Life After Death (Original Series)

It was just around dawn that the gunshot woke Kelly up. She didn't mind so much, as her dreams had dipped into faces and memories that she really didn't want to revisit. It was a rough sleep, but sleep, none the less. The falling temperatures made her hammock, suspended high in the tree she'd climbed to escape the ghouls, a very breezy affair. With a silent sigh of complaint, aimed at no one, she finally unzipped her thick jacket and peered out of her camo colored bed. There didn't seem to be any movement near by, but she did spy a herd of the dead heading towards a nearby hill.

Kelly had learned to be almost silent when moving around, producing half a binocular and using it as a telescope, from a pocket deep in her coat. Without rustling the dead leaves and snow around her she was able to get the sight of a man who was lying on his back, gun in hand, just before the ghouls descended upon him. She pondered his dilemma for a moment, then decided it was too late to do anything, anyways. Tired limbs and a sore core were all stretched inside her swinging bed before it was all stuffed into a pack and slung.

Quick as she could she climbed down the tall tree, its various limbs supporting her small frame, and soon after her boots silently sunk into the snow on the ground. 'I hope you found peace, sir.' she thought as she turned away from the hill and began walking. Her legs pushed through the foot or so of snow easily, making her trek easy, but she still kept a weary eye. She remembered once there had been a ghoul that was just under the snow, not even a foot of it, and it popped up and...She shook the memory from her head.

Avoiding the cornfield was easy, but it also meant heading in a different direction before having to correct to the one she wanted to go. It wasn't too much trouble, but it was a risk. The woods became a bit thicker, trees and their off-white bark hid paths and maybe threats, and it all put Kelly on edge. It was the first pause of the midmorning and she used it to go to the bathroom, unpack her recurve bow, and ready a quiver full of arrows. It was hard looking at the weapon, even after all this time. All she could see was her husband's hands wrapped around hers, teaching her how to use it.

Another memory that had to be shaken away, just as she finished the second to last can of tuna she had. She began walking again, paying close attention to all the noises the world made, all the creaks and groans of the trees trying to thaw in the midday sun, the occasional shuffle of snow that fell from the branches, the few and far in between moans that would surface from places she couldn't see. Despite the temperature Kelly's brow was slick with sweat, the moans had become persistent, but she couldn't see the source.

Crouched low and her pace slowed, the world seemed quiet and at the same time screaming with danger, every step was precarious and taken with near paranoid caution. Just ahead the trees broke into a small clearing, there was two tents, and the source of the moans. At the tree line Kelly stayed very still, crouched behind a thicker tree, surveying the camp ground she'd found. She whistled, but no one answered, except the ghoul she had yet to spot. She whistled again, and nocked an arrow at the same time, again, only moans.

The fire pit had long gone cold, the tents were both still with the flaps hanging open on both. Kelly's footsteps were silent as she circled the inside of the small campsite, looking for the source of the noise. She came to the first tent, inside lay two corpses, they hadn't died of natural causes. Each of the bodies were mutilated, chunks of flesh and muscle missing, but there were no bite marks. The flesh had been cut off, like a butcher would do to a cow, clean pieces of defined anatomy. Both of the faces were covered with a piece of dark cloth, their slit throats barely visible.

The cold had slowed the decay, but they were long since beginning to rot. Kelly could feel her stomach turn as the thought of them being killed and eaten by other humans came to her mind. She fought to keep her nausea down. In the second tent the story became more grim. Three blankets over three bodies. Two of them were small, children, probably no older than 10, the other a female. The blankets stuck to their foreheads where the blood from the single bullet wound had killed them. At their feet was a note held down by a small rock.

'I couldn't let them starve. Forgive me, God.' Movement caught Kelly's eye and she stood tall, arrow pulled back and pointed at the potential threat. Just behind the tents, in the tree line, was a man hanging from a branch, rope around his throat. His hands had been chewed down to the wrist, his legs nothing more than bones and pieces of sinew hanging from what was left of his thighs. At the sight of her he twisted in his noose, his stumps raised and stretched out for her. Dried lips that had been peeled back worked in unison with the moans, yellow, half rotted teeth snapped open and closed at the promise of flesh.

Anger flared up in Kelly and she aimed for his head. The arrow didn't find it's mark and instead stuck in the tree trunk, the branch holding him broke. Bones cracked loudly as they splintered when he hit the floor, the moaning was growing louder. Kelly was still fueled by anger and wasted no time, she ran over, unsheathed her knife, and plunged it hilt deep into the top of it's skull. Suddenly all the memories she'd suppressed all day flooded in and her eyes stung with tears. She pulled her blade free and sat back on her knees as she cried silently.

Images and sounds and smells and voices of her sister, brother, father, husband, best friend all rushed through her mind. Their lives, and then, ultimately, their deaths. Each one played like it just happened that morning. Her hand absent mindedly wiped away the tears as the last words her husband spoke came anew, like a recording, "I'll always love you. Keep living. For me. Please..." She sobbed once more and began catching her breath, running her hand through her short, blonde hair.

After a minute or two she was okay, shakily she found her feet. She took a long, deep breath, letting it out into the cold air, a cloud that proved she was alive. After her hands settled she retrieved her arrow from the tree, and it gave her trouble, not wanting to come out from it's half frozen new home. With a grunt it finally came free and then joined the rest of the arrows in the quiver on Kelly's waist. 'I'll keep living. As long as I can.' she thought to herself as she prepared to move on.

