DELIGHTFULLY TWISTED TALES:
VOLUME FIVE
LOVE AND OTHER FILTHY HABITS
by
Nicky Drayden
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Nicky Drayden on Smashwords
Copyright © 2011 by Nicky Drayden
Zombie Doll Photograph by Keng Susumpow, Creative
Commons
www.flickr.com/photos/kengz/391996898
Discover other Delightfully Twisted Tales by Nicky Drayden:
Volume One – Close Encounters of the Worst Kind
Volume Two – Fire, Fangs and Brimstone
Volume Three – The Weirdos Next Door
Volume Four – Wisps, Spells and Faerie Tales
Volume
Five – Love and Other Filthy Habits
Volume Six – Family
Antimatters
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
BY NICKY DRAYDEN
First Published by Shimmer Magazine, 2010
Few folks know that zombies prefer cat brains over human ones, cats being a smidge smarter and all. Problem is cats are just so damned quick. Then again, few folks know anything these days on account of there just being two of us left. And I can't rightly call myself human anymore, now can I?
Dr. Arbuckle performs last-minute tests on the machine as I watch. She swats me away when I get too close. Not in a mean sort of way, but like Renée used to when I'd lift the lid off the stew pot to sneak a taste. Way back then, before Renée got the side of her head all chewed up. Back then, when I still ate stew.
"I'm nearly done," Dr. Arbuckle says to me. She stands up from the instrument panel and the light from the fluorescent lamps hanging overhead hits her just right. Strands of sweaty hair cling to her face. She's beautiful and I tell her so.
"Rarrrgg!" I say, but she never understands. She treats me real good, though. We've got a sort of unspoken contract, her and me. She promises to catch me stray cats with those contraptions she's set up about town, and in return, I promise to keep her in good company. And to not eat her.
"June sixth, 2041," she says adjusting the dial on the machine. "That should give the world enough time to mount proper defenses."
"Rarrrgg!" I agree. That's two months before the first confirmed case of the Rochester flu, which came out of nowhere and killed over forty-eight thousand in just a few weeks. Six months before the deadly mutation of the virus that now crawls through my veins. Eighteen months before mankind stares into the hungry jowls of extinction.
Dr. Arbuckle works herself into a straight tizzy, stuffing a small duffle bag with test tubes and pages and pages of her chicken-scratch formulas. I try to shuffle out of her way, but I never move fast enough.
"Steven!" she yells, giving me a bump with her hip. "A little room, please?"
That's what she calls me when she's frustrated. Most often, it's just Steve, or sometimes Stevie when she's feeling sweet on me. My real name's Chet, like I've tried to tell her, but yeah...
It's a good thing we found each other when we did. I'd smelled the sweet scent of her brain--must have been from thirty miles away. That's plenty far when you top out at a quarter mile an hour. I remember it clearly: her scavenging the local grocery for scraps. Me scavenging for her. Probably the last two survivors left on this war-torn planet.
She shot me six times before her bullets ran out. Blew my left arm straight off, too! But then our eyes met, and my fetid heart fluttered. I led off with one of my old pickup lines. "If I told you you had an amazing body, would you hold it against me?" Of course she only heard the moaning and she screamed to high heaven, but she warmed up eventually.
"Steve, come here. Let me show you something."
I shuffle towards the back of the room where Dr. Arbuckle is waiting for me with a patient smile. She's got one of her cat-catching contraptions set up, but this one's different. Bigger. Sturdier.
"Listen carefully, Steve. Are you listening?"
"Rarrrgg!" I say. I'm undead, not stupid. But then she smiles again, and that makes it all better.
"Good. I've finished the time machine, and now I've got to set things right. I'll be going away, okay? I know I told you you'd be coming with me, but I'm afraid that's impossible."
"Rarrrgg!" I yell. She'd promised. She promised she'd keep me fed and I'd keep her company! I don't want to be left here alone.
"It's not that I don't trust you, but we just can't risk another outbreak. Oh, Stevie, I know this is hard for you to understand." She sighs and places her gloved hand on my good shoulder. "If I succeed, then none of this will ever happen. You'll go on living whatever life you had before you were infected."
Well, this is just great. The last woman on Earth is giving me the "it's not you, it's me" runaround. I feel something itching the corner of my eye, then a warm bead of sludge trickles down my cheek. The hell, I'm crying!
