Ahh, more words!
Yes folks, there are more, and they can be found below. These are some of my more abstract stories and due to page height restrictions Dave has been cut off.
Bands of ThievesWhen I was younger, my parents would send me to my room when they came. I never understood why. They seemed like nice people to me, but obviously I was far too trusting as a child. I had a big brother who was old enough to see them, and he would tell me stories of their massive wagons pulled by ten men each. They had so much stuff. It almost seemed like they could barely hold any more when they arrived, but they were always looking for something. Most people called them bands of thieves. Once again, I didn't understand why. In my opinion they had never stolen anything; they had just asked nicely and been given things. Once again I was wrong.
I remember very first time I was allowed to see them as if it were yesterday. My parents opened the door and a large man with long messy hair stood there. He was too big to fit in the doorway so he remained outside. He had a worn out wide rimmed hat with some hair escaping out of the various holes in the top of it. His eyes sunk back a bit and his nose protruded farther than anyone's I had ever seen before. He was clean shaven. He wore a brown fur coat that he seemed to have outgrown. The back of his hands were very hairy and he was wearing a single ring on his middle finger. He was wearing a nice pair of dress pants. I thought he must have just gotten them from somebody. When he opened his mouth to speak I noticed that one of his teeth was missing. His voice was deeper than I had imagined it would be, but he spoke quietly and softly. Somehow, even with his calm and kind tone, his voice demanded attention. He introduced himself and asked very politely for a jar of mayonnaise and some candles. My mother told me to fetch the nice candles and I ran off to grab them. My brother came with me. When I opened the cabinet I reached in a grabbed out best candles. I turned around to find my brother shaking his head. I didn't understand why as I had been told to get the good candles. He pointed to another group of candles that were clearly not as good as these ones. I opened my mouth to ask, but he put his finger over his lips and pointed at them. I put the good candles back and grabbed the old ones. I walked back to the door and asked my mother if I could give him the candles. After some slight hesitation she said yes and I held the candles up for the man. He took them and kindly thanked me. My father returned from the kitchen with a jar of mayonnaise and handed it to the man. The man shook my father's hand and returned to his caravan. I saw that he too had 2 children. They were playing with some old soap carvings shaped like rabbits. One of them looked up and saw me and waved. My mother closed the door as I waved back. That night I sat in bed wondering about a lot of things. I wondered why we had not given them the good candles. I wondered why they wanted mayonnaise. I wondered why people feared these kind people. I wondered who those children were. And last but not least, I wondered if they would be my friends. For the next two years, caravans came and went every week, but I never saw the same family twice. There were tall families, short families, families with one child, and families with twelve. There was always something interesting and new about the families' caravan and the families themselves. But as I began to wonder if I would ever see those two children again, I learned why people feared the bands of thieves. It was late October and the caravans were getting ready for winter. They knocked on the door and we all stood there as my father answered it. It was the big man. He had new boots and a new hat. He was wearing the same pants but they were much more worn out now. I forget what he asked for that time, but as he left he turned and saw the teddy I was holding. My grandmother had made it herself and I was incredibly proud of it. He looked at it in a way that made me uneasy. I gripped it tighter waiting to see what he would do. He looked up from me to my father and asked if he could have it for his son. My father told him he had already been given what he had asked for. The man asked again, but once again my father raised his voice and told the man that the bear held great sentimental value to me. The man accepted it and walked off. When my father closed the door I noticed my mother was crying. I asked her what was wrong and my father told me to go to my room. Once again I sat in bed wondering about things. Why had my mother been crying? Why did my father seem angry at me? I fell asleep. I remember waking up crying and clutching the teddy. I can't remember what I had dreamt of but it had terrified me. I walked to my parent's bedroom to find they were still awake. I told them about my dream and they told me I could stay with them for the night. When I awoke the next morning I was alone. I heard people in the kitchen downstairs and assumed that my parents were making breakfast. When I got to the bottom of the stairs I saw two police officers sitting at the table. I knew something was wrong. I walked in to the kitchen to find my mother crying and my father comforting her. My brother was sitting at the table staring at his breakfast. He was lost in his own thoughts. One