Drunk blogging

I am drunk and I hate myself for not posting. Here goes a short story I have prepped 0%

Making it up as I go.  I have already finished writing it and I am going to proof it once after my fourth cup of Jack.  Please give criticism but go easing on the spelling and the failure to keep it First Person.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

My bedroom door was crashing like waves against my sanity.  Sitting on the twin bed weighing it down to keep the door closed I cried in silence.  Hoping that it would go away if I was quiet enough.  Wishing it would stop.

The clock read 3 A.M. and I knew that silence wouldn't save me.  Pretending I didn't exist wouldn't work like it did in the hallways at my school.  I couldn't focus with the pounding on the door.  I couldn't breath knowing that my dad was on the other side.  Sure he was a drunk and a jerk.  Sure he didn't understand why I didn't want to go out for football and cared more about Star Trek than 13 year old girls.  That didn't make me hate him enough to want this.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Nothing could soften the hurt in my soul as my mind forces me to watch the arterial spray from my sisters neck as my father begins to chew on her meaty thigh. Her in her white and yellow polka dot spring dress.  Sure my sister was a mean spirited bitch who was popular and was dating a football player in high school.  That doesn't mean I wanted to watch me father chew on her as she tried to scream and only vomited blood....

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Tears ran down my face and snot clung to my chin as my mind refused to work.  The burgundy sheets beneath me were soaked with the tears leave a large dark stain at my knees.

The bed moved into the room an inch.  I responded by rolling off the bed and pulling my dresser onto it to block entrance into my room.  The survival instinct in me refused to give up despite the situation.  The dresser was half on the base of my bed and half on the floor.  My brain worked despite itself and I got between the dresser and the wall and rolled it over and off the bed so that it was between the wall and my bed almost filling up the space between.  The bed had only 3 more inches before it was locked against the dresser but that left 6 inches between my bed and my door.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The sound of furniture crashing renewed his fervor.  My situation worsening as I noticed the dressed was off center and opposite the opening end of the door.  I could see my dad's arm.  Inside my room.  Grabbing at the wall.  Grabbing at my bed.  My sisters dried blood flaking off onto my burgundy sheets and disappearing against the dark stain.  His arm was inside and I could see his mouth and nose.  Biting at the air inside my sanctuary.  Blood and spittle floating through the air and dropping onto the bed that he banged against.  Rolling over the dresser I braced my back against the wall  in the hopes of stopping the progress of the opening door.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Now my fathers shoulder was inside the door propping it open with it's girth.  Fear had ruled my mind for the past four hours.  Knowing that my sister was dead and my dad had done the deed was too much to process.  My left foot slipped off the bed frame at the same instant his rhythmic crashing hit the door.  My foot pushed up the mattress and flipped my 2011 Playboy College Girls onto the floor.

Boom! Boom! Crack!

It was a miracle the door had held for 4 hours being as cheap as it was and considering how big my father was.  5'8 230 pounds compared to my 70 pounds.  An epiphany came to me.  My mother.  4 hours and I hadn't thought about my mother once. The woman who took beatings to protect me from my fathers alpha attitude.  The woman who kept him from beating me when he was drunk by offering herself up as a target.  The only way that I can describe the feeling that welled up in my gut was righteous anger.  For all that she had done for me I sat here and did nothing for her.

Crack! Boom Crack!

I could see my dads face now.  The door was in shambles and he could climb over the top of it if he had the wit to.  I released my feet from the bed frame and pushed off the wall to roll over to my desk.  It was a flimsy thing with 3 metal legs and a plywood top.  Nothing that would even slow my father.  What I reached for was something else though.  The Rawlings baseball bat my dad gave me on my 10th birthday.

Crack! Crack! Snap!

I grabbed the bat with two hands and swung as I turned screaming in fury and determination.  Snot and tears flying as I put all 70 pounds behind it.  My dad was almost face down on my bed.  The force from his incessant banging carrying him through the door.

CRACK!

