Zombie Poodle Skirt

The silver of the moon's rays makes everything visible yet alien. Still it was beautiful and it was times like this that made walking home a blessing. There is a certain amount of detail that goes missing well in a car. Jesse knew this walk, she had made it five days a week for the last year and a half and still she was finding anew.

It was her way home from her after school job at the bookstore. Yeah it is just as it sounds, cute. The McCabe’s Book Store is a small place in the San Bernardino mountains. Picturesque, the small store was piled high, the shelves bursting with the written word. Jesse would be surrounded by adventure and relished every moment but the story is not about that. Jesse was walking home looking at what she knew with a light that she did not, it made everything change yet the same.

Quickly Jesse found herself away from the “busy” street of the town, even at six the streets were deserted. The further she walked the colder she became and soon the cold made Jesse stopped to swing her skates off her shoulder. For longer then she had been working at the store Jesse had been skating to school. Thought it was too dangerous to skate home in the dark and she was forced to walk home in her black sneakers. Pulling her arms about herself as the temperature dropped, it seemed colder walking under the shade of the ancient California forest.

-WHAM

With a force that knocked Jesse off her feet and with pain that she did not know she was on her back. Jesse saw the stars above her and then all was chaos. The sound of material tearing, pain and then there would be no further coherent thought to come from the body of Jesse.

To all that knew her Jesse died that evening September of 1956. Her mother, father and brother would search for her. They would cry for her and soon mourn her, never forgetting her. No body would be found just one bloody skate, a chunk of gray fabric and blood, lots and lots of blood.

Truth is something hit her. Something hit her and tore the skirt that Jesse had meticulously sewn on the couch as Victor watched Zorro. It was an easy tear and within seconds a frenzy began.

Whatever hit Jesse, for she would never see would eat her internal organs. It would make it half way through her left leg before some reason it stopped. Maybe by that time Jesse was no more. Maybe by that time without lungs and heart Jesse was dead but for some reason her body had been left.

Too many people have their lives taken from themselves, their present taken from family and earthly plan. Jesse had met this fact that all will meet but unlike many deaths Jesse’s body would get up. It would stand up, taking no notice that she was missing 30% of her left leg. Not even looking at the stomach that danced about her poodle decal, staining the gray red.

Jesse’s body would wander the woods. Soon her name and disappearance were forgotten to the passing of time.