Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Walking dead

A fog creeps across the land, and the still, wet air is swollen with the hiss of dragging and moaning... the dead walk again. They pull their enervated carcasses across the earth, looking for the merest scrap of warm flesh to consume hungrily, an unrelenting craving conferred by the decay of the grave. Entrails wet with disease and rot slide over grass and asphalt, as legless bodies claw their way towards the living, all for that one thing they crave monomaniacally -- brains.

In an insolated farmhouse, the damned that hell hath angrily spat up munch and slurp hungrily at a freshly dismembered corpse with toothless maws, the still-warm blood pulsing out of throbbing arteries as a heart beats its last. Two lumbering, dessicated forms move their grasping digits inexactly at the flesh, mindlessly filling their ruined jaws with the meat.


Larry: This one is is quite good.

Bob: I agree. There's a good measure of fat marbled throughout.

Larry: I don't remember anything tasting quite this good.

Bob: I actually can't remember much, myself. My brainpan was shot away by that farmer in the last frame.

Larry: Tough one, there.

Bob: Yeah... but I agree. This is really hitting the spot right now.

Larry: Like a glass of cool water after mowing the grass on a hot day.

Bob: Something like that. I really can't say for sure what grass is, at this point.

Larry: I wonder how we ever got along without the taste of brains.

Bob: I'll say. By gum, I used to not eat brains at all!

Larry: Me too. Back when I was alive.

Bob: That'll do it to ya. This whole deal is a bitch.

Larry: Granted. I'm tired of pulling an empty torso along the ground. My guts spilled out a long time ago.

Bob: I thought I saw a squirrel in there before.

Larry: I know! You, with those knee stumps and one arm -- you're practically on a vacation!

(There is a momentary pause as they voraciously shovel tissue and bone marrow into their throats.)

Bob: Hey Lar, you ever stop to think why we love the taste of brains so much?

Larry: No. Not really. Can't say I ... no. I know I like it, and there's not much more to it than that.

Bob: I can't stop thinking about it. I used to love bacon, and heavy cream, and mint chocolate chip, and braised lamb, and Slim Jims.

Larry: Slim Jims?

Bob: Those little beef jerkies you can score at the convenience store.

Larry: If you squint hard enough at this person, some of the marrow looks like jerky.

Bob: You're missing the point -- I don't care about lamb shanks anymore, or chow fun, or even Count Chocula! All I want is BRAINS!

(From another wing of the house comes the low vocalized moan of "BRAAAAAIIINSSSSS!")

Larry: Great, now look what you did! All those idiots are going to come and mooch off our farmer's wife. I'd like to see 'em get up these stairs.

Bob: What happened to us, man? Where did we go wrong? One minute we had pools, and Hondas, and TiVo. Now, we're shambling corpses.

Larry: Here, have some pectoral muscle, it'll make you feel better.

Bob: I've had enough of this woman to eat. Enough! It's time that we had some changes around here. Big changes!

Larry: We were only turned into ghoulish abominations of nature, like, yesterday. Give it some time, homes.

(Coincidentally, the remaining pulpy mass of Bob's spent cerebral tissue bubbles out of the sizable shotgun wound to his skull.)

Bob: Hurrm, what was I saying?

Larry: You asked me for some bile duct.

Bob: Oh, I love bile duct! Pass the perineum, please?