The (Short) Story of the Evil Umbrellas [Completed]

The Girl in the Blue Dress

The flesh is rotting off of my bones. Instead of just looking macabre it has started to come off in chunks, like a poorly cut steak.

It will be done soon, the years long fight to survive, to stay fed. Sometimes it overwhelms me, the itch to eat. Until I can't help it, until I'm not even in control of my own body, and I'm just watching myself rip into someone's skull with my broken and bloody fingernails and feast.

It is easier, in times like that, to just be the stereotypical brainless (pun intended) monster that people expect from a zombie. I, like most of us, have long ago accepted the fact that communication is impossible, that self-control is a thing of the past, that we are slaves to the most basic and undesirable of instincts.

But the itch, much like myself, is at long last fading. The superhuman strength is leaving me. I'll be gone soon.

We'll all be gone soon.

The world will be reborn. The uninfected will get a chance to rebuild.

It's beautiful.

***

The wind pulls at her long dark hair, teasing and tangling it. Her blue dress is also lifted up, and she finds joy in the simple fact that she had remembered to put shorts on underneath that morning. A giggle bubbles up, creating a light airy sound, perfectly accompanied by the wind chimes that twinkle somewhere up ahead on the road.

It is the first true day of Spring. The trees are still bare, but the world seems to have suddenly burst into technicolour and the temperature had reached the perfect level of too-hot.

She is walking on the curb, one foot poised in front of the other. Her arms are out as if she is on top of a tightrope a hundred feet up in the air. Or perhaps a princess in one of her little sister's favourite Disney movies, trying desperately to keep the book on top of her head.

A maple leaf flutters past her, and she lunges for it. She has no expectation of catching it, and when it floats just out of her reach she just laughs again. If she wanted, she could chase it down, she could run and run and run until she is panting and her legs can barely hold her up. But what would the point of that be? It's such a beautiful day, and she just wants to go home and spend it with her family.

Out of nowhere, something pulls at her arm.

No.

Someone pulls at her arm.

She never even gets the chance to run.

***

Whatever happened to the girl in the blue dress?

I must have eaten her. That is the only explanation for the memory. I wonder if people mourned her. I wonder if any of her friends or her family survived to mourn her.

I've had so much time to think lately. I can barely move anymore, I just lie in a pile, waiting for some human to come and end me. I think that I will welcome the end.

I wonder if they will mourn me.

Did I eat her? I must have. But that doesn't... that doesn't make sense. I can't remember anything clearly, but I know that that doesn't make sense.

So who was she to me? My friend? My sister?

Did anyone mourn her?

Will anyone mourn me?

Something is coming. I can hear it. I try to move, but I am too weak. The corner of my raggedy blue dress is caught under something.

My blue dress...

The girl in the blue dress.

Did anyone mourn her?

Did anyone mourn me?

It's here, the noise I heard. It belongs to a nervous looking kid with a shotgun. I thought that I would give up, but I can't. I have to try. So I do. I try desperately to get up, to run and run and run until until there are holes in my lungs and my legs cannot support me, but I am trapped, and he doesn't hesitate.

I never get the chance to run.