Halloween Bonus!

One more Halloween story from the archives, to celebrate the holiday. This one's from 2013, in 970 words.

Be Careful What you Read on Halloween

Don’t read fairy tales on Halloween.  Just don’t.  Trust me on this; I know what I’m talking about.

My name is Cara, I’m ten years old, and I like fairy tales. Correction: I used to like fairy tales. Mom is always saying fairy tales are good clean, safe reading for a kid like me, and things half the books out there are too violent, and half are too mushy. I kind of agree about the mushy part. Yuck. But none of the books she rants about is half so violent as Grimm’s fairy tales, and Mom ought to try reading them sometime.  But not on Halloween. Let me tell you.

It was while I was reading Cinderella that things began getting weird. I took a break to light my jack-o-lantern, and when I opened the lid a bunch of mice jumped out and took off, then sort of vanished. That was bad enough. I mean, mice are kind of cute, but not in my room, and not in my pumpkin. At least they hadn’t eaten it.  And if they vanished I wasn’t too likely to find them in my bed later.

But it was “Little Red Riding Hood” that pushed matters way beyond funny. Odd-funny, I mean. Even the mice weren’t laugh-until-you-wet-yourself funny. Just weird. I don’t really like scary stories, and I hated it last summer at camp when all the girls started telling ghost stories, even though they were mostly stupid. But I believed Mom about fairy tales being wholesome, and figured the Big Bad Wolf was scary enough for Halloween. And he was. Oh, yes. But he wasn’t all I got.

By the second page, when Little Red Riding Hood was walking through the dark and spooky forest to take her basket to her Granny, I could see—well, almost see—something out of the corner of my eye. When I turned to get a better look, it vanished. But long before we reached the cottage, I knew what it was. The wolf was there, watching.

I tried to stop reading. This was more spookiness than I wanted, especially on Halloween. But the book wouldn’t close. My eyes kept tracking the words, and the almost-seen wolf grew larger and more real. Then I got to the gory part. It would have been bad enough to watch the wolf swallow Granny whole. And if I’d stuck with the original Grimm tale where they kill the wolf and everyone stays dead, it might have been fine.

But Mom had decided that the Grimm fairy tales were too grim, and bought me a book of the prettied-up stories, where everyone lives happily ever after (except the wolf; he gets the axe either way). That was what I was reading, but the other story was in my mind, too. So I got it both ways.

By now I wasn’t even reading, anyway. I was just starting at the page and watching the story unfold in the corner of my eye. I wasn’t scared yet, not really. I thought it was some cool special effect they’d put in the book. They work so hard these days to make books compete with computer games.

I didn’t get really scared until Granny climbed out of the carcass of the wolf, which is what she does in the modern, non-scary version. They never talk about how that works. I mean, I’m pretty sure my book implies that the wolf swallowed her whole and she just sat in there alive until the woodsman let her out. Never mind how she managed to breathe in its stomach for a half hour or whatever. In Grimm, she doesn’t come back out.

Anyway, I should have known better, because that cleaned-up story doesn’t even make sense. No one could live in the belly of a wolf for a half hour, even if it swallowed her whole, and why would it? No, the reality was quite a bit different.  The wolf ate Granny. Not totally in little bits, but she was dead all right when she went down the gullet. Because he really was a giant wolf, totally unreal but there he was, or wasn’t, but I saw it, as long as I didn’t look.

He ate her. Tore out the throat, took a few bites here and there, and only then swallowed her mostly whole. So the Granny the woodsman set free shouldn’t have been alive, and she wasn’t. But she was awfully lively for a dead woman. An un-dead woman.

That was too much for me, and I finally managed to tear my eyes away from the book.

The images of Little Red Riding Hood and the woodsman vanished. But the body of the giant wolf stretched across my room, occupying most of the floor. And Granny stood there, bloody and undead.

Then she spoke.

“Brains.”

I screamed. The zombie Granny and the wolf—who also seemed to be showing signs of un-life—were between me and the door, so I went out the window. It’s a good thing my room is on the ground floor, because I’d have done the same if it had been the tenth floor.

But I didn’t think to slam the window shut behind me. So now she’s out there somewhere, Zombie Granny and maybe the wolf-zombie too. I wonder if he’ll eat her again, or if now that they’re both zombies they’ll work together?

I ran like crazy, right to the kiddie Halloween Carnival at the church on the next block. If I’m not safe here, I’m safe nowhere. And no one will believe me, but I’m not leaving here until morning. If then.

