And here we go !
TEK writing at desk!
- - - Tanya's TEXT - - - will be written in purple.
- - - Michael's TEXT - - - will be written in red and black.
The class audience decided the following:
The class audience decided the following:
MALE Character
Name: Corner Johnson
Hair/eye color: Black hair, blue eyes
Job: taxidermist
Other Details: studying to be a coroner, dating a librarian
FEMALE Character
Name: Tasha Harris
Hair/eye color: Red hair, green eyes
Job: waitress
Other Details: likes coroners, coke habit
What is the conflict or situation? :
Corner Johnson walks into a restaurant/diner with a stuffed bird on his shoulder.
AND SO IT BEGINS -- in class...
He sat there with his favorite stuffed parrot on his shoulder. He called it Guido. He was just waiting to be served, but his waitress hadn’t arrived. He yawned and glared as he watched this waitress with red hair and a reddish nose stared absentmindedly out the window. When would she finally get over to his table!
He tapped his fingers harder and rested his cheek against Guido.“Ma’am?” He cleared his throat.
She turned her emerald eyes toward him and seemed to notice him for the first time. “Yes?”
“Can I at least have some water?”
“OHH! Sorry. I was lost in thought.” She ran over and grabbed a cup and filled it with ice water. She then collected a menu and darted to his table. She seemed very energetic. She set the water down in front of him and handed him the menu. She smiled, he knew it was fake.
Like her breasts, but he didn’t mind.In fact, the thought that her whole body might be made of silicone, was actually kind of
interesting.Perhaps she was entirely inorganic material.Perhaps she was a robot, sent from the future, to destroy mankind and bring him water.He couldn’t be sure, but somehow, it seemed likely.
He could fall in love with those green eyes in a heartbeat, but it was her red nose that caught his attention.Was she a clown, part-time, when NOT bringing people water?Or was she a horrible alcoholic?Or just another coked-out waitress?
If he had a nickel for every coked-out waitress he’d met, he’d have… well, a nickel.But the point was still valid. In the end, he really needed to find a better diner. Eat M Up Joe’s Diner wasn’t great in the first place, but since Romero’s Restaurant & Bar next door had bought it, it was just terrible.
Staring out the window, he pondered how he would get through the day.Another mind-numbing, unfulfilling day.And there was, of course, those zombies eating an Asian school girl just outside the window of the diner.“God, I hope they’re zombies,” she said aloud.“If not, it’s just weird.”
Another Asian school girl had managed to break away and run into the diner, screaming.
“That won’t get you water any faster,” he called after her.“These coked-out waitresses know nothing about customer service.”And then he slipped back in the cool, blank darkness of his own depression.
Ahhhh.
Using his cell phone, he snapped a quick picture of the waitress, then got up, left two dollars for the glass of water, and left the diner.He screamed the whole way out for no reason whatsoever.
__
She stopped at the window wondering if the hit of coke she had just taken was affecting her mind. She had just seen 28 Days Later last night. Was thata mistake? She wandered back to his table and pulled out her pad and pencil. She looked up to take his order? But he wasn’t there? Two dollars sat on the table? For water? What? Then she noticed there was someone screaming. What? Then she remembered the flesh eating girls. “Can I get you something?”
“Don’t you see outside?!?”
“Yeah… it’s weird.”
“I just got off a plane from Paraguay. Has people been eating people for long?” The girl cowered beside her.
“I don’t know… I was contemplating dumping my boyfriend …”
“Is he a zombie?”
“I don’t think so,” she said.“I think he’s Episcopalian.”
Yeah, break up with my boyfriend, she thought.He’s kinda chap.Why do I have to pay for everything!I’m a waitress, how much money does he think I have? And he NEVER has coke!Seriously, he has a really small penis.At least if he had coke, I could look past that.
“I’m sorry,” said the gentleman, staring a little too intently at his waitress. She was not looking at him at all, just absentmindedly spinning the bracelet on her left wrist while staring out the window, looking for the previous (screaming) customer who’d just left. “I’m from Paraquay,” her new customer said, “and you’re thinking out loud about illegal substances.”
She looked up at her customer.It was a bad decision. First of all, you NEVER pay attention to your customers.Secondly, it takes your attention away from the Asian school girls, one of which just bit her on the thigh.She yelped.
“Not a scream?” said the Paraquay man, who might have coke, because it is Paraquay after all.
“Didn’t seem to warrant it,” the waitress said.“She’s a small woman, after all.Her bite radius can’t be more than four inches, tops.So,
yeah, I’m comfortable with the yelp.”
She noticed that she no longer had the unquenchable desire to do cocaine.She did have a slight hunger for human flesh, maybe a brain.
Corner walked down the street. It bothered him that he hadn’t eaten, but who really wants to eat with a zombie floorshow out the window.It was like bad anime. He scanned the streets looking for a restaurant without a zombie dance number… and finally opted for a bar with dark windows. If there were no zombies inside he could stomach the deep fried, poorly cooked bar food.He wondered what Zenobia was doing. Should he call her at the public library and tell her about the flesh eating in the street? Or should he ask her to go through the hold shelf and get his Ohiolink booksfor him so he could research the wounds he saw for his next paper. It would really help him get an A. Maybe he could finish his dissertation.
Instead, Corner decided to turn the corner onto Vine Street, and cross the train tracks.
“So THIS is the wrong side of the tracks.Huh.”
On the second block, he came across an old, should-be abandoned movie theater.The sign read: All This Week, the New Western Classic – Five Easy Nieces.Formerly coked-out waitresses, men with odd names, and dudes from Paraquay admitted FREE!
Hmm, thought Corner.Too bad that doesn’t apply to me.But he went in anyway, even though it cost $8.50 to get in.Seriousy.$8.50.What’s the world coming to?First flesh eating school girls, now $8.50 for a movie at 3:00 in the
afternoon.
Corner found a nice seat in the back, and slipped into the cool, comfy darkness.A darkness that reminded him of “the Incident.”
