“It's
not easy being green.”
Bruce Banner*
#quote
Today
I marched with the penguins. They are really, really
slow. Anyway onto the flash fiction!
Revolting
Zombies
I've
been a necromancer for many, many years. Hundreds in fact. It's a
privilege you gain when sacrificing souls to extend your own
lifespan. So I haven't died yet and with flesh magic I've managed to
make myself still as attractive as I was when I was twenty. My magic
never did stand on the legal side of the thing so I was forced to
adjust my face as well. It forced law enforcement to update the
wanted posters, I've managed to maintain a collection of various
“WANTED: Necromancer Fillian Daniels” posters. It crossed my mind
several times to change my name but there's a charm to have a legacy.
I
combed my black hair and rubbed the smooth black skin of one of my
new faces when a voice addressed me quite angrily, but also with a
hint of nervousness.
“We
demand better maintained bodies as well as compensation for our
services,” the voice said. I planned to next change from my casual
black wizarding robes that I wore around the home to a suit because I
had a date with a more mortal person this evening, but apparently
someone chose to ruin my day. I turned to see one of my many zombies
as the source of the voice. And behind him stood more zombies. Right
now I hid out in an old abandoned temple on the west side of a
mountain. Most of them were supposed to be out farming or doing other
tasks, none of them were supposed to be inside the temple. But I
couldn't even see into the next room through the zombies. Had they
all abandoned their duties?
“You've
got to be joking.” I raised these people from the dead. Pulled
their souls back into their bodies. Well, actually not necessarily
their souls. Really to make a zombie you can just get enough parts
and attach any soul you can get from the afterlife. If I didn't have
enough power and spell components to get a human soul sometimes I got
an animal soul. I knew I at least made a few out of cat and dog
souls I think one with a squirrel.
The
zombie continued, “We are not joking. When one of use got a hold of
your magic books we realized you cannot unbind our souls from our
bodies and most all the things you claim you can do to torture us. If
you made us mindless zombies then yes. But no, you made us advanced
zombies. The only thing we have to fear is society shunning us and
body decay.”
Another
zombie spoke up, this time a woman. She seemed more confident.
Perhaps one of the leading ones that possessed enough charisma and
courage to lead the zombies to this ridiculous notion they can fight
against me. “So you're asking for body repairs, but what about the
money?”
A
third one began to speak, “Money works for us,” I hope that too
many don't speak, if there isn't central leadership focused on one or
two of the zombies that means that taking them all down could be a
problem. The third one continued with a toothless smile, “because
some people don't care where money comes from.”
I
laughed. Hard. I forgot about previous notions of the difficulty of
taking any form a leadership down. Spending money? They must have
been thinking of this for quite awhile to even come across the notion
of buying things as zombies. I wondered now if they thought I'd give
in and they'd get to just have all they wanted handed to them. I'd
repair their bodies and they'd get paid. I bet they imagined buying
pretty little houses on hills for all the zombie families to live and
buying pretty zombie clothes and getting all sorts of zombie things
by being some sort of employees.
“No,”
I replied, “You're just standing corpses. Why would I listen to
you?” I then looked at the zombies when my tears of laughter
subsided. I saw anger in the zombie faces, even the ones who had very
little in their faces left to express anger with. They showed their
anger in the way they stood too, all of them, but especially the ones
who didn't have faces to show me their fury normally. They way they
stood resembled a tense animal before pounce mixed with a tense form
like clenched fist but through the whole body.
One
of the shorter zombies among them walked out, he looked extremely
calm and collected despite the other's anger. “It seems that you
don't understand Mr. Daniels. Necromancers have difficulty making
zombies so it is a large job market. We can find another to meet our
demands. For now, we'll just turn you in for your ransom.” The rest
of my zombies leaped at me. I assumed they'd stumble at me with a
slow walking pace, but they moved faster than I anticipated. It
didn't take long before they disarmed me of all my magical items, I
couldn't reach for anything in time. I never expected zombies to have
the strength of will to band against me, the only person more
surprised than me that day was the royal guard who the zombies
presented me to while demanding their bounty for my arrest.
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