Horror Stories: A Macabre Collection (8 page)

It’s funny the things you think of when
you’re trying to get some shut-eye. And when I say funny, I mean
odd. I was just thinking about the rain forest. I pictured it
beginning to flourish once again. I saw vivid colors and giant
trees, crazy looking little bugs, and noisy birds. The earth, the
real earth, must be rejoicing as we continue to struggle for
survival. I thought of the future I use to picture, flying cars and
teleportation systems, robots named “Rosie” and all that good
stuff. It’s crazy how quickly things can change. How one can go
from a bright future to no future at all. I thought of dinosaurs,
and then I felt like one. Somehow I slept.

I dreamt of walking through the city, the
bridge was cleared and we joined a parade. People were celebrating
again, the sun was shining, and people were talking and laughing. A
man tried to sell me ice cream but I didn’t have any money. He
smiled and handed it to me anyway. Then he gave me a wink. I could
hear children laughing but I didn’t see any. Then it began to rain,
no it poured. It was muddy and hot, and everyone ran off. I was
left in the middle of the street with my ice cream, which turned
into eyeballs. The people around me all turned into deaders. They
began clapping. My vision blurred and the world began to spin out
of control. Then I woke to the touch of someone stroking my leg. It
was the feral girl. I jumped up and pushed her away. She hissed at
me, I kicked her and snarled back. The others looked at me, then to
the girl, and then they went back to whatever the hell it was they
were doing—which was really just killing time.

I sat back down, and the last thing I
remember was the shifting of gravel underfoot. Then blackness. When
I woke up my head pounded, and the world was upside down. The folks
I traveled with were standing around me. They looked anxious, and
they were looking at me. I hung suspended by my feet, and my hands
were tied in back. All I could do was squirm—and not very much at
that. They were all pretty quiet. From behind me I could hear the
sharpening of metal—I knew what was coming. I smiled when I figured
it out; it was my turn, at long fucking last. There was a bucket
under my head. The sharpening stopped and then all was quiet. I
could hear footsteps approaching from behind, then the swift sound
of a cleaver slicing through the cold night air. The pussy swinging
the cleaver didn’t have enough strength to cleave off my head in
one swing. So, you could imagine the pain when it struck my throat.
As much as I looked forward to this moment, I had no idea how much
pain it would actually be. Nor did I think it would hurt a hundred
times more when the bastard pulled it out to try again. Finally on
the third stroke my head landed in the bucket, face down and
bleeding stump up. My warm blood flowed from the wound, quickly
cooling off—and there was a lot of it. I then watched them slice
open my gut and disembowel me. Cleaving out every organ and letting
them drop to the ground. The bucket wasn’t near big enough, and
according to the reaction of the bastards doing it I didn’t smell
too fresh on the inside. Am I thankful? –Yes. I’d certainly have
preferred a cleaner death, something more serene, and quick. But,
what’s done is done. I was just a bit confused as to why there was
no heavenly light shining down upon me, or why I didn’t float off
into the air—I was still here, watching them hack at my mortal
remains. Their names are fuzzy, and as I’ve told you before, they
don’t really matter, but I think the bastard that cleaved my head
was named Vic. He’d told me before that he’d eaten human flesh. He
sort of eventually became our group’s leader. He was a nice enough
guy, and if I could’ve thanked him for choosing me to be the
Thanksgiving bird, despite the fact that the bastard couldn’t do
the job swiftly, I would have. I guess he somehow convinced the
rest of the group that human meat was better than no meat. I guess
they agreed.

They had turned pipes and branches into
skewers which they covered in my meat. I wondered if anyone would
eat my dick, and if they did I sure as shit didn’t want to watch,
but I wanted to know. I was almost all bone as they continued to
skewer large chunks from my body. The man with the cleaver started
making a stack for himself, cutting from my thighs, probably the
choicest of cuts, my legs were in great shape from all the walking
I’ve done over the years—probably the best they’d ever been in. I
used to be a couch potato with a desk job and a bad appetite, now I
was a slender stack of meat on Thanksgiving Day. Once someone had a
full skewer they walked it over to the fire. I could hear the
sizzle of my skin, but I couldn’t smell it—why I don’t know. I
watched them eating my body. I wish I could tell you it disgusted
me, but it didn’t. I didn’t care. The feral girl grabbed a skewer
of me and headed to the fire in her hunched over stagger of a
walk.