His mind raced with images. A hunter had brought in a buck he wanted stuffed. The whole buck, not just the head. He said he
wanted it to be altered. He wanted it to be shaped like a unicorn, he was going to give it to his girlfriend or something.
Why he would carry dead Rudolph into a movie theater, Corner didn’t know.But when the bucks eyes lit up, like a red light had been turned on behind them, he was… intrigued.That the buck craned it’s neck and bit the hunter was funny.It was hilarious that it chewed through the hunter’s neck entirely, his now-severed head falling off and rolling down the movie theater aisle, crashing
at the end.
Hilarious.
Five Easy Nieces was not the classic movie he thought it would be.The plot was tangential at best, and the acting, while competent, was not really as compelling as he thought it could be.Corner was actually about to leave, when he saw the waitress walk in.
She stumbled and grasped the seat in front of her. He stood up… it must have been her drug addiction finally paying her back. Or karma… because she never did take his order… why had he tipped her? That was
not service.
His stomach grumbled. He watched her plop into a seat. He toyed with just leaving, but his humanity took over. He walked over to
her “Are you ok?”
“I think so,” she said.“I no longer have an incessant hunger for cocaine.But I do kind of wish that I could bite your brain.Not a lot, don’t get me wrong.Just a nibble.”
“Hmm,” Corner said.“While that IS enticing, I’m going to have to pass. "
(8-8-2011)
“Well, can you find someone else’s brain?”
“We have some in a jar in the lab back at school?”
“That will work. Which school?”
“Come with me, but no biting!” They reached the back of the theater while characters on the
screen screamed… Corner turned to see that the severed doe’s head was illuminated and a ditsy teen stood stage left pointing toward it as the head erupted in maggots. He was suddenly glad he was leaving.
He turned back toward the door, while escorting the waitress. The door was blocked by an athletic, tanned man. “Excuse me, sir.”
“Pardon.” He nodded his head and smiled nervously. He glanced at the waitress and Corner had the sudden notion to protect the flesh craving ex-coke addict waitress. “I need to speak with her a moment.”
Corner eyed him. “Why? I was just going to take her to get her some food. She isn’t feeling so well. I think it’s low blood sugar.”
“Senor, you are wrong,” the man looked familiar. He seemed a bit antsy. “You both need to come with me, ahora.”
Corner glared. The waitress began to vibrate in place. “What’s going on?” Her voice trembled as much as she did. “Aren’t you the guy from Paraguay from the restaurant?”
He nodded. “You left so quickly after the Japanese girl bit you. You have a problem. You must come with me now, before this continues.”
Corner turned to the girl. “Do you want to go with him?”Corner didn’t but he didn’t want to decide for the waitress. “Why should we trust you?”
The man from Paraguay pulled a badge out of his pocket. “I am from the CDC. My name is Dr. Javier Cortez. I can help you.”
Government… figures. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
“I can help. I have government resources.”
“You’re government, why should we trust you?”
“You have a fake parrot on your shoulder, why should she trust you? I heard your conversation… you’ve only first met from the sounds of it.”
“Leave Guido out of it!”
She looked between the two men. “I don’t know what to do.”
Corner looked at her. Her face was taut. “I’ll go with you if you want.” He asked himself if he just said that. Did he really just get involved? She was hot, but obviously becoming one of those zombies. Fifty percent of zombie films say it’s not curable… in fact, it was more like ninety percent. He was only being nice to a dying human being at this point and putting himself into danger.
“Please.” She turned to the doctor. “I’ll go with you.”
He nodded curtly. “May I ask your names?”
“May I ask you all to leave the theater? We’re getting complaints.” A squeaky teenage boy had appeared beside them. Corner recognized him as the kid who had sold him his ticket. “Please, sirs? Ma’am?”
“We’re going now.” The doctor turned and opened the door. He stepped out into the lobby and waited for Corner and the waitress. Corner saw the impatience grow across his face and approached slowly with the waitress in tow. “I’d like to start by getting your names.” He pulled out his PDA and started poking at it with the stylus.
It wasn’t a question. It was an announcement. ‘I’d like to start by…’ This annoyed Corner. Ask! Damn it!
The doctor stood with one eyebrow raised. “Well?”
“Well, what?” Corner almost snorted at his self amusement.
“Your names?”
“Oh, you are asking me for my name? I thought you were going to get it.”
“From you… yes.”
“So I was waiting for you to ask…”
“Sir, would you please give me your name?”
“Corner.”
“As in Jack Corner?”
“No, that’s Jack Horner… I’m Corner.”
“First or last?”
“First name.”
“And last?”
“Johnson.”
“Corner Johnson?”
“Yes. You have my name now.” Corner was about to start in on his next barrage of trouble when the waitress leaned against him. She was sniffing his shoulder. Corner swallowed.
“You should push her back gently.” Corner nodded and pushed her back. “Now miss, your name?”
“Tasha Harris.”
“Ok. Ms. Harris. Are you married?” She shook her head. “Any
family in town?” She shook her head again?
“You didn’t ask me.”
“You’re not a zombie victim yet. Ms. Harris, do you have anyone we can notify or contact?”
“My boyfriend, but I was going to dump him.”
Corner looked at her, “You might want to wait…”
She nodded.
“Are you taking any drugs? You mentioned Coke at the restaurant.”
Great, she was a coked out waitress.
“Yeah… um… I was addicted to Coke, I’m feeling better now. Is
that normal?”
“Well, the hunger would take your mind off of the cravings. You’re craving flesh now as you begin to die. You will be living dead soon. How long have you been an addict?”
“Since I started work at the restaurant 12 years ago. I drank my first coke and realized that I like the feel of the bubbles on my nose.”
Corner looked at her with disbelief. Was she seriously trying to spin this? Her nose was red. She was spacy.
“Then someone cracked a joke and I inhaled what I had tried to swallow. The bubbles ran through my nose. It felt so good. I can’t stop now. I hate that it looks like I’m on hardcore drugs, but I can’t stop. But now, all I can think of is how much gooey stuff is in your brain.”
The doctor blinked. “Have you been tested for drugs?”
