you're too young & eager to love

I am so … not keeping up with this trying to write one thing a day. And I had barely begun! I blame, at least for the last two days, my busy schedule. So – I am presenting three very little pieces, which will (in my mind) catch me up from Wednesday.

We have:

1. Olivia + sickboy. Though using that nickname makes me think of Trainspotting.
2. Clementine + the twins (thanks to my pookie for the inspiration).
3. Fabianna + Denny + zombies. My attempt at humor instead of angst.


(  ...  )

This stemmed from watching The Walking Dead reruns.

I think it’s great that Fab had enough smarts to get out of the city as soon as possible. I couldn’t imagine trying to navigate safely through such a heavily populated area. Nope.

-

She learns to shoot a gun. Realizes that bullets don’t last long and the sound attracts. Learns that her body is stronger than she realized – she can walk more miles now than she ever could in high school. The muscles in her arms are tight with exhaustion and fright, the curves of her youth fading into ribcage and absence. There was something there before, she was sure of it, when her hair wasn’t so lank with oils, her face powdered and eyes rimmed in decorative black. Breasts that were high and plump, slender thighs, the desirable, graspable skin of a young woman.

Fabianna forgets that mirrors exist. She passes them by uncaringly, because what could they reveal to her? Her tarnished lips, the shadows beneath her eyes, the rabbit-frightened way she views the world?

Denny doesn’t have that look, she realizes.

Before they found each other, there was a man Fabianna ran from, a man who used his hands too readily, who wanted too much, and she preferred her chances alone. Preferred facing the crawling, shuffling sound of dead walking to his suggestive breathing. What she ends up is finding a woman squatting by bushes, pissing. Not the symphony she was expecting, but her expectations are low these days, and she never was much of a complainer.

-

“I killed my father.” She tells Denny over a dinner of canned peas and half a can of Dr. Pepper.

Denny’s shoulders are sharp, and she shrugs them – not from lack of sympathy but for lack of words.

She’s the thinner one, which means she’s probably unhealthier too, but Fabianna is the one suffering from a cough. She hasn’t quite figured out the logistics there. Spooning a lump of peas into her mouth, she shares the last bit of soda. “He wouldn’t leave. When all this crazy bullshit started? I think he thought the government was going to prevail.”

Denny scratches her neck with broken, chipped nails. “Lots of people have killed nowadays.”

Fabianna isn’t sure if Denny includes herself in that general statement. She’s too polite to ask, even after she swung a barn axe into the skull of a corpse, rendering it lifeless again when it was trying to gnaw on Denny’s shoulder. Some things require tact, but killing proves not to.

-

They travel during the day. Determined, steady. Sometimes, Fabianna whistles tunes from childhood movies until Denny tells her to be quiet. If it’s a good day Denny will hum along.

Most days aren’t good. Most days are bleak and bloody and the air stinks of rot.

-


There’s a radio that works in a rich house. It’s mostly static until a channel connects and then there are screams. The gurgle of ripped throats. They stand around it, and Denny touches her wrist very softly. “I used to believe in God.” She doesn’t mean to whisper, but her regular speaking voice is too loud.

“I never did.”

“I wouldn’t either, after all the dicks you’ve seen.”

Denny glances at her, and her mouth curls into a smirk before she laughs, rasping with dryness. Fabianna joins her until her stomach cramps and tears brim in her eyes.

-

There is no end in sight.

There are cities they try to avoid, even though neither of them is very good at reading a map. Roads that curve and continue. Sometimes, they follow rivers for a change of scenery.

There are blisters and empty stomachs. Nightmares that clog visions. A jaded, desperate type of simplicity.

This is what happens when you read correlating journal entries.

I'm pretty sure my tenses jump all over the place here, but whatever.

--



It’s one of those flawless afternoons. The weather, after months of winter, has just started to warm. You keep the windows in your room open, the heat lingering around the length of your legs, across the discarded comforter. Nothing stirs. Even the wind is hushed. You have done nothing but lay, as motionless as possible, on top of your bed and let the sweat collect. Sheening between the shallow dip of your breasts, collecting behind your neck at the nape of your hairline.

Denny is by the door, leaning. You get the impression that she rarely tires of standing, but she seems out of place. Distorted.

It’s hot and your eyelids are heavy and there’s the buzzing of flies.

Louder now, and you want to tell Denny to close the windows. To turn on the AC. But your tongue is a stone in your desert mouth. Too many flies, and you can’t imagine how they are here, suddenly, invading. Rotten fruit somewhere, and they keep landing on it.

Except this didn’t really happen, and you wake up with a start. You don’t remember having fallen asleep at all, but that’s typical now. Denny is sitting with her back to you, watching the window, watching the door, listening. You’ve closed yourself up in another abandoned home. You tried on the pearls of the woman who used to live here earlier, feeling their coolness against your throat.

The two of you have been trying to get as far away from the city as possible. For days now. You were never claustrophobic, but you have reason to be now. The first few weeks were so bad so quickly that you were running through the limbs of grocery store clerks and door-to-door bible salesmen. Your last pair of shoes were still stained red. Made sense to move, especially since the heat has come back, and it used to be bad before but now there’s the smell. Decay and shit and blood and so many bodies. It gets a little better each day, so that you were barely noticing it until this afternoon. Denny had sprayed air freshener – the aerosol kind that used to be in every woman’s kitchen. Fresh apples and cinnamon. You were delighted for five full seconds before the scent faded, replaced with the renewed force of decomposing corpses and you promptly vomited.

Denny didn’t offer to hold your hair back, but she threw you a bottle of water when you were finished.

More Fab and Zombie apocalypse goodness. Even though this is oldish.

Although this is less about zombies and more about what it would be like to cope in that situation. Reference to Sasha's character, that's supposed to eventually gallivant along with Fab.

( 74th Street )

In response to daintiestmartyr's latest post/piece.






The funny thing is that you love horror movies.
Or you did until your life turned into one.

You’re a smart girl. You know to run out the door rather than up the stairs. You know to lock windows and to never live in a large house, alone, in the middle of the woods. You do not give rides to hitchhikers and, just to be safe, you avoid the street gutters less an evil beast in the shape of a clown is there, lurking, waiting to offer you a floating balloon. You used to be okay with dark alleys; now, you jump at your own shadow and avoid mirrors.


Your mother died of cancer five years ago. You’re grateful for that, even though when it happened you were not ready, and you cried for three weeks straight. Your father’s lukewarm affection became even more limited, but he fixed you coffee every morning and gave you the occasional smile of a stern military man. You bought your mother’s coffin in a violent sundress, and you poisoned your father’s orange juice when it was time to run. He would never have left, you know, not that house with your mother’s pictures and the family heirlooms. His old war injury in his left leg made him weak, incapable of surviving. You think, if there’s a heaven, he is watching and appreciating the gesture.
He passed with his dignity on a sunlit morning. Warm in the bed he had shared with your mother for fifteen years. Outside, inhuman cries were already approaching the horizon.
You didn’t cry, although you had wanted to. Your sobs choked on the vomit in your throat. You got sick in the bathroom. Milk and cornflakes.
Then you left.