Translate

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Today's #flashfiction Revolting Zombies

“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.

No comments:

Post a Comment