd that caveat is a crappy office in the Bergman Tower?” asked Sally with a mocking smile.

“Well, it is for you. Would you like to believe you are somewhere else?”

“No, no, it’s okay,” laughed Sally. “Its just funny, God lives on the eleventh and a half floor in the Bergman Tower.”

“No I meant it, believe you are somewhere else. You know you are somewhere else.”

“Well, according to you I am in a little bubble in the uh, universe… uhhh… space…”

Sally trailed off into silence as the walls around her faded until they were barely visible and transparent like thin glass. All around them the cityscape vanished as blackness set in and then, stars, millions of them, began to appear as though someone was using a dimmer to slowly turn the universe on. Above and to her right, through the glass ceiling, an enormous nebula lit up. It was staggeringly beautiful, massive on a scale that she could not comprehend and made up of great clouds of gases glowing in nearly every colour imaginable. She stared at it for some time, lost in the nebula’s beauty and grandeur. She had seen pictures of this sort of thing before, images captured by satellites orbiting the earth. Now they seemed like a child’s drawing might when hung beside a masterpiece from the Renaissance. She felt like crying for a multitude of reasons.

Abruptly Sally turned away as something caught her eye and looking down she suddenly realized that past her feet and the legs of her chair was a spiral galaxy of titanic proportions. It was like a great pinwheel of light, glowing with the brilliance of a trillion stars and her wide eyes could do nothing but stare at it, as if pulled in by the massive black hole itself, the one at the galaxy’s centre. She was struck dumb by the galaxy’s utter magnificence and nearly fainted from the overwhelming beauty of the universe around her. She steadied herself with a hand on the desk and continued to stare through the floor.

Some time passed.

“That’s better,” it said. “It is much nicer out here. I think this is the best scale at which to observe this universe. I’m rather proud of these works,” it said, gesturing through the glass walls.

“Now, when you are ready Sally, I would like to ask you a few things.”

The Tragedy of Buddy – Part 2

In the post-feeding stupor the pack lay about, their muzzles and brows painted with the blood of their meal. Fat snow flakes fell in the darkness like little ghosts drifting lazily among the silhouettes of the pine forest. Buddy lay curled in a small pit he had dug in the snow, his tail wrapped around to keep his nose warm. It was quiet in the forest and little stirred in the February night.

A full moon rose steadily above the ridgeline of the mountain to the north and bathed the great valley below it in silver light. The pack slumbered amongst the snow shrouded pines and there was no sound save the popping of the trees as the temperature continued to sink. Nestled as deep as they could in their burrows and packed as tightly as possible into their hidden multitudes of holes, every animal that could sought out refuge that night. The cold was oppressive but something more sinister was moving through the woods; a fear that spread steadily like mist along a forest floor, filling every burrow and hollow with its chill. The young twitched in their slumbers while mothers drew bated breath wide-eyed in the dark. Even the owls, silent hunters and seers of all, sat stiffly on their hidden perches, their great eyes scanning the woods below. They would not fly this night.

At some unknown hour in the deepest watches of the night, Buddy woke. His body unmoving, Buddy’s keen wolf eyes pierced the forest, seeing far by the glow of the moon. Something stirred on the edge of his vision, darkness moving amongst shadowy trees. An unknown smell on the still, cold air made him uneasy. Involuntarily his ears stood up, the only motion to betray his alertness. Only silence greeted them though and he scanned the woods before him for some time with no further sign of anything. Lots of strange creatures moved through the woods at night but none would dare approach a resting pack of wolves, especially not one as large as theirs. Still, Buddy liked to know things were safe before drifting to sleep.

