Hello!

I don't know the rules for this place, but I wrote something silly for Halloween (completely separate from my story universe) and thought I'd share it here. Since it's all festive and whatnot!


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I fumbled open the apartment door, hands barely maintaining their grip on my bag o’ donuts and purse-and-jacket combo, to fall into my dark apartment.

“Hello?” My words fell softly into carpet, and wooden doors. “Hello?”

It seemed no one was home, and I dropped my things on the ground in my room, thud-swish-thud, only to hear another muffled “thmpth” on the other side of the wall. Was someone home? Had they stayed silent out of some strange attempt to be polite? It made no sense. I peered out into the darkened living room where soft yellow light flooding through opened blinds created a drunken mishmash of shadows.

There was the table, the piles of god-knows-what that accumulate in the living room, the support beam, and –

“Jacob?”

I saw his shadow, what looked like the outline of his frame, only barely visible by the filtered streetlights. He was hunched over, head lolled to the left, right shoulder raised as if in a frozen shrug. He was standing in the middle of the living room, facing a wall, in the dark, when an inhuman moan escaped him. It emanated in rolling nasal sounds, it seemed to come out of his pores; it was, in short, not his usual greeting.

“Nnnnnngggnnnnnmmmmuunnnngg…”

As the sound trailed off into a creaky whisper, his shape leaned and lumbered and he turned and faced me in the dark – I ran back into my room, slamming the door, jamming a small bookcase under the doorknob – and wondered if he was one of those fast zombies, or one of the sad undead that can only sort of shuffle. Mostly, I wondered if he knew how to open a door, and if he was strong enough to get in.

The handle turned. That answered one question.

I realized I was trapped and that I had cornered myself in an inescapable place, this third floor room with one barred window. I cursed myself, like I cursed all the fallen damsels in distress you see in the movies who try to run away from murderers by climbing stairs or locking themselves in cupboards. “Irrational!” I muttered to myself, and looked for something to protect myself with.

Luckily, I had found a reasonably small board on the street earlier in the week, and while I had intended on turning it into shelving, it could swing in a reasonably unencumbered fashion. I still played softball with some friends on the weekends, so I felt reasonably protected. Newly armed, I faced the door from which I could still hear a pathetic moaning and scratching.

The handle turned again.

I prepared myself for his hulking assault, gripping my new weapon; I pulled the bookshelf away from the door and turned off the lights. Do zombie eyes see like our eyes? I didn’t know, but I wasn’t going to take any risks. I grabbed my painfully bright LED flashlight, and crouched low, finding my center of balance.

When he finally came in, I turned the flashlight into his eyes, and as he bellowed and threw up his arms, I felt the first tendrils of hope I might survive the night. I jammed the board into his stomach so he doubled over, and went into a clumsy assault about his general head area. I was so terrified, blood was rushing to my head and I could barely see in my desperate attempt to escape what I thought was a terrible monster, officer, you don’t understand!

You really would have done the same thing in my situation, I swear. It’s All Hallow’s Eve, right? Under any other circumstances I never would have been fooled by my roommate pretending to be a monster, only this is the day when our world and the spirit world are the closest, you know? So I’m kind of superstitious! Can you blame me? The whole world is set on being creepy tonight. It got to me. Look, I’m sure when he comes to he’ll blame himself and not place any charges or anything, so could you please let me go home? I’ll foot his medical bills, I promise, and look at it this way, at least he didn’t sustain any internal injuries! Alright, yes, I’ll hear what you have to say.
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Then he bit you? Really?
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I thought he was unconscious the whole time in the ambulance. I mean, he was pretty much out after I was done giving his general upper torso what-for.
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That’s really unnatural. And that bite doesn’t look too good, officer, have you seen any nurses about it?
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Mm, I see what you’re getting at; you’re playing a joke on me now, right?
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Right?
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Ohh, sh-