I can hear a scratching at the door. Can zombies even enter a church? 

I am never reading fairy tales again.

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©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2013
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Friday Flash: I'm in Love with a Zombie

Last week, Chuck Wendig collected a whole lot of titles from his readers. This week, he presented us with his 10 favorite and told us to pick one and write the story. He gave us the usual 1000 words; I used 918.

I'm In Love With A Zombie But He Doesn’t Even Know I’m Alive

Look, I’ve been crushing on Armand since the sixth grade. We’re graduating next spring, so that’s pretty much a whole lifetime, in teen years. He’s never liked me back, of course. Why should the cutest guy in the school pay any attention to a geek with pimples? Even if I do have the best brains in our class. Plus I don’t even know if he likes boys.

So I guess I have the best brains except when it comes to crushing on beautiful boys with no brains and 17 girlfriends. I have to admit that’s pretty stupid.

After last month, it’s even more stupid.

You know all about that, of course. There hasn’t been much else on the news besides the virus that spread into every community in North America, turning about ten percent of the people into zombies. Those zombies wander around, looking for the living so they can suck out their brains.

You see now why it’s not so smart for the brainiest kid in the junior class to crush on Armand. Because though I’m pretty sure that being smart doesn’t actually mean I have more brains in a literal sense, what’s a zombie to think? Actually, I’m not sure that Armand recognized the “brainiest” designation as figurative even when he was alive. I’m not in love with him for his brains, just that gorgeous body.

The only thing that’s kept me alive so far is that Armand doesn’t know I am. If you didn’t follow that, it’s like this: I’m pretending to be a zombie. So Armand and the rest of the zombies don’t know I’m alive. Literally.

They shut down the school, of course, after than nasty incident in the AP class. A dozen zombies broke in and went after the top students. Lucky for me, I’d gone to the bathroom and missed the carnage, but they got a couple of my best friends. Anyway, after that the school said they couldn’t be responsible and shut down.

Now most people lock themselves in their houses from sunset to sunrise, and only go out in the day if they have to, because not all the zombies avoid the sun, and cloudy days are always chancy. Everyone sits around watching TV or cat videos on You Tube, which to me is just a long slow way of becoming a zombie. I could only stand it for about a day and half, and then I had to come up with a way to get out.

That was when I realized that zombies only attack the living, not the living dead. They wander around together all the time and never try to suck each others’ brains. If I could learn to look like a zombie, I could go where I liked, night or day. I found my sister’s makeup and practiced for a week before I felt confident, and then I started venturing out.

Of course, the first thing I did was go look for Armand, and I found him with a troop of zombies, wandering around looking for “braiiiiins.”

The movies all show the living dead as half-decayed, hideous things. But the thing is, the virus doesn’t ruin their bodies, only their minds. They’re dead, but the virus keeps the body going. So Armand looks just the way he always did, and I can’t get over that. I started hanging out with his gang just to be close to that gorgeous bod, even though I knew that if they figured out I’m alive I’d be dead.

The hardest part is to remember not to say anything but “Braiiins!” and to fade away discreetly when they find a victim. The first time I saw them attack someone, I barely managed to get out of sight before I puked. That would be a dead giveaway, and I can’t risk it happening again.

I still really, really want to suck face with Armand, but…I’m pretty sure that he only wants to suck brains. And anyway, he doesn’t know I’m alive, which is just what it’s been like since sixth grade. At least I can look at him, and sometimes I manage to rub up against him, pretending it’s just the jostling of the crowd. There don’t seem to be any more zombies forming in our town, but the crowd around Armand keeps getting bigger, which makes it hard to stay close to him, but also gives me an excuse to touch him when I do get close. Zombies seem to like company, even though they’re lousy conversationalists.

My patience finally paid off after a couple of weeks. He spoke to me! Armand turned and looked right at me and said “Brains!” Just to me. I went so weak in the knees I almost forgot to be a zombie. I’ve been waiting for him to see me, really see me, since middle school. I wanted to reach out and hold his hand, but I’ve noticed that zombies don’t do that. I’m trying really hard to fit in, and it’s working better than it did when I tried to join him at the jocks’ table in the lunchroom in 9th grade.

So there I am. I’m spending all my time with the most beautiful boy in the school, and he doesn’t even know I’m alive. And I have to be glad about that.

When you’re in love with a zombie, it really is best if he doesn’t know you’re alive.

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©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2016