Come Knocking

CHAPTER 2; TURN THAT FROWN UPSIDE DOWN

He stopped, the knife still in his hand, but now pointing to the floor. He panted, his breath now dry and stale again; the wound in his thigh now severely bleeding.

[I'm sorry]

The air was still around him, all sound ceased to exist - no wind, no shimmer of any trees, no birds singing. Only his dragging breath and beating heart.

[I'm so sorry]

"Aaaaaaaagh... aaaaaaaaghhh."

His head snapped up, jaw squared, his whole body locking down and freezing.

A few yards ahead of him, shambling along in the diminishing sunlight, was a living corpse. Its breath was also wheezy, but rattled too as the loose fluids inside its rotting body sloshed around. It glared at him with one rheumy eye, the other just a black socket - the skin torn right down to its chin. It wore absolutely no clothes whatsoever - its reproductive organs now gnarled and black. One yellowing femur bone protruded from its right leg, sticking out and bending queerly with every slow step.

"Aaaaaaaagh... aaaaaaaaaghhh."

Jay stood up, and made his way slowly towards it, yet again flicking the carving knife up and down. Blood poured down his leg; the corpse smelt it and starting to lollop towards him, attracted to his bleeding flesh like a ravenous dog.

"Like the smell, eh?" Jay roared, his voice rusty and hoarse. He started to run to it, his steel tipped boots clicking on the tarmac road as he went, the metallic sound reverberating in his ears and echoing around -

-and around-

- in his head, high-pitched and tinny, drilling into his mind in excruciating and relentless pain.

"I said - DO YOU LIKE THE SMELL, YOU SACK OF SHIT?!" He screamed at it, his head pounding, his own voice repeating over and over to itself. Dribble ran down his mouth - which was now pulled into a rictus-like grin, showing his teeth and bleeding gums. "Come here - have a piece of me!"

"Aaaaaaaaagh!" The corpse gnashed its mawed jaws together, the single eye wide in greedy excitement. It stumbled ever-closer to him, its calloused fingers reaching out to grasp his white shirt - to pull him closer.

And that's when he struck, bringing down the blade onto both its wrists; cutting them clean in two with a crunch. Blood sprayed everywhere; over his chest, his shoes, in his grinning face. He swept back his hair, revealing one lucid green eye - dancing with eclectic hysteria, the other eye circled by a scar, its pupil wide and pooled in blood.

Using his whole body weight, he shoved it, where it fell over backwards like a sack of stones, never putting out its hands to break the fall, merely just letting its skull smash right onto the road. It didn't stop though, carried on wriggling, holding up its severed stumps at him. He kicked them away, and dug the heel of his boots into its empty eye socket, pinning its head to the ground.

"There we are, just stay there -" He leant over, whispered right into its gnashing face, holding his knife outstretched behind him. His other free hand twitched.

"I must admit, you done me a favour coming here today." He spoke into its glazed eye, the browning eyeball swivelling round madly in its socket, as if the close proximity of Jay was giving it some sort of sick orgasm.

This didn't phase him, only made him chuckle darkly.

"Sometimes my mind... wanders... just like you do, come to think of it." He flicked the knife , shoving his boot harder into the corpse's socket as it tried to lunge up at his face. "I had a wife once, she didn't like it when I wandered... she didn't really like me... just my money."

A large gob of snot exploded from the zombie's nose, dribbling into its snarling mouth.

He looked at it and smiled, bringing his knife to its face and tracing a long invisible line down its forehead.

"I don't think she'd like you either... can't see why." He continued with his knife, now tracing up from the corners of the zombies mouth to the undersides of its ears. "She would always look at me when I'd returned wandering, looking at my face and frowning - that's the whole reason I would go off for night-time walks, to get away from her; to get away from the smothering bitch with all her pregnancy problems and financial qualms."

He traced a line up from the opposite corner, now completely enthralled in what he was doing, his face creeping closer and closer to the zombie's.

"She would look at my face, and then laugh, with her prissy hands on her hips and her slutty lips pursed, and she would say 'Why Jay, are you carrying the world again?' and I would frown and say 'No' and then she'd laugh and tell me to turn my frown upside down." He cracked his head back, roaring with sudden and hysterical laughter that brought a slaver of bile running out of his mouth.

He laughed and laughed, cackling hysterically, his bloodshot eyes weeping, his mouth pulled right back into a full blown rictus - the trapped zombie beneath him still smacking its jaws together, trying to bite.

He whipped right back again, staring straight into its face - his green eye now cold and calculating. The knife once again traced the corners of the zombies mouth.

"Why," he grinned, "lets turn your frown upside down!"

AJ