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Zilong the Zombie DAY 3

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DAY 3 the Dehydratoad

There really does seem to be such a thing as the human spirit, I've discovered in my Undeath. During life, it takes quite a bit of abuse from most people, but it usually manages to hold together just fine. There are, however, certain things that can be done to severely warp it. So far, I'd had two of those things occur. From one aspect you could say I did both to myself. The first thing was when I'd died and been dragged back. The second was the overwhelmingly dark fury mingled with bitter sadness that took place after Spike's death. Perhaps the second became possible because of the first. I don't know. It's hard to say either way. I know it wasn't rational, I mean, sure we loved him as a part of the family, but he was just a cat too. It's not like my brother died some kind of senseless death, right? And even if he had, would my reaction be normal? I'm not sure. I'm no psychiatrist, and so far, no one has sent me to one, so I just don't know.
The days passed. I became normal, no 'ish' about it. At least when viewed from the outside. A little bt quiet, but no shouting at the TV for me, no odd predictions of lost keys, nothing along those lines. No playing with "It Glows in the Dark!" Ouija. Just a quiet, reserved me. It's easy to pass unnoticed when you're quiet and reserved.
Inside, I burned with an intense insane rage. I wanted to face our Creator, grab a baseball bat or tire iron or shovel and just beat him or her or it into submission. Our Creator may be a supernatural being with the power to uncreate me with less effort than a thought, but I had righteous fury on my side.
This kind of anger is impossible to contain for long. It begins to spill over in small, but noticable ways. If one is quick, one can wipe up those spills before they get out of control, but they still happen. To do damage control one has to watch faces for the look of utter and complete shock. I found, "Oh I'm sorry, I saw that on TV last night, and got distracted and it just sort of popped out. What I meant to say was-" tends to work. But you have to be very fast to think ahead quickly enough to both make up an excuse and to think of what it was you meant to say, so that people chuckle about it instead of quickly leave and tell someone about you. When questions about how you're acting pop up, it's harder to put people off with a quick embarrassed looking smile, shrug, and an "I saw it on TV, I'm sorry."
A little while later, I first encountered the Dehydratoad.
I've mentioned lived in the desert with my family. During the cooler fall and winter months, at night desert toads would come out and feast on the bugs. I was always careful to not run them over. I'd heard it was bad luck to squash them in Chinese mythology. Plus they were kind of cool looking. I used to have to scold my brothers and their friends about abusing the toads. I know the saying 'Boys will be boys', but c'on, you don't need to shoot the toads with Bee bee guns or run them over. It's just not cool.
Yes, I know the cats would chase them around and generally torment them, but it's different. Usually Porky wouldn't KILL them, just sort of play with them in probably non fatal ways. I'm certain it was no fun for the toads, but at least she wasn't SHOOTING them or driving over them.
So one day I found this dead toad in the back of the pickup I drive. It looked like it had been there for at least a week, since it had been pretty dehydrated, skin looking a lot linke what I imagined an unwrapped mummies would look like. It's skin was a dusty sand colored, sort of tannish. Dried up and probably the consistancy of toad jerky, I'd guess. Thin and shrunken. Pretty much how you'd expect somehing that died in the desert and baked under the sun for awhile to look. The only thing were it's eye. They were still intact and hadn't faded in the sun like I would have expected them to. Well, at least one of them hadn't succombed to the heat and sun. Upon closer observation it's left eye wasn't. It looked like it had died one eye shut, and only the empty socket lay behind it's wink. It's intact looked glassy, but it's sideways cat shaped cornea was still visible as was the gold surrounding it. It was a little creepy, but also somehow enticing. I wondered how it had gotten there.
I figured it was probably that Porky had picked it up and dropped it in the bed of my truck, and it had gotten stuck and cooked. Poor froggy, err, toad. Although why I hadn't noticed it before I couldn't figure out. And why the toad didn't just jump up onto the wheelwell of the truck and then out also puzzled me. Maybe Porky had accidentally killed it and left it there for me. I really didn't feel like removing it right away, something just told me that maybe I shouldn't handle it. Premonition maybe. Possibly fear of germs, so I ignored it for a little while and forgot about it.
