The Ghost of a Zombie

I thought this was a brilliant concept and wish this had been a challenge subject. I pitched the idea on a few vocal pages when Mike Singleton from the True crime, Horror Story & Dark Poetry group on Facebook (Definitely join if you are interested in any of the above-mentioned subjects, they share some epic whoppers) goaded me into writing my version. Here it is! I hope you enjoy and if you want to make your own, share it with me on facebook or instagram! I would love to read ya'lls renditions!

I had some unfinished business. I knew what that unfinished business was. Unfortunately, the likely hood of achieving it had passed. Literally, she had died.

I am a bit of a recluse, which was always odd for a lawyer. I just couldn’t find words to say to people if I didn’t know all the angles. Even still I would have to practice responses at home before I could go into court. Otherwise, I got easily flustered. Exhaustion from hiding this short coming had me experiencing a burn out that left me wanting to shut myself away from the world when I wasn’t working.

That changed when I met Amelia Rodreguez. She was assigned by the firm to help me with case files. It wasn’t love at first site, though. The best way to describe her is approachable. There was no ethereal or cosmetic beauty to her. She wasn’t ugly, though. If I had passed her bye on the streets, she would go unnoticed, but if I had been looking for help, she would be the person I would want to go up to.

There was a power to that approachability, and it had my tongue loosening. I didn’t know anything about her. Her goals and wants did not read out on her face, mystifying me. All the same I suddenly felt the need to talk. I needed her to know me. More importantly, I needed her to accept me.

As we poured through cases together, I gushed out maters of the soul. She lightened my load on two fronts and I felt uplifted. Just a week into her employment I found myself wanting to ask her out for coffee or something on our time off.

Sadly, though, I caught a new strain of the covid-19. It started with frequent sneezing and digressed into shortness of breath with fits of coughing. When I realized I could no longer taste I stopped going into the office, for everyone's safety. I was surprised at how quickly it took me, not even three days at home. I had never been vaccinated but stubborn pride told me I would be fine.

Confusion wracked me as I woke up dead on the third day. I had gone to bed wheezing and shaking, thinking a good sleep would rejuvenate me. When I had sat up that morning, I felt great. I could breathe, there were no aches or pains and my temperature felt fine, so I got up. I was starting my morning stretches at the side of my bed when something stirred in my sheets.

I would never want to get someone sick, but my mind went to Amelia. Maybe she had come to keep me warm and her affinity to people had healed me. Nope. I was shocked when I saw myself struggling in the twisted sheets. A scream tried to escape my mouth, but like a dream nothing came out.

“I am dreaming,” I told myself, “Now wake up!”

I didn’t wake up. Instead, I watched myself struggle in bed for hours. When my carcass finally emerged from the mangled sheets it swayed like a newborn finding its feet. I watched in terrified bewilderment as my former self tossed the place in its mindless wonderings. It bumped into walls, bruising and cutting up my flesh. It tripped over anything its feet caught on, breaking my toes and making it harder for whatever possessed me to move.

For days it bumbled about this way and that while I did everything in my power to stop it. I couldn’t figure out its goals. I couldn’t get back into my body. I couldn’t touch anything. I had no idea what to do, but I was beginning to think I wanted to pass on, if only I had asked Amelia to go out with me the first moment, I had met her. Not knowing if she liked me or not had my soul stuck to this mortal coil.

A week into our entrapment my old body must have been hungry or something. Its rampage had subsided, and its movements were sluggish. His calmer demeanor had me relaxing as well, which gave me time to think.

Firstly, I was surprised all the noise had not alerted the neighbors. The HOA people were real pricks that loved giving out citations and noise violations. I was also surprised no one from the practice had come by. I saw my phone light up with their number, but after a few days the calls stopped. What hurt me most though was that Amelia had not had neither called nor checked in on me at all.

I watched my body ate its fingers out of desperation and it dawned on me in my hopelessness that this was a zombie apocalypse. They were probably all dead. Hopefulness rebounded as I had the epiphany that perhaps Amelia like me was stuck in her apartment unable to move on. New purpose spurred me as I connected the dots.

“We gotta get out of here,” I told my body.

My body stopped chewing and eyes drifted where my spirit lay. Could my meat sack hear me? Finally, I thought and shouted, “Hey you goon!”

It clambered up, more alert this time. I walked to the door frame of my bedroom and shouted again, “This way!”

The zombie twitched and swayed like a beast trying to get its bearings.

“Yea that’s it over here, come on, come on!” I coaxed.

It took hours for me and myself to get down the hall, past the kitchen and living room to my front door. I was cursing myself for upgrading to the penthouse apartment. At the time I thought I had deserved the upgrade for making practice, but I wondered what I had done to deserve this torment.

The greatest challenge was the door. The idiot floundered at the door. Looked under the remains of furniture and ran into every surface looking for the source of my voice. Somehow in a fit of frustration I was sucked back into my body and fit like an oversized latex glove.

I felt like the skin was baggy on my soul and there were multiple sources in the body that I had to fight against. I somehow had grappled onto the main source though and as long as I possessed it, I was able to move the body in delayed jerks. It was a doozy getting the door open with only a pinky and exposed nobs of gore. I was thankful that no pain shot through me as blood spirted across the door with my efforts.

There was no time to celebrate. I couldn’t hold my possession for long and there were still many more obstacles to get out of the building. There were so many entities crawling through the body that worked against me; tiring out my spirit quickly. I had to take a break and was thankful when it managed to stumble into the stair well. The zombie falling down the stairwell shaved considerable time off our journey. It made me wish I had thought to have him fall out of a window. Oh well I guess I was still learning in death.

We passed not a soul on our way out. When we finally made it out the door we parted ways, me going to the office and it stumbling down towards other newly made zombabies.

It didn’t take me long to realize that the office had been whipped out. I mean I had sneezed over every surface there. I just needed to see if I could find her address. Problem was how did I get into the building? Well, I didn’t get in.

My boss, James, floated out as effortlessly as he made talking to people look. I didn’t have time to waste on chit chat and hadn’t had a conversation cued up so I just blurted, “Where is Amelia?”

James smiled big, “I figured you would like her she has.....”He paused thinking about how he could describe her, “an approachableness about her. Wished she hadn’t passed on. I could have used her in a courtroom to win over a jury.”

“How do you know she passed?” I asked

“She was one of the essential and she had been vaccinated to she stayed on even when she was sick. It was down to the two of us and she passed right there in the filing room.” He shook his head, “Her body didn’t turn like some of the others though and I could swear I saw her body float into the light.” James patted me on the shoulder and said with that charmer smile of his, “I am glad to see you are alive, though everyone keeps dying on me.”

Not one to mince words I said dead pan, “James, we are dead.”

His face fell and his eyes widened in horror. He looked behind him realizing he hadn’t opened that door. I never saw him in life break his composure and it took me aback to realize how tormented he was on the inside as he threw a full-blown tantrum. “Fucking, fuck, fuckiedy, fuck jacks. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck!” he screamed into the wind.

When he had finished, he fell silent and never talked to me again. For a few days we wondered the city together, but I couldn’t take his melancholy and found a polite excuse to leave him on the outskirts of town. I hadn’t realized how nice it had been to have the silent companion in death. Perhaps I should have had the same tantrum, because I am now well and truly stuck in this hellscape.