REBELECTRIC ZOMBIE
CREATURE COCOON TO TEEN VAMPIRE ROMANCE
written by: MZ CLARKE
@zoeandme
I’m not sure how long this took – days – months – years perhaps
I was a ghost so time had no relevance
Finally my sculpture body was complete with an electrical motion system
I was anxious to try it out
see if I could live inside this body
create and feel motion
My particled spirit flew inside the sculpture head and suddenly I could see out of my new eyes
literally blue tinted windows
My wrists were already hooked up to an electrical cord plugged into the socket
I attached three lithium batteries as back-up power
I felt around the brain for electrical impulses
I could hear the whispers and echoes of cells telling each other what to do
a chorus of chromosomes was singing at a glass-breaking pitch
Zap! A spark My brain was working my thoughts were turbo-charged
jumping ahead and back – difficult to focus but I had to
I looked at my hand trying to make my new brain lift it
Suddenly a burning sensation – a hole was being drilled into the palm
The coracle was back!
It was filled with blood – an ocean of blood and — teeth
There must have been a storm brewing because I heard a rumble of thunder
I looked out the warehouse window just as
a whip crack of lightning split a tree in two
falling against the building
I stared at my hand — Lift up, lift up
Nothing
But I could hear the hum of blood vessels bursting open
Were they growing or expanding
My head hurt as if tiny bullets were being shot through my skull from the inside out
Pop pop pop like popcorn in a microwave but my brain was the paper bag
Now I was terrified since I didn’t know if this was a good thing or not
realizing I was trapped in this body and couldn’t get out
this could be my self-made mummification of my soul
I stared at my hand again pleading — lift up, LIFT UP
My pinky finger moved just as
A wild wicked wind blew through the warehouse
then I could see a blood red tornado descending from the sky
shattering the windows glass raining down on me
followed by a swirl of creatures flying through the window
surrounding me
I looked around me as the glass and dust settled
The vampire ghosts!
The tallest one stepped forward sniffing my skin
He inhaled deeply
“Ah– blood cells. My favorite.”
“How did you get here?”
“Lucy, when you left us, you tore a wormhole through Limbo. Thanks for that. You saved us another thousand years of having to figure out how to break back into earth.”
Dozens of vampire ghosts began closing in attacking Lucy biting into her newly blood-pumped body.
Lucy screamed through centuries, unable to move.
I was screaming in pain to somewhere beyond this earth
as the vampire ghosts devoured my stem cells as the most delicious forbidden fruit
back in the Garden of Eden
I could see them getting stronger and more visible – they were becoming three-dimensional!
The stems cells were creating limbs – arms and legs and torsos were appearing out of thin air
as they got drunk on my blood, sucking my bones
I was being eaten into oblivion disappearing from existence and I couldn’t move an inch in my mummified state
every evil thought flew through the air
but speak no evil was my religion
so I started speaking in tongues – a magic spell and a prayer:
“May heaven flood this ground with fire
Let the tears of angels rain down burning these devil creatures in holy water
of justice!”
with that I was able to raise my hand and the coracle was suddenly a blow torch
of sun burning the vampires now blown back into the corners
balls of fire
wailing and screeching
and the skies opened up and purple acid rain drowned them in their own evil
some of the vampire ghosts exploded like fireworks
splattering my precious blood cells everywhere
I used all of my brainpower to will my leg to move
I took my first step as a reborn zombie
I stumbled as I tried to bend to clean up the stem cells
suddenly each tiny cell the size of a pomegranate pearl
opened its eyes and blinked at me!
They knew what I wanted, nodded their red beings and pooled themselves together
and jumped back into my body
My body hummed with rebelectricity
unlike any kind of zombie
electric or not
My blood was singing a song of unknowable life buzzing with activity
My brain was a hive of new thought connections transmitting to other galaxies
I was getting lightheaded – dizzy
I waited a moment to take another step
My feet now had feathery steel around my heels
I took one more step then another
now I lifted into the air
I could fly without a portable generator
I could fly as a ghost bird transcending all boundaries of the spirit world in the body of a near human
With voracious appetite
you bite
into bionic blood
that gives all galaxies electricity
All childhood hidden photographs are still framed
in her face
yet even the footprints have walked away from
a child of wonder I want to always be
the moment a caterpillar discovers it has wings
with a new name
I dreamed of flying as a bluebird
and I now fly for all mankind
to fight
for justice
I’m hungry
and no one will stop me
not vampires who suck the blood from me
or the werewolves howling
devouring the moon
I am uncaged as the force
of the great blood river
that runs through all of us
I was now a new breed of hybrid flying zombie – fueled by stem cells and electricity
I looked at myself in a reflection of a shimmering pool of blood
I am not a girl, I am a dangerous storm with skin and wings
I was filled with poison for the past
Now reframed restructured and blessed with beauty and a raging fire for the future to burn
in the name of justice I ride on the waves of sorrows
grateful for as many tomorrows as I could earn
I wanted to show Teri my new self
and check on my stem cells in the lab
So I flew to Lataham Hospital
flew in through an open window
into the lab afterhours
Perfect, the graveyard shift
I walked down the hallway but Teri was nowhere in sight
Now that I had a body again I had to be careful
I turned a corner and saw a body bleeding on the ground
It was Teri!