The next day I got a parking ticket at both school and work. I'd apparantly forgotten to hang my student parking pass on my rearview mirror when I got to school. And my rear view mirror had somehow fallen completely off at work. Stupid mirror, stupid tickets. When I went to argue the first one, the lady kindly pointed out that "forgetting to hang you permit is not a valid excuse." Grumble. I ended up paying a half ticket of $15 for that, stupid ticket. The next day when I tried to argue out of the ticket at work, they told me "It's not OUR problem that your mirror fell off. I guess you'd better get it fixed, and be sure to pay the ticket, so we don't have to send it in to the DMV." Bastards. Another $35. I was going to be broke pretty soon.
On the way to get some food that night, my window rolling handle broke off, and I was stuck with my window half up and half down. I looked and felt foolish trying to pay at the drive through window. I was starting to have a bad week. And of course, there was a sandstorm on the way home. Nothing too heavy, not even really enough to impede driving, but enough to bug the heck out of me on the drive home. Stupid desert.
Two days after that I had a scary moment where the tread on one of my tires peeled while I was driving on the freeway to the store. The tread separating made it sound as though someone were shooting the side of the truck with a machinegun. The rear end started fishtailing in traffic. Luckily, SOMEHOW I managed to pull over to the side of the freeway without getting hit by any other traffic. I looked at my tire, and the steel belts were clearly showing, but at least it seemed to be holding air. I could probably make it to the next exit and change the tire OFF of the freeway.
Here's an important lesson for everyone about to change a tire. Make sure your Spare can hold air BEFORE you take the other tire off. I don't know HOW I managed to get a nail in my spare tire, but it clearly wasn't going to hold any air. And since it WASN'T a full service station, I couldn't get them to put a plug in my tire either.
I looked dubiously at my tread gone tire as I put it back on, and HOPED it would hold air to get me to the tire shop. I figured it was only about 7 miles to the tire shop, so HOPEFULLY I'd be okay.
It held air, that's the good part. It was a Sunday, though, and the tire shop was closed, that's the bad part.
Do you know the old commercial that goes "If you ever have a problem with one of our tires, bring it back," and the little old lady throws the tire through the window? That's how I felt that day. Judging from the business hours, I was going to miss my first two classes on Monday. Stupid tires.
I FINALLY made it home, and persuaded my dad to stop by the tire store to replace my two bad tires, but of course, he was going to drop them off during lunch and pick them back up on the way home from work. That meant I wouldn't have my truck for the whole day, practically. He was willing to drop me off at school, but then I'd be kind of stuck without a way either home or to work after that. Neither option particularly appealed to me right then, so I ended up not going to school, and calling in to work. My boss wasn't particularly pleased. He asked why I didn't get a friend to drop me off. A good idea, but the porblem with being 'quiet' and 'withdrawn' is you don't make a lot of friends, and the ones you already have sort of distance themselves. Stupid friends. Stupid boss.
So Monday I ended up not doing much of anything. It was kind of nice to sleep in on a Monday, but it also got boring very quickly. I pestered Porcupine until she decided she'd had enough and requested to be let out. I tried to read a book, but I didn't have anything that I hadn't read before, and it was hard to concentrate. Daytime TV during the weekdays sucks, I learned. I suppose I COULD have read ahead in some of my text books, but, naaaaah, why do that? I wasn't THAT bored. Stupid boredom.
My father finally got home at around 6:30 with one of my two tires. "You owe me $30, son. They didn't have the other one in stock, but you can pick it up later this week. Oh yeah, why do you have that toad jerky in the back of your truck?"
I thanked my dad, and went outside to put my new tire on. My dad had left the still flat spare in the bed, and propped the new tire next to the wheel well where it was to go. It didn't take long for me to get it back on and lower my dad's floor jack. I looked into the bed of my pickup and wondered why I hadn't gotten rid of  that dead toad already. It's one good eye still looked intact, and the rest of him didn't seem too much worse the wear for a week in the back of my pickup. I decided to get a shovel and toss that thing as I was putting my dad's jack away. I catapulted the toad into JD's yard next door, and went back inside to join my family for dinner.