Little blood flew contrary to what I expected.  His temple just caved in leaving his body twitching in an effort to inch towards me.   The dark red stain of my sheets a bloody looking backdrop to the gruesome scene of his crushed skull and crushed hollow door.

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

Now there was blood and plenty of it.  The twitching stopped and my dads lifeless corpse slid back into the hallway over the remaining quarter of the door.

I realized I had stopped crying sometime in between holding the door shut and breaking my dads skull open.  Purpose drove me to find my mother and protect her.  Something bigger than myself was at stake here and I couldn't afford to shut down and hide like I was accustomed to.  It was time I became the hero I had always dreamt of being.  The hallway light was still on.  My dads now corpse lay knees against the broken door and his mushy head against the opposite wall.  His stomach was distended and looked like the belly of the two girls in the 8th grade class that were about to have a baby.  Huge and distended.

A shudder struck me as I realized that the mass in his abdomen was my sister.  This was no game.  My dad was dead.  My sister was dead.  My mother was missing.  I need to find her and protect her.

The bathroom and the linen closet were clear so I went back down the hallway into the living room.  Living Room.  The room where my dad ate my sister.  The Dead Room.  My own little nightmare.

A faint whisper could be heard as I rounded the corner, my bat in front of me.  "Hhhhhhhheeugh".

My sisters corpse was still but her head was up.  Looking at me.  Breathing through her throat.  Her head leaning far to my left, her right because that side of her throat was gone.  Her right thigh was missing flesh down to the bone.  Her clothes were drenched in blood and torn to shreds.  Her right breast and half of her left were gone.  A nipple sadly pointing to her sternum was all that remained.  I vomited right there, down my chest and all over my hands and the bat.  Green and black bile covered everything..  The tension of my father had been too much for my mind to process, but in this quiet room with the girl I hated most in the world looking at me it was too real.  It was that moment that I realized I loved her.  I realized that I would rather die than live another day as well but it was a passing thought.  One of many that I had learned to ignore.

CRACK! BAM! SPLOSH!

I considered it a mercy.  I hit her in the temple just like I had my father and she fell.  Silent.  Eerie.  So quiet I listened for the first time.  The retort of gun shots and squealing tire wheels sounded distant but loud enough for me to tell what they were.  The sounds told me this wasn't just my dad going crazy and my sister holding onto life by a thread scaring me silly with her deathly moans.  I was scared and my arms began to shake.  No tears this time though, not like with my dad pounding on my door, hour after hour.  My eyes burned and I knew they would be red and splotchy.  There was nothing for it though and I needed to check the rest of the house for my mother.

The kitchen was empty.  I moved as quietly as I could.  The linoleum floors never creaked under my weight.  The house was silent.  My sisters room was empty.  It was messy as usual because she never cleaned it.  The carnage that had left its mark in blood on the other rooms was absent. It had an almost calming effect.  The laundry room was empty too and for the first time I was happy that we lived in a one story home.

BLAP! BLAP! BLAP! BLAP! BLAP! BLAP! BLAP! BLAP! BLAP! BLAP!

The gunfire, for that is what it had to be, sounded like it was going off in my head.  Someone was unloading a gun in the yard or our neighbors yards.  It was something I had never heard before, outside of a movie, and it scared the shit out of me.  I finally pissed my pants standing silent in the dark hallway just 2 feet from the door to my parents master suite.  It felt warm running down my leg.  My underwear caught it and pooled it so there was no splatter like I always imagined there would happen.  Just a warm feeling running down my leg.  I couldn't smell anything because my nose was swollen shut from crying.

A scratching sounded over the ringing in my ears from the gun fire and the door began to shake.  I reached out and turned the knob hoping to find my mother.  Instead the door crashed outwards towards me and almost knocked me down.  A figure bore down over me.  I used the bat to push the scrawny figure back but the bat slipped past and whatever it was landed on top of me.  My head bent sideways as its ribs crashed against my shoulder.  I tried to leverage the bat as a fulcrum to push the thing off of me but the vomit caused it to slip from my hands.  I beat at its head with my bare, vomit soaked hands as the jaws reached for me but the bony figure didn't even slow.

