Fasion Week Outbreak

This is the text for a chapter in a graphic Zombie novel I've had on my mind for some time.

‘Massive cannibal-gang captured this morning’ ‘Occult cannibal leader believed to be in charge of attacks’. The newspaper headline caught Francisca’s attention as she was walking to work. She went into the kiosk and picked one up with a coffee. She put the newspaper in her bag and continued walking to work. She was an upcoming model. She reached her destination and entered the building through two large automatic doors and went to the changing room.

It was February. The end of yet another fashion week was ending. Francisca stared back at her reflection. She'd been lucky with her cheekbones. She was also tall, even for a model. Almost too tall. But it was those cheek bones that made her famous. To get somewhere in the world, you had to have something out of the ordinary. Something to get you noticed. Her cheekbones, were her outer trait, her way of getting recognized. 

As she rounded the corner and walked behind the 'stage', she ran to get herself into a new outfit for the next walk. It was such a hectic atmosphere that she didn’t have the time to feel how tired she was. Or how hungry she was.

She looked at the boots and wondered what animal they had to kill in order to make that. The people around her all looked like anorexic blood suckers. They were all after one thing; fame and to be what passed for beautiful. The designer she was representing put a small top hat to her head and pushed her out on the catwalk again, making her feel  like a female version of the mad hatter. "Make me proud, girl, it's the last one today". ‘Head high, walk straight. Remember; you're supposed to be able to balance a book on your head, walk like a lemur, a lemur, I said’. She could hear Francis, her mentor, say in her head. She glanced at the model approaching her. She looked worse than herself. How long was it since that girl had eaten anything other than cotton balls? The other girl shot her a nasty look as her back was facing the audience. Then, Francisca's whole world tipped over. It was as if someone put life on pause, and then played everything in slow-motion. She could just glimpse the girl smirking at her and tucking her foot back under her dress, before she was ignored. Then, she hit the floor. 

Francisca looked around, as if the ground held the answer to her question. Maybe she’d find a hole there somewhere that she could jump into. The audience had silenced completely and were looking at her like they were hungry lions, and she was a piece of meat. Then she saw a white flower lying next to her. She picked it up and raised herself up from the catwalk. Her hand went to her top hat that the designer had placed on her head earlier, and she plastered a smile on her lips. With a smooth motion, she crossed her legs and bowed to the crowd with the hat in her hand, and the flower in the other. Then she spotted an elderly man amongst the crowd. She thought she recognized the man from somewhere. He'd looked bored all evening. Francisca looked him in the eyes before handing him the flower and blew him a kiss before she went back from the walk, head still held high. If someone had dropped a pin, everyone would have heard it over the silence that came after. Like a thunder cloud, applause started to break out from behind her. She looked at the horrified face of Marc, the designer who had put the top hat on her head. He put on a stiff smile and walked out on the catwalk. 

Her stomach was all butterflies of nervousness. She would surely never get a job again after this. The applause had subsided and she could hear Marc begin his short ‘thank you’-speech. Without a warning, a scream erupted from the audience. She sneaked a peek behind the curtains. It looked like someone was trying to eat Marc’s face. Something looked very off about the face-eating person. The skin was torched on one side of his face, and the eyes were a glazy white. She didn’t stand around to see more, but turned around to see if the other models were still in the room. Some of them looked terrified, others were rushing to the stage to try and help their designer.

Francisca remembered the newspaper headline from the morning. Was this the cannibalistic cult they had talked about? The people in there didn’t even look like people. Her instincts kicked in, and her feet started to move as if someone was puppeteering them. She needed to get out. Out, before the panic started to spread amongst the people inside. At the emergency exit, she hesitated before pulling an iron pole between the two handles. Then she ran. She ran for what seemed like an eternity before she came to a halt and looked at her surroundings. She had run into an unfamiliar part of the city. A sound came from her left. She opened her mouth as if to scream, but nothing came out. A woman, with similar traits as the man back at the catwalk, was busy scoping out goo from a hobo’s lungs with gleeful lust. The hobo’s eyes were flicking back and forth wildly, a trail of blood came from his mouth. As she stood there watching the hobo getting eaten alive, she saw the life disappear from the old man’s eyes. She could feel a strong nausea well up from the pit of her stomach, but didn’t have time to run away before she belched and emptied the coffee from that morning all over the street. The cannibal stopped all movement and turned towards Francisca with her head tilted and a skeleton smile. With her arms outstretched, the woman launched at her, forcing Francisca to start running again. She looked at her feet, still in stilettoes. She stopped for a few seconds to take them off, aimed one of the shoes at the woman and threw. It missed by a meter. She tried the other shoe, which hit the cannibalistic woman - who didn’t look like she could be more than 17, in her throat. It didn’t seem to have any effect. She turned away from her follower and focused on moving forwards. As she did so, she could feel a sharp pain in her foot. Glass splinters were thrown all over the ground, making her movement slower. Her stalker did not seem hindered by the glass at all and would overtake her any moment. With tears running down her cheeks, she realized the hopelessness of the situation as she was running into an impasse. She could see a pipe sticking out of the middle wall in the impasse. With nowhere to escape and a bloodthirsty woman after her she stopped right before the wall, desperately clawing at the wall as if by magic, something like a latch would appear before her. She turned around and looked at the approaching woman one last time before she closed her eyes and started to make peace with all the religions she knew of. Just in case. 

Author's Note

- I'd like some comment on the flow of the short chapter here, if you think it would fit in a graphical novel setting, are there any wholes that should be filled here, etc?