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Chapter 2 - A Corpse, SC
🕑 Added 2024-05-02 08:17:18 +0000 UTCDeath was no more than a strange and peaceful nap. Sunday only remembered catching a glimpse of a whirlpool in the sky and countless blurry figures marching toward infinity. He wanted to join them. There was something irresistible that called out to him there. It offered peace and new beginnings.
Then all was gone in a blink as something else grabbed him and whisked him away. A strange voice stole his senses and Sunday felt as if he was drowning. His eyes shot open and his first thought was that something had been taken away from him.
The story of Sunday starts as many do— with a death and a birth.
In the Sanctum of Lost Legends, floating in the dusty space between the myriad worlds stirs a story. The hand of a dry corpse pushes from beneath the earth as if reaching for the heavens. The universe silently awaits his first step. And so do we…
The eerie voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once. And it knew his name. Sunday was not sure if it had truly spoken or if it was just a part of a dream he was still having. He felt drunk, disoriented, and sluggish. Something was seriously wrong. There was a sense of general all-encompassing numbness that made his whole body feel like a malfunctioning tool. A shell barely connected to a nervous system. It still followed directions but with a long delay, as if it was taking a moment to decide if the effort was worth it.
The soft earth put up a mighty defense as some instinctual force guided his next actions. His numb hand broke through after what felt like an eternity and weak daylight lit up the word for a brief moment. Dirt collapsed onto his face and got into his eyes. It didn’t irritate them, only making it seem as if he was looking at the world through a dirty lens.
Surely nothing bizarre was going on. Nothing at all. He was probably asleep in some dirty alleyway. What a party it must’ve been.
With effort, his other hand joined the first, and Sunday slowly crawled out of his grave. The mud slid off his body in wet clumps. He stood up on two shaky legs, as each movement felt foreign without the sensations to guide it. His mind remained foggy but there was something clear...
Why?
Sunday tried to move his face and mouth but quickly gave up. He knew he had a face, but it had decided not to cooperate with him. His thoughts were sluggish but certain. There was one thought that dominated over all others.
He had died. Quite pathetically at that.
There was conviction in the thought. Death and rebirth were an indisputable fact. He knew nothing else – there was no knowledge of where he was, what was happening, or why he hadn’t remained dead. He had the vague sense that he had agreed to something. The last few moments of his life were a hazy mess, but he remembered falling.
To die because of a slip of all things…
Something solid inside of him pushed away at the fog in his mind. Hidden somewhere beneath the cobwebs and under the floorboards of his mind the cold and hard steel of certainty that he was here for a reason thrummed for his attention. Sunday knew that as sure as he knew that people who blamed retail workers for price hikes needed a hobby and a slap.
Explanations, theories, and stray thoughts that could make sense of it all tried to worm themselves into his mind but were stopped by the impenetrable knowledge that nested there. Sunday shook his head, a slow and unnatural movement that he was sure almost made his head come off, and forced himself to focus.
If there are answers to be found, I will find them. Still, I figured death would be a much more peaceful experience, with much less digging. He thought.
Sunday tried to use his right hand to clean the dirt from his eyes. It happened slowly as the limb was hesitant to follow his commands. He felt nothing as a dried-out finger pushed away the specks of dirt stuck to his eyeball. It was like cleaning a dirty window.
He blinked and did a double-take. The arm – his arm – was a blackened thin thing covered in dry leathery skin. Slowly, like forcing a rusty hinge, he looked down and screamed internally at what he saw. The legs and body followed the same theme as the hand, and so did his pride and joy – it was like a sun-dried little snake, with not a trace of its former glory, barely managing to dangle.
Who knew those preachy assholes would prove right in the end. Hell is real. I should’ve listened.
The world demanded his attention now and he obliged if only to pull his mind away from his current state. He had been staring, without really looking. And surely, if his jaw was not locked in place by calcification and dried flesh, it would’ve dropped open.
Thin fog similar to the fumes around the factories, but much cleaner, rolled lazily everywhere adding to the mystique of the scenery. Above were low-hanging clouds that lay like a gray cotton candy blanket over the world. There were many hazy shapes in each direction, veiled by the mists, awaiting discovery.
Sunday was in the middle of a desolate cemetery – gravestones of various sizes and styles stood erect all around. Most were broken, by time or something else he couldn’t tell; what remained was only a remnant of a former beauty – a shadow of what once was. Few stood tall, but even those had lost the names they had carried through the centuries to the unforgiving passage of time. An odd letter or symbol could be seen here and there. Sunday couldn’t tell what the language was.
The one thing that was still resisting this everlasting march toward entropy was a towering evergreen tree that seemed to be the center of this burial ground of the nameless. It created quite a contrast. Its bark was brown and scaly, while the leaves glistened dark green and pointed like tiny accusing fingers at the world around it. The branches were dense and spread wide, creating a circle of dark shade under it that seemed ominous even amidst everything else. It would have taken tens of him to barely circle the large misshapen trunk.
All the memories of the city he had come from seemed oddly profane as he stared at the tree, surrounded by the ghostly silence of the forgotten cemetery. He wanted to know what type of tree it was for some reason. An odd desire to lie under its trunk and feel the breeze on his skin with a good drink washed over him for but a moment. Alas, there were no bars in sight and he highly doubted he could even hold a cup in his current state, let alone drink anything.
There was so much more to explore too. The cemetery was on top of a hill and centered around the tree he was busy admiring. However, beyond the graves, he could see the ornate fence and gates promising undisturbed rest to the buried. And further, the rolling mists obscured something important.