of the police officer asked me if I had heard anything last night. I told him that I had not. My parents assured the officer that I had been sleeping in their room. I started to walk towards my parents but they told me to stay where I was. They came to me and walked me into the living room. The police officers began talking to my brother. I could hear him fighting back tears as he spoke. He told them he had been sleeping and he had heard a noise outside. When he went out they were there. My parents covered my ears at this point and I only heard him say "They knocked me over and broke-" before their hands completely covered my ears. A third police officer walked in with a wheelchair and after a couple of minutes they brought my brother out of the kitchen in it. He was crying. I had never seen my brother cry before. I didn't know what was wrong but I knew it was bad. When he was gone my father sat beside me and told me that the thieves had returned to take the teddy bear from me while I was sleeping because we had not given it to them. He said that my brother had heard them and had gone outside to stop them, but they had broken his spine and set him up in the chair in the kitchen like that for us to find in the morning. My heart dropped instantly. I knew that if you're spine was broken, you couldn't walk. I sat in my room for two days straight crying about it. My brother had gone outside to protect me from the thieves and had been paralyzed because of it. Two weeks later, a police officer knocked on our door. He brought all of us into the living room and told us that my brother wouldn't be coming home. At that, my father told me to leave. I went up to my room, but I was really quiet and I put my ear to the floor. I heard about my brother going through physiotherapy and how he had struggled. In the end he killed himself because he couldn't take it. We moved to the city a week later because the bands of thieves never came to the city. My mother started drinking and my father never came home. My family fell apart and nobody was punished for it. The people who had enthralled me as a child instantly became horrifying things that had destroyed my family. All of it was for a teddy bear. | The Great OneWhen the great one returned from his translucent flying apparatus, he brought with him gifts. There were gifts of many shapes and sizes, but all were great. He told me to decide which gift I wanted. This came to me as a surprise as I didn't have an appearance that would make me stand out in the crowd, nor was I behaving in a unique way. I was just standing there watching him like everyone else.
People liked him. There was something about him that made people want to see him. They wanted to hear his voice and be near him. Many even attempted to infiltrate his "Cloud Ship" as he called it. They all died horribly. I attended many of their funerals to show my respect for their courage and initiative. At least that's what I told people. I actually attended because it made me feel better about myself. As he descended, hand held out to me, I noticed a small crater in his skin above his left eyebrow. It was almost completely hidden, but it was there. I don't know why I noticed it, or why it made me feel important, but it amused me. I smiled as I looked at it. He told me again to choose a gift, but I had not yet decided. I wanted a gift that I would like, but I wanted to choose a gift that would impress him. His opinion of me seemed more important than my own happiness. I believe everyone else there felt the same way. As I looked through the gifts, my eyes kept wandering back to the crater on his face. I wondered what had caused it and why. At that moment I realized what gift I wanted. I looked him in the eye and said "I would like your charisma, your charm. I want to be able to talk to people the way you talk to people. I want to be like you." He looked back into my eyes and said "I admire the fact that you did not choose a material possession, but that is not one of the items I have laid out here for you to choose from and I'm afraid you have lost your chance." He then turned away and asked somebody else in the crowd to choose. I was crushed. I had only asked for one simple thing and he had shunned me. I looked back over at him and noticed a small shine coming from the crater. It appeared to be a piece of metal embedded within the indent. The other member of the crowd chose their gift almost immediately. As they did the shine disappeared and with it the amusement displayed in his face seemed to dissipate. He gave them the gift and walked back up his staircase into his contraption. As the crowd dispersed I realized I had given everyone in it a great gift. I had given them more time with him and a second chance to be chosen by him today. I went home with a sense of pride. BioHazard OpeningAbsolute deafness is of course a major side effect of being eaten alive. Although due to circumstances, this almost never, one exception being the story of the victim I will get to in a minute, crosses the mind of such a victim. The victim's thoughts usually go more along the lines of: "OH SHIT, WHAT IS THIS. I'm being eaten alive; I have to get this thing off me. I can' get this thing off me. Why is nobody helping me? Why do hotdogs come in packs of 8 while buns come in packs of 12? Oh I guess I should die now."