A woman, I think her name was Emma, grabbed
the bucket that held my head. She pulled my head from the bucket by
my blood-soaked tendrils of hair and raised it to her eye level.
She looked at my face—which, to my surprise was moving its jaw and
flitting its eyes. Those were my eyes, and they were moving without
me behind them. I always thought if you removed the head from the
body there would be no coming back. I couldn’t tell if my body
still writhed, but my head sure did. It was strange, I must’ve cut
the heads off hundreds of deaders and never once did I stop to pick
up the head and say hello to it. Nor did I ever see a headless
corpse walking around. You’d figure that after so many years these
things would start to make sense, but no, they didn’t. None of it
made any damn sense. Not ever. My current situation didn’t make a
lick of sense either, but it was happening anyway, or not happening
in my case. The woman started talking to my head, but I didn’t
quite catch what she was saying. Then she walked my head over to
the fire and tossed it in. My face, my identity to the world, was
tossed like rubbish into the fire. It was one of the few things
that reminded me of who I was, the other…the other was the
photograph, which lay in a puddle of my innards and blood and torn
clothes. I walked over to it and knelt down. I tried to pick it up,
but I couldn’t. I wanted to wipe away my blood to see the faded
image of my wife, Lynne, and my son, Marley, and I couldn’t even do
that. All of this was to see them again, and what I got to see was
the butchering of my body and the feasting of my flesh. God, if
there is such a thing, had forsaken me.

I left. I walked away and I didn’t turn back
in the slightest. I returned to the bridge and what I saw made me
laugh; the deaders were coming. They must’ve smelled my blood and
innards, and like flies to shit they came for it. There were more
than I had seen in a long time. I guess the city wasn’t as empty as
we thought. There had to be hundreds, all of them shriveled like
raisins. Still they were able to stagger, still able to feast. I
wished them a Happy Thanksgiving as they passed through me. As they
stumbled off the bridge and down toward camp, I could hear shouts,
then a few shots but I knew firearms were few and ammunition was
sparse. The shots stopped and the shouts turned into panicked
screams. I walked over to the edge of the bridge and watched. They
were completely surrounded by the swarm of deaders. The fools were
so busy with feasting and clamoring about nonsense that they didn’t
hear their slow approach, and the smell of the fire must’ve covered
up their putrid scent, which I couldn’t smell. I was thankful for
that too, I guess.

The feral girl ran for the river and dove—she
would most likely die of hypothermia. The others tried to fight,
but it was like fighting the tide. For every deader dispatched a
new one came to take its spot. They fought as they always had
though, and valiantly, but it was pointless. A few more chose the
river. I guess I would’ve chosen the river as well. I’d rather of
died a death with my lungs full of icy sludge than have my flesh
torn off in chunks by the rotted teeth of the deaders. The deaders
overpowered the rest of my group, dragging their dying bodies to
the ground. The tide came in. The tide always comes in. And there’s
not a damned thing in hell you can do about it. I watched the tide
go back out as quickly as it came in. The fire illuminated the
leftover chunks of cooling gore. The cold stiff dirt was left a
darker than rust shade of red. The folks I traveled with joined the
ranks of the dead. I walked on.

The bridge was littered with the remains of
vehicles. The kinds people would’ve killed for, the public type
that people dreaded, and the kind that probably stalled out and
caused this mess. They were rusted and weathered, cold and dead,
and useless. Just like me. I wondered how long it would take for
the bridge to collapse without man there to keep it up. From the
looks of it, I didn’t think very long. The longer I walked, the
more I felt a part of this world. It was dead, I was dead. The only
things I saw were dead, in one way or another, and the people still
left were only biding time till they eventually died.

After the bridge I entered the city. It was
once called Titan City, but I couldn’t find any sign that stated
such. I remember the day of the bombings—Titan City was among the
first to fall. It seemed like forever ago. I used to visit every
once and a while. Daytrips, a show, an anniversary dinner here and
there, and I remember when we took Marley to the museum for the
first time. He loved it. We all did. I wondered if it still stood?
I doubt it—many of the buildings were leveled, the ones still
standing looked as if a good gust of wind would knock them
over.

The streets were covered in glass and metal
from the windows. I don’t think there was a high rise with a window
left intact anywhere throughout this city of the dead. It was a
hollowed out husk of a hornet on the windowsill of the world. And,
I was walking through it. The devastation was nothing short of
breathtaking. I tried to touch things, to run my fingers along the
old bones of the city, but I could feel nothing.

