Happy Halloween- Trapped in a Zombie World Part I

The following was a short story I wrote, I was hoping I could sell it to a magazine; but, it is best served to you readers as a gift for Halloween, as a thank you for your readership over the last year.

This story will be in two parts.  I will post part two later this week, so make sure you check back and read the rest of the story.  If you like this short story, check out my novel “Legend of the Mystic Knights”. Although the novel is more of a fantasy novel, you still get the same kind of writing as in the short story.

I am a big fan of the zombie genre. In these stories or movies, a person dies and becomes one of the undead, a lifeless unthinking creature, but what happens to the person inside, what happens to the consciousness that once housed that body?  Read and find out.

WARNING: This story does have some intense parts and may not be suitable for everyone, so viewer (reader) discretion is advised.

Trapped in a Zombie World

                                                                        Part 1

I do not know what happened to me exactly, I may never know, all I know is that I am trapped, and probably forever.

It was a bright sunny day when I found myself walking down the street.  It was on this day, on this street, when I heard the screaming. The screaming that was coming around the corner, this screaming was a prophecy, a foretelling of what my existence was about to become.

The screams first startled me, but instead of leaving I found myself drawn to them. I could see people fleeing as if they were being chased by something or someone.  Instead of joining the herd of people fleeing, I stood there for a minute, like an idiot.  I guess I was too curious for my own good, and my curiosity would end up cursing me.

“THEY”RE COMING. RUN, RUN,” someone yelled as they passed by me.  I was unaware of what was going on, or perhaps just not sure of what I should have done at that moment.  Every second now I curse my lack of action, every second I wished I had simply run away.

“Who’s coming?” I thought to myself, maybe it was a street gang or a bank was being held up, or one of the many interruptions that occur daily in life of the city. When you live in the city for a long period of time, you get used to these interruptions, and they no longer excite or influence you.

Curiosity killed the cat, and it seems I was destined to join that fate, or at least partially.  As I rounded the corner to investigate what was causing such a commotion and panic, I found myself face-to-face with someone or something.  I say something because he seemed to be less human than anyone I had ever seen before.  His skin was gray and pulled tightly around his face. The eyes were fish like, and they made me sick as I looked into them. I was so shocked at his appearance for at that moment I just stood there doing nothing, just standing like a granite statue in a park.

The man reached out with his bony hands to grab me; this action seemed to break my motionless stance as I reached up to protect myself. It was almost surreal; everything was moving in slow motion, and in this bizarre unreal moment I was unable to react.  It was as if I was in a bad dream where I was being chased and unable to run from my pursuer.

The man grabbed my arm and opened his mouth; I could see his yellow rotting teeth, and I could also see him violently drive his head into my arm and then bit into it.  A loud scream was the uncontrolled reaction to seeing the man biting my arm.  It may have been a sense of disbelieve or perhaps shock, but I stood for a second, while his teeth was ripping into my flesh.  I could not believe that someone would bite my arm as he had done.

The man’s head twisted side to side, looking like a crocodile holding its prey and then performing its death roll.  As the man drew his head back there was a piece of my forearm in his mouth. I looked down and saw a huge section of my arm missing.  Blood began to shoot out of my arm onto the sidewalk, as if it was a fire hydrant spraying water on children during a summer’s day.  Then what seemed like forever, but in reality only a split second, the pain came rushing into my arm.

The man began chewing the section of my arm which a moment before was part of my body.  This was the ultimate violation for he took something of me; a part of me could never be replaced or returned. It was horrifying to see a part of my body being consumed by someone else, as if I was nothing more to him than a piece of candy.

I screamed as I grabbed my arm, trying to stop the gushing blood which seemed never to stop.  My head began to feel faint, and a sickening sensation entered my stomach as I began to stumble backwards.

I felt weightless for a minute, as if I was floating in space. Then the light around me disappeared and was changed to darkness.  A perception of falling surrounded me, and then suddenly I hit hard on my back as I landed on several cardboard boxes.  It was then that I realized that I had stumbled backwards into one of those open street grates, which lead to a cellar of a store. I had fallen down into it that man-made crater, like an animal into a tiger pit.

I rested there for a moment, stunned and shocked at the same time from both the vicious attack upon me and the fall I had just taken.  I noticed I was becoming more lightheaded, and soon it was almost impossible for me to concentrate, as if the world was fading away.  I could no longer think as my mind faded away. The world became dark.

My eyes opened; I do not know how long, as it could have been minutes, hours or even days since I had fallen. I wanted to look around, but I was unable to control where my own eyes were looking. They randomly looked around on their own as if they were controlled by an unknown force, a force which I did not control nor knew who, in fact, was directed my stare.

I tried to move my arms or legs, but again, I was unable to control them.  A sense of panic engulfed me as I was thinking that I had seriously injured myself in the fall. Visions of me being an invalid in a hospital room were created by my imagination.

“I’m crippled, I fell and broke my spine,” I screamed to myself.  I wanted to yell for help, but nothing came out of my mouth. My words became as paralyzed as the rest of my body.

Without me consciously moving them, my body began to shake and twist. I turned over and my body then stood up, without me telling it too.  I was shocked and bewildered at what was happening, how could my body move on its own?