“Yes. Often. As I said, I keep being accused of using.” She smiled a little. “I only use caffeine, just weirdly.”
She was serious? Seriously? She was serious?
“I was wondering, when can we go to Corner’s lab? He said he had brains there.”
The doctor looked at Corner and Corner shrugged. “I have a few more questions and then I’ll get you what you need. You wouldn’t be able to stomach the brains he was taking you to anyway. He was taking you to the university lab’s anatomy labs, right?” He looked at Corner. Corner nodded. “Those are resting in formaldehyde. That would render the brain uneatable,
according to our tests.”
“How do you know that?” Corner didn’t like this government agent knowing so much about him after just having met him.
“I did a search on your records on my PDA. You attend the state university and your major is mortuary medicine.”
“You’re going to be a coroner?” The waitress turned to Corner and nearly squealed.
He had never had THAT reaction before. Usually, it was more of a ‘how can you stand looking at brutally mutilated bodies, ew!’ reaction.“Uh, yeah. Why?”
She blushed, well it was sort of a blush. Her face was blanched, and it was a soft pink roseying her “cheeks. Actually, her nose looked less red. Her skin was graying. “Is
she ok? Is she going to be ok?
“That depends, are you ready to go?” The doctor finally looked up from his pda… the one he had been focused on for most of the conversation, nervously tapping away.
“How long does she have?”
“Again, ready to go? I need to get her to my truck to find out.”
“Then, why are we just standing here?”
“Yeah, why are you just standing here… you’re keeping a zombie in our lobby?” The squeaky boy was standing beside Corner suddenly.
“Umm…” Corner was trying to remember how many times they had said zombie and how long the kid had been there.
“You talked of feeding her brains?” The kid’s eyes were the size of half dollars.
The doctor seemed concerned momentarily. He reached into his pocket with his left hand as he wrapped his right arm around the kid’s shoulders. “Son, I need you to step over here with me so I can clarify what is occurring. Perhaps you should get your manager too.”
“He’s in the projection room.”
“Is there anyone else here?”
“No, sir.”
“Ok. I’ll tell you.” The doctor pulled his left hand out and thrust it quickly at the boy. The boy’s body tensed. His muscles then relaxed and he began to collapse against the doctor. The doctor hoisted the now unconscious boy onto his shoulder and turned to face Corner and
Tasha.
“Let’s go. My truck is in the alley.”
“Are there braaa-ins there?”
“Indeed, come along, Ms. Harris.”
Corner slid his arm around Tasha. “Let’s go. We’ll get you some brains.” He tried not to think about the fact he was now holding a soon to be zombie. She looked at him dreamily and he couldn’t help but smile. Partially it was because he was fond of her green eyes. Partially, the smile rose from the fact that it appeared a starry eyed zombie girl was staring at him.
He could almost see the life draining through her eyes. She sighed. Or was it a sigh… no it was a gasp. She had gasped for air and seemed to catch it. He could see the veins in her eyes darkening. Corner looked at the doctor.
“We need to go. We need to go now. She’s getting worse and this kid is getting heavy.”
__
Tasha held her breath. It had been a hard fight to get it and she didn’t want to let it go. Her vision was getting dark around the edges. She recognized she was light headed. It had started just after she found out that cute guy who had tipped for water was going to be a coroner. She loves coroners. She loved watching CSI and NCIS, she grew up watching Quincy M.E.
Tasha held her gaze at his blue eyes. His face was growing creases as his expression changed. She could see the stuffed parrot rest against his head. She studied how the tenseness of his jaw traced into his hairline. His dark hair was wavey and rose in tuffs around his head, falling in a sort of organized style. She was going to have to dump her boyfriend. Her boyfriend wasn’t as smart… he certainly wasn’t a coroner… or a soon to be coroner. Nah…he’s gone... the boyfriend is being dropped.
-----------------------------------
(8-10-2011)
Raleigh Iago Coulter had met his “girlfriend” when having a reubon sandwich and chips at the INSERT-NAME restaurant. Tasha was a waitress there. Not a very good waitress, but a waitress none the less. He’d known at first glance that he had to make her his “girlfriend,” and he knew that girlfriend would be in quotes, like the David Bowie song “Heroes.” Because he knew she would be his “Girlfriend” in name only, until he could do something utterly horrible to her.
Because Raleigh Iago Coulter was an utterly horrible person. Or at least he wanted to be. With a name like Raleigh Iago Coulter, how could he be anything else? He’d never read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, but a lot of other people had, and they loved to tell him that the villain’s name was Coulter. Villain. The word was simple and exotic at the same time. Villain. He’d even had a shirt made up, a black t-shirt with the word villain in simple, white letters, as if typed on a typewriter. Villain. It infuriated him to no end that not one person commented on it. He’d worn it to work. He’d worn it to the park. He’d worn it to a wedding once. He’d even worn it church, and he didn’t even belong to a church. And still, not one person had made even a single comment.
Iago, of course, was a classic Shakespearean villain. A bad guy like few others, he seemed to perpetrate his ill deeds for almost no other reason except evil. A villain, to be sure. A villain to ASPIRE to!
And Raleigh. Well, everyone knew that Ralieigh was the evilest city in North Carolina. Maybe the most evil city in the world! At least, that what his mother told him. Or at least, that’s what the woman who said she was his mother for the first 6 years of his life had said. By age seven, she’d begun to say that he had been left on the front stoop by gypsies. Whether this was true or just meaness on her part, he would never know. Because at age 9, he would never see his “mother” again.
On his ninth birthday, an older gentleman came to Raleigh’s one and only birthday party. His mother had nonchalantly said, “Raleigh, I am not your mother, but this is your father.” Again, he didn’t know if she was telling the truth or not. His “father” had countered with, “Don’t call him that! His name is Iago!”
“They’re ALL named Iago,” his “mother” cryptically replied.
Raleigh Iago Coulter’s “father” then took his “son” out to the “car.” It was a “car” only in so far that it had four wheels, an engine and a place to sit. It looked like something he might have built himself. “Raleigh,” his ‘father’ said to him, “come out to the ‘car’ with me. I have your ‘present’ in it.”