"But in case I fail, I've refitted all the traps so you can bait and retrieve them yourself. See this pedal?" She presses her foot down on a metal plate and the cage door wrenches open. She drops a tuna can in a slot at the top. A barbed spike activates, punches a hole in the can, then eases it down onto the trigger plate.
"And that's all there is to it," she says, a trace of remorse in her voice. She walks back towards the time machine and slings the duffle bag over her shoulder. "Well, Steve. Wish me luck."
"Rarrrgg!" I say, and really mean it.
She presses a button on the panel and the machine begins gyrating. I shuffle towards her, fast as I can, nearly tripping over my own feet. There's so much I want to tell her, and I can't help wondering if things were different, if my skin wasn't the color of week-old fish, if my body parts didn't slough off whenever they pleased, if I didn't feast on the brains of dead tabbies... could she love me?
"I know, Stevie. I know. If there were another way, I--" She gets all choked up. I must look really pathetic. She steps towards me, arms outstretched, and hugs me. I squeeze back, my blue-black tears smudging across her cheek.
It's then that I sink my teeth into her neck. Softly. Tenderly. She yelps, but doesn't fight. There is another way. She knows it. I know it. But it's one of those truly awful things no one wants to talk about until the deed is dead and done. I hold her tightly in my arm and watch the life drain from her face. Then I wait. As long as it takes. Hunger's raging, but I tamp it down deep with every scrap of soul I got left in me.
Finally, she starts to twitch, and her eyes flutter open. She takes a timid first step, then does something with the rigid muscles of her face that just might be a smile. I take her cold, stiff hand in mine. As we shuffle together over the threshold of the whirring time machine, she says those three little words I've yearned so long to hear: "Rarrrgg!"
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BY NICKY DRAYDEN
First Published by Aoife's Kiss, 2010
In a nest of my crewmates' bones
I wriggle, coated with mucus,
crying like a babe left to wolves.
Mother Tentacle cradles me
in the curve of her succulent arm
and with its tip, tugs my gaze
from the wreckage on the horizon.
I heed her subtle warnings
since I cannot be Mother's hostage
if she's killing me
with kindness.
Locked in the same embrace
that stripped the others of life and flesh,
she nurtures me, slicks back my hair,
rubs dirt from my cheek,
like my own mother's wet thumb.
Though Mother Tentacle is all wet,
all thumb.
I cringe at her oppressive touch
but I cannot be Mother's slave
if she's smothering me
with kisses.
I'm a spectator of my own demise
too frail to escape
too indifferent to hope for rescue.
Mother Tentacle tempts me to suckle
sweet nectar dripping from puckered pores.
Like an insolent child I refuse her gift,
her love.
Silent contempt remains my only weapon
for I cannot be Mother's prisoner
if she's strangling me
to death.
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NO MORE GOLD STARS
BY NICKY DRAYDEN
My students bounce around the room with limitless energy, climbing on tables and knocking over chairs. It's useless to chase them. My joints are too stiff, and after twenty-eight years of teaching, the best I can hope is for some of my lessons to sink in on accident.
"Next is the letter P," I say into thin air, my voice scratchy and raw. "Can you say P? P is for people." I look for a glimmer of hope in these kids' eyes, a spark of interest. Something that will make me not worry so much about our bleak future. But it's all bedlam in my classroom--running, screaming, shrieking. Biting.
"Curtis!" I yell. "What did I tell you about biting?"
Curtis ignores me and continues to sink his teeth into Sapna's arm. Sapna wails and tries to pull away, but Curtis has a good grip on her. For goodness sake. I lay down the book and amble towards the pair. I'm not fast, but I know how to look intimidating. That look is enough for Curtis to disengage and he slips past me, running and screaming to the other side of the classroom. He starts shoving crayons into his mouth--peach, tan, raw sienna--he looks at me as he does so, taunting me. I ignore him and focus on Sapna.
"Are you okay?" I ask her, rubbing my fingers along the gash in her forearm. She moans and wraps her arms around my waist. She's a sweet one. If any of my students have a chance of making it, it's her. "It'll be fine," I tell her, then lead her by the hand back to the reading circle.
I continue where I left off. "Next is Q. Can you say Q?"
I pause for my audience of one. Sapna blinks at me, but not blankly like the others. Her mouth puckers, but no sound comes out, just a forced exhalation.
"Almost, I say," trying to be encouraging, but I can see the frustration on her face. "Q is for Quarantine."