I ran to her and knelt down next to her
Teri, Teri!
She had vampire bites all over her body
I looked up and was surrounded by more vampire ghosts dripping with blood
the door to the lab where my stem cells were was wide open
I screamed in a rage that shook the walls
“look what you did to my sister!”
the vampire ghosts laughed and attacked me
I raised the coracle and bolted them with electricity and lightning and saved sunlight
they flew backwards into the walls
but they were strengthened by my blood
they were three-dimensional and three times as powerful as the vampire ghosts in the warehouse
they got right back up and rushed back at me sucking my arms and legs
biting right into my head
I looked into the coracle and yelled
“Oah! Help me!”
I heard an explosion which rocked the hospital breaking windows, shattering beakers and the stem cell dishes fell to the floor
the vampire ghosts flew to the dishes and lapped up the blood
“Stop it!” I yelled
From down the hallway an army of zeltergeists rushed and pulled the vampire ghosts off of me
in the midst of them Oah picked me up and carried me to an empty hospital bed as the rest of the army began zapping them with electricity and trapped reserves of bottled lightning
I hugged Oah
“I thought you crossed over? How did you come back?”
“You might say I got a three day pass… special circumstances”
He looked at my fresh wounds
How can such a spritely spirit attract such evil forces?”
“Aren’t we all magnets for our opposites?”
“That’s true.”
“Help Teri, please, she’s my sister. She can’t die before she’s ever lived, like me.”
Oah rushed out of the room to rescue Teri.
My face was splattered with blood and bits of flesh and bone but I managed to sit up and heard a scraping sound.
I turned and saw another vampire ghost – a male, young, maybe sixteen, scraping the last bits of stem cells from a dish. He looked at me, fangs down, about to bite my arm, then stopped himself
“Lucy?!”
I knew I knew him but from where-
“Jordan?”
Tears welled in my eyes. He turned his head and a large gash and crushed skull were gleaming in the
moonlit hospital room
Yes, it was him, my first and only love, who was killed in a car crash when we were sophomores, before our first kiss.
Jordan looked at my body, covered in blood, grabbing towels, stopping the bleeding
“You look great— considering”
I was too overwhelmed to think
“Could you help my sister? Remember Teri? Your friends attacked her. Please.”
“Sure, I’ll be right back.”
He rushed out of the room as I looked down at my wounds, I wondered
I held the coracle over a gash in my leg
Light and electricity beamed into it and started healing my wound in fast motion
I quickly aimed the coracle at my arms and face and stomach healing myself then jumped up and ran out to find Teri.
How easily we slip into old tragedies
grow bolder with each heartbreak
as my soul buckles
crushed beneath my knuckles
and knees
a vintage love never quenched
is thirsty again
my tongue is a weapon
a sword of truth and crimson crusade
join me in this passion parade
as a monster moon rises
from Never Again
Shall I tell you kiss me?
You and I know this never was and never will be
merely a tryst
what breed of angel has collided us as planets
or what breed of demon
that I did not know could exist
no matter
Death does not decide
when a love will end
love transcends all dimensions
breaking eternity into stars
speaking our names
I rushed down the hallway to join Oah and the zeltergeists
using the coracle as sword of sun and electricity
slicing through dozens of newly born blood-filled bodies
time to give back these animated blood houses back to the bank
I couldn’t see where Jordan went
then I began to worry
would he be slain by one of the zeltergeists?
would this vampire nightmare be vainly spent?
I heard an unholy shriek not from another
but from my own heart as if leaping out again
I flew across the heads of the remaining unslayed
and found Jordan cornered by Oah with a dagger of bottled moonlight
at his neck
“Spare him, please, that’s — my friend.”
Oah turned his brow furrowed, confused.
“He must die like the rest.”
“Please, he saved my redeath right now and my life when I was alive.”
Oah allowed his sword of light to vanish into the night.
“They’re all dead again and your sister is resting on the first floor.”
“Thank you, Oah, for your help.”
“You’ll have to figure out how to repair that wormhole in Limbo.”
Lucy smiled, staring down at the coracle. She could see her unborn siblings with electrified
thread sewing the seams of Limbo back together
“Any minute now the tear will be closed again.”
“I’ll leave you then, for now. Visit Zeek when you can. Telepathy is no substitute for a real visit.”