His eyes grew heavy and his ears settled slowly back against his head as he tucked his muzzle deeper into his furry tail and nestled his head to the right. Suddenly a shiver ripped down Buddy’s spine, driving the sleep from his body in an instant, and like a wave the hair on his back bristled right to the tip of his tail. He froze in place, his ears erect like sentries and his eyes riveted on a spot in the woods not thirty feet away to his right. There two enormous eyes, with nearly a foot between them, sat glowing in the moonlight at least six feet above the snow. Unblinking they bore straight into some primal corner of his brain and Buddy lay rigid, curled in a catatonic state, his own eyes held as if by force. He dared not cry out an alarm lest the keeper of the lamp-like eyes be drawn to him. Whether they stared at him or not he could not tell but he dared not move a muscle. The eyes held his gaze for what felt like minutes before suddenly turning away and vanishing into the night. Buddy whimpered quietly in the darkness but no other wolves had woken.

He did not sleep for the rest of the night, and it was a long time before the sun broke above the mountain peaks to the east. At some point in the misery of that night a scream echoed through the forest to his still straining ears, and Buddy knew that some poor creature had met its end. Empathy was a most unwolf-like emotion, but he knew now what terror must grip a deer’s heart when it is met in the night by the countless sets of glowing eyes that was their hunting pack.

That morning confusion and fear gripped the pack. Shortly after the other wolves had stirred someone had found tracks that circled where they had slept. The prints in the snow were enormous, larger than any animal tracks any members of the pack had ever seen, and their smell was strange and unfamiliar. The pack was restless and agitated as a result and several small fights and growling contests broke out that morning. Despite the appeal of the obvious attention he would receive if he recounted seeing the creature that made the tracks, Buddy kept quiet. Telling the story would raise more questions and provide no answers, and Seamus would likely blame him for not rousing the pack or attempting to drive the creature off.

The Tragedy of Buddy – Part 1

As wolves go, Buddy was fairly ordinary. He ranked somewhere in the middle of the pack and usually got what he needed although not necessarily what he wanted. He did not get first pass at a fresh kill, but he ate enough to stay healthy. He was fairly quick, but not the swiftest. Buddy was strong but far from equalling the most powerful alpha males and he was smart enough to know that there were smarter wolves than him in the woods.

Buddy kept to himself for the most part, although he was fairly good friends with a couple of the wolves closest to him in rank. Old Constance the Lopsided, was probably his closest friend. They often discussed things like the weather or who was smelling the most interesting that day while tearing into a moose or deer or whatever hapless woodland creature the pack had managed to kill. Constance often ate on Buddy’s left so that he had someone to lean on when he lost his equilibrium and tipped over, as he was in the habit of doing.

Samuel Whiskers was a grey wolf with blue eyes whom Buddy considered as something of a mysterious ally. He had stepped in on Buddy’s behalf once or twice before when tensions had escalated in the pack, much to Buddy’s own surprise, and Buddy likely owed him his life or at least some of his fur and maybe an eye. He showed respect to Samuel above what was due, and he knew the older wolf appreciated it.

Finally there was Dave, a rather odd greyish wolf of small stature and brain who often held lengthy one-way conversations with Buddy. It sometimes occurred to Buddy that Dave only talked to him to try and hide the fact that he was cutting far above his place in line. In fact Buddy did not really consider Dave a friend at all, but simply could not be bothered with chasing him off all the time.

Some day Buddy dreamed of leading a pack of his own and raising a litter of strong hunter pups. In all of his myriad dreams of various perfect futures, only one wolf played the female lead. Her name was Desemah. Her true name was one of beauty and power: a deep guttural roll rising to a piercing, mournful howl and ending in a husky bark. He dared not attempt to utter her true name with Seamus around, and he wasn’t even sure if he could master the vocalisations at all.

If he could call her properly, getting each sound and waiver perfect, it would impress her greatly. But if he failed at it she would be insulted beyond reproach, or, at least for a few months anyways. Either way though Seamus would take it as a direct challenge and fight him on the spot for even trying. Still, he longed to abscond with Desemah and lead a pack of his own. He was sure they could hunt well enough together and he could bring a few of the lower wolves along with him, they knew well enough that they had no shot at ever leading this pack. He’d bring Old Constance along too just for the company and for general support purposes.

