Dead Men (and Women) Walking (23 page)

Outside the mall, she
finally reaches her car and is confronted by a trio of Gucci girls
turned ghastly. Either due to some buried primal group memory or
just out of habit, the girls giggle at the fat woman fumbling with
her keys. Sounding like someone with throat cancer or choking on
wet bread, the girls continue to hack and titter, giving Rose ample
time to secure herself into the driver's seat. She forces the
pickup into gear. When the irresistible force (Rose's truck) meets
the rotting object (Gucci girls), the result equals splat. The
girls, no longer slaves to fashion, makeup or popular opinion, only
diet, writhe on the pavement like spiders with limbs
removed.

She wheels past a security
guard, who curiously resembles Keith Richards. The truck backfires
putting an exclamation point to her thoughts.

“
What the fuck was that all
about?”

The needle burns on 65 all
the way home, the highest speed the Toyota will allow before having
convulsions.

She arrives in the driveway
just as a pizza delivery driver pulls up two doors down.
Dumbfounded, she watches as the driver plows into the front of a
Volkswagon Bus. Boy, those hippies are going to be pissed. The
driver gets out the car, one hand holding the pizza like some
underpaid Statue of Liberty. The other hand still grips the
steering wheel. The driver looks at Rose, motions to wave but seems
to realize he’s missing a key ingredient in the gesturing
process.

Rose opens the door. Home
Sweet Home. Duane manages a grumble. She plops on the couch. She
stares at her husband, already three days dead, slowly becoming one
with his chair. Rose grabs the remote from his swollen
hand.

“
And give me some of those
chips too.”

Rose makes herself
comfortable, realizing the more things change, the more they stay
the same.

G. W. Thomas

The dim mist settled beneath
the windowsill, the minute crack no longer plugged with white
paint. The smoke solidified into a twisted and grotesque being. Its
skin was deathly pale, hair-less, cold. The eyes, piercing red. The
ears, large and swept back in place of hair. The body was
uncovered, naked for all to see, though none would have wished to
look on such a ghoulish physique. And the fingers, tiny spears,
each tipped with a saber-like nail. All in all, the nosferat was a
hideous thing.

Its name was long forgotten.
Dead, like its soul. But in those odd circumstances when it must
appear, only by night, to be one of the living, it called itself
Borque.

Borque floated across the
parlor floor. It was heading up the long staircase to the bedrooms
above. There it knew it would find Kathrina sleeping. It hungered
for that which was not rightly its to take. It would suck her
blood. It would spew cold sperm into her womb. It would take and
take and take ...

A sound stopped the stalking
beast. Downstairs, standing motionless, like one of the suits of
armor, was Kathrina’s father, Dr. Polidori. Borque spun wildly,
hissing like a serpent.

“
So -- you return,
Vladaslav Korbochenko?”

The vampyre spit again,
pained to hear its long forgotten name. “Call me Borque!” it
demanded.

“
I’ll call you Hell-spawn!”
the scientist roared. “How dare you come into my house
uninvited?”

“
Tsk-tsk, doktor, and you a
Man of Science. But you forget, I was invited. By your daughter
--”

“
Leave.”

“
Never.”

“
No more warnings then. I
have tried to respect your existence as part of Nature’s scheme --
but no longer.” The man retrieved an object from his pocket. The
geegaw was a gilt-worked cross of gold, borrowed from a colleague,
a doctor of Archeology, Simon Feldman.

The nosferat laughed.
“Hog-wash and superstition, doktor.” The creature began ascending
the stairs once more. “You said it yourself. Nature’s scheme. The
cross has no effect -- never did!”

“
Damn you!” cursed the man,
throwing the crucifix to the floor.

Borque chortled again,
spinning and leaping up step after step. “She’s mine, Polidori. You
are all my cattle.”

The vampyre topped the
stair. The first door on its left, there he would find the
beautiful and helpless Kathrina. A diseased hand turned the knob,
allowing the cadaverous body to enter. Once inside, Borque screamed
like a stuck pig, a pale, inhuman shriek. After a moment, silence
returned.

Downstairs, Polidori smiled.
He took the stairs slowly, listening to the slow and peaceful
breathing of his child. The vampyre was gone. In a moment the
vlokvelk would be too. The vlokvelk had little business on this
dimensional plane, except for the occasional foray for food. Top of
the food chain, the doctor thought to himself. Top of the food
chain.

Nature’s scheme. He was a
Man of Science after all. Just like the sign on the door
said:

FREDERICK POLIDORI, DOCTOR
OF BIOLOGY.

By Tristan T.
Tenorio

Its eyes jerked open. It
drew long deep breaths, wheezing as it did so. It sat up, and as it
did so, it heard sounds, sounds of raised voices and scampering
feet. It ambled up to his feet, slowly, clumsily trying to maintain
its balance. It looked at its surroundings, trying to make sense of
where it was. It was in a grassy place, probably in a park, but it
did not know that. The sun shone in its eyes, the air smelled of
smoke and ruin and death, but these were all new things to it. This
creature, this New Creature, struggled to analyze everything. But
it would be damned to fail.