That night I had some pretty disturbing dreams. I'm not sure that I woul;d call them nightmares, but they certainly were the closest I'd ever really had in my life if they weren't. I woke up bathed in sweat, and extremely thirsty. I made my way to the refridgerator, and drained a 32 ounce bottle of Gatorade in one long drink. Luckily, whatever I'd dreampt about was alrady fading fast in my mind, but my heart was still racing.
The next morning, the sun was shining, the thermometer wasn't TOO red, and my hopes were high. That is, they were high until I went outside, and saw my truck sitting on a flat... the tire I'd JUST changed.
I grabbed both sides of my head and muttered "OH ... my freakin' gosh... What is THIS all about?" I went and stared at my truck, and could see absolutely no reason for my tire to be flat.Of course, my dad had JUST left for work not ten minutes before.
I persuaded my mother to call him on his cell phone and then come back and pick up my tires to try and take care of whatever happened to be wrong with them again. My father wasn't happy, but agreed to come back as long as I had the tire off for him by the time he got back, so he could hit the road and preferealy not be TOO late to work.
I hurridly got his floor jack out, and had managed to take off the tire as he pulled into the driveway again. He wasn't smiling as I put the tire into the back of his truck. I was reaching for my spare as he backed out and sped down the street. I guess he didn't think of getting BOTH tires fixed at one time. I certainly wasn't going to call him back, either. So I had another day off of school and work. My boss sounded even less pleased than my father on the phone.
"This is getting to be a bad habit with you."
"I know, I'm sorry," I said. What was going through my mind was What? this is only the second time I've EVER missed work since I started! What are you talking about?
"I'm going to have to find someone more reliable than you if this keeps up, you know."
"Yes, sir. I understand." More reliable than me? Who's the one who leaves early everyday when I show up, you two faced bastard!
"Don't let it happen again!"
"I understand I wo-" <click buzzzzzzz > Bastard hung up on me! I mean, I KNOW I just work in a video game store in the mall, but this was totally uncool!
My mother walked in on me then and saked "Who are you yelling at?"
Ooops, thoughts going out my mouth without any intervention by brain again. "Sorry, mom, the boss was just being a jerk again. He hung up on me."
"Well, just watch it. I don't want you to get fired for saying things when you think he's not listening, okay?"
"Yeah, okay. Sorry mom." Ooops.
Yes another pointless day passed me by. I tried to read my text books for class, but I couldn't really stay focused on them. That night, my father told me the tire place had been careless inserting the stem, and that's why all the air had leaked out overnight. I got the tire on again, no problem. Woke up EXTRA early the next morning just to be SURE no air had leaked out. I was safe. At least I could make it to class, and drop off my spare before work.
I'd had a short paper due that I didn't know about, as it had been assigned the week before, and I'd ditched. I could make it up, but I'd lose a letter grade for each day that passed. We'd had a pop quiz in Astronomy that I could've easily passed, but couldn't make up. And we had a test in Statistics that day that I was woefully unprepared for. I'd missed TWO days of Statistics this week since I had it for an hour Monday through Thursday. At least the coach had no bad news for me in Kung Fu class. I checked with my Psychology Professor, but it seemed I'd missed nothing TOO vital on Monday, and I tried to check with my Public Speaking professor, but he was absent today. I just hoped nothing TOO unexpected would await me come Monday.
After class I tried to get my spare replaced, but the tire store was out of stock again. Yes, they'd ordered some. Yes, four had come in, but someone else had come in yesterday and bought all four of them. Yes, he'd be glad to order more for me, they should arrive late Thursday or early Friday. No, I'm sorry we can't hold tires for you unless you cared to pay for them in advance with your credit card. You have no credit card? I'm sorry then, thank you for doing business.
I shook my head at that. I'd waited 35 minutes in line for THAT news? 35 minutes... Uh oh! I was going to be late for work!
I sped to work. I got pulled over. I couldn't really complain, it WAS my fault for speeding. And now, I may as well slow down, because I was already late, from the officer checking to see if my truck was stolen for FORTY MINUTES.
My boss started in on me the second I walked through the door. "You're an HOUR late, you know!"
