by M. R. Holman
stolen his car. He cursed loudly before stuffing the entire remainder of the piece of pizza he was eating into his mouth, completely forgetting about the snake baked inside of the crust.
Torrance reflected, as he crunched through the scales, that maybe the gimmick was not so bad after all. Maybe he had been too quick to dismiss trying new things, just because they seemed to be the trendy thing to do at the time. He picked up another piece of pizza and turned off Bigfoot Bandits, flipping absentmindedly through the channels in between bites of pizza and trying not to think about the inevitable trip to the grocery store he would have to make when the pizza ran out.
Zombie: Attending an Outdoor Music Festival
Fog drifted between the sparsely spaced trees and hung closely over the unkempt grass. A stumbling being parted the fog and left a scent-trail of rotting flesh behind. It was a zombie, and it was searching desperately for sustenance in the form of living human flesh.
Though what remained of its brain could only process dim, half-formed thoughts, it knew that the scent it detected on the breeze would lead it to a feast of untold proportions. It had never, in all of its days of zombification, detected so many humans in the same spot at the same time.
The zombie's hearing no longer retained the sharpness it had in life, but it could still register the deep bass vibrations echoing across the hillside it was now climbing atop. The insatiable hunger for flesh and thirst for blood became overwhelming as the zombie scrambled to the hilltop. When it reached the peak and stared out over the valley, its feeble mind could hardly comprehend the joy of seeing over one-hundred thousand humans below.
It began to trundle down the hillside as fast as it could toward the crowd below. It tripped and slid much of the way, losing a great deal of its own rotting flesh in the process and ripping its already ragged clothing. This did not matter to the zombie. All that it cared about was the hunger that drove it toward the crowds.
It soon came upon its first obstacle. Tall fences surrounded the crowds. The zombie laced its fingers between the wires of the chain link fences but it was much too tall to climb. Besides, as soon as it began its ascent, a hand clinched the back of its shirt from behind.
"What in the world do you think you're doing?" a security guard asked the zombie after it pulled it down from the gate. The zombie stretched its blood covered hands toward the security guard's face and groaned.
"Hey now, take it easy! I'm just trying to help you," the security guard said as it batted away the zombie's hands. "Just show me your ticket or your wristband and I'll let you back in..."
The words 'ticket' and 'wristband' echoed through the hollow mind of the zombie. It stared hungrily at the security guard.
"Just let him in already! He smells horrible..." another security guard said from nearby as they held their nose.
"These festival types..." the security guard said, shaking his head. "He looks stoned out of his mind too... Probably can't even understand a word we're saying! Alright then, in you get." The security guard opened a gate and let the zombie into the music festival.
The zombie entered the gates of the festival and began to trudge through the mud and muck toward the crowds of dancing festival-goers. The first crowd that the zombie approached was dancing violently as peels of raucous guitar solos cascaded over insanely loud and fast drums. He reached out toward the first person he came in contact with on the edge of the crowd.
His grip failed and his hands bounced off the dancing frame of a young woman. She turned around and yelled over the music, "No thanks, I just want to dance alone right now."
The zombie tried to grab the woman again. This time she turned around and grabbed him by the shirt, thrusting him toward the interior of the crowd of dancers in the audience. As he reached out for the bodies he passed or was pushed into, they each pushed him further into the crowd. Finally, he reached an area right in front of the stage in which the crowd was behaving more violently than ever. It was the mosh pit.
The inhabitants of the pit did not appear much different than the zombie. They were invariably sweaty, covered in blood and mud, and swinging their arms violently. The zombie fit right in. He was elbowed in the nose and punched in the back of the head. He could not even find a moment to attempt grabbing and feasting on anyone because he was getting battered around so badly.
Slowly, he made the decision in his addled brain to get out of the pit. He found his way to the stage and climbed atop the wooden planks, right in front of one of the guitarists. He stretched his arms in front of him and walked toward the musician.