In the distance, the New
Creature could see things moving. They looked similar to it, but
they were not like it. The New Creature began to feel something.
Something that tugged in the back of its confused mind. Not knowing
what it was, the New Creature began to move. It walked with slow,
sluggish steps, like something that had just awakened. It began to
move towards the things in the distance. The things also began to
move. They moved much faster than the New Creature, as if they had
been doing it for a long time. The New Creature also began to move
faster, but it was not able to reach the things before they moved
out of its sight. Nevertheless, it continued to move towards them,
for there was something that was compelling him to.

When the New Creature
reached the spot where it last saw the things, it stopped. It tried
to make sense of its surroundings. It could see more things that
were like the New Creature lying on the ground.

But these things were not
moving. They smelled a lot like the air when it awoke. They had the
scent of death, and their heads were damaged. Some were black,
shrunken things that crumbled when touched. The New Creature stood
over the motionless things as if to mourn, but the feeling, the
undeniable desire for something it could not understand, prompted
it to move again.

It walked for a good long
time, through wide, hard pathways, soft, grassy parks and rocky
mountain passages. The sky was soon becoming dark. The New Creature
stopped and looked around. It could hear the sounds of shuffling
feet, similar to its footsteps. In the fading light, it could see
other New Creatures walking about. Like it, they were walking
around, listlessly, as if they were looking for something, but
unsure of what that was.

The New Creatures came in
different shapes and sizes. Some were complete, others missing
pieces or parts, but it did not seem to bother them. Most were
clothed, fully or in tatters, and some wore nothing at all. They
felt no shame, outrage, nor disgust. They felt nothing save a
desire, a need.

Then, they heard it. A low,
moaning sound from somewhere not too far off in the distance.
Instinctively, they began to follow it. Like moths to a flame, or
pilgrims to a holy place, the mass of New Creatures rushed, as best
they can, to the source of the call. Some stumbled and crawled,
others ran and most walked towards the noise.

They began to hear screams,
of pain and panic and sounds they could not begin to identify,
mixed with the noise of ripping, tearing and devouring. As the New
Creatures arrived, they came upon a scene of feasting. Other New
Creatures were eating something on the ground. They began to sense
something from the thing the others were feasting on. They began to
reach for the sprawled thing on the ground, trying to partake of
that something they sensed. They pushed, pulled and tore at the
thing, tearing out chunks from it. It was warm, sticky and slippery
all at the same time, and as if on instinct, they ate and swallowed
the chunks of the thing. As they felt the warm pieces slide down
their gullets and begin to fill their bellies, they began to walk
away again.

It wasn’t because they were
satisfied, it was because what they were looking for, what they
desired from the thing on the ground, wasn’t there anymore. And in
the haze and confusion of their minds, a purpose was set. Their
desire now acknowledged, wrong or right did not matter. Wrong or
right no longer applied to them. They only felt a need. A need to
fill the terrible emptiness within them, these pitiful, terrible
New Creatures, and they would not stop until they found the
something to fill that void.

Whatever that something was,
they would not be denied it. They knew they wanted something from
the things that looked like them but were not them, but they knew
not what it was. It was inside these screaming things, these
struggling, frightened things, but it would disappear when they
were torn apart by the New Creatures, in an attempt to locate that
elusive something. Desperate to have that something, the New
Creatures would bite and chew and swallow parts of the screaming
things, their warm blood flowing into their maws, their
reddish-pink flesh swallowed down their throats, in an attempt to
get that something they wanted. But they would never be
satisfied.

The New Creatures continued
walking all through the night, unmindful of the cold, searching for
that elusive object of their desire. They knew there were more of
the things that looked like them but were not like them, and they
would find them. No matter what.

By Penelope
Allen

His frame is painfully
gaunt,

in cinder striped
rags,

as he shuffles and
haunts

a dreadful second hand
store.

Lamps stand on sagged
shelves;

no two shades are the
same:

he’s looking for long lost
remains.

He softly calls

   
my Love 
my Life

   
my beautiful
Wife

   
my
Blood  my Child

   
So sweet and
mild

   
I am your
beggar beguiled

but only his echo rises and
falls.

Three score and three
years

since they
disappeared,

muscled away at the rail
yard that day.

Too numb struck to
protest,

he stoically prayed for the
best.

Steam rolled down the
line

until he ran out of
time

and typhoid caught
him

in camped out
concentration.

On the eve of his
death,

with devotion
profound, 

he began hunting through
mounds

for their burial
grounds.

Meeting more aimless
souls

than he could possibly
count.

At
Ravensbrüek, 

where women were reviled and
defiled:

ashen spirits fumed
secrets

of the fiend Irma
Grese

and her savage devil
dogs.

He scoured reams of
logs

through families of
names,

but no grasp of the
same.

At Auschwitz:

blind to his held fast
hope,

the concierge was too
cruelly kind

with vivid assertions of
Irma’s coercion.

A glimmer obsesses his
mind.

His beloveds’ skin was so
clear,

so pure, that it
shone,

pale and refined with
feathered laugh lines.

He became convinced the jack
booted witch

committed an implacable
sin

and mutilated his precious
kin

to occupy a sadist’s moments
of leisure -

fingering lamp lit tattoos
so stark, 

they glow in the
dark.

He’s consumed with grief
beyond belief.

As he
spiraled 

into despair and
despise,

the love light died in his
eyes.