They weren't fast or particularly scary, but they were oncoming and they were persistent. So naturally, or rather not, I was afraid. We fled from scene to scene, gathering and loosing people, most of which I did not note past the weight on my shoulders of responsibility, waiting for the conclusion I had reached many times numerous. There are often steps, varying in number, varying in size, but often there.
Looking back, I wonder if I fought for them or if I tried for myself, and they merely came with, an accompaniment I needed only to reach the end, not to satisfy the game in me, but of me.
The house changes too, but it is always a memory distorted. I always know where I am. Back in that place, back on that road, back on that street, watching them pass by, slow and Neanderthal. And yet they weren't there too.
It is interesting to watch the exaggeration.
My friends sat anxiously on the couch, where a hand - seemingly from no where - scrabbled at my thigh where it was pressed against the armrest. Upon standing, I found I had been seated in the middle where my Kika was no resting docilely.
I love the logic of these places.
There was a dull knife on the table before the couch and mentally, I willed myself to take it up and attack the hand, incase it did something untoward, but I didn't, my body ignoring the common sense of doing anything plausible, like slapping my friends for being there in the first place.
I wandered around the house, its pattern changing fro time to time, becoming more and less the house I knew, but always captivating in its nooks and crannies. I never got to explore the way I wanted.
My father was in the other room with an elderly relative. In bizarre fashion, they busied themselves drinking beer and watching a TV I don't think was working properly.
But my attention passed from them.
I was making a perimeter check you see, trying to discern if all was safe.
I meandered into the kitchen that was mostly recognizable, even beneath the layers of baking trays and loaded up platters of food.
It didn't smell nice, but then I did not like the smell of roasts in any time or place.
In the dinning room, which was both larger and smaller, depending on the angle, my mother was worrying over the food that was sprawled here too. Once again, it was unappealing. But much as this whole scenario was necessary, so too was the grand spread she was laboring by herself to bring for all those gathered into the house that was and wasn't. On the plus side, I could probably sneak some food for my Kika, so that would be okay. Not that Kika would do much but look put upon.
My mother had little to say beyond perhaps the most hilarious thing I have heard in a while in that state - when I thought on it later, it was enough to make me hysterical for a brief time. As it was, the line was delivered with a face of forbearance, ready to continue but tired that it must be this way. She was not worried. Should I flatter myself and consider that I was so good a protector? Or should I pay more attention to her valiantly flawed logic?
With a sigh, she elaborated:
"Liz could have handled them all if Stacey hadn't eaten her salad."
The all referred to the zombies that had trapped us in this house.
Apparently, in this landscape, Liz was a martial arts expert, who was now too weak to protect us due to here salad being consumed by her friend Stacey.
Makes sense to me, how about you?
Anyway, after this gem of wisdom, I went back to check up on my friends.
It seemed that Libby had acted on the wisdom I could not, and had cut the fingers off the hand in the couch. I took them and threw them into the bin under the table. I took the knife too, not sure what to do with it.
Normally this little play ends with the grand meal my mother had cooked feeding the family and whoever had gathered in that house – last supper. After that, some how a divine savior is called down and he/she/it puts the zombies back in their graves, or at least their consciousness back in the after world.
As if was, this did not occur that night.
I woke up.
Not that I minded. It meant I didn't need to eat the roast.
But alas, I could not offer meat to Kika and watch the disdain.