Collection of Stories for Demented Children (2 page)

Captain Nuttington’s squirrels scampered
onto the factory floor, adding to the commotion. The chickens
flapped into the air in a desperate attempt to get away, which was
silly because chickens couldn’t fly. The ducks took to the air too,
trying to contain the hens.

Emo didn’t want to waste time pinching each
goose’s rear end, so he goosed them with more head-butts. An entire
row of geese honked and flew into the air in a wave as he dashed
by. It didn’t take long for Emo to reach the bunnies and shout for
them to start hopping. Chaos filled the building.

Then he saw Haylo and realized she was a
prisoner too. She looked at him in surprise before bumping her
cheek against his. “What are you doing here, Emo? Did they capture
you too?” she asked in a dulcet voice filled with worry.

“You know my name?” he asked in
surprise.

“Of course. You bumped into me last month
and I noticed how soft you were,” she told him shyly. “You go off
into the forest alone a lot. I follow you sometimes, even though my
parents would be furious if they found out.”

The words stunned Emo. He stared at her in
adoration and happily noticed she was returning the gaze. Never in
his life had he thought someone so wonderful as her could care
about a sad little bunny like him.

A duck crashed into him, wildly flapping its
wings. It skidded across the floor with Captain Nuttington
courageously hanging onto its neck. The good captain yelled at
them, “Don’t just sit there, you silly little bunnies! This is the
grandest rescue in the history of the forest. Get to it!” With
that, the squirrel leader tweaked the duck’s beak and went off to
rescue a chipmunk that was getting its tail nipped.

Everyone else was dashing around in panic
while squirrels chucked nuts at the ducks and bears. “Follow me,”
Emo told Haylo in an extraordinary moment of bravery. “Follow me,
follow me!” he yelled to the other creatures around. The thought
that he was actually doing something heroic surprised him. Emo
wasn’t sure he liked the way it felt, but continued anyway. “Follow
me, follow me!” he yelled again, rushing toward the hallway where
the big doors were.

“Follow him, follow him!” Haylo yelled.

“Follow him, follow him!” other bunnies
yelled.

“Follow him, follow him!” chipmunks, gophers
and geese yelled too.

“What in the Golden Egg is going on here?!”
an ominous voice bellowed. The Easter bunny had come to see what
the ruckus was. His contacts were out and his evil red eyes were
fierce with anger.

Emo ignored the monster and led everyone
into the wide hallway. Squirrel Militia members were clearing ducks
out of the path and even had a bear wrestled to the floor. Emo led
the captives around the corner toward the exit. To his delight, the
militia had opened the doors and the forest lay ahead.

Emo and Haylo charged into the forest with a
bunch of bunnies, a gaggle of geese, a flock of chickens and
assorted others while robins flew into the air above. He was pretty
sure some of the cows came along too, but he never took the time to
look back.

***

Half an hour later, he and Haylo were in the
corner of his coffin home, desperately trying to catch their
breath. The missing bunnies had come home and everyone was in the
clearing, shouting excitedly. Somehow, the rescued bunnies didn’t
even realize that it was Emo who helped save them.

He didn’t care because Haylo was softly
rubbing her cheek against his. For the first time since he could
remember, Emo wasn’t sad.

The End

###

This story is dedicated to brains: the
forgotten victims in all zombie tales.

***

Tobias was determined to catch the emo
bunny. He had been following it for quite a while through the
forest. He’d always wanted an emo bunny. They were soft, cuddly and
always needed extra hugs because they were so sad.

He wasn’t supposed to be in the forest, but
there were
so
many interesting creatures that he could see
from his backyard: deer, wolves, fairies, porcupines, ghosts just
to name a few. Tobias’s father was a ranger who lived on the edge
of the village and the creatures of the forest were respectful to
the family, but it still wasn’t safe for a boy to wander off
alone.

The emo bunny dashed through some
underbrush, disappearing out of sight. It was too thick for Tobias
to enter, so he went around. A ball of black fur darted out of the
tangled foliage and past some densely packed trees. Emo bunnies
normally sat underneath shady trees and wallowed in their misery
all day, but this one appeared quite serious about getting away
from the boy.