Careful thinking was quickly replaced by panic as she looked around at the once silent woods that were now filled with ghouls. She let out a gasp as they just kept appearing, like waves of locust, finally they set eyes on her. The world was filled with moans of hunger, like a chorus of the damned conducted by death, himself. She ran, as hard as she could, to the nearest gap in the wall of rotted and rotting flesh, avoiding swipes and grasping fingers. As she passed by more of them began to voice their want.

Her pack slapped against her back, rattling the contents, not that stealth mattered anymore. There were so many, and each of them only saw one source of flesh. She didn't want to end up like that man, not like any of them, not like her husband. The white barked trees stopped and gave way to smooth ground. But that, too, soon ended. Kelly's toes were on the line of a ravine, a river thick with ice, far down below. She gripped her bow and turned around, nocking an arrow, ready to face her fate. They poured out of the woods, stumbling, shambling, moaning, reaching towards her.

She let her arrow fly, plunging through a ripe head as it exploded it's grey and black contents out of the back. The decision came quick and she acted on it just as quickly. She slung her bow over her shoulder and crossed her arms across her chest. She took a deep breath and held it. Gravity took over just as she closed her eyes. She fell what felt like forever, the wind deafening her as her body shook. The water caught her with harsh arms and quickly covered her in liquid ice. She couldn't tell if she was alive.

House Of Lies (Original Short)

"Your father was a ruthless bastard..." My uncle Jimmy used to say after he'd had a few drinks in him. "We had M16's and grenades and he used to use a knife. Moved like a shadow at midnight." That New York cop accent slipping through though he's been living in California for the past 20 something years. I smile at him with practiced affection at his tale. He doesn't know that I know something: The truth about him and my father. Both my parents are dead. They had died in a vicious car accident leaving me to the only person that my family would have trusted: My uncle Jimmy Dons. After their death he took me and moved to the west coast in an attempt to start a new life and give me a shot at something normal. My name is Jack DeMonstros, 21 years old. Yeah, I know. Hell of a name. But we'll come back to that later. "After the war we'd come home and they called us 'Baby killers'! Can you believe that bullshit?!? Worse than that they could only give us jobs as cops!" I sip my beer and puff on a cigarette as I watch him, drunk and at the grill, in the back of my mind a theater plays all the things that I will make happen. He goes on with tales of the war, reciting them to his cop buddies that surround us in our tiny backyard, people he's known for years. The spatula in his hand is waved around like he was drawing the pictures of his narrative, and sometimes it was a rifle, sometimes a handgun, all to illustrate the story he was weaving at the time.

Before I was born my uncle and my father served in the war together. After that they became cops. After that my uncle became corrupt, trying to take my father with him into the depths. My father refused. So they staged a coupe. My mother and father were shot down and pushed off a bridge in their car somewhere in New York. My uncle pulled the trigger. He thought it was the end of it. But plans had already been made. Three years ago a box showed up on my doorstep, no return address, no postage. I managed to open the chest and inside were things that changed my life: Videos made by my parents. They explained what had happened to them, what they saw coming, and videos that trained me. Trained me to be a killer like my father. For three years I've studied them intensely, learning every trick, every word memorized. And soon I became like my father. Soon the blades in the box that was sent to me, 20 plus years later, by my parents, were second nature to me. Every night before I'd gone to bed, for three years, I'd watched a video of them both, telling me they loved me.

He hadn't even noticed that I'd been wearing the very cross necklace my father wore all those years ago. Didn't notice the extra inch or two of muscle I'd put on for the deed yet to be done. He would. I had them all here. Every one of them that took that which was most precious to me before I ever knew them. Now was the time. My empty beer bottle shattered against the floor as I launched myself forward, they never saw it coming. The blade on my hip was out and working, spilling blood and viscera, entering soft, screaming flesh as I dispatched them all. The metallic smell of what they'd spilled by my hand filled my nose, pushing me onward. My uncle Jimmy was stunned to see such violence from his frail, antisocial, quiet spoken nephew. My shoes squished audibly against the soil now soaked with crimson as I approached him, eyes wide in disbelief. He uttered one word: Why? The handle of my knife, my father's knife, came down on his head with a sick thud. He was unconscious. I dragged the rest of the bodies into the kitchen and arranged them, as I'd been told. Then drug my uncle to the den. My muscles quaked and shivered as I peeled the soaking shirt off myself while I tied him to a chair. He'd get his answer soon. While he slept I poured gasoline all over the house, all over his dead friends, all over him.

He woke with a groggy moan, seeking to move his immobilized limbs, but couldn't. I sat in a chair across him, shirtless, the cross hanging from my neck in a gentle sway. He asked why I'd done all this in a slur. With a grunt I turned him to face our TV and without a word let the videos my father and mother made all those years ago do the explaining. He was wide awake, making excuses, justifying his actions, pleading with me, then cursing me. It had been somewhere near ten o'clock at night when I began this spree of violence, but it was dawn by the time he rattled out his last breath. I took the knife with me, cleaning it, and storing it in my coat as I breathed one last, deep sigh, and tossed the lit match into the house he'd built. A house of lies and deceit. I only stayed a few minutes to make sure the flames engulfed and consumed everything inside before taking the few thousand dollars that were in the trunk and walking away. The last words to leave my mouth that night were the words my father had said from beyond the grave: "Revenge takes time, cunning, strength, and in the end the undying belief in the truth." I walked away from my life. Walked away from the lies. And into the night I disappeared with my hand gripping my father's cross tight, giving me the ability to start anew. Revenge is never easy. But it is very, very, gratifying.