That is when I realized it was my mother.  My mother was going to eat me if I didn't do something fast.  Again survival mode kicked in and I rolled onto my back keeping my legs between us.  My legs weren't strong enough to push her past me onto the floor.  Instead she crashed down on top of me.  Her weight pressing me into the floor.  She may have been skinny but she still weighed twice as much as I did and I was no match for her.  I tried to roll away as she fell on my but just rolled into the wall of our narrow hallway and left my back open to her.  She bit into my mid back.  I knew it was a bite only because I felt her teeth scrape against my ribs.  Her teeth went straight through the cotton t-shirt that I was wearing. The pain only motivated me to fight harder to stay alive.  With my feet pressed against the wall I pushed my mother into the opposite wall jarring her grip.  Following it up with a forward somersault I was suddenly out of reach.  I felt like a ninja.  This shit was real and I was surviving.  My life may be ending but I could tell that a new life was beginning for me.  No more hiding in plain site pretending that I wasn't good enough for anyone around me.  I would not be afraid to show my face in public or to speak my mind ever again.  I stared at my mother on her hands and knees looking back at me.

She growled fiercely as she rose up but I was ready.  Getting up on both feet she lept into the air and landed on top of me again, the weight of her pushing past my upraised arms.  My left shoulder torqued and the pain seared through me.  I tried to push her off but she was too strong. Her teeth raked against my forehead tearing off skin. Blood ran into my eyes.  The shock of my despair overpowering the pain.  Her next bite crushed my left eye socket and this time the pain was more than the shock.  I screamed bloody murder.  I screamed as loud as my burning lungs would allow.  This caused my mother to hesitate. She sat over me her upper body no longer pressed against mine.  I couldn't see anymore but I felt her there. Looking around for something.  A million emotions hit me at once.  5 seconds of mercy from the woman who was about to eat me was enough for me to completely lose all hope.  Instead I reached up, grabbed my mother by her head, dragged her down to me, and kissed her.  I loved my mother more than anything.  I could forgive her for anything.

Her teeth tore into my lips.  Scraping and pushing against my own teeth.  Her next motion was to bite into my cheek, then down to my throat.  All the while chewing and moaning.

"I love you."

I didn't actually say it.  It wasn't possible.  All my air ran out through my throat.  My blood leaking onto the floor.  More important than saying it, I meant it.  Even now I loved her.  Even now I forgave her.  As the room began to spin and the pain of her teeth digging into my gut began to subside I smiled.  Only half my face managed to move and it must have been grotesque to anyone that might have been watching, but no one was.  It was my last moment, alone with my mother.  The woman who sacrificed everything to protect me.  The only person to ever make me feel loved.

Darkness came then.  I could feel the jostling of my body and my back working its way across the floor towards the laundry room. Then I fell through the floor into nothingness and ceased to be.

The End.

My first public Zombie short story.  Let me know what you think.

Suspending Disbelief

When watching a show or reading a book I immerse myself in not only the story but the world.  I don't sit there and nit pick every detail.  I don't complain that dwarves don't exist and and men can't call fireballs down from the sky.  I read fantasy because I want a break for my humdrum life.  I should be able to do the same when writing a story but for some reason I can't.

When I sit down to write instead I try to explain how zombies can exist.  I try to come up with a 100% real reason for dead to walk the earth.  I try to explain how they could come into being and how they could stay a tangible threat forever instead of just letting go and living in the world I want to create.  So instead of worrying about it forever I am going to talk about what I plan to do and see if it works out.

I think my next blog will be about zombies.  How they come into being and what abilities they have.  I could go on for hours about his.  I have gone on for hours about this much to my sisters chagrin. I might just create a structure for a series of posts about how the zombies should come into being and how powerful of a force they should be.