"Geez, these fans get worse and worse," the guitarist said as he kicked the zombie forcefully back into the pit. The mosh pit crowd paused from their violent dancing and punching and caught the falling zombie. They passed his body over their heads and across the crowd. The audience cheered as they saw what appeared to be another hardcore fan body-surfing the crowd. Eventually he reached the edge and was deposited back onto the ground. He landed with a dull thud in the muck.
The zombie groaned as his face rested on the ground. Although his sense of touch was mostly numb, he was still vaguely aware that he was in a great deal of pain from the experience he was already forgetting. He rose to his feet, wary of entering the crowd again.
He began to wander toward another crowd he spotted in the distance. The music coming from this area was different. There was still a great deal of bass, but it was accompanied by a variety of electronic noises. The crowd appeared much different as well. They wore bright clothing and were not beating each other to within an inch of their lives like the last crowd had done. They danced frantically, but did not make contact with one another. The zombie held out his arms and prepared to grab a victim.
"Hey now, there's enough to go around. No need to get grabby," a man on the edge of the crowd said as he deflected the zombie's hands and placed two little white pills into his palms. The zombie looked down at them in confusion.
"What are you waiting for?" the man asked the zombie, guiding his hand toward his withered and dried mouth. The zombie felt the pills slowly grind their way down his partially operational throat. The man danced away and the zombie felt the urge to sit down for a moment. He felt very odd all of the sudden...
The zombie tried to say 'woah' but was only capable of groaning something that sounded like, "Wooaaargarblle." He felt as though he was sinking and rising simultaneously, and that the last vestiges of his mind had departed completely from his ravaged body.
After sitting for a few minutes, or maybe much longer, or maybe after no time at all, he arose. The zombie suddenly felt like eating the flesh of the living and drinking their lifeblood was no longer the most important thing in its life. It now felt that in this moment dancing was what mattered, and dance he did.
The zombie was not a good dancer by any stretch of the imagination. No one in the crowd surrounding him seemed to care though. They did not seem to care about anything at all aside from dancing and music and breathing. He felt as though the music was inside of him and that each of his movements expressed what the music would look like if it was visible.
After what seemed like a lifetime, the music stopped playing and the crowd around the dancing zombie began to depart. Although he could still feel the effects of the pills he had been given, his hunger for human was returning. He followed a group that was walking away from the crowd. Eventually, they arrived at a large Ferris Wheel that was among several other rides, games, and attractions at the festival.
The door to the Ferris Wheel carriage they entered shut as soon the zombie reached it. The Ferris Wheel began to rotate and the group he was following disappeared. An empty seat was now before him, and he was ushered into it by the Ferris Wheel attendant. He sat down and was soon joined by another man.
The zombie was experiencing the zombie equivalent of jubilation, which admittedly is not very jubilant. He was certain that he was finally going to have a victim that could not escape from him. The Ferris Wheel began to move he
and his soon-to-be victim up in the air. It was then that he noticed there was something wrong. The other occupant was also a zombie.
He grunted at the other zombie, trying to form the phrase 'What are you doing here?' but only achieved a noise that sounded like, "Whurruuuwwdewerr?"
The other zombie wore a tattered bandanna atop his bruised and battered forehead and a great number of glow-sticks hung from around his neck. The other zombie said something that sounded like, "Ahdunno." He then offered the zombie more pills, which he gladly accepted.
After some time, the zombie began to regard the axle of the Ferris Wheel as a super-massive black hole in the center of a galaxy. The seat that he and his fellow zombie were in was a star system and they were the planets. They rotated round and round, knowing that the great force existed and could destroy them at a moment's notice if they got too close, but that it was kept in check by the forces that maintained the equilibrium of the universe.
He and the other zombie regained the use of coherent speech for a few minutes but said nothing worthy of note and quickly forgot the entire incident. When their Ferris Wheel carriage reached the bottom once more, they departed and did not speak another word to each other.
The zombie began to wander once more. Night was
