Yo humanoid followers of this blog, been down with work and other various forms of illnesses. But I have the latest fully edited chapter of Green Sunday ready for your viewing pleasure. As opposed to your agonized clawing through my many heresies against grammar and spelling.

As usual this is just an excerpt and I have the full chapter up on inkitt because you can’t copy and paste on that site haha. I know I’m that paranoid. It’s a good site, my girlfriend loathes it for all the nepotism but that’s the name of the game unfortunately, what can you do?

Anyway, here’s the link to the latest chapter all suited and booted; Step Right Up.

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“I despise your killing, and raping.”

“You’re… despicable.”

“Are you my judge?”

“It’s just… you should be punished.”

“I’m going to chop off your arm, so are you ready?”

TJ sat on his bed, half-watching a kung fu movie, trying to learn kung fu from osmosis. He polished his sword, checking for minor imperfections left by the douche in the knife shop, before wiping it off. He lovingly slid it back into the sheath and placed it in a red trunk at the bottom of his bed.

TJ’s bedroom was the standard, unashamed man-child room every man secretly desired, but had had taken away from them at some point by age or shame or usually a woman. TJ seemed immune to all. He was happy to like the things he’d loved all his life, with only a slight sour tinge of regret rolling around on his tongue before he swallowed it down with some mountain dew.

His room was a boxy affair in a reasonably-sized two storey house. He had chosen the room when he was a kid because it had one of those cool sloping roofs. It had a little skylight window that let in all the moonlight. And he could put posters on it too.

Movie and anime posters adorned the walls in no particular order from Dragonball Z, in pride of place above his TV and PS4, to Cowboy Bebop, over his bed, the one where Faye Valentine had her ass facing out in those little yellow hot pants. Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood, Samurai Champloo and Attack on Titan and Berserk. His door hid a cute, pink Elfen Lied calendar that was way out of date. He had a  Gantz wall hanging on the wall behind his desktop monitor that his mother sneered at. The tight black uniforms looked sort of ‘bondagey,’ she commented once, to which TJ, red of cheek, informed her that this wasn’t the case and it was his room and she should always knock before entering.

Then you had the zombie-related paraphernalia. You had your Walking Dead shirts and cap; Evil Dead bobble heads, which made various chainsaw noises and spouted the relevant catchphrases when tapped; original Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead posters, both signed by the Tom Savini; a Return of the Living Dead tarman ‘action figure’; Return of the Living Dead 3 playing cards; Shaun of the Dead air freshener; Zombies on a Plane travel sweets. You get the picture; ‘nerd likes zombies trope’.

His real pride and joy lay dormant in the red trunk: an assorted collection of crappy fantasy knives and cheap knock off kung fu weapons that he had picked up at various flea markets and gun shows that rolled through town. He didn’t get much of an allowance to splash out on any one piece, or even a reasonably priced but painfully drab, cold, steel machete. And the thought of working some nine to five job just to buy something better seemed antithetical in a world that he believed would be all teeth and rotten flesh by the end of the year.

So he just picked up what he liked the look of, not really knowing what he wanted or what he wanted them for. They were all tacky wall hangers. His mother wouldn’t let him hang them on his wall though because they made him look like a ‘weirdo’. There they remained in that box under his bed, ready to be viewed with a satisfied smile as soon as he looked inside his little man-crate full of toys. When he closed it, he felt a hollow, little thud inside and felt maudlin. He stared at the bluing sky as night crawled out of the caves and crags to blanket the horizon.

TJ’s house was in a secluded part of town. The town itself was rural and mountainous, a small town lined by high trees and cliffs with a whole lot of nothing in between. Think Twin Peaks meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Nightmarish small town America in all its horrible banality and tremulous quiet beauty. Only ruined by its noisy stereotypical inhabitants.

He took to staring off into the trees, trying to imagine hordes of his dead Facebook friends tearing through the undergrowth, and himself savagely cutting after them, sword flashing above his head like a Hun on heat. Then he started to think about them, their frozen stock photo faces, twisted and rotten, coming at him through the trees. And it was real for a second and he wanted nothing more than to buy a big gun and hide under his window, drinking and peeing in the same bottle, Waterworld-style, for fear of moving. It came in waves and he settled back into his fantasy, comfortable at the thought that it was an unlikely occurrence. But he also wanted nothing more than to have his mundane existence upended by throngs of the flesh-nibblingly inclined.

Well what little existence there was he thought to himself as he stared off into those dark esoteric woods. If only they’d come then he could be who he wanted to be.

~

I hope you enjoyed it if you read this far, as usual here’s the link again to my inkitt page where you can read this chapter and more completely free.

Step Right Up