Reunion

The zombie waited with perfect patience. He had a sort of stoicism or weariness in his deformed face, a bloated impassivity borne, no doubt, from his years trapped in this watery pit. I spread my wings out, casting my shadow over my old friend. His grey, dead eyes blinked. Looking up at me, he sighed. Lifting his arms, he went through the motions, straining the few fingers left on his hands up to the sky.

I jumped over the lip of the old well, feeling a shiver. How long had we been trapped together, and how long ago had I left him down here? Do zombies remember? Can they recognize a face? To see heaven, one must, I fear, face hell, for there’s a poetry in things, and the horror we flee from is sometimes the door beyond our suffering.

“My friend,” I said as I floated down to him. He reached for me, trying to embrace me with his disease and hunger. His teeth sank into my thigh; the pain! How sharp pain was now, now that I was alive again and could feel it. No more malaise, no more angst, no more that curtain of numbness—I was alive, and, once again, I could die.

He swallowed me, the chunk of me he’d torn from my leg. The changes came quick. Reflection first. He seemed to see again, lifting his mangled hands up to his own face and studying their horrific decay. His mouth opened, and he screamed. The tones, just one more of the infinite howls of hell as they began, morphed, becoming clearer, softer, human. It ended in a wail of terror and realization as his voice returned to that of a man.

He seemed to be trying to flee from his own grasp, backing away from his hands until he came to the soft, muddy wall.

“Ah-AH!” he kept shouting, little realizing, little knowing, the changes coming over him. The sallow, near white flesh was filling up with blood, blooming ruddier and ruddier as his soars and wounds began to bleed, to bleed and close, to close and smooth, to smooth and fade, to fade and, finally, to disappear.

He was again a man. His screams died as his hands began to change, and he fell to his knees as they were once again made whole.

Weeping, laughing, he gasped in a broken voice, “It’s over.”

I walked over and placed my hand on his shoulder. He gazed up at me with clear, brown eyes, the honest tones of earth. Taking his arm, I began to ascend, pulling him up from the pit.

Hello Darkness.3 (2, 1)
In Restless Dreams
Visions Softly Creeping
Seeds