Timothy 01: Timothy (3 page)

I couldn’t believe how incredibly good his fingers tasted once I swallowed the wedding ring, the pinkie ring and the watch, almost choked on that garish thing. My father’s screams didn’t stop until I was halfway up his wrist by which time it became more of a high keening. Then ceased all together. My body quivered with the delight as it rendered mercilessly through his body, I had long retreated to a dark recess. Maybe not as soon as I should have but I went, eventually. There was a measured sense of satisfaction as I killed my father—he was an asshole, plain and simple. His idea of love usually revolved around a beer buzz and the back of his hand—that was of course until I turned fourteen when I became bigger than him.

The only reason I can figure he even came over here was for me to protect his scrawny little ass, it wasn’t to make sure I was alright. My father blamed me for all the ills in his life. Most fathers past their prime try to live vicariously through their kids, not my old man, though. He wanted his old life back and he saw me as the roadblock that prevented him from getting back there. When I was eight years old he had locked me in the basement for a solid week. I was old enough to realize that crying out would have brought more wrath than mercy. Not once did he check on me to see if I needed anything or if I was even alive. The day after Christmas I heard the bolt slide back on the basement door and then he had just left, most likely to the bar with his friends. Luckily, my mom had been sort of a canning freak in those last few years she had managed to stay with the old man and to this day though I cannot eat, pickles, beets or sweet relish. I get the cold sweats when I pass jars of them at the grocery store. My hands and piss smelled like vinegar for the rest of the week, every time I rubbed my eyes they would burn for hours.

Before he went out he had left me a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon on the table and on a napkin he had scrawled ‘Merry Christmas Shithead, save the can for redemption’. I thought about crying as I looked through the kitchen window and out into the daylight, but as I drank that beer down I swore I would someday pay him back for that.

***

It was many hours later before I dared borrow my senses just because this was the second person I had eaten. Didn’t mean that I had gotten used to it.

‘
I’m blind!’ I screamed, and that was terrifying. I was already a prisoner in my own body but now I couldn’t even see! As I controlled my faux breathing, trying to suppress the panic that was welling up in me I began to sense a soft light. The harder I concentrated the brighter it got before I realized that dawn was approaching. My body was pinned up against the front door; that was why I couldn’t see anything except the dark maple stained pine.

My dipshit body couldn’t figure out how to get out of the apartment and apparently, I was starving again. Three hundred or so pounds of meat in two days just wasn’t good enough, it’s not like they were Chinese.

‘
Turn the knob, fuck head!’ I yelled.

My head whipped quickly from side to side and then up and down like it was looking for what had spoken to it.

‘
Holy shit! Fuck wad, can you hear me?’ That head movement came back. This could get interesting. It beat the hell out of quivering in the dark like a victim.

‘
Hey big fella, can you turn the knob?’ The head movement happened again but it wasn’t nearly as pronounced. Whatever was controlling my motor functions had at least enough of a thought process to potentially realize that whatever was talking to it was internal. I sensed ‘feelers’ wriggling through the ripples of my mind. It… they were looking for me and they would devour me much like they had my dear old dad. I pictured my hidey hole as a room, a small black dark room which I immediately closed the heavy iron door to, just as the ‘feelers’ slid on by. I was tempted to
make
a moat but I didn’t want any undo activity to cause anything to come investigating.

‘
Fuck you!’ I yelled. The feelers halted their progress, their heads all shot up like prairie dogs in their dens. I covered my mouth lest it betray me. Being like this sucked, it sucked bad but being dead was worse. I was pretty certain that there was no afterlife, no God to atone to and I had lived my life accordingly, but always something niggled ‘what if I’m wrong?’ in the back of my mind. Best to just delay any mythical meeting with this person; now that two murders were on my resume. Although, if my feet were really held to the fire I’m not sure how I could be held accountable for them.

The worms/feelers were still moving around but much slower as if they had caught a scent. I held my breath, figuratively and turned, listening to the noise as a worm scraped up against my door, it had found my hideout. The noise traveled farther up the closure. It was raising its head to let its brethren know. The first thing I could think of was ‘sword’. I nearly dropped the two handed broadsword that appeared. I imagine it would have been in the neighborhood of fifty pounds. The steel shone bright and was encrusted with gems of varying colors and sizes, it looked a lot like the one Arnold used in the
Conan
movie.

The worm turned to look at me as I opened the door and rushed at him. Although, ‘look’ is a stretch—it didn’t have anything resembling eyes. The thing that stared at me was roughly humanoid, it looked like something a retarded five year old would draw. ‘Fuck you!’ I screamed again as I swung my sword clipping the end of its stinger. Caustic fluid flowed from the wound and I watched in horror as wherever the blood came into contact with my mind, the pinkish matter turned gray. This thing was destroying in moments what I had planned to do over the span of many years with booze, pills and definitely some grass.

I brought my sword back up, the man-shaped thing in front of me was struggling. I had not incapacitated it. Whatever this was, it was safe to assume it was a battle to the death, I brought my sword crashing through its fuzzy head quickly stepping back lest I get any of that poison blood on me. But the white fluid that ran from its head was not made of the same material, it merely coursed through the channels in my mind. The thing collapsed to the ground, that’s when it hit me. ‘Dumb ass, why didn’t you just wish for a
gun
?’ Dozens of various weapons began to form in my hands, I settled on the AA-twelve, yup, a fully automatic twelve gauge shotgun, that would work perfectly.

‘
Fuck this cowering shit—I’m going on the offensive.’