“I don’t like the way that sounds,” Raleigh said. His “father” was put aback.
“Why is that, young Iago?”
“It sounded like you said presents in quotes, is all,” he replied.
Regardless, the young boy did follow his “father” out to the “car.” Once inside, they drove away, in a fast and reckless way that assuredly would have been cause for a failing grade on the driving test in ANY of the 50 states.
Well, maybe not North Carolina.
Irregardless, the man drove to bad motel, one of those old time motor hotels where you park right outside the door to your room. He put his “son” inside, and promptly left the room.
Raleigh will be the first to tell you that he doesn’t remember a whole lot after that. He remembers the screaming, of course, coming from outside the room. The loud metallic scraping sounds, the explosions, the gunfire, and the horrible smell of black licorice. Seriously, who likes black licorice? Seriously.
When he opened the door, the parking lot was filled with thick, black smoke. Fires burned here and there, and what looked like blood was splattered across the remaining cars in the lot. It looked like blood, but was either yellow or green in color, both splashed about the area liberally.
Raleigh sat down and waited until morning. When it was clear that his “father” was not going to return, he got into driver’s seat of the “car.” The keys were in the ignition, attached to a keyring that had a dolphin pendant hanging from it. On the passenger seat was a briefcase. Inside the case was half-eaten tuna fish sandwich, and a half million dollars in untraceable, non-sequential bills. He knew this, because there was a note on top that said, “Raleigh, here is a half million dollars in untraceable, non-sequential bills. Do NOT eat my sandwich. Signed, ‘Dad’.”
That he had written “signed” was odd enough, but that he had also put dad in quotes was odder. So Raleigh stretched his legs and haphazardly drove back home. When he arrived, he found, to his irritable amazement, that the house was not there. The house, in it’s entirety, was gone. A large square hole sat where the basement would have been, the basement and the house were gone. As if plucked out by a giant, or space aliens, not a sinle brick remained.
The one thing tthat DID remain, was a single scrap of paper, half burned, fluttering in the wind. It held a single word on it: VILLAIN. Raleigh bent to pick it up, and sighed heavily. The paper actually said TUNA FISH, but even at nine who knew that was just ridiculous. And so he would tell everyone the paper said VILLAIN, and work to become just that – the world’s greatest villain!
-----------------------------------
Twenty-five years later, on his birthday, the no-longer young Raleigh Iago Coulter stood in a phone booth finishing his phone call, and completing his first stage of evil. Agent-A bit my ‘girlfriend’ beginning the process. You have four hours to intercept her to begin Stage Two.” The voice on the other end sounded confused.
“What?” it said. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t make sense?” Raleigh asked. He was holding the receiver to his ear by tilting his head to one side and lifting the corresponding shoulder. This allowed both hands to be free so he could rub them together maniacally, like a mad scientist.
“You’re at a phone booth? Where did you find a phone booth? Seriously. Did you travel back to 1975 or something?”
“No,” Raleigh replied. “There are still many phone booths available! I’m using one in the event this call is being traced. We don’t want to be stopped before all the stages of evil are completed!”
“Yeeeeeah,” came the voice on the other end of the line. “Okay, whatever.”
“You have FOUR HOURS!” Raleigh bellowed into the mouthpiece.
“Doesn’t matter,” came the voice. “I’ve already got her. I picked her up in a porno theater on the wrong side of the tracks. She was with a guy, so I had to grab him, too. Her and her boyfriend are both tied up and unconscious at the warehouse.”
“I’M her boyfriend, Agent Cortez!’
“Yeeeeeeeah, of course you are, Raleigh. Look, unless, the guy wakes up, still has his cell phone on him, and has a librarian for a girlfriend – who can do research for him and thus help them escape – I think we’re pretty safe.”
“Excellent! Good work, ‘Agent Cortez’.”
“Why did you say it like that?” came the voice.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re saying Agent Cortez in quotes. That IS my name. Dr. Javier Cortez.”
“Really? You used your real name? You didn’t come up with an evil pseudonym?”
“No! Were we supposed to?” came the voice. “You made up Raleigh Iago Coulter?”
“Uhhhh, yes. Yes I did!”
“Damn it!” came the voice. “Wait, are you calling someone on a cell phone, Mr. Coulter?”
“No, why?” asked the somewhat evil genius.
“Because I swore I could hear the sound of a cell phone making a phone call a couple of times while we’re talking here, but kind of distant, like in a distant locked room.”
Both men sat in silence for a full minute, until, finally, both exclaimed, “DAMN IT!” at the same time.
-----------------------------------
When Sister Anna asked Mary how she felt on her first day at school, she said, “Lonely.”
Mary Angela Piccalino had been lonely as long as she could remember. When she younger, her father had a habit of taking her to the park. Silverton, Tennessee was a small town, but it had a beautiful city park. Her father was usually quiet and distant, but he did take her to the park; and she loved him for it. Once there, it was a matter of time before he would begin talking to some other adults. Mary would sit by herself on a park bench and wait. And wait. As time went on, her father would talk these people, moving farther and farther away. She thought to herself often that this bench was the loneliest place in the whole world. And when she was grown, she’d never be lonely again.
Sometimes her father and the other adults would all move into the little park building. Sometimes he would come out after the sun had gone down. And Mary waited, in the dark. When he did emerge from the building he was always “funny.” He walked funny or talked funny, or both. When they got home, Mary’s mother would yell at him. She forgot Mary was even there. She would slip away and put herself to bed.
As time went on, the trips to the park became more frequent. Sometimes when he entered the building, he never came out at all. Mary was actually relieved. That meant there wouldn’t be yelling. She knew the way home – four houses down, two blocks over, third house on the left. She would walk herself home. If her mother noticed at all, it was only for a moment. After a while, she would just say, “Go to bed.” Awhile after that, she would just nod in Mary’s general direction, and she’d put herself to bed.
One day, Mary asked her grandmother when things would get better. Her grandmother said, “Good times are just around the corner.”
Her father would come home the next morning, dirty and smelly, walking funny or smelling funny.
