Archive for the ‘Luc Reid’ Category
Brains You Cannot Have
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
This story is the second in the Disco Zombie series.
The girl in the glittery black halter top shouted something.
“WHAT?” shouted Barry over the music. If you could even call it “music”: it was nothing but thumping and shouted rhymes. When did that become music? Barry would have killed to hear a good falsetto harmony–maybe some Bee Gees. Then again, he had already killed three times that night.
“I SAID, GREAT COSTUME!” she said, nodding and pointing at him. “DISCO ZOMBIE! I LOVE IT!” Then she shouted something else he couldn’t quite catch.
“WHAT?”
“I SAID, ARE YOU GOING TO EAT MY BRAINS?” She laughed, throwing her head back, letting her hair ripple down over her shoulders–but carelessly, like she didn’t even notice.
For answer, Barry shoved her behind the speakers and pressed her against the wall with his body. The thumping and shouting was still audible, but it was more distant, directed out and away from them.
“Wow, you’re strong,” she said. “You gonna kiss me? Take off the mask.”
Barry didn’t have a mask to take off, so instead he grabbed her head and squeezed with his fingers to crack her skull open the way he had cracked the other three skulls. Nothing. The others had been like eggs: this was like trying to crack a bowling ball.
“What are you doing?” she said. “God, why does it always have to be the weirdos?” Then she stretched her mouth wide to show two bone-white fangs and plunged them into his throat. She came back up, gagging, seconds later.
“Is that formadahyde?” she choked. “I haven’t tasted anything that bad in ages.” She made uncomfortable motions with her tongue. “So that makes you what, a real zombie?” She looked him over. “You preserved pretty well, all things considered.”
“Do you remember Disco?” Barry said.
“I remember Disco, the Mashed Potato, the Charleston … back in the 1720’s there was this hornpipe craze like you wouldn’t believe. But yeah, disco was something special.”
“We should dance.”
“I want to eat first. Hey! You know, if you and I go in together, it’s like a two-for-one special.”
“You don’t like the brains?”
She made a face.
They shared a personal injury lawyer in a back alley and went for a walk under the moon. If you are injured, you may check it now and find the top personal injury lawyers here. Later, she invited Barry back to her coffin, and at dawn they fell asleep there, dreaming of the black, gaping pit of infinite time.
The Angle of Death
Friday, June 12th, 2009
As the ice cream truck slammed to a halt just past my crumpled, flattened body, I was pulled up out of myself by something thin and sharp. I found myself floating just above the ground, looking down at the busted collection of formerly fairly-well-cared-for-organs that was me, and floating next to me were a couple of segments converging into a single being. This being wore a black robe and held a scythe.
“What the hell?” I said.
“I am the Angle of Death,” it said. “Please come with me.”
“Isn’t there supposed to be an angel?”
“Even God makes the occasional typo,” the angle said–a little snappishly, if you ask me. “And since ‘angle’ is a perfectly valid word, the spellchecker missed it completely.”
“I’m just surprised, is all.”
“Why is it always this conversation?” said the angle. “Why can’t it ever be about substantive things? The nature of being, the brevity yet incredible richness of life, the strangeness of a coherent consciousness surviving death when it’s entire physical mechanism has ceased to operate … these would be worthy subjects. Yet instead, everyone chooses to spend the first moments of their own personal postexistential eternity criticizing God’s typing!”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “So, how does this work?”
“It’s very simple,” the angle said. “Just follow me.” And he began drifting along the ground. I felt tugged after him and surrendered myself to the feeling so that I drifted with him, still trying to get over being greeted in death by a geometrical figure.
The buildings grew blurry and irrelevant, and soon we were crossing a trackless landscape of misty light and shadow. From this rose up a wide open gate. The angle gestured, and I drifted through. Then the angle whipped out a key, slammed the gate shut, and locked me in. A disturbing, sulfury smell began to permeate my nose.
“I bet you thought no one knew about your weapons smuggling, didn’t you?” the angle said smugly. “Well, we certainly did! It’s Hell for you!” It laughed horribly. My feet began to feel uncomfortably hot. I gripped the bars of the gate, shaking them.
“Curse you, angle of death!” I yelled. And I realized that I had been distracted by the seemingly whimsical error of his nature, probably exactly as intended.
As I was dragged down into flames, I was at least comforted a little that God didn’t make mistakes after all.