I could sense movement all around me they were coming. ‘Be careful for
their
swords,’
I heeded that advice unlike my mom’s advice to be nice to women and they would be nice to me. Chicks are flawed animals, the worse I treated them the more they came around. I had once sodomized a girl who had begged me to stop, had to throw my sheets away she had bled so much on them. She had called me for a month straight trying to go out on a second date, I had finally picked up the phone and told her I’d had better. I’m fairly certain I had heard from one of my friends that she had moved to Seattle or maybe killed herself, I don’t know never really cared enough to get any further explanation.

I let lead fly, the ‘men’ fell all around me, only one got close enough to make it interesting, his head disintegrated for the effort. I felt like Rambo, hell I think I was screaming like him. I was blowing thousands of imaginary rounds through an imaginary weapon, never worrying if my barrel would overheat or if I would run out of bullets, it was damn near orgasmic.

What came next finally made me stop holding the trigger down. I could feel my invaders looking through my mind for something. It was unnerving, all attention had been diverted away from me, the sound that emanated from my mouth could hardly be considered speech, it sounded more like a rake being dragged over bones.

“
Truce?” Came the sound from my mouth, using my thoughts to talk to me.

Was this a trick? ‘What, so I’m kicking your ass—you want me to give up? Fuck you!’ I shouted to myself.

I was allowed to sense ‘men’ by the millions amassing for an assault. I began to wonder if I could call in an air strike.

“
Truce?” Came the one word question again.

‘
Stop talking!’ I told myself. ‘Girls in the morning sound less irritating than you!’ I stood for a moment as I lost concentration the gun I had fabricated quickly dissolved into the material it was made out of. ‘I want my body back!’ I yelled.

“
Must feed.” Was my only response to myself.

‘
You fat bastard, you just ate two whole people—how much more do you need?’

“
Must feed.” My tortured voice box repeated.

And then it hit me, whatever had control of my body needed my help, the dipshit couldn’t figure out how to open the door. “So you’re pretty much asking me if I’ll drive,” I said.

“
Feed,” it pleaded with me.

I took too long in my thoughts. “Feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed!!” it keened.

‘
Shut up!’ I said placing my hands over my ears, about as effectual as pissing on a forest fire.

“
Feed, feed, feed, feed!”

I think it would have gone on forever or until me or it died. I wasn’t willing to find out just how long that might be.

“
Turn the knob!” I told it while also imagining how the process looked.

My alter ego
composed
self, wrenched its gaze down to its hand and grasped the handle, it turned the lock so hard I could hear the innards snap, I had a moment of panic thinking that I would be stuck for eternity in this dark shell while Bozo here cried for food.

‘
Pull!’ I shouted before it completely tore up the inside of the door.

A drunk eighty-year old with Alzheimer’s would have reacted faster to my command but at least it did as it was told. I personally would have stopped to take in the carnage that was all around me but my other self had other ideas. Smoke from fire, ruined cars smoldered, people or things lay in various states of decay. Bullet casings littered the ground, more than once we almost lost our footing on them.

‘
We?’ When had that thought crept into my head? It was still my enemy and I would do whatever it took to get my self back.

‘
What are you?’ I asked the thing in control of my body. But if it couldn’t turn a door knob, could it be self aware? I doubted it. It might not be smart by my definition but he/it was most assuredly running the show, he had taken complete control of me. I was thinking about what it could potentially be; an alien, a demon, a germ, or maybe a virus. I had once read on the internet about a zombie virus that the government had been working on during World War II,
called operation Hugh Mann, but I had skimmed over most of it and considered it to be just more conspiracy bullshit. I wouldn’t have read it at all if it weren’t for the fact that I had to click away from porn as my boss came out of his office to check on all his good little worker bees in Cubicle City. Even as I had struck an answer I shied away from it, I had just eaten two people and I had no control over my own extremities but the fact that I was a zombie still hadn’t hit home.

“
Holy shit, Vern, do you see that one?” I heard a man shout from across the street.

“
That is one big fuckin’ zombie,” came another voice that I could only imagine belonged to Vern.

My head turned to look at two older men who both looked like they had just ransacked an Army surplus store. How they figured their camo outfits were going to make them blend in with the coffee shop front was beyond me.

Hugh, yeah that’s what I’d call my body. Seems fitting somehow. Hugh picked up their scent and was off to the races. The look of surprise on Vern and the other guys face was pretty hilarious right up until the other guy lifted his huge rifle into place.

‘
Hugh, whoa!’ I screamed. ‘Fucking stop, you ape! You’re going to get us killed!’

“
That sum’ bitch is fast, Darryl. You’d better hurry up and shoot it.”

“
Sum’ bitch?”

“
You know what I meant. Shoot that thing.”

“
Did you mean son of a bitch?”

“
Whatever! Shoot the fucker!” Vern screamed.

I was halfway across the street, Darryl had a bead right on my forehead, I swear I could feel the laser dot painting me like an Indian bride. I told Hugh to sidestep just as the first shot rang out. I was pulled to the side as the bullet crashed into my shoulder. I hesitantly waited for the onrush of massive amounts of pain. What came would barely be considered as painful as a mosquito bite.

“
The head, Darryl! The head!”

“
I did shoot him in the head—he moved. He’s so
fast
.”

Darryl dropped his weapon down, pulling the bolt up. The hot brass tinkled to the ground. He was struggling to put a fresh bullet into the action. Who the fuck brings a bolt action rifle to a zombie fuck fest?

Darryl had a look of triumph on his face as he brought his rifle back to bear, unfortunately for him it would be a short lived. Hugh was already past the barrel of the rifle and used Darryl’s body to stop our forward momentum as we crashed into the store front window. Shards of glass, some as big as flagstones, rained down all around us, Darryl seemed to have gotten the worst of it. Between the pieces of glass sticking out at odd angles and his fleshy lips being chewed up in my mouth he wouldn’t live long.

“
Darryl! Fuck, Darryl! You alright?” Vern shouted behind me.