"Yes, I know, I got pulled over, I'm sorry." So what if I'm an HOUR late? What about all the times I come in early just to help out, time I DON'T get paid for? ran through my head.
He looked starangely at me. "That's no excuse and it's unacceptable!"
"I understand and I'm sorry," I said with my head hanging. I was thinking, No, I'm NOT sorry, you pompous arrogant son of a... yeah. I mean, what are you sad that you couldn't LEAVE an hour ago to go do whatever the hell it is you do?
"I'm not going to tolerate this from you!" His face seemed to be getting redder and redder.
"LOOK! I said I was SORRY, OKAY? Things have been a little out of control, through no fault of my own, now if you DON'T MIND, I'd like to get out to work, since I seem to have a lot of bills to suddenly pay!" You pompous, arrogant jerk! I'd kick your ass, but I don't want to get my shoes covered in slime! If you had any idea how close you were pushing me, even that TINY jelly like brain of yours might just activate your self preservation instinct.
"What did you say to me, you little peice of crap?" he said very softly. I looked around, and noticed that my coworker Jerry's eyes were very wide and he looked frightened. "GET OUT NOW!" my boss roared. He sprayed me with spit as he said that. As I raised my hands to wipe my face, I noticed that my fists were clenched tightly into fists. "NOW! Don't BOTHER to come into this store again, I'll have your fiinal check mailed to you! You're not welcome in my store again!"
I stood there for just a moment. Time seemd to have suddenly become very slow, as though it were poised waiting to see what I was going to. I could see my right fist drawing back as though to hit my boss, seemingly of its own accord. I thought how deeply satisfying it would be to just GIVE IN to this rage that had built up behind my eyes and unleash all the fury I'd had these last few months into him. I could see already in my mind the shocked look of surprise that would cross his face after the first blow, and I could see him crumpled on the floor bleeding after repeated blows. The vision was so vivid, seemed so true I realized I'd already started the first swing at him before I caught myself. I changed the swing into a vigorous face wiping. My boss still flinched. I shook my head to clear it of the visions and I couldn't help but sneer at him as I turned to leave. I shook my head in scorn this time as I slowly walked out of the stoor. Jerry's eyes were huge, he didn't seem to be able to take them off of me, and his mouth was hanging open. I expected a fly would buzz in soon.
I shook my head in scorn as I walked out of my former work place. The images of violence ersisted in my mind, and my body seemed to truly want to turn around and unleash some fury upon my boss. Someone had shook up the can of whoop ass, and its contents, they were a fizzing.
I turned the corner to go out into the parking lot, and then my nose started bleeding. The bright red spot of blood on my white collared shirt transfixed me for a moment. I watched in apparant awe as a second spot joined the first. Then my thoughts cleared, the violence left my head, and I thought, Oh crap, this is BLOOD! Blood doesn't wash out of white well, mom's going to be pissed!
Jerry rounded the corner just at that moment. I'd never been really close to Jerry, he was a little TOO into the world of video games for me, but he seemed to be an alright guy and a hard worker. NOT someone I'd call a friend, but reliable I guess. Right now he looked as though he were standing in the presence of a diety or something. Utter awe on his face.
"Did I forget something, Jerry?" I asked trying to wipe the blood from my nose and avoid getting anymore on my shirt. I was soaking the sleeve now instead of the front. Great.
His mouth opened in that big O of surprise for a monet before he actually spoke. "I can't BELIEVE you said that to the boss! That you'd kick his ass except you didn't want slime on your shoes? That was AWESOME! You are SERIOUSLY my hero, man. You need any games, I'll hook you up!"
Oh $#!+ I thought.
Mom was right.
I vaguely remember thanking him and staggering out to my truck. I was leaning on my tailgate when I looked in the back and saw the toad again. It wasn't in the same place as it had before, so JD must have found it and tossed it back. Stupid JD. Stupid job. Stupid toad. Stupid nosebleed.
Stupid me.
The Dehydratoad tale begins, though not it's ultimate meaning to Zilong the Zombie. A little about Zi's life, post Spike. It seems the story is going a little slow now to make room for character development, but it is progressing, I assure you.
© 2004 - 2025 Vampic
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