He winked at Lucy and disappeared into the blood-splattered wall
Lucy looked at Jordan, he was fading fast from the stem cells he ingested returning back to his ghost self
“Do you want to stay– for awhile?”
He reached into his rib and took out a tattered piece of paper scrawled in blood ink
“Of course. You know I kept this poem you wrote for me
clutched in my hand in death and through hell and limbo. It gave me hope we might meet again somehow.”
I blushed electric blue then red as electricity rushed to my face
After death it’s easier to tell the truth, all clocks were broken, crushed with regret
No more
Daring is as daring does
A wild wind filled my lungs with courage now that tells time for both of us
I moved a step closer
“You were my first love and if not for you, I would not have known love at all…”
“We never even had our first kiss… I died on my way to you-”
“That killed me more than any wound, more poisonous than hemlock”
We leaned into each other and kissed
all lightning and fire and everything I missed
I suddenly felt more than complete as
heaven roared like thunder with angels stomping their feet
What is life in quantity without quality?
I would rather live one more day with Jordan than live in eternity without him
I had already been in my own limbo since he died
floating in a frozen waterfall of emotions
that no longer could be denied
As Jordan was disappearing in front of me
back to a gossamer ghost
I must find his spirit a more permanent host
I touched his glowing light
“If you want, I can try and build you a body like mine
All wires, sculpture, electricity and vintage misery intertwined”
Jordan smiled which shined as a crescent moon in the dark
“When can we start?”
What else could we do
now that we already could fly?
Could we have an afterlife
Since we already knew what it was to die?
A lightning strike volted through us lifting us into the air
or was it for the first time since his death I was unchained from my wrecking ball of despair?
I was about to find out as I took his hand and we flew to an abandoned haunted house
once lived in by old Mister Seymore
the house was gray with decay and sunken windows as eyes
staring blankly out at the world
I set up a lab in the library, its walls a mausoleum of books
the floorboards creaked creepily with every step
I worked all night and then I lost time in a tornado of activity
I built Jordan’s body from muscle memory
A frame of wire mixed with desire
tapestried throughout with red and white and yellow
When I was done I spoke into the darkness as I could no longer see Jordan
“Enter the structure and I’ll fill you with stem cells. Then you must stay very still and
hope they meld into your spirit.”
His bodyless voice scared me a little
“How long does it take?”
“I’m not sure, but you’ll feel the electricity flowing like blood through your being.”
I injected the stem cells and watched as the faces of the cells woke up, their eyes opening
and smiling then rushing inside the wires
“I can feel them swimming around my soul like tiny sunfish. Cool!”
“This will take a while so I just need to go check on Teri and I’ll be right back, okay?”
There was a moment of terrifying silence as I thought he died again
“Jordan?!”
In a wild otherworldly voice he whispered
“I love you, Lucy. I want you to know that — whatever happens.”
My heart seemed to break — in a good – perhaps it was breaking open
“I love you too.”
I flew out the door and locked it holding back tears and flew into the hospital room where Teri was sleeping.
I sat by her bed for a moment when she opened her eyes.
“Am I alive or are we both dead now?”
“You’re alive. How do you feel?”
She burst into tears.
“Stan is suing me for custody of the kids.”
Stan was her sociopathic husband who had beaten her into a pathetic pulp for the last ten years.
“No, he’s not. I’ll be right back. Rebel justice is way overdue.”
“Wait, Lucy, what are you going to do?!”
I flew out the window and to Stan’s house kicking in the door with my fury
My fists and my heart were now all I needed of judge or jury
Stan’s slimy self was in front of the television with a beer
He looked at me beyond horrified
“Lucy?”
“No, Lady Justice.”
I picked him up with such force his head hit the ceiling as he shrieked in pain and on his way
down to the ground I swung my bionic-blooded legs into his gutless gut slamming him to the corner where a rat was scurrying by
“That’s where you belong. I will say this once. You are not suing Teri for the kids or anything else. You have twenty-four hours to get out of Lataham or I will come back to send you early to your reserved seat in hell. Got it?!”
Stan’s entire body trembled.
“Got it.”
“And I’m taking the Chevy you stole from her so you’ll need to Uber yourself to Oblivion.”
I grabbed the car keys from the kitchen table and started up that Chevy and drove away.
I drove back to Mister Seymore’s house to check on Jordan’s progress.
When I walked in the front door, there he was – my one true love – Jordan – a three-dimensional
glowing electric vampire humming with stem cells.
A new angel monster with fangs of my creation. Overwhelmed, I beamed
“Your halo’s full of fire, we can blaze a new frontier with love’s desires, and claim this realm as ours.”
He flew to me and picked me up, spinning me around, landing me in a kiss, the best moment of my life so far.
“Let’s fly around the world!”
Yes, I thought, yes, suddenly the whole world was one big yes.
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