Ben Croshaw's Lunchtime of the Damned
By Alex Whitington
"Where is she?" I was not having a good day, firstly I'd come into school late (well you try running to school with your ponytail tied to your shoelaces). When I finally did get to school I found that we were supposed to hand in our geography projects today, I didn't know about any project, no one tells me anything then I risk detension to do somthing with my girlfriend and she couldn't even be bothered to show up.
Finally I saw her walking towards me,a sandwich in one hand and a mini-death gun in the other (she's a bit of an inventor).
"Where the hell have you been, Elandra" I called out to her. she looked at me and said
"eating lunch,Davy this is lunchtime after all"
"yes but-"
"HEY, you drew the pentagram without me"
"yes, but"
"I can't believe you drew the pentagram without me"
Indeed I had already drawn the pentagram around the grave, but that was no reason to do what she was going to do to me less than an hour after this paragraph...
"So, what're we doing today, raising the dead again" said Elandra
"yeah" I replied, "I'm seeing if the traditional corpse raising spell will work with a pentagram"
"Trial and error, eh" she said
"uh huh" I replied as I searched through my notebook, (now I think of it maby she wouldn't have done what she was about to do if I'd paid more attention to her)I love my notebook, I've had the same one for seven years, it's had 3 new front and back covers , the pages have been replaced twice, and the spiral back once...so I suppose it isn't the same notebook but I love it all the same. "found it!" I said
"okay, I'll start" the words that I said are unprintable, partly because if they were ever written down in any place other than a mage's notebook but mostly because they're really hard to spell.
"I don't belive it" I said
"C'mon, just give it another go"
"no, I couldn't do it back then, I won't be able to do it now" Elandra put her hand on my shoulder, she's always been there for me at times like this, she helped pay for my skin transplant (don't ask), just then, there was a movement in the earth, a lump appeared in the grave. I lept up "IT WORKED!" I cried, "IT WORKED!". A hand punched its way up through the earth, it grabbed onto Elandras trenchcoat and pulled itself up revealing a horrible rotting corpse on the end, it had one eye the other half of its head ripped away revealing a wobbling brain alive with maggots.
"you" I said in what I hoped was a suitably dramactic voice "have been granted a second chance, GO FOURTH and forge a new life" the zombie looked at me with wide eyed (with his one eye) gratitude, I assumed it was gratitude, there was somthing else in that eye some sort of hunger...
"BRAINS!" it shouted, it's voice was slightly slurred (yours probably would be too if your lower jaw was missing)
"...so, aren't you a lucky so-and-so" I said trying to keep the conversation intelligent
"FLESH!"
"Davy", said Elandra in an urgent voice
"shhh" I replied, I'm trying to make contact with the dead"
"DAVY, HE'S GOING TO KILL US!" She shouted "and that was my favourite trenchcoat" She sounded genuinely geniune and the Zombie was looking at me in a very funny way...
"okay", I said "In that case, LEGGIT" she was already half a mile away.
"This is your fault Davy" Elandra cried as we walked along the streets of reality "If you hadn't drawn such a crappy pentagram, that zombie wouldn't be such a lean mean brain-eating machiene" she was right but I wasn't going to admit that so I said "Don't worry, I've got a spell somwhere in here for restoring souls to brain-eating zombies. We can--"
"no, Davy. you can" abnd then she walked off leaving me standing there clutching my notebook with a brain eating zombie on my trail and double maths in 10 minutes, as I said before, it was not a good day....
Epilouge
It was weird, It was like waking up from a sleep except without the normal "arghgodonedayimgonnasmashthatbloodyalarmclock" buissness, one minute my wife was coming at me with a cheese grator, the next minute I was in this garden with this snooty person telling me to go away, I looked down and I was rotting and mouldy and maggoty, I was a zombie. I soon learned that it was hard to get any respect when you're dead, so I decided to run for mayor...and why not, after all shouldn't we always look on the bright side of life.
THE END
Bill Cosby was not harmed in the making of this story
adapted from the game by Ben Croshaw.