There was a calling, a need that rose deep inside of him when he looked in that direction. He had a purpose, and it lay beyond the mists and toward what awaited in their embrace. His body took an involuntary step forward.
A step is taken. A step of heresy and uncertainty. Come forth young wretch, and face the judgment and gifts that await those who have forgone the waters of oblivion. Be victorious, and receive the opportunity to turn a short fable into a legend! Come and let songs carry your name!
The voice came again and Sunday was enthralled by it. He wanted to respond, to ask questions, to argue and lie, but his mouth remained dry and unmoving. The beckoning only became stronger but somehow, he managed to resist taking another step.
Sunday had always had a problem with authority, and the unknown pull was acting too much like some creeps he had known. Following foreign hunches and strange voices, no matter how glorious they sounded, was not him. First, he would do what he felt like doing.
He turned toward the tree and was surprised to see moving shapes that he hadn’t noticed a moment before. Corpses, just the same as him, were crawling out of their graves, just like he had, and venturing forth on shaky legs. Did all of them hold confused minds inside?
Sunday ignored them. He willed his feet to move away from the direction of the pull and toward the tree. Walking was hard, but he managed without breaking anything. The pull became stronger with each step. After what felt like an infinity of passing by shattered gravestones and being careful not to fall into the holes left by the walking dead, he reached the tree and tentatively raised a shriveled hand to touch it. It was strangely warm considering the lack of direct sunlight. There was power beneath the bark – power long forgotten in the city where he had bled and forced others to bleed for scraps.
What a beauty you are, eh? He thought. Some of the warmth seemed to shift into his hand and spread throughout his body. He suddenly felt a bit surer in his movements; just a tiny bit more in control of his pathetic body.
Why do I feel warmth? I don’t feel anything else.
His thoughts were erased like the writing on a chalkboard as the beckoning grew stronger yet again. Sunday tried unsuccessfully to take a deep breath as thousands of invisible ants started nibbling at his very soul, urging him to respond. With a last look toward the mighty crown, he patted the tree trunk and turned to catch up.
The discomfort slowly faded once he was walking down the ancient and half-buried cobblestones leading toward the cemetery gates. There was a mass of corpses there already, with more coming. They behaved as one would expect from zombies who had been on a strict no-brain diet for a while, pushing against the fence, frail bodies failing to elicit a single tremble from the uncaring black iron.
It was like watching a crowd gathering at the entrance for a concert of a newly famous artist. Sunday had always preferred to pose as staff or sneak in through the back instead of waiting squashed together between the sweaty and crazed fans. He didn’t think his experience would work here, but a cursory look let him notice something extremely simple that his brethren hadn’t.
With as much aplomb as his body allowed, he sauntered closer to the arching gate and watched a few of the corpses ram their bodies against the steel bars in futility. The unfortunate bastards, in their desire to follow the call of whatever manipulative thing was waiting beyond, had missed one very important detail. A detail that had brought even the mightiest to their knees and made them feel stupid at one point or another; and without a doubt, a leading cause for the revolution in sliding door technology.
It was pull, not push – evidenced by the two stone columns on each outer side, stopping the gates from opening out.
Sunday moved closer, pushing a few of the thin corpses out of the way. It was not hard, despite the lack of functional muscles. He wrapped both of his hands around the iron bards – it was more of using them as hooks, as his fingers were too stiff to curl appropriately – and tried to pull. The gates barely budged.
As he let go, perplexed, something pushed him from the back and made him fall face-first. His head rammed between two of the steel bars. There was no pain, but something in his forehead cracked ominously. He tried to right himself just as another push brought him back down.
Is this a metaphor for society or is some dead bastard tired of unliving?
A beast reared its ugly head inside of Sunday, and he felt a bit more like himself again. This was the first true emotion he had felt since crawling out of the grave – anger. If he could smile, he would’ve bared his teeth.
He pushed with all of his effort but to the side this time. He turned in time to see a decrepit corpse winding up and missing him narrowly. It failed to stop itself, falling toward the iron gates just as Sunday had a moment ago. Sunday wanted to speak, but his mouth was as useless as a plastic cheese grater. So, he simply chose violence.
If one thing could be said about Sunday, it was that he paid back every slight he had suffered, as long as he could get away with it.
He took a step back and grabbed at the back of the corpse’s head before slamming it into the iron bars. Each movement was done almost in slow motion, but it was enough as he heard a crack similar to the one that had come from his skull. He had the vague sense that he was stronger after touching the tree.
The corpse struggled but Sunday slammed its head down again without thinking, and on the third time there was a loud crack as if someone had broken a rotten door down, and his enemy's head caved in. Its thin limbs twitched for a few moments. There was no blood. Sunday let go and the corpse fell to the ground with a hollow thump.
Did I kill it?
The thought was strange. He felt no worry, no remorse or shock. Only the lingering touch of anger. Both of them were already dead after all, and he had only done what it had tried to do to him.
The first falls, their body just an empty broken vessel of wasted potential lying in the mud. How far will the rest go before the embrace of eternal dark reclaims them? Will some prevail, or will they all fall as the thousands before? Walk forth, and grow.
The voice appeared again. For some reason, he found the strange narrator much more disturbing than the fact that he was just one of many zombies trying to escape a cemetery. However, after the cold-hearted zombie-on-zombie murder he had committed, he felt just a tiny bit more in control.
He felt stronger.