And then one day, he didn’t come home at all.
(4680 words)
-----------------------------------
Name: Corner Johnson
Hair/eye color: Black hair, blue eyes
Job: taxidermist
Other Details: studying to be a coroner, dating a librarian
FEMALE Character
Name: Tasha Harris
Hair/eye color: Red hair, green eyes
Job: waitress
Other Details: likes coroners, coke habit
What is the conflict or situation? :
Corner Johnson walks into a restaurant/diner with a stuffed bird on his shoulder.
AND SO IT BEGINS -- in class...
He sat there with his favorite stuffed parrot on his shoulder. He called it Guido. He was just waiting to be served, but his waitress hadn’t arrived. He yawned and glared as he watched this waitress with red hair and a reddish nose stared absentmindedly out the window. When would she finally get over to his table!
He tapped his fingers harder and rested his cheek against Guido.“Ma’am?” He cleared his throat.
She turned her emerald eyes toward him and seemed to notice him for the first time. “Yes?”
“Can I at least have some water?”
“OHH! Sorry. I was lost in thought.” She ran over and grabbed a cup and filled it with ice water. She then collected a menu and darted to his table. She seemed very energetic. She set the water down in front of him and handed him the menu. She smiled, he knew it was fake.
Like her breasts, but he didn’t mind.In fact, the thought that her whole body might be made of silicone, was actually kind of
interesting.Perhaps she was entirely inorganic material.Perhaps she was a robot, sent from the future, to destroy mankind and bring him water.He couldn’t be sure, but somehow, it seemed likely.
He could fall in love with those green eyes in a heartbeat, but it was her red nose that caught his attention.Was she a clown, part-time, when NOT bringing people water?Or was she a horrible alcoholic?Or just another coked-out waitress?
If he had a nickel for every coked-out waitress he’d met, he’d have… well, a nickel.But the point was still valid. In the end, he really needed to find a better diner. Eat M Up Joe’s Diner wasn’t great in the first place, but since Romero’s Restaurant & Bar next door had bought it, it was just terrible.
Staring out the window, he pondered how he would get through the day.Another mind-numbing, unfulfilling day.And there was, of course, those zombies eating an Asian school girl just outside the window of the diner.“God, I hope they’re zombies,” she said aloud.“If not, it’s just weird.”
Another Asian school girl had managed to break away and run into the diner, screaming.
“That won’t get you water any faster,” he called after her.“These coked-out waitresses know nothing about customer service.”And then he slipped back in the cool, blank darkness of his own depression.
Ahhhh.
Using his cell phone, he snapped a quick picture of the waitress, then got up, left two dollars for the glass of water, and left the diner.He screamed the whole way out for no reason whatsoever.
__
She stopped at the window wondering if the hit of coke she had just taken was affecting her mind. She had just seen 28 Days Later last night. Was thata mistake? She wandered back to his table and pulled out her pad and pencil. She looked up to take his order? But he wasn’t there? Two dollars sat on the table? For water? What? Then she noticed there was someone screaming. What? Then she remembered the flesh eating girls. “Can I get you something?”
“Don’t you see outside?!?”
“Yeah… it’s weird.”
“I just got off a plane from Paraguay. Has people been eating people for long?” The girl cowered beside her.
“I don’t know… I was contemplating dumping my boyfriend …”
“Is he a zombie?”
“I don’t think so,” she said.“I think he’s Episcopalian.”
Yeah, break up with my boyfriend, she thought.He’s kinda chap.Why do I have to pay for everything!I’m a waitress, how much money does he think I have? And he NEVER has coke!Seriously, he has a really small penis.At least if he had coke, I could look past that.
“I’m sorry,” said the gentleman, staring a little too intently at his waitress. She was not looking at him at all, just absentmindedly spinning the bracelet on her left wrist while staring out the window, looking for the previous (screaming) customer who’d just left. “I’m from Paraquay,” her new customer said, “and you’re thinking out loud about illegal substances.”
She looked up at her customer.It was a bad decision. First of all, you NEVER pay attention to your customers.Secondly, it takes your attention away from the Asian school girls, one of which just bit her on the thigh.She yelped.
“Not a scream?” said the Paraquay man, who might have coke, because it is Paraquay after all.
“Didn’t seem to warrant it,” the waitress said.“She’s a small woman, after all.Her bite radius can’t be more than four inches, tops.So,
yeah, I’m comfortable with the yelp.”
She noticed that she no longer had the unquenchable desire to do cocaine.She did have a slight hunger for human flesh, maybe a brain.
Corner walked down the street. It bothered him that he hadn’t eaten, but who really wants to eat with a zombie floorshow out the window.It was like bad anime. He scanned the streets looking for a restaurant without a zombie dance number… and finally opted for a bar with dark windows. If there were no zombies inside he could stomach the deep fried, poorly cooked bar food.He wondered what Zenobia was doing. Should he call her at the public library and tell her about the flesh eating in the street? Or should he ask her to go through the hold shelf and get his Ohiolink booksfor him so he could research the wounds he saw for his next paper. It would really help him get an A. Maybe he could finish his dissertation.
Instead, Corner decided to turn the corner onto Vine Street, and cross the train tracks.
“So THIS is the wrong side of the tracks.Huh.”
On the second block, he came across an old, should-be abandoned movie theater.The sign read: All This Week, the New Western Classic – Five Easy Nieces.Formerly coked-out waitresses, men with odd names, and dudes from Paraquay admitted FREE!
Hmm, thought Corner.Too bad that doesn’t apply to me.But he went in anyway, even though it cost $8.50 to get in.Seriousy.$8.50.What’s the world coming to?First flesh eating school girls, now $8.50 for a movie at 3:00 in the
afternoon.
Corner found a nice seat in the back, and slipped into the cool, comfy darkness.A darkness that reminded him of “the Incident.”
His mind raced with images. A hunter had brought in a buck he wanted stuffed. The whole buck, not just the head. He said he
wanted it to be altered. He wanted it to be shaped like a unicorn, he was going to give it to his girlfriend or something.