(In case you are wondering Buddy’s own true name sounds a bit like the sound a pup might make if you bit it on the rump a few times while it had food in its mouth.)

When Buddy’s turn to feed came and he was busy tearing into a kill, Desemah would occasionally stand behind him as though waiting for an opening at the carcass. He would always offer his spot to her, but then she would angrily refuse it and trot away. Such a display of canine pride, it made him crazy about her! Of course she had already eaten her fill during the First Tier’s feeding and did not actually intend to eat any more. It was a wolf’s game they played and she did it only with him. If she really did want to feed she would merely fix her steely eyes on a lower male and drive him from the kill without so much as a growl. Oh, what a woman!

But for now it was only a dream…

When Sally Met… Part 2

It was a small, square office with the same bland off-white walls and plain, beige carpeting as the rest of the floor. There was a bookcase in one corner and a black, two-drawer filing cabinet in the other. Both were covered with precarious stacks of papers and binders, and several bound books sat languishing on the one shelf in the book case that wasn’t broken or covered in papers.

Before her was a small desk with an ancient looking computer on one corner and some papers, pens and other stationery scattered about the remainder. It wasn’t nearly as cluttered as the chaos that was the bookcase though. Most interestingly, behind the desk sat a large, older man with great locks of white hair and an enormous beard that looked as soft as cotton and covered a great deal of his chest. He was wearing a white robe that was tied about his girth with a belt and his large sandaled feet were resting on an unoccupied corner of the desk. How he fit in the little reclining desk chair that he was occupying Sally had no idea.

As she walked in the old man’s eyes lit up and he exclaimed, “Sally, Sally! Come in, come in!” Taking his feet from the desk he gestured to a dusty wooden chair she had failed to notice and urged her to sit down.

The chair was surprisingly comfortable and Sally sat before the desk still clutching her file folder. The room did not smell like musty library, old man or recycled air, but rather Sally noticed the faint but pleasant smells of lemons, flowers and sea salt and this struck her as somewhat odd.

Leaning back in his chair the old man put his fingers together and continued, “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for a little while now. So, you are well I assume? Here, let’s have a look see, what have you brought me?” he asked without waiting for an answer to his first question.

Sally pulled a copy of her resume from the file folder she was carrying and placed it in his outstretched, and quite large, hand.

“Yes, this is a copy of my current resume. I’ve brought along a cover letter as well if you’d like…” she trailed off. It was clear he was not listening as he pulled out pair of old reading glasses, and donning them, held the slip of paper at arm’s length. He slowly scanned the page, quietly mumbling things like, “yes… yes… science? Indeed! hmm… quite, yes.”

“Excuse me, if you don’t mind, I’m a little bit confused by all of this,” said Sally after a minute or so. “IS this the Greenworks office?” she asked hesitantly, not wanting to appear slow if this was in fact the office she had been looking for all along.

“Oh heaven’s no!” said the man, not looking up from her resume. “Surely you know that its not.”

“That’s what I thought. Which brings me to my next question, and no offence mister, but who the hell are you, where am I, and what’s all this crap with the signs and stuff?” her face flushed as the words spilled from her mouth louder than she intended, but she was beginning to grow both frightened and angry and she would rather show her anger than reveal her fear.

The man chuckled softly and shifted forward in his chair to lean his elbows on the desk. Putting down her resume, he looked her directly in the eye, and suddenly she felt powerless and insignificant and yet also immense, free and elated. The abruptness of her realization was as though someone had whispered an answer in her ear that had been on the tip of her tongue all along.

She was sitting opposite God and having a conversation with Him!

Her revelation was neither terrifying nor humbling, but rather she felt immensely curious and also strangely satisfied, as though finally verifying some long held suspicion.

She knew it was so pathetically human, but immediately Sally could not resist asking, “So, am I dead? Did I just die in the elevator?” She had asked many bizarre yet legitimate questions in her life, but those were probably her best yet.

“Would you be talking to me if you were dead?” He asked in return.

“Well, hopefully.” At this, God looked puzzled.

