you're too young & eager to love

I had my kids practice creative writing today. I wanted to model the process, so I did one of the prompts myself and shared it - along with my so-called thoughts on brainstorming.

Journal Prompt 1: Your neighbors have begun treating you differently ever since your son became a zombie. (10 minute writing limit)

He’s seeing red again.

Figuratively, of course. Not literally. The virus causes many things, all sorts of changes, but it does not turn white eyes red. If anything, you would have to say that your son’s eyes are more of a milk-gone-sour color. Opaque. Lifeless.

You sometimes forget that they used to be blue. Or that he didn’t always smell like last week’s garbage. Or that he would respond to you in more than mere guttural groans.

In any case, your wife is cooking fresh steaks and the kitchen windows are open, the smell of raw meat sizzling thick in the summer air. That is why he is seeing red, this son of yours (because he still is your son, somehow). Why his usually stiff, often statue-prone body is crawling forward, sparked with sudden life.

He’s making that noise from his throat again, the not-quite scream, more of a wet, gurgling hungry-growl noise. It’s the noise your neighbors, Jan and Rick, complain about the most. You think this is a bit unfair considering how often their football-sized dog yaps shrilly behind their fence (symbolically painted a gunmetal shade of grey two months ago – as a warning, you can only surmise).

Jan and Rick used to come over every Sunday for T-bones and chilled cans of beer. Rick was a football fan, like you, and Jan enjoyed the same celebrity gossip that your wife favored. They haven’t been over in a few weeks though. They’re spending more time at Church, but you’ve never known them to be saintly people, or god-fearing.

From across the yard, your son lunges at the air. The rattle of the chain around his ankle is not fully silenced by the sprinklers.