Of course "why do hotdogs come in packs of 8 while buns come in packs of 12?" is more often a much deeper question about what will become of the victim after the death. But, the three most commonly asked questions when being eaten alive, not including those about the afterlife or lack thereof, are the aforementioned and occasionally: "Why do they call it a Big Mac? Was there ever an average sized Mac, or even a small Mac? And who defines big anyways?" and the rarer: "Why can't the Batmobile fly. Bats fly, shouldn't it?" Curiously enough, everyone that thinks one of those questions dies instantly afterwards. In fact, it would seem that while being eaten alive, your chances of survival increase greatly if you ask a question that is very rarely asked. Upon learning this information, one victim attempted not to ask any questions at all, which only angered the devourer of this victim's body and caused it to eat faster. Nobody knows why the question you ask defines if you survive or how quickly you die while being eaten alive. This is mostly because not very many people are looking into it; probably because there were only four sentient beings in the universe that knew about it, one of which was devoured alive after not asking any question at all, and none of the three others inhabit the planet Earth, so we will ignore them. I believe I have stalled long enough, so I will now tell the story of the victim of being eaten alive that happened to realize that they would not be able to ever hear anything ever again. Mary Chadwick was an average person, going about her average day, at the time that she normally would. Therefore it was quite a surprise to her when she found herself being eaten alive. The biggest surprise to her was that the creature eating her alive was human, or at least appeared to be. The creature was what is now commonly referred to as a zombie. Because of the question she asked, she was saved, only to become a zombie herself. That was the beginning of the outbreak. Our actual story takes place twelve years after the infection. That of course sets a vague enough period of time for me to wonder exactly what is qualified as "after the infection". So I asked about it. I was told to just read the script. When I inquired further, I was promptly told to fuck off. I did what I was told, for fear of not getting paid. Three years after the infection is quite a long time and a lot happened then but that of course leaves room for a prequel that is nowhere near as good as the original. That is assuming the original is any good, but you can decide that. It is twelve years after the infection, and the population of humans is beginning to rise again. The population of zombies is beginning to decrease due to the large amount of survivors that got fed up with hiding and decided to just go out and kill any and all zombies they could find. That put a very large dent in the zombie's population, but also lowered the human population more. Natural selection at it's finest I say. Many of these groups, however, became successful in their murderous endeavors. This is their story. DaveIt all started when I met Dave. I’m not sure what it was about him that I first noticed. It may have been the hat, or the shoes. His hat was bright red and his shoes were a very deep blue. The rest of the clothing in between created an almost gradient effect. He wore a pair of blue pants that faded as they got higher. He wore a tie that faded as it got lower. As for the rest of his clothes, they were non-existent. Instead he seemed to have painted on his shirt and gloves. It started red at the top and became bluer as it went down. Come to think of it, his entire attire may have been what made me want to talk to him.
As I approached him, he was shot. I’m still not sure who did it, or why, but I know they ran away pretty quickly. I rushed to Dave to see if he was ok. He was sitting, leaning his back against the shelving behind him, which were covered in books and entirely unintentionally coated in blood. He looked up when I got to him and he coughed. To this day I still believe he was trying to say something, but he denies it. He reached behind him and grabbed a book. “1003 Things You Can’t do With a Toothbrush in Your Shoe” it was called. The author’s name was Melanie Dutter or something like that. For all I know it could have been Greg Dutter, or Melanie Greg? He started reading out loud: “Number four-seventy-nine: Brush Your Teeth. Hmm, I would never have thought of that.” He said as his blood flowed out of the rather large and infected looking hole he had in his arm. |