“Look,” He said after a moment, articulating very clearly. “I find it clumsy and difficult to communicate effectively in human languages, so bear with me. I am what you would identify as God, although I am much different from what I understand people often believe God to be. I am not human, not male nor female, big nor small. I have appeared in this manner before you solely because that is what you have as an image in your mind.”

Zombies Ate My Homework – Part 2

The afternoon sun was high and bright and pollen drifted lazily in the hot May air. A wide sidewalk flanked with low white chains stretched away from Clayton for forty feet or so across a well kept grass lawn to where it merged with the school parking lot. In a few minutes the buses would be pulling up there to ferry students back to their homes. In the far corner of the parking lot, past all the junky student cars and lame vehicles that the teachers drove, sat Clayton’s truck. His pride and joy, it was big, beautiful and blue and the freshly polished chrome glistened in the sunlight. There were only a few things that he cared for more than that truck; he had recently been suspended for roughing up a tenth grade punk who had kicked its hubcaps. He only needed to get to it and then he could head to the police station and find Dave.

But beyond the parking lot was the playing field where Clayton spent most of his afternoons practicing with the Senior Boys football team – that field was like his home away from home, it and the boxing room were the only parts of school he did like – and there, running across the field and making for the parking lot, was Alicia Benton-Andrews.

Her long, dark legs, even longer in those little running shorts, looked incredible at that moment in the sunlight. Her singlet was tight to her body and Clayton could clearly see just how fit she really was. Her arms were pumping high in mid stride and her hair was set in braids and pulled back into a thick ponytail. Strangely her eyes were fixed squarely on Clayton and her face held the most fierce look of determination that he had ever seen. That must be how she looks when focused on the finish line, he thought. But it was then that he suddenly realized that following behind her was an uncountable number of people of all sorts, a crazed mob, many covered in blood, some missing limbs and all with glazed white eyes!

In that instant of recognition time returned to its normal speed and Alicia tore across the parking lot faster than he had ever seen anyone run before.

Fear and disbelief wrestled for Clayton’s mind, but he stood in the doorway and yelled for her to run – pretty useless advice really. Alicia was pulling away from the stumbling, groaning people who slathered after her, and she screamed for Clayton to hold the door as she hurdled the hood of a small hatchback. She crossed the grass lawn in five strides, leapt over the chain and sailed in the open door past Clayton. He followed her in, slamming the door shut and holding it tight.

Inside, Alicia fell against the far wall and leaned on it to hold herself up. She kept repeating “Oh God!” between large gulping breaths while outside the crowd poured across the lawn and piled up as the frontrunners tripped on the chains lining the walkway. Staff rushed from the office into the entranceway where the two students stood and they grabbed, hugged, consoled and interrogated Alicia all at once.

Clayton stood rooted to the spot, watching the people outside draw nearer as he strained to hear what Alicia was saying over the frantic voices of the teaching staff and the awful sound coming from the growing mob.

“They just -, they came off the road. Suddenly they were there, coming at us. The others, we start-, started running, they fell down, they just fell over and went into fits, having seize-, seizures. ” Alicia’s voice kept breaking with sobs and hearing her made Clayton feel as though someone was twisting his insides.

“Oh God, Jessie! JessIEEE…” he wanted to cover his ears as she collapsed screaming. Someone please sedate her, knock her out – anything to make her stop. But as horrifying as her pain was to hear, Clayton was more horrified still as the window frames were filled by crazed faces, pressing against the glass, desperately trying to get at him. All their eyes were smoky white and expressionless and a multitude of hands reached forward, palming and clawing at the windows, leaving streaks of sweat and in some places blood.

The sound of their groaning and the slapping and squeaking on the glass grew to an unbearable volume and Clayton stumbled slowly backwards. The teachers seemed to have finally noticed as well and he felt a pair of benevolent hands guiding his retreat. He could not take his eyes from the doors, but behind him he could still heard Alicia’s sobbing.

“Are they locked?” he asked quietly.