You may have already noticed I am not very consistent in my postings so don't get your hopes up that I will post something too soon.  I do promise that I will post something though.  My biggest complaint about the zombie fiction society is all the half assed or given up on stories.

Peace

Building a Zombie Apocalypse World

You can't build an entire world in a day, and I don't want to run out of things to write for my brand new blog in a day either.  I could argue with myself for a week about the pro's and con's of 28 day later zombies but that would get boring too.  Rather I would like to discuss the zombies as a tool for the author.  They are the rule-book that the characters I create have to live with.  Also without them it wouldn't be a zombie apocalypse and that I cannot abide.

First things first.  Zombies were people.  Mothers and Fathers, Sisters and Brothers, Friends and Lovers.  Zombies were all of these before my sick and twisted brain decided to have a zombie apocalypse.  This is a powerful tool for an author when developing a character.

"Drop Dead Tavern" on Kindle

This is a free kindle very short story that I read recently.  Something like what I plan to post on this blog at some point.  It starts out so cliche that I almost didn't finish it but I powered through.  This is some of the best use of a zombie as a person I have read.  It is too powerful a tool to use on every zombie but it has a place at least once in every characters story.  A character can be forced to choose between killing a loved one and getting eaten by that loved one.  A character can also choose to hunt his or her loved ones so they do not live on as an abomination.  A haunting reminder that they once had a normal life.

Another thing that Zombies are is a mindless horde.  Mob mentality with no tactics and only one goal.  This is directly opposite my first explanation of zombies.  It is a balance that I will need to be careful about.  I cannot forget that they are people and I can't let my characters become emotionally dead to the fact that they are killing the bodies of former humans or my book will become a bloody hack and slash with little dramatic content.  I want to make my characters as real as possible and put them through as much emotional anguish as is bearable but I cannot ignore the mindless horde aspect of the zombie genre.

Other things I will want to talk about are how fast I want my zombies, how strong I want my zombies and how smart I want my zombies.  All of these are open to discussion and I will respect any view point.  Here is my macro level idea.  Slow zombies with average human strength.  I am willing to go faster than slow, but I will not allow fast zombies.  I also want my zombies dumb as a box of rocks.  I may have a post on each of these attributes separately depending on discussions on comments.  I most definitely will if I am still talking to myself on here in a month.

Another thing that I haven't decided on yet is how the zombies came to be.  One thing I do know is it will not be something that my characters can do anything about.  It won't have a cure.  This is to keep me from making a "hero" that cannot fail.  Also to keep me from getting stuck in a rut writing about how awesome one person is.  Everyone is special and everyone has their place.  I want to give everyone I write about a chance to be a hero and a villain depending on the situation and I want to be able to kill anyone at any time.  I don't quite consider GRRM to be the best author ever, but I love his character development and his lack of fear in killing off characters he spent so much effort building.  I want to copy this tone in my apocalypse because I enjoyed reading it myself.

If you have any zombie ideas that I didn't think of let me know.  Any zombie characteristics that I didn't mention.  I want to go into much more detail on zombies but that is for a later post.

Peace

Zombie inspirations

With this trend of zombies in the media lately there is a lot of clutter.  A lot of people like me are trying to make original content because they love zombies.  If you managed to find my blog then you probably know about most of my inspirations and are looking for more content.  The intent here is to show you what I consider inspirational to my version of a zombie apocalypse.  Please leave comments on subjects that you feel should be covered in the near future.


www.zombiehunters.org
This website is pretty awesome.  It is not what the name implies.  It is a prepping website that takes a realistic look at preparing for a post apocalyptic world.  Also their forums have tons of rules like no talking about politics and no talking about doing something illegal.  Shooting at or robbing from humans isn't allowed even when speaking hypothetically.  I especially like their Fiction section.  It is the area where people talk about zombies through the medium of fiction writing.  I use the rest of the site as ideas for characters in a PAW(Post Apocalyptic World) and what kind of gear they would have/find in their journey.  I also got the acronym ZPAW from reading this site.

