Yeah, yeah, get to the point, John.
It’s one big, slobbering mess of almost-zombie horror fiction; almost because I never follow the norm when dealing with the familiar horror tropes, I like to come at them from a different angle. The best zombie tales do this, while the rest…bore me. It’s a rather lively piece of off the cuff madness, takes place in a famous guitarist’s abode (you‘ll see), goofball references abound, our narrator’s sense of humor is twisted by being amongst the last survivors of “a mysterious plague,” he’s just wanting his girlfriend back, but she, well…she’s fallen to pieces; that said, the pieces never die, so…
Well, here’s a taste, and I mean taste. This is where the story gets its title. It's dated, written in the early '90s, and you can tell, so know that when you read the grisly sample below. Oh, and not recommended reading while eating…
Enjoy!
***
The dead are everywhere. In pieces. It seems the plague reanimated the dead, and those alive…fell apart. Chunk by grisly chunk. Arms, legs, torsos, heads (like gruesome, fleshy bowling balls, two fingers in the nostrils, thumb in the mouth and, as Joe Bob Briggs would say: Heads will roll), unrecognizable chunks, all crawling, seemingly alive. The bleak manifestations are resurrected before my very eyes, hindered only by the narrow scope of my vision. Infected beyond repair, their senseless meandering is no more human than the slow flies. Plump, meaty, lethargic flies which is a plus. They’re easy to catch.
You may ask: What are you implying? Let me explain:
I’m staying in southern California at guitar God Eddie Van Halen’s place, lots of pictures of Eddie and the wife, Valerie (now there’s some excellent stroke material, if I were so inclined), and the kid, Wolfgang. Not that this really matters. It does lock up good and tight though, real secure. Ah, but periodically—I know you’re going to like this—I have to open the doors to let in some of the slow flies. You see, there’s not much left that hasn’t been soured by the plague. Initially I tried the meat of those crawling things outside (it’s hard to think of them as ever being human. Nonetheless, it tasted like rancid Spam), trust me, the flies are better. As the Colonel, Mr. Sanders (that’s right, Alice [Cooper, referenced earlier; yes, I told you this one is nuts] and me and the old chicken plucker), would say: Mmm, Mmm, finger lickin’, lip smackin’, crunchy on the outside, squishy tender on the inside, good. Well, I suppose he wouldn’t put it quite like that, but you get my drift--whoa, let’s hope you don’t--shower’s a rare luxury these days, and anyway, who are you to complain? Are you in any position to complain? You, the invisible all-attentive fabrication of my fornicating brain cells, a ghostly groupie groping the perpetual mindfuck, my perpetual mindfuck, the relentless squeezing of life like a drenched dishrag wrung dry and then flaking like the dead skin from sunburn, so dried up…
You may ask: Who died and made you boss?
Everybody--ha ha, I am such a comedian. Forgive me my tainted sense of humor. I call myself a “grimwit” (a variation of dimwit as altered by these corrupt circumstances, standing at this window, soaking in the sordid scenery) because that is the crux of my existence: the telling of the tale. ...
***
Allll righty, you get the point. It only gets worse, too. I’m a much better writer now, much different, for sure, but the free-for-all energy of this one was fun to catch up with again...and, actually (be honest, John), there's a couple pieces in progress that have that same FFA energy, though much better refined, haha...
Now, where’s my flyswatter? I got some dinner to kill.
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| This guitar ends up in the living room bonfire towards the end of the story. |
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