I found what was left of the museum. A hole
in the ground—a hole filled with fancy things. Fancy things covered
by dust and debris. Things that had no place, things like me,
relics. I stood there for what seemed like days, though I know it
was only a moment. I waited to see my family, but they didn’t show
up. I walked on.

The day never changed, night never came, and
the sky stayed the dullest shade of grey I had ever seen. The
clouds looked painted and hung heavy over me. I tired of the
wasteland. There was nothing to keep me here. I headed for a home I
had not been to since the dead began to rise. I wasn’t sure how to
get there, but I felt drawn, like something was pulling me or
pushing me toward it. I didn’t fight it, it’s not like I had
something better to do.

I couldn’t tell if time was moving or not. It
should have taken me a while to get from the city to my old home,
but the sky never seemed to change. I felt no cold, no warmth, no
wind, no anything. I thought I saw other ghosts or spirits, but
they could have been shadows. I saw no living, or living dead. I
couldn’t even find the sun. Yet I was almost to my destination,
which was unrecognizable. The street signs were faded, the homes
deteriorating; the once well-kept lawns were rebellious fields. My
old suburbia lie in a worse ruin than when I left it, which was no
real surprise, but it was disturbing to see. It made me feel
haunted, though it seemed I was the one doing the haunting.

There it is, right in front of me. A door to
a world I left behind years ago. A big heavy door, it used to be
red—the shutters too, now they’re rust-colored. I can’t turn the
handle. I can barely move. Whatever force had been guiding me is
gone. I’m alone. The door opens.

“Welcome home, sweetheart,” she said to me.
Her voice, a song I so longed to hear. Her irises shimmered like
warm honey. Her skin looked so soft—if only I could touch her,
smell her.

“Daddy,” shouted my beautiful little boy,
running down the hallway toward the door. His hair bounced with
each step, and his smile was bright. The tiny pieces of my
shattered heart ached. Each broken chunk burned. My eyes teared. I
couldn’t even smile. They did though; they smiled brightly, as
brightly and as warmly as I remember them.

I tried to speak but I couldn’t. She nodded,
she knew what I wanted to say, and didn’t want, or need, to hear
it. She patted my boy on the head. He looked at me with somber eyes
and a grim chin. Their beautiful appearance began to change. They
looked as they did the last time I saw them—in agony.

“You know what they say about cowards, dad,”
he said, and I did.

I just wanted to apologize. I wanted to take
it back. I wished over and over that I died with them, that I held
them then, instead of hoping I could now.

“A thousand deaths,” my wife whispered.

A thousand deaths, her soft words hit me like
a sledgehammer. All the years of letting the guilt eat me alive
from the inside out for one death. How many times did I want to
kill myself and end it all? I was a coward then. I was afraid,
always afraid.

“Do you know how long it takes for a ghost to
die,” she asked me, and I didn’t know. It wasn’t something I ever
gave any thought. After thinking about it for a moment I feared I
might never die again. I stared into her eyes looking for an
answer, but there was none, only the warmth that I’d always known
to be there. This was all my fault, not hers, I was the one who
ran. She did the right thing.

“We love you,” they said together, and I was
forced to watch them die again. It was just as painful the second
time around, but this time I couldn’t close my eyes. I couldn’t run
away. I had to grin and bear it. I watched every morsel of skin get
ripped away. I watched them bleed, and scream, and squirm, and cry
out for me, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t help, or change what I
did. I was a Goddamn coward twice over, and there they lay in a
pool of their blood, twitching as the dead thing swallowed their
flesh, again. Just like the first time, only now I couldn’t run.
All I could do was cry, not even blink, and hurt. Then they were
gone, as quickly as they came. My angels, my demons, gone once
again, all that remained was a stain on the floorboards and a huge
gaping hole in my heart. Could God be so cruel? I guess so. I was
able to move again, so I knelt on the stain—the only remains of my
family. I wish I had my picture, now more than ever. All I have is
nothing, save that of guilt. I eventually got up and wandered
aimlessly through my old home. The dust was so thick it was dirt;
covering most of the framed pictures I longed to see. What little I
could see was distorted, another level to the hell I find myself
in, if this is hell. I’m not sure. I tried to wipe the dirt away,
but it was useless. I tried to blow it away, but nothing came out
of my ghostly form. I pictured us as we were before the deaders
bled the world dry. These walls were filled with laughter once, now
just dirt and a ghost chasing after death. I walked around the home
some more, then went outside and sat on the stoop. I waited for the
tall grass to wrap me up and pull me under, but it never did.