Why he would carry dead Rudolph into a movie theater, Corner didn’t know.But when the bucks eyes lit up, like a red light had been turned on behind them, he was… intrigued.That the buck craned it’s neck and bit the hunter was funny.It was hilarious that it chewed through the hunter’s neck entirely, his now-severed head falling off and rolling down the movie theater aisle, crashing
at the end.
Hilarious.
Five Easy Nieces was not the classic movie he thought it would be.The plot was tangential at best, and the acting, while competent, was not really as compelling as he thought it could be.Corner was actually about to leave, when he saw the waitress walk in.
She stumbled and grasped the seat in front of her. He stood up… it must have been her drug addiction finally paying her back. Or karma… because she never did take his order… why had he tipped her? That was
not service.
His stomach grumbled. He watched her plop into a seat. He toyed with just leaving, but his humanity took over. He walked over to
her “Are you ok?”
“I think so,” she said.“I no longer have an incessant hunger for cocaine.But I do kind of wish that I could bite your brain.Not a lot, don’t get me wrong.Just a nibble.”
“Hmm,” Corner said.“While that IS enticing, I’m going to have to pass. "
(8-8-2011)
“Well, can you find someone else’s brain?”
“We have some in a jar in the lab back at school?”
“That will work. Which school?”
“Come with me, but no biting!” They reached the back of the theater while characters on the
screen screamed… Corner turned to see that the severed doe’s head was illuminated and a ditsy teen stood stage left pointing toward it as the head erupted in maggots. He was suddenly glad he was leaving.
He turned back toward the door, while escorting the waitress. The door was blocked by an athletic, tanned man. “Excuse me, sir.”
“Pardon.” He nodded his head and smiled nervously. He glanced at the waitress and Corner had the sudden notion to protect the flesh craving ex-coke addict waitress. “I need to speak with her a moment.”
Corner eyed him. “Why? I was just going to take her to get her some food. She isn’t feeling so well. I think it’s low blood sugar.”
“Senor, you are wrong,” the man looked familiar. He seemed a bit antsy. “You both need to come with me, ahora.”
Corner glared. The waitress began to vibrate in place. “What’s going on?” Her voice trembled as much as she did. “Aren’t you the guy from Paraguay from the restaurant?”
He nodded. “You left so quickly after the Japanese girl bit you. You have a problem. You must come with me now, before this continues.”
Corner turned to the girl. “Do you want to go with him?”Corner didn’t but he didn’t want to decide for the waitress. “Why should we trust you?”
The man from Paraguay pulled a badge out of his pocket. “I am from the CDC. My name is Dr. Javier Cortez. I can help you.”
Government… figures. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
“I can help. I have government resources.”
“You’re government, why should we trust you?”
“You have a fake parrot on your shoulder, why should she trust you? I heard your conversation… you’ve only first met from the sounds of it.”
“Leave Guido out of it!”
She looked between the two men. “I don’t know what to do.”
Corner looked at her. Her face was taut. “I’ll go with you if you want.” He asked himself if he just said that. Did he really just get involved? She was hot, but obviously becoming one of those zombies. Fifty percent of zombie films say it’s not curable… in fact, it was more like ninety percent. He was only being nice to a dying human being at this point and putting himself into danger.
“Please.” She turned to the doctor. “I’ll go with you.”
He nodded curtly. “May I ask your names?”
“May I ask you all to leave the theater? We’re getting complaints.” A squeaky teenage boy had appeared beside them. Corner recognized him as the kid who had sold him his ticket. “Please, sirs? Ma’am?”
“We’re going now.” The doctor turned and opened the door. He stepped out into the lobby and waited for Corner and the waitress. Corner saw the impatience grow across his face and approached slowly with the waitress in tow. “I’d like to start by getting your names.” He pulled out his PDA and started poking at it with the stylus.
It wasn’t a question. It was an announcement. ‘I’d like to start by…’ This annoyed Corner. Ask! Damn it!
The doctor stood with one eyebrow raised. “Well?”
“Well, what?” Corner almost snorted at his self amusement.
“Your names?”
“Oh, you are asking me for my name? I thought you were going to get it.”
“From you… yes.”
“So I was waiting for you to ask…”
“Sir, would you please give me your name?”
“Corner.”
“As in Jack Corner?”
“No, that’s Jack Horner… I’m Corner.”
“First or last?”
“First name.”
“And last?”
“Johnson.”
“Corner Johnson?”
“Yes. You have my name now.” Corner was about to start in on his next barrage of trouble when the waitress leaned against him. She was sniffing his shoulder. Corner swallowed.
“You should push her back gently.” Corner nodded and pushed her back. “Now miss, your name?”
“Tasha Harris.”
“Ok. Ms. Harris. Are you married?” She shook her head. “Any
family in town?” She shook her head again?
“You didn’t ask me.”
“You’re not a zombie victim yet. Ms. Harris, do you have anyone we can notify or contact?”
“My boyfriend, but I was going to dump him.”
Corner looked at her, “You might want to wait…”
She nodded.
“Are you taking any drugs? You mentioned Coke at the restaurant.”
Great, she was a coked out waitress.
“Yeah… um… I was addicted to Coke, I’m feeling better now. Is
that normal?”
“Well, the hunger would take your mind off of the cravings. You’re craving flesh now as you begin to die. You will be living dead soon. How long have you been an addict?”
“Since I started work at the restaurant 12 years ago. I drank my first coke and realized that I like the feel of the bubbles on my nose.”
Corner looked at her with disbelief. Was she seriously trying to spin this? Her nose was red. She was spacy.
“Then someone cracked a joke and I inhaled what I had tried to swallow. The bubbles ran through my nose. It felt so good. I can’t stop now. I hate that it looks like I’m on hardcore drugs, but I can’t stop. But now, all I can think of is how much gooey stuff is in your brain.”
The doctor blinked. “Have you been tested for drugs?”
“Yes. Often. As I said, I keep being accused of using.” She smiled a little. “I only use caffeine, just weirdly.”
She was serious? Seriously? She was serious?
