by Samie Sands
Dread shoots through me, as my brain goes into overdrive. Now what? What the hell can I do now? In the periphery of my hearing, I’m listening to Felix defending me—I’m not surprised by this, he’s spent his whole life sticking up for me. He’s insisting that once I’ve had a wash, a sleep, and a hot meal, I’ll be back to my normal self. I should be saying this, but my mind is everywhere else at once.
I notice that my dad is silent. I glance up at him, knowing that if I can just get him on my side too, Mum will eventually have to come around too. He’s staring intently at me. So much so that I feel insecure under his gaze. I try and silently communicate with him that I’m fine, that I may have done bad things, but that doesn’t make me a monster. I’ll never be like them.
He moves forward tentatively, his gaze never leaving mine. He holds my face in his hands for just a second before his fingers reach down to my shoulders. I tense, begging him in my mind not to look under my top, not there. As soon as they see that wound, they’ll immediately get the wrong idea. It may not be a bite, but that’s how they’ll see it. I hear a rip and close my eyes, preparing myself for what’s about to come.
The hysteria is intense. My mum starts shrieking—a noise I never would’ve thought could have come from her small, frail body. She races into the other room, taking my last hope of survival with her. My dad starts shouting at Felix to get something, anything to ‘sort me out’ before I can do any real damage.
“We need to protect ourselves,” I hear him yell. “We’ve all seen what they’ll do once they’ve changed.”
I look pleadingly at my brother, but even he has lost confidence in me. His stunned silence says it all. Nothing I can say or do now will change any of their minds. It’s too late. It’s done. Their minds have been made up. Clearly they’ve seen some dreadful stuff, and that’s overriding anything else.
I need to run.
I need to get as far away from this house as possible. Why did I even come in? I should have trusted my instincts. I knew it didn’t quite feel right. I try and yank myself out of Dad’s grip, but he’s so strong and holding on to me so tightly that I can barely move between his hands. He’s mumbling an apology, an explanation to me in my ear, but I don’t want to hear it. He can’t justify killing me—‘sorting me out’—when there’s nothing wrong with me, however much he seems to think it’s ‘for my own good.’ He’s allowing his irrational fear to rule him. If only I could make him see that!
I attempt to block out his words. I really want to, but he’s absolutely determined that I’m going to hear him. He gets louder and louder until it feels like his voice is filling up my whole brain. Agitation slowly develops into rage, and anger starts to block out every other emotion. How dare my family treat me in such a disgraceful way? I’ve done nothing bad to them; I don’t deserve any of this. I suddenly want to scream in my dad’s face until he actually listens to me. I’m not one of those things, and if he’s stupid enough to think that I am, then he’s a fool. Violent thoughts swirl round and round in my brain until I’m not even sure what I’m doing any more.
I feel myself sink my teeth into my father’s arm, because I need to get him off me somehow and it’s the only way I can think of. But I don’t stop there, I can’t. One taste isn’t enough. I find myself tearing all the flesh from his body and devouring it, bit by bit. There’s an insatiable hunger that I didn’t even know I had, completely controlling all of my actions. I can’t stop, even though I know I should. I wish I could. Even though I know what I’m doing and I know it’s wrong, I carry on.
Can’t stop.
Must stop.
I’m suddenly aware of a prickling sensation on the back of my neck. Someone is watching me. I snap my head up and find Felix staring down at me. The terror in his eyes causes my heart to pound and my stomach to twist up in knots. I’m instantly ashamed at that total loss of control. I stand up and look down at myself, seeing myself through my brother’s eyes. What the hell has become of me? I’m totally disgusting. I’m the lowest of the low, the worst of the worst. Maybe…just maybe, I am infected. Maybe I was bitten and I just didn’t want to accept that. Maybe I have been one of them all along. The monsters that I’ve been hiding from have become me.
I want to take it all back, I want things to be the way they were before any of this happened. I didn’t mean to hurt my father—I’d never do anything like that on purpose. I’m sorry, my loving brother must understand…
Then my eyes settle on the baseball bat in his hand and I remember what he was going to do to me, what he’s still going to do to me, and I pounce on him like an animal, without a second thought. Shock must have rendered him frozen because he doesn’t even try to fight me off as I demolish every inch of him, licking my lips and enjoying every single bite. I get a great pleasure from sucking every bit of meat off his bones—there’s something about his youth that makes him even more delicious than anyone else I’ve eaten.
What a weakling. I laugh to myself. At least Dad struggled. Well, at first.
After he’s finished, I sniff the air, somehow understanding that my nose can help me find my mother. She’s next. This is all her fault. She started this. If she could have just let me have a shower and sort myself out, then none of this would have happened. Dad and Felix would still be here, and I wouldn’t have had to face some uncomfortable truths about myself. No, she’s caused this and now she needs to pay.
I can sense her hiding behind the sofa; I can taste her fear on my tongue. I decide to play a game with her, to make her really suffer. I open my mouth to speak, to tease her a bit, to pretend that she isn’t going to meet the same fate as the others, but to my frustration only a low growl passes through my lips.
I stalk quietly, moving slowly towards where she is. Her emotions are all heightened and she’s sweaty with fear. This causes her to smell more delicious than anything I’ve ever tasted. Even better than Felix! Anticipation and excitement tingles in my stomach as I wait, forcing myself to savour this moment. I move until she can see me and I snarl.
***
As I wander out of the house, I look down at the warm blood splattered across my hands and I grin to myself. I tortured Mother for hours, eating little bits off of her now and again, not enough to kill her or even allow her to black out, just enough to ensure she was in agonising pain. It was terribly hard to keep control of myself because she tasted amazing—just as I’d suspected she would—but I had to make her pay. She needed to understand what she’d caused.
I’m not sure if I truly got through to her because she spent the whole time screaming at me to get it over with, to kill her already, when she really should have been reflecting on her awful behaviour. If only she’d got that, I might have made her end a little less dreadful. Never mind, some people will never listen.
I was bored by the time she took her last breath, and glad to just finish my meal. As I watched the light leave her eyes, I was more than ready for it all to be over. Although, now that I’m done, I’m not really sure what to do. What’s next? There’s no point in me going back inside, there isn’t anything left for me there. It’s no longer home in my opinion. Not after what they just put me through.
I guess I just carry on walking, the same as before. In fact, maybe I will carry out my original plan, and visit my cousin Ethan along the way…
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my friends and famil
y who helped Lockdown come to life, including the ‘zombies’ who helped me create the website—James, Jasmine, Oliver, Jordan, Kate, Rhys, Kain, Paul, Tracy, Adam, Alex and Eden. Your support has been amazing!
I would also like to thank Jennifer O’Neill, Lori Whitman, and everyone at Limitless Publishing for all of your help, with special thanks to Toni Rakestraw, whose editing was invaluable.
About the Author
Samie Sands is a 30 year old freelance graphic designer who has recently decided to follow her lifelong dream and use her creativity in a new way by writing.
She has a degree in Media Studies and PR and has already had articles published in a number of e-zines, including one of the most popular pieces at Zombie Guide Magazine. She has also had a number of her short stories included in some very successful anthologies.
She lives in a small seaside town in the UK, but loves to travel to gain inspiration from new places and different cultures. To follow Samie’s work, please check out her website http://samiesands.com
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