After several sharp turns around the trees,
it disappeared for good. Tobias couldn’t tell where it had gone and
he wandered around, looking for it. Sometime later, he came to a
small babbling brook. It was babbling about a skunk that had made
it stink for a little while and about a log that jammed upstream.
Tobias wasn’t interested, so he crossed it and continued
searching.

It was late in the afternoon when Tobias
tiredly sat down on a moss-covered log. The smell of damp earth
mingled pleasantly with pine needles. It had rained that morning
and the sky was still overcast. He had been gone since shortly
before lunch and his stomach growled, mad at having missed the
midday meal. Tobias looked around the dark, unfamiliar forest and
panic set in as he realized he was completely lost.

He saw a movement to his right. A man was
slowly shuffling through the trees a short distance away. Tobias
stood up and waved, the panic instantly going away. “Hello, Sir!
I’m lost. Can you help me get back home to the village, please?”
His mother would be very proud of him for saying please.

The figure stopped, turned and shuffled
toward him with a lurching movement. Tobias ran toward the figure,
but stopped abruptly. The man looked very unhealthy. His skin was
grey with some on his face hanging down, his left kneecap was
showing through his pants and one of his eyeballs was rolling
around in its socket. “Brainsss?” it asked.

“You’re really ugly!” Tobias exclaimed. “Can
you help me get back home to the village?”

***

Zachary Zombie was on a mission to find some
newts for Gert, the Wicked Witch of the Forest. A while back,
Zachary had been a thief intent on stealing some magical potions
from the witch’s tower. However, a magical trap caught Zachary and
zapped him to death with lightning. Upon finding his dead body on
the stairs, Gert decided to turn him into a zombie servant bound to
do her bidding. He wasn’t a normal zombie. The witch had done
something to lock his soul into his dead body and as a result, he
could still think, although it took longer with a mushy brain.

He heard someone say hello a short distance
away. Turning to look, Zachary saw a boy waving and saying, “I’m
lost. Can you help me get back home to the village, please?”
Zachary was very impressed that the boy said please, so he lurched
over to see what was wrong.

As the boy skidded to a stop in front of
him, Zachary blurted out, “Brainsss?” It was a habit he tried to
control, but the urge for brains was part of being a zombie and the
word came out of his mouth at random times.

“You’re really ugly!” the boy exclaimed.
“Can you take me back to the village?”

When he was alive, Zachary had been rather
handsome. His charming good looks were one of the things he missed
the most. The other thing he missed was the way his right eye used
to stay where it was supposed to. Now it was spinning around in his
head, making him dizzy. The view inside his head was not all that
pretty either.

“Villagshe? Home?” he asked for
clarification. Zachary’s brain was decayed, so he liked to make
sure he understood what people were saying.

“Yes. Will you please take me home to the
village?” the boy asked. Zachary was very impressed that the boy
had said please again.

Zachary wasn’t supposed to go to the
village. For some reason, whenever a zombie appeared, villagers lit
torches and brandished pitchforks. It was a very bad habit that
villagers had. However, the boy was lost in the dangerous woods and
Zachary
did
know how to get to the village, and the boy had
said please. It was very important to say please whenever possible.
Zachary’s mother had taught that to him. “Villagshe, yeshh,” he
told the boy.

“Thank you!” the boy exclaimed happily. “My
name’s Tobias, what’s yours?”

“Tobiashh,” Zachary repeated, making sure he
had it right. “Namesh Zshachary.”

“jjack . . . shack . . . oh! Zachary! You’re
name’s Zachary!” Tobias exclaimed as he figured out the name. “You
talk funny, kind of mushy like your face,” the boy pointed out.
Zachary nodded in agreement. It was a personal failing that he was
trying to work on.

Tobias took Zachary’s hand and waited to be
led. Zachary thought about which way to go. It took a moment since
his brains were decayed, but he finally decided that it would be
best to go along the cliffs by the sea. The forest had too many
dangers in it for a little boy. He led Tobias in that
direction.

A stag suddenly appeared in front of them.
It was a majestic beast with a yellow glow and its head held high.
“A human hunter killed my mother, therefore the boy must die!” it
declared in righteous anger, lowering its twelve pronged antlers at
Tobias.