                “HELP, PLEASE HELP ME,” I screamed but then realized that there were no sounds coming out of my mouth.  I was concentrating, trying to speak and yell, but my mouth would not open, and my vocal cords ignored any and all of my commands.

                My body continued to move on its own, as it walked around the dark cellar; its gate appeared to be more of a stumble then walking.  It appeared that my body was now searching for a way out of the basement. Without any orders from me, my legs started walking over to the stairs and began going up them. I concentrated, and concentrated, trying so hard to control my body but my body seemed to ignore any command from the brain that resided within.

                “What is going on,” I thought to myself. Panic and fight filled my thoughts, what was controlling me? Who or what was making me move without any conscious effort on my part.

                My body slowly moved up the stairs and into the store above. Items in the store were thrown around as if the store had been ransacked during a riot. The cash register was open, but the money remained inside. Whoever had ripped apart the store totally ignored all the money and valuables that seemed to be scattered on the floor like useless trinkets.

                “Stop moving, now, just stop,” I yelled at myself, but again, my commands to my body were totally disregarded.

                As my body stumbled around it passed a mirror which hanging on the wall. Although my body was walking by it, I was able to catch a glance of myself.  What I saw made me yell inside my mind, unable to vent the horror which had just been shown to me in that reflective piece of glass.

                My reflections seemed not to be of me, as if someone else was looking at me from my own mirror image. The reflection seemed to be me, but not me, as if I was seeing a shadow of myself in the mirror. My skin had become gray and brown in color. My eyes were dull and lifeless looking and had receded into my skull. Clothes hung off my body, and I now resembled a walking skeleton wearing an outfit several sizes too large. It was at that moment that I realized I resembled in appearance to the man who had previously attacked me.

                “What happened to me?” I thought to myself, “What is going on?”

                I wanted to yell for help again, but I knew that my words would not leave my mouth.  I then unwillingly walked through the front doors of the store and into the street. Cars were abandoned and parked in the middle of the street. Garbage and debris were scattered in the streets as if the city had become a dump. A newspaper floated on the wind and flew by me like a butterfly dancing on the air.

                Even though I was outside, I felt very cold. It was a cold that engulfed every inch of my body, every fiber in me froze. The sun shining overhead was beating down but did nothing to warm me. My body refused to shiver from this cold, or the cold had no impact on it, but I felt that coldness inside.

                As my body walked down the street, I saw a man stumbling toward me. He was covered in blood and stared at me with his cold dead eyes. This was the man, the exact same man, who had attacked me earlier. I wanted my legs to start running away from the man, but I found myself walking toward him. Terror filed my heart as if I figured this man would resume his attack on me, but the man totally ignored me as if now he was no longer interested in me.

                What I saw next was disgusting to my senses. The man was holding a severed arm, an arm that had been ripped off his victim. My horror was intensified as I saw this man actually eating parts of the arm as he had with mine. He would bite the arm, ripping off a section of skin or muscle then chewed on it, and afterwards, he would swallow the grotesque bounty. I felt sick, seeing this act of cannibalism and knowing full well that he had partaken in a similar consumption of my flesh earlier.

My legs began walking faster and faster as my body moved toward the man with the arm. I wanted to run away, but my body again totally ignored the commands coming from my brain.  My body moved as if it had a desire to go near this man.

“STOP!”  I could not think of anything else to say inside my head, the site of the arm being eaten consumed all my thoughts in my mind at the time.

My now independent body was not disgusted by this scene of the man eating the arm, on the contrary, my body wanted to participate in the grizzly feast. As my body got closer, my hands rose up and tried to grab the arm out of the other man’s hand.  The other man jerked the arm back and growled at me, growled like an animal. He snapped his teeth at me like a dog protecting his precious bone.  My body somehow felt this warning and walked away, leaving the man alone with his monstrous prize of human flesh.

                A feeling of hunger now appeared.  At first, it was nothing but a small awareness of an appetite, as if you knew it was around lunchtime, but you somehow missed it. The sensation then grew and grew, and soon I felt a hunger that I had never felt before. It was an all-consuming starvation like it was gnawing at the inside of my stomach. It was not a feeling of hunger now, but the pain of famine.

                “What is going on with me,” I said in my mind. “Someone has to find me and help me.”

                I wandered by a window of a store, the window was broken and shattered. Although the window was broken and the store was ransacked, a television inside which was still on and working. A special news program was being broadcasted on the television.

“The recently dead are returning to life and are trying to kill and feed on the living,” said the reporter on the station, “they are nothing more than instinct now, nothing more than animals needing to be feed.”

                “Is he talking about me?” I asked myself, “I’m not dead…am I?”

                “These corpses are no longer your family members of friends,” the reported continued,  “do not be misled into thinking they are intelligent, there is nothing left of their previous lives in those bodies.”

                “No, you are wrong, I’m here.” I argued in my mind to the reporter, again no words came out of my mouth, “please you need to know I am still here…inside.”

                A terrible realization was then revealed to me, I indeed was dead. This was the reason for the extreme cold I felt, for I had no body temperature. However, if I was dead, why was my mind trapped inside? How was I able to think and feel, even if I had no control over my body?

End of Part 1

 

So this is where we leave off the story.  What happened to the narrator of our story?  Is he truly dead, or did something else happen to him?  Read part two to find out!