[short] Stalking In Ten Easy Steps
Stalking In Ten Easy Steps
Warning: Zombies. Um. Gross-factor.
Note: Very old. 2005-6ish.
rule #1: know yourself
Norman had died a very long time ago, but he didn’t know it. Or maybe he did know it and he didn’t care. Whatever the case, he staggered down the road, staggering because his maggot-infested legs couldn’t support his hulking frame anymore, their rotten meat falling in a trail behind him with every stomp he took. The stench of death rolled around him in a solid wall, even if he couldn’t smell it because he had a fat cockroach for a nose and the cockroach could a give damn about his smell very much at all. He wandered, up the street beyond the cemetery that he’d risen from, not entirely sure of where he was going, perhaps incapable of understanding enough to ask. He had no working brain, the maggots had made sure of it, and what was a mind without a brain?
Any living man would have said that Norman shouldn’t have been walking because he had no lungs, and that meant no oxygen to his moldy muscles. Norman was dead, and dead men do not dig themselves out of their graves and walk down the street for a bit of fresh air. But Norman didn’t know science. Norman was dead, and for a dead man, he was looking pretty well alive.
rule #2: know your target
A woman screamed, and he turned his eye-less head to look. She was blonde, big breasted, and wearing a miniskirt. Pink, he thought. Norman wondered without wondering if she was a cheerleader. He could almost-very-nearly remember a time, vaguely, when he’d dated a cheerleader…
rule #3: understand your desire for the target
His mouth was open in toothless wonder, grinning at the very pretty girl who stood and stared dumbly back at him. Then she made a noise, like the whine of jets, and somewhere glass shattered. Norman was sure of it, but he didn’t care because he was dead and couldn’t really hear, and didn’t realize that the noise she was making was a very bad noise that meant perhaps she wasn’t interested in dinner and a movie after all. He staggered forth toward her, wondering in his zombie way if they were still playing The King And I at theatres, and if cheerleaders liked that movie. He did, and his lifeless arm outstretched, grabbing, trying to see if she had any money to pay for the tickets since he hadn’t been buried with his wallet. He wanted to give her a good time because she was pretty, and every zombie knows that pretty little teenage cheerleader girls in miniskirts were the thing that every undead creature must have.
rule #4: find target, follow target
Unfortunately, she ran away, and he chased after, unrelenting in that living-dead sort of way, still reaching like a dog reaching for his bone. Or a zombie for her the pockets at the back end of her dress, where surely the money must be. She screamed something unintelligible to Norman, but Norman didn’t care, because he couldn’t hear it. He chased after her until she was cornered in a dark alley, and he smiled that dead, toothless smile, grunting things only zombies understood. It was meant to be very romantic and meaningful.
rule #5: corner target in a place of solitude
She made more noises, terrible warbling noises, but his ears were blocked with grubs and his eardrums had large holes in them where the maggots had drilled to get into his brain.
rule #6: announce to target your affection
There were tears blurring her vision, and Norman briefly wondered how she could run like this without actually seeing where she was going. But then again, Norman couldn’t see at all, and he could see where he was going just fine. With a zombie shrug, he grunted, reasoning without really doing so that she probably just needed a hug. And perhaps movie tickets… sometimes, Norman needed hugs and movie tickets too. He outstretched his arms in a big circle and stiffly wobbled toward her, his mouthful of maggots puckered into a kiss. The maggots squirmed, some falling to land on the pavement under his rotten feet, wiggling rice between his toes. He bent down.
Rule #7: target will resist–do not let target escape
She screamed so loud, she probably woke the dead. More dead, anyway, as Norman drifted his cold, slimy, half-eaten lips over her cheek and embraced her body with his arms. Some of the maggots fell into her hair, a spider crawled out of his eye and jumped onto her pretty white shirt, and she screamed and screamed and screamed–more glass shattered, an entire cathedral. She thrashed like a hundred-ninety-pound bear with breasts caught in a trap, blue eyes wide with fear, and he held on tighter, sweeter, kissing her again on the cheek, trying to comfort her. The poor girl really needed a hug pretty badly if she was this upset.
rule #8: kiss target
But then she stopped. Just stopped. Confused, Norman backed away to see the expression on her face, and he realized that she was still terrified, too terrified to speak. He kissed her again, and she frowned, leaning away, resisting even as she tried to understand the zombie’s motives.
She asked him something. Low, trembling, curious. He only vaguely understood, but he heard the words clearly.
“Are you kissing me?”
He kissed her again. She needed something more than a hug… she was a wreck.
rule #9: lure target into bed
She shivered. Maybe she was cold. Norman embraced her, kissing down her face, along her jaw, under her neck, and lower…
rule #10: love target
She screamed again. She shoved away with strength he’d never seen in a living woman before, the terror fueling her muscles to run, run farther and faster than her legs than Norman could follow. She got away, still screaming and stumbling as if to gather the entire world’s attention.
Norman sighed a zombie sigh and watched her vanish into the streets. Another pretty girl, gone. And his movie tickets too.
But there were others…