Zachary knew instantly that it was a magical
deer: partially because it glowed, but mostly because it talked. He
pushed Tobias to the side in order to protect the boy from the
lunging stag. It hit Zachary square in the chest, lifted him up
with its antlers and threw him into the air. Zachary fell to the
ground with a squishy thud. “Ewwww,” the deer stated
un-majestically and began scraping its antlers on a nearby tree in
an attempt to get the zombie goo off.

“Wow! That was neat!” Tobias exclaimed,
looking back and forth between the stag and zombie in admiration.
Zachary got up and checked to make sure all his body parts were
still attached. There were a couple of puncture wounds and a few
maggots had escaped from his chest, but that appeared to be the
worst of the damage. Then he realized that half of his vision was
missing. The spinning eye was gone.

Searching around for a moment, he finally
saw it impaled on a tine of the stag’s antlers. Worried that the
stag would damage it further while trying to scrape off zombie goo,
Zachary lurched forward. One of the advantages of being a zombie
was having the strength of ten men. He grabbed the deer by the
antlers and twisted it to the ground. Then he sat on its head and
carefully plucked the eyeball off the antler while the stag bleated
and kicked its legs in desperation.

Zachary stood up and examined the eyeball,
ignoring the stag that jumped up and flailed around trying to shake
zombie mush off its face. There was a hole through the eyeball, so
Zachary licked it on both sides to fix the hole before setting it
back in the socket. It was a little known fact that zombie saliva
could heal minor zombie wounds. It was possible it would work on
non-zombie wounds as well, but no one would let a zombie close
enough to lick them in order to find out. Not only did the eye work
again, but it had stopped spinning, making him very happy.

“That’s really gross!” Tobias stated with
glee. “I wish I could do that!” He gently poked his eye with a
finger and stretched out his tongue in an attempt to reach it.
“Nope! It’s too far away and I think mommy would be mad if I took
my eye out like that.”

“Villagshe, home,” Zachary told the boy,
holding out his hand. Tobias took it and they walked away from the
deer that was still bleating and jumping in disgust at having been
slimed.

It wasn’t long until they emerged from the
forest onto the windswept cliffs. The sun was nearly set and its
golden rays streaked out from the horizon, causing the bottoms of
the clouds to glow brilliant yellows, oranges, reds and purples. It
was a truly beautiful sight and the smell of sea spray filled the
air. Off in the distance to their right, away from the village,
thunder rumbled. Zachary looked in that direction and jumped when
he saw a bolt of lightning. He had become terribly afraid of
it.

“Look! There’s a woman near the edge of the
cliff.” Tobias said. Sure enough, a woman in a flowing white dress
and cloak stood with her arms spread. She was staring into the
sunset while a breeze from the ocean swept her dress and beautiful
blonde hair back. “Let’s go see if she’ll help us get back to the
village!” Tobias tugged on Zachary’s arm, pulling it loose from the
shoulder socket. It fell to the ground with a meaty thud and both
of them stared at it for a moment. “. . . Oops,” Tobias finally
said.

Zachary reached down and picked up the arm.
He set it against the shoulder where it reattached. It was another
nice feature of being a zombie. While body parts did fall off, they
also reattached easily. “That’s really neat,” Tobias told him. “I
wish I could pull my arm off and put it back on. Sorry I pulled
yours off.”

“Shalright,” Zachary reassured him.

“Shal . . . You mean it’s alright?” Tobias
clarified.

“Yeshh.”

“Okay. Let’s go talk to the woman on the
cliff, okay?” Tobias suggested again.

“Yeshh.” They walked toward the sea cliffs.
Tobias was very careful not to yank on his arm after that.

***

Anise stood at the edge of the cliff with
her arms spread wide. The breeze brushed her beautiful blonde hair
against her cheeks as she cherished her dramatic pose. Everything
was perfect. The sun was setting and lighting up the clouds in
brilliant golden orange hues. Far to the right, lightning lit the
sky, sending thunder to mix with the sound of the waves crashing
against the rocky beach below.