http://mjoyzy.blogspot.com/2011/11/august-it-begins.html
This is by and far the best zombie fiction I have read outside of The Walking Dead.  Kathy in FL writes a story about a ZPAW from the perspective of a prepper mom in a diary format that fits well with a blog style story telling.  The story was originally told in the zombiehunters fiction forum but was moved to blogspot for easier reading.  If you want to read the original format in all it's glory and with community feedback like I read it go here.  http://zombiehunters.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=113&t=35300

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walking_Dead_(comic_book)
The Graphic Novel "The Walking Dead" is the first zombie fiction I read and was able to relate to.  It is ongoing and awesome.  @RobertKirkman is the author of it and I plan to have a bookshelf full of TWD content someday.  Here is the amazon link to the issues if you are interested and didn't know about it.  http://www.amazon.com/Walking-Dead-Collected-Editions/lm/R3DLKI0S20B6L6

http://www.amctv.com/shows/the-walking-dead
The TV show The Walking Dead is pretty awesome.  TV as a medium for art is much more popular than graphic novels. Many more people watch the show than will ever read the work it is based on.  The book was better.  That is what most people say when a show is made out of their favorite book.  The show doesn't try to stay true to the story of the Graphic novel.  They split from the story line early and hard making it a fresh story that doesn't spoil the Graphic Novel or vise versa

http://www.zombiesrungame.com/
This is an awesome app.  It helps me get off my fat ass and go running.  The fact that they got the http://www.kickstarter.com fund to make the app bodes well for the zombie industry as a whole.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1386925/
"The Dead" was just another zombie B movie.  Except it wasn't.  The feeling you get while watching it is similar to how I want my world to feel. This is by and far my favorite zombie movie of all time.

Honorable Mention

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Evil_(disambiguation)
Milla Jovovich is hot and zombies are cool.  They have a very compelling story and a huge franchise.  This is honorable mention because the "Hero" stops the "Bad Guy".  In the world that I imagine there are no heroes and no superpowers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left4Dead
Zombie game with a cool story.  Fun team play makes it a party game if you have 4 or 8 friends.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Island
This game is freaking awesome.  Very visceral and I love sandbox games like this and Elder Scrolls.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dies_the_Fire
This is a book that had nothing to do with zombies.  It is written by someone with very different ideas and ideals than me.  The later books lost me with their deep religious influences.  The PAW creation and the story of how it happened was extremely compelling and also a fun read.

Hopefully there is something on this list that you didn't already know about.  Also hopefully you understand that I am not going to be writing about heroes with superpowers.  I am not going to write about cool guns and machetes.  I definitely won't be writing about AWESOME head-shots.   I am going to write about people and how they react and survive when things go badly.

Also making HTML links is boring.  This is gonna be fun!

Why start a blog about zombies?

I decided to start a blog because I need to practice writing.  I am going to try and be real instead of fantastic so I can't sabotage myself into not writing.  I am also going to try to get a little fancier as I go because I am being asked to learn some basic coding for work.

 I have a book written in my head of a very realistic and visceral zombie apocalypse.  I have all the characters created and all their story lines fleshed out.  I have been working on this for almost two years.  The problem is none of it is written down.  Every time I sit down to write I change my mind and make small tweaks that change how everything happens.  I have written one characters introduction six times.  

Now I plan to blog about zombies.  The URL is derived from the acronym ZPAW which means Zombie Post Apocalyptic World.  

The main reason I am drawn to zombies is not the horror aspect or the gore.  I don't want to write about heroes who thrive in a living hell.  I want to have access to a fantasy world that is so bad that it justifies the depression I feel when everything is going perfect in my life.

I will try to write something that involves zombies in the near future.  The short term plan for this ill thought out blog is to flesh out a template for a world.  You can't do fiction without first building a world and if everything is planned and written down then there will be no need to change my mind halfway into the first chapter.

Peace