Flash fiction

The injury was worse.

Ellen felt better.

As blue seeped up her arm, she felt strong.

Jack was struggling against it.

He had tried a tourniquet, talked about cutting off his arm. Now he rocked in the corner.

The undead were shambling around. Their prey had escaped.

Ellen and Jack were turning, but still human. Go out now and they’d be eaten.

Ellen wanted to be complete. Didn’t want to be one of the legless who dragged themselves along the ground, late to every meal. She wanted to prey.

Her arm felt hot and itchy. The bite stung. Her mouth was bitter.

It should have been a simple mission.

Their hide-away was around the corner, a mile down the road.

They’d holed up at a rundown gas station. The previous owner had been security conscious. There were metal shutters, a hidden cellar, and plenty of canned food and shotguns.

Ellen reckoned they had taken him in the sudden storm of infection that had destroyed the world overnight. (His rifle behind the counter. A mess of blood around it. He’d shot. And missed.)

He’d been scratching at the door when they’d arrived. They’d let him out and been holed up since. Three months.

Ellen wanted to get out of the place more than she wanted to scout for fresh supplies. Had talked at Jack until he’d been convinced (Wasn’t any less fair than him talking at her for three months. He’d lost his nerve, couldn’t bear for her to leave even to go to the toilet.) He wouldn’t be scared much longer.

In the dark of their shelter, the back of a van free of the undead, she could see his arm throbbing.

The veins pushing to the surface.

It looked painful.

It felt painful.

But it would make her stronger. When she woke up, she’d be one of them.

Jack whimpered to himself.

Praying.

What would happen when there was no fresh meat left, when everyone had turned?

Fresh meat? She meant people, right?

People like Jack who’d never done her any harm.

She’d rip them apart.

“Jack?”

His wet eyes looked in her direction.

“When we come back…”

His eyes cleared. Expecting her to say something to make it all better, to fix things. To tell him it wasn’t all bad.

She knew what to say. There was only one thing.

“When we come back.” Her eyes started to close. The itchy heat had reached her heart and her brain. “just do… what everyone else does.”

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This is an older piece, from way back in January in 2020. Hope you like it!

The names of the crew replaced those of the actor’s onscreen, and the snotty punk music changed into an orchestral score played on a synthesiser.
“These are the guys who make the film, you know.”
“I know, Mal.”
“The actors just do what they’re told. Or, you know, try to.”
The Slaughters of Christ was being praised—on genre websites—with single-handedly bringing back Nunsploitation movies. Mal didn’t like it.
The deal was, we took it in turns. I watched the auteur-director-drivel films he chose and he watched the films I chose. Admittedly they weren’t art but at least something happened in them. Mal wanted to be a screenwriter-slash-director. I wanted to be a screenwriter-slash(haha!)-actor.
“I could hardly see the final scene, the lighting was off,” he said.
“Sure, Mal.” He was right, but that was clever. They didn’t have the budget for convincing effects for the, what would she be called? the Boss Nun? the Nun Queen? to morph into a demon and eat all the naked younger nuns in bright light. Besides they were in a cave, why wouldn’t it be dark?
“I suppose we’re watching Slaughters of Christ, Part 2: The Nunnoning, next time you pick a film?
“Sure Mal,” I said. “And before that we’ll watch Bearded Mumblecore Monologue, Part Whatever, when you choose.”
He tilted his beer bottle to get the last warm drip of beer. “I’m going to bed,” he said.
I turned in too. I had my script almost finished. Tomorrow. Then a quick second draft and start submitting it. It was good. It was going to start me on the road to success and the fist of many busty Hollywood wives.

I couldn’t sleep. Whenever I was just drifting off, Mal intruded. He pointed at me and laughed getting closer and closer, until I could feel the heat of his breath. A nightmare. He was going to make more money than me. He was a better filmmaker. He was a director. I woke covered in sweat. He was in the doorway, watching me. “Sleep well?”, he asked.
I shook my head.
“All those cheap horror films are giving you nightmares,” he said. Then he continued talking about how men went to the hairdresser more often than women, even though they supposedly cared less about their appearance, and a guy he went to kindergarten with, who might be gay, not that it mattered but he was allergic to avocados, and being creative shouldn’t be about ego although how can it not be?
I woke up with a start, covered in sweat.
“Sleep well?” he asked. Then he told me about a documentary he’d seen. About how pigs were raised for slaughter, in darkness but with some kind of UV light, but they didn’t get a tan, wasn’t that strange? And palm oil was used in biscuits and ice-cream, which meant it was soft and crunchy, and he wanted me to help him take a new profile photo for Tinder, because cats were no longer in, like they used to be. Why didn’t people eat cats, if they ate dogs? Everybody thinks dogs are dirtier than cats but nobody eats cats, so maybe it’s a cultural thing.
I woke, covered in sweat.

