Blood Orange Zombie

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Summer camp big kids sneak out to scale slippery rocks across the rushing water's edge. So we want to do that too. I follow Bubba. He knows everything.

The river thunders for miles, but the river's rage slow pokes here. Can you see it? Near that stand of Mugging Trees.

Come to find out, they're not mugging for the camera, making faces at Polaroids. Muggings Trees are thugs. Violent, vicious thugs. They isolate the weak kids and try to kill them, dead. Dead-dead.

Centuries ago, Mugging Trees hoofed it to the Crossroads where Robert Johnson made his deal with the Devil.

The trees made their own pact. It went like this:

The Devil agrees to give the trees impenetrable roots that stretch to Hell, and in return the trees agree to poison the world's children, one sweet gumball at a time.

Parents only ever see the trade-offs: bubblegum, adhesives, medicines and salves to cure whatever ails you. Or so they're led to believe.

Bubba and me, we're itching to catch up with Johnny, Wally, Ritchie, and Jack, so we rush. Cut across the beach but its Quick Sand eating shoes and licking bones. Jack hears us screaming, finds a long branch, helps us outta there, quick. We lay bodies flat then hightail it the heck outta there, sacrificing shoes and socks. We don't look back!

Then we're trapped. We pop up underneath Mugging Trees. Yikes!

Their gumballs are everywhere. There's no way out. Every square inch is covered. We're trapped. And we ain't got no shoes.

Only thing we think to do: summersault our way through the gumballs. Hands and feet smacking into sticky balls of Hell. Each one bites and tears, pricks our veins, draws our blood. Snap, Crackle, Pop.

I trade Vitamin Deficiency Walking for Blood Orange Zombie. Camp kids suck balls, but the nickname sticks. I'm caked in bloody bits of bubbling, oozing skin that pinks, then pops a ghastly white, then flashes orange, then boils bloody-raspberry-red before falling away, charred to black.

When Doc comes in, he smiles, offering me a stick of gum.

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Copyright © 04/30/2024 by Christy Munson. All rights reserved.

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Author's Notes:

Word count: 350

Written for Proud ViM Productions' unofficial challenge, We'z Walking on... Anything But Sunshine!