“I was wondering, when can we go to Corner’s lab? He said he had brains there.”
The doctor looked at Corner and Corner shrugged. “I have a few more questions and then I’ll get you what you need. You wouldn’t be able to stomach the brains he was taking you to anyway. He was taking you to the university lab’s anatomy labs, right?” He looked at Corner. Corner nodded. “Those are resting in formaldehyde. That would render the brain uneatable,
according to our tests.”
“How do you know that?” Corner didn’t like this government agent knowing so much about him after just having met him.
“I did a search on your records on my PDA. You attend the state university and your major is mortuary medicine.”
“You’re going to be a coroner?” The waitress turned to Corner and nearly squealed.
He had never had THAT reaction before. Usually, it was more of a ‘how can you stand looking at brutally mutilated bodies, ew!’ reaction.“Uh, yeah. Why?”
She blushed, well it was sort of a blush. Her face was blanched, and it was a soft pink roseying her “cheeks. Actually, her nose looked less red. Her skin was graying. “Is
she ok? Is she going to be ok?
“That depends, are you ready to go?” The doctor finally looked up from his pda… the one he had been focused on for most of the conversation, nervously tapping away.
“How long does she have?”
“Again, ready to go? I need to get her to my truck to find out.”
“Then, why are we just standing here?”
“Yeah, why are you just standing here… you’re keeping a zombie in our lobby?” The squeaky boy was standing beside Corner suddenly.
“Umm…” Corner was trying to remember how many times they had said zombie and how long the kid had been there.
“You talked of feeding her brains?” The kid’s eyes were the size of half dollars.
The doctor seemed concerned momentarily. He reached into his pocket with his left hand as he wrapped his right arm around the kid’s shoulders. “Son, I need you to step over here with me so I can clarify what is occurring. Perhaps you should get your manager too.”
“He’s in the projection room.”
“Is there anyone else here?”
“No, sir.”
“Ok. I’ll tell you.” The doctor pulled his left hand out and thrust it quickly at the boy. The boy’s body tensed. His muscles then relaxed and he began to collapse against the doctor. The doctor hoisted the now unconscious boy onto his shoulder and turned to face Corner and
Tasha.
“Let’s go. My truck is in the alley.”
“Are there braaa-ins there?”
“Indeed, come along, Ms. Harris.”
Corner slid his arm around Tasha. “Let’s go. We’ll get you some brains.” He tried not to think about the fact he was now holding a soon to be zombie. She looked at him dreamily and he couldn’t help but smile. Partially it was because he was fond of her green eyes. Partially, the smile rose from the fact that it appeared a starry eyed zombie girl was staring at him.
He could almost see the life draining through her eyes. She sighed. Or was it a sigh… no it was a gasp. She had gasped for air and seemed to catch it. He could see the veins in her eyes darkening. Corner looked at the doctor.
“We need to go. We need to go now. She’s getting worse and this kid is getting heavy.”
__
Tasha held her breath. It had been a hard fight to get it and she didn’t want to let it go. Her vision was getting dark around the edges. She recognized she was light headed. It had started just after she found out that cute guy who had tipped for water was going to be a coroner. She loves coroners. She loved watching CSI and NCIS, she grew up watching Quincy M.E.
Tasha held her gaze at his blue eyes. His face was growing creases as his expression changed. She could see the stuffed parrot rest against his head. She studied how the tenseness of his jaw traced into his hairline. His dark hair was wavey and rose in tuffs around his head, falling in a sort of organized style. She was going to have to dump her boyfriend. Her boyfriend wasn’t as smart… he certainly wasn’t a coroner… or a soon to be coroner. Nah…he’s gone... the boyfriend is being dropped.
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(8-10-2011)
Raleigh Iago Coulter had met his “girlfriend” when having a reubon sandwich and chips at the INSERT-NAME restaurant. Tasha was a waitress there. Not a very good waitress, but a waitress none the less. He’d known at first glance that he had to make her his “girlfriend,” and he knew that girlfriend would be in quotes, like the David Bowie song “Heroes.” Because he knew she would be his “Girlfriend” in name only, until he could do something utterly horrible to her.
Because Raleigh Iago Coulter was an utterly horrible person. Or at least he wanted to be. With a name like Raleigh Iago Coulter, how could he be anything else? He’d never read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, but a lot of other people had, and they loved to tell him that the villain’s name was Coulter. Villain. The word was simple and exotic at the same time. Villain. He’d even had a shirt made up, a black t-shirt with the word villain in simple, white letters, as if typed on a typewriter. Villain. It infuriated him to no end that not one person commented on it. He’d worn it to work. He’d worn it to the park. He’d worn it to a wedding once. He’d even worn it church, and he didn’t even belong to a church. And still, not one person had made even a single comment.
Iago, of course, was a classic Shakespearean villain. A bad guy like few others, he seemed to perpetrate his ill deeds for almost no other reason except evil. A villain, to be sure. A villain to ASPIRE to!
And Raleigh. Well, everyone knew that Ralieigh was the evilest city in North Carolina. Maybe the most evil city in the world! At least, that what his mother told him. Or at least, that’s what the woman who said she was his mother for the first 6 years of his life had said. By age seven, she’d begun to say that he had been left on the front stoop by gypsies. Whether this was true or just meaness on her part, he would never know. Because at age 9, he would never see his “mother” again.
On his ninth birthday, an older gentleman came to Raleigh’s one and only birthday party. His mother had nonchalantly said, “Raleigh, I am not your mother, but this is your father.” Again, he didn’t know if she was telling the truth or not. His “father” had countered with, “Don’t call him that! His name is Iago!”
“They’re ALL named Iago,” his “mother” cryptically replied.
Raleigh Iago Coulter’s “father” then took his “son” out to the “car.” It was a “car” only in so far that it had four wheels, an engine and a place to sit. It looked like something he might have built himself. “Raleigh,” his ‘father’ said to him, “come out to the ‘car’ with me. I have your ‘present’ in it.”
“I don’t like the way that sounds,” Raleigh said. His “father” was put aback.
“Why is that, young Iago?”