He already had a moustache. His daddy had made him a little gun-belt, too. The biggest, ugliest baby I ever seen. Not that I’d say that out loud: he was the Sheriff’s son. Burl was his name, but his Momma called him Burly, when she was out and about. And wherever she went, the place emptied out pretty quickly. I felt sorry for her, but there was no saying anything in case the Sheriff caught wind of it. 
So she was stuck with the baby most days, the Sheriff himself having a lot of business around town, all of a sudden. The only thing on everybody’s mind was little Burly Baby. With his moustache and his thick shoulders and his little gun-belt shooting off reflections as he drooled and scowled. He was shaping up to be as much of a bully as his Daddy. Couldn’t stop thinking about that damn baby. The whole town went quiet after he was born. Even in their own homes, in case the wind changed, and carried their words out the window and into the Sheriff’s ears.
It was a relief when the kid started walking around. On the other hand, it wasn’t. We’d spent so much time thinking about little Burly without being able to say a damn thing, that it was a relief to see he wasn’t some shared hallucination. The first time he came out his Momma was behind him, but he had no more need of her. His moustache was halfway to his chin and his Daddy had bought him little toy guns to put in his holster. The poor Momma looked tired and Burl quickly left her behind. 

I bumped into him in the woods. He gave me the foulest look I’d ever seen. He was still drooling, his moustache grey from slobber and his single eyebrow going from ear to ear. He’d found one of the cats that made a good go at being a stray. He had his toy gun out as he played with it. Bashing its head in. I passed on and never said a word to anyone in case his father thought I was bad-mouthing his son. 

It was agreed he should be homeschooled after he attended his first class. In return the school children should first apologise for laughing or whatever it was they must have done to set him off. Then he was out of sight for a few more years. He didn’t mix well. We went through so many teachers, that the sheriff arranged for the new teacher to stay in the jailhouse when he wasn’t at work. For his own sake. 

There was a river a couple miles out, real secluded, and people’d go there and talk about the Baby—he remained Burly Baby, even though he was in his twenties by now. They’d talk about the things he’d done, how he looked at them, and how no one was allowed to say anything, and the water took the words away downstream and they’d feel better. 

There was a knock on my door.  I knew it was him.  I’d been young when the Sheriff’s wife gave birth and it had put me right off the thought of marriage. The town was dying out.
There he stood, with the same moustache and the same angry look. I shrank back, but I don’t think he noticed, because we’d all had so much practice.
‘Hi Burl,’ I said.
He pushed his way in and he had real guns in his belt. ‘You got whiskey?’ he asked. I didn’t. Anyone who had whiskey had drunk it. It was only the teetotallers left. And Burl, who couldn’t get his Daddy to buy him more after last time. 
‘I’m thirsty,’ he said, twitching his moustache in a manner that I could never figure out. I had some coffee on the stove and he drank that, which made him talkative.
‘I’m thinking of getting a wife,’ he said.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘But there ain’t no women.’
‘Right,’ I said. There weren’t. You had a daughter you married her off real quick, before Burl came around.
‘How come you never married?’ he asked. He started wandering around my room, poking at the photo over my hearth and my pan of food and sucking my evening meal off his finger.
‘Never fancied it.’
‘I think it’s time we married you off, as well,’ he said.
‘Sure, just need to find us some women.’ I relaxed. I couldn’t think of a single one anywhere that we could get in trouble by talking.
‘But I’m getting married first. I need to have kids, carry on the line.’
There was another knock at the door. 
‘So if you can wait a few years, I’m going to give you my eldest.’
‘Sure.’ But I didn’t feel so fine no more.
The sheriff pushed into my room when I opened the door. Dragging his wife in after him.
‘So you’ll be my best man?’