Aftershock

Zombieish story written in study hall.

The first thing he thought of, the only thing he thought of, was the stink. Did he actually smell it? no, his scars prevented that, but he knew it was there. A dastardly stench of rot and decomposition.. the collective tinge of thousands of dead that line his door. He heard banging, it was as if those multitudes of corpses were smashing their bloody, scorched hands against the siding, trying to gain entrance to the seemingly impenetrable fortress. Of course this was crazy. He knew that all of those things were dead. He couldn’t seem to grasp the concept of those things being human, but he knew they were dead just the same. Yet that thunk thunk-thunk thunk of hundreds of hands clenched in fists continues. He uncurls his arms from his head and begins to get up, glass smashing as he does so. He doesn’t register the noise because he is caught in believing the occurrences were all a figment of his imagination. “I had a concussion.” he says aloud, standing erect. thunk thunk the fists continue. his head is splitting , and he sees arms reaching through the broken window into his living room. These arms seem to fit perfectly between the bars that guard him from thieves his paranoia warned him of. They were constantly clenching. open close open close. This mechanical attempt at grasping him though he was too far mesmerized him. He forgot his purpose and even that horrible migraine. His trance was broken as another window behind him shattered and a hand reached to grab his shirt. Soon there were three. five, eight scorched hands grasping the dinner jacket, pulling him towards them. He cried out in disbelief. They didn’t exist yet they were touching him. He had had hallucinations before but nothing this interactive or vivid. He was jerked closer and his mind raced. “The dinner jacket!” he exclaimed as the light turned on in his hollow skull. He twisted out of the thing and it was immediately ripped apart and dropped on the floor. He heard other windows breaking and thought quite sanely; “All of these windows are gonna cost me a fortune..” The thought turned into a statement shortly thereafter. Then it was as if he came to again. I’m f*****g ODing or something and all I can think of are those damn windows? More arms reaching through the barred windows. I have to sleep and try to survive this trip. He ran to his central rotunda stairs and stumbled up them as if chased by God himself. At the top of the circular stairway he fell flat on his face on the expensive marble tile. He distantly heard something crack and felt some hot liquid pouring down his face. He pulled himself to a knee and paused. What am I here for? there was a creak and a slam from downstairs. Whatever it was I’m sure it can wait while I light up. He got lazily to his feet seemingly unaware of the river of blood exiting his eyebrow. He walked to the guest room blood now running down his button up, silk he thought it was, and soaked his pants. Great, he thought, now the other kids will laugh at me. When he got to the bed of the room he began scrubbing the crotch of his pants with a blanket.. “Damn it all.” he said as he bent down. The blood from his disfigured ocular cavity fell in splatters to the shag carpeting. He looked in dismay to the discolorment and remembered that he hadn’t wanted white in the first place. He sighed and stood up. Remembering his smoke he walked to the bureau a saying “That f*****g girl.” under his breath. Everything was her fault from his drug abuse, to the bomb that had exploded earlier that day. He opened the cabinet in the middle, pulled out the shoebox and began assembling the twisty pipe, muttering about “that b***h Amy” as he did so. When completed he packed the reservoir with the heavy hybrid his dealer had let him sample. There was a brief thought of going to get some munchies from the kitchen on the first floor but he stopped. One thing at a time. He took a huge lungful of that marijuana laced with pcp and meth. He held his breath and laid down in the full sized bed. He thought about the TV but all that would be on was corporate lies pumped through an HDTV and Sony Six Speaker Surround Sound. He lay there smoking and forgot about everything; about the windows, about the door, about the blood, about the eye flooded and covered with the stuff. He even forgot about Amy. So he drifted off into a fitful tweeker’s sleep.

He woke with a start, not to mention a baffling headache. “ow…” he groaned as he rubbed his eyes. He touched the right eye and found nothing but crusty blood and weary throbs of excruciating pain. He dropped his jaw and began feeling around the area with both hands. He began picking away at the massive scab until his finger dug into something softer, a goo like substance. He still couldn’t feel anything. His tired paining mind summed it up to be only slightly congealed blood and began his excavation again. He began to wonder where his eye was? Did he push it into his brain? He looked at his right hand. It was covered in a substance not unlike semi cooked egg whites. He looked closer, bringing his right hand to his working eye. He saw a strip of purple followed by a half circle of black surrounded by white clinging to the back of his middle finger. A horrible thought crept into the back of his mind as the overworked, tweeked, and aching thing was trying its best to process this. It came in the form of a moan, deep and guttural as if summoned from the bowels of hell itself. Not just a moan but a mass moan contributed to by thousands of almost unearthly beings. Then his world snapped into focus a he realized what the “egg” was. His hands crept slowly to a bedside mirror. He brought it before his face and looked into its dreadful reflection. Then he screamed, his face covered in blood which appeared to be erupting from a source in the abyssal hole where his eye was once located. Under the piercing screams and demon-like bellows was an ethereal beat, seeming like the heart of the world. It was in fact about 15 of the dead things that had lain outside after the weapon crash landed. His voice was lost but his mouth was still wrenched open in a disturbingly wide fashion. He slowly closed his mouth and heaved water and mucous beside him on the bed. He curled up then, sobbing and touching the place where his eye had once been. He felt the shattered brow that had once existed above it, the brow who’s fragment severed the nerve receptors as well as other things leading from brain to eye. He listened, dumbstruck, stoned, and whimpering to the arrhythmic heartbeat of the world. When the dead beings broke down the door that he didn’t remember closing, he couldn’t help but think something like “Oh but the world is a cruel temptress indeed.”