“It sounded like you said presents in quotes, is all,” he replied.
Regardless, the young boy did follow his “father” out to the “car.” Once inside, they drove away, in a fast and reckless way that assuredly would have been cause for a failing grade on the driving test in ANY of the 50 states.
Well, maybe not North Carolina.
Irregardless, the man drove to bad motel, one of those old time motor hotels where you park right outside the door to your room. He put his “son” inside, and promptly left the room.
Raleigh will be the first to tell you that he doesn’t remember a whole lot after that. He remembers the screaming, of course, coming from outside the room. The loud metallic scraping sounds, the explosions, the gunfire, and the horrible smell of black licorice. Seriously, who likes black licorice? Seriously.
When he opened the door, the parking lot was filled with thick, black smoke. Fires burned here and there, and what looked like blood was splattered across the remaining cars in the lot. It looked like blood, but was either yellow or green in color, both splashed about the area liberally.
Raleigh sat down and waited until morning. When it was clear that his “father” was not going to return, he got into driver’s seat of the “car.” The keys were in the ignition, attached to a keyring that had a dolphin pendant hanging from it. On the passenger seat was a briefcase. Inside the case was half-eaten tuna fish sandwich, and a half million dollars in untraceable, non-sequential bills. He knew this, because there was a note on top that said, “Raleigh, here is a half million dollars in untraceable, non-sequential bills. Do NOT eat my sandwich. Signed, ‘Dad’.”
That he had written “signed” was odd enough, but that he had also put dad in quotes was odder. So Raleigh stretched his legs and haphazardly drove back home. When he arrived, he found, to his irritable amazement, that the house was not there. The house, in it’s entirety, was gone. A large square hole sat where the basement would have been, the basement and the house were gone. As if plucked out by a giant, or space aliens, not a sinle brick remained.
The one thing tthat DID remain, was a single scrap of paper, half burned, fluttering in the wind. It held a single word on it: VILLAIN. Raleigh bent to pick it up, and sighed heavily. The paper actually said TUNA FISH, but even at nine who knew that was just ridiculous. And so he would tell everyone the paper said VILLAIN, and work to become just that – the world’s greatest villain!
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Twenty-five years later, on his birthday, the no-longer young Raleigh Iago Coulter stood in a phone booth finishing his phone call, and completing his first stage of evil. Agent-A bit my ‘girlfriend’ beginning the process. You have four hours to intercept her to begin Stage Two.” The voice on the other end sounded confused.
“What?” it said. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t make sense?” Raleigh asked. He was holding the receiver to his ear by tilting his head to one side and lifting the corresponding shoulder. This allowed both hands to be free so he could rub them together maniacally, like a mad scientist.
“You’re at a phone booth? Where did you find a phone booth? Seriously. Did you travel back to 1975 or something?”
“No,” Raleigh replied. “There are still many phone booths available! I’m using one in the event this call is being traced. We don’t want to be stopped before all the stages of evil are completed!”
“Yeeeeeah,” came the voice on the other end of the line. “Okay, whatever.”
“You have FOUR HOURS!” Raleigh bellowed into the mouthpiece.
“Doesn’t matter,” came the voice. “I’ve already got her. I picked her up in a porno theater on the wrong side of the tracks. She was with a guy, so I had to grab him, too. Her and her boyfriend are both tied up and unconscious at the warehouse.”
“I’M her boyfriend, Agent Cortez!’
“Yeeeeeeeah, of course you are, Raleigh. Look, unless, the guy wakes up, still has his cell phone on him, and has a librarian for a girlfriend – who can do research for him and thus help them escape – I think we’re pretty safe.”
“Excellent! Good work, ‘Agent Cortez’.”
“Why did you say it like that?” came the voice.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re saying Agent Cortez in quotes. That IS my name. Dr. Javier Cortez.”
“Really? You used your real name? You didn’t come up with an evil pseudonym?”
“No! Were we supposed to?” came the voice. “You made up Raleigh Iago Coulter?”
“Uhhhh, yes. Yes I did!”
“Damn it!” came the voice. “Wait, are you calling someone on a cell phone, Mr. Coulter?”
“No, why?” asked the somewhat evil genius.
“Because I swore I could hear the sound of a cell phone making a phone call a couple of times while we’re talking here, but kind of distant, like in a distant locked room.”
Both men sat in silence for a full minute, until, finally, both exclaimed, “DAMN IT!” at the same time.
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When Sister Anna asked Mary how she felt on her first day at school, she said, “Lonely.”
Mary Angela Piccalino had been lonely as long as she could remember. When she younger, her father had a habit of taking her to the park. Silverton, Tennessee was a small town, but it had a beautiful city park. Her father was usually quiet and distant, but he did take her to the park; and she loved him for it. Once there, it was a matter of time before he would begin talking to some other adults. Mary would sit by herself on a park bench and wait. And wait. As time went on, her father would talk these people, moving farther and farther away. She thought to herself often that this bench was the loneliest place in the whole world. And when she was grown, she’d never be lonely again.
Sometimes her father and the other adults would all move into the little park building. Sometimes he would come out after the sun had gone down. And Mary waited, in the dark. When he did emerge from the building he was always “funny.” He walked funny or talked funny, or both. When they got home, Mary’s mother would yell at him. She forgot Mary was even there. She would slip away and put herself to bed.
As time went on, the trips to the park became more frequent. Sometimes when he entered the building, he never came out at all. Mary was actually relieved. That meant there wouldn’t be yelling. She knew the way home – four houses down, two blocks over, third house on the left. She would walk herself home. If her mother noticed at all, it was only for a moment. After a while, she would just say, “Go to bed.” Awhile after that, she would just nod in Mary’s general direction, and she’d put herself to bed.
One day, Mary asked her grandmother when things would get better. Her grandmother said, “Good times are just around the corner.”
Her father would come home the next morning, dirty and smelly, walking funny or smelling funny.
And then one day, he didn’t come home at all.
(4680 words)
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Copyright © 2011 by P.M. Bradshaw & Tanya Ellenburg-Kimmet