Jogger/Machete 1

The post that started this whole mess..j/m:1

I never intended this blog to have much to do with we’re alive. I want to focus more on the creative process, theory, and storytelling. All of these things being relative to the zombiepodcast subject, but a much more forum based focus than podcast based. Today, I am beginning what should become an interesting subject. I plan to write a segment of an entire story per blog post. The main reason this will be interesting is, I haven’t written a legitimate story in …ten years? The other is strictly the subject matter within the story itself. At the end of each weekly segment, I’ll explain the inspiration and thoughts behind the things happening within the story.

We begin with where the brief jogger scenario from the “introduction” blog left off. Our heroine of the story has finally made it back to her house, only to find her children doing…stange, things. I plan to tell this story until I feel it’s finished…no idea how many blogs that will take; right now, I have a beginning, some middle, and a definite end. So….when it’s over, its over…enjoy

Jogger cont.

After waiting in a large cluster of bushes for what felt like an eternity, the jogger ran like the wind back home. Her house is only a few blocks away, but there’s certainly no time to dilly-dally. Those…“things” kept her from her children for long enough. She guesses the time to be around nine, possibly ten pm, meaning her half hour jog had been extended an extra three hours. Hopefully everyone at the house is alright. Running in the house though the front door of her small, but manageable ranch style home. She calls out…“Jacob! Amy!..Kids im here, where are you?!“ She passes through the living room and into the kitchen….nobody. She goes through the adjacent door into the dining room…Again nobody. Coming back through the kitchen into the living room, she finally finds exactly who she had been looking for….but perhaps not exactly how she expected to find them

She stopped dead in her tracks, staring at her young daughter Amy. Amy had entered the living room after her mother passed through, and she wasn’t alone. Amy held onto her brother Jacob by the ankle. Jacobs’s body was limp behind her, face down.. Following her sons body up her daughters arm, the mother’s eyes finally look at her daughters hanging head. Amy’s deep black hair framed her face in such a way as to obscure her eyes from her mother. Nevertheless, her mother could see the noticeable differences on her daughter already. Her shirt was ripped in a few places, her nails appeared to have blood or some kind of grime underneath them, and her feet….her feet were…bloody. “What’s happened to her?” the girl’s mother thought. As she stared at Amy, Visions of her conversation with her five-year-old daughter about the events at school that day filled the mothers head. Now, her beautiful young daughter, drug her ten-year-old brother’s seemingly dead body behind her….
And then ….Amy looked into her mothers eyes

Her daughters eyes were,… dead. There’s perhaps no better way to describe them. They looked somewhat normal, albeit glazed over. Almost as if young Amy had developed a very sudden and very fast spreading form of glaucoma. Amy’s eyes were truly quite disturbing, not just from their appearance, but how they made her mother feel. It was as if young Amy was staring directly through her mother’s soul, and finding the weak young girl that lived within the woman. The same scared little girl that young Amy herself was, the girl her mother was twenty-five years ago. The fear that her mother is feeling seems to feed the rage that is building behind her daughter’s dead eyes, finally Amy screamed an inhuman, guttural cry.

The young girl lets go of her brother and attacks her weakened mother with a ferocity the woman has never seen. Its was all she could do keep the child at arms length as she kicks, scratches, and attempts to bite her way through her mothers defenses. “Amy honey! Stop! Stop! Its mommy honey! Please Amy! Oh my god Amy, no!”
The jogger manages to shove her daughter away from her with a violent push that sent Amy crashing back against a wall, her head hitting with a resounding thud. As the girls mother steps back, shaking from the shock of the doing something like that to her own daughter. Her son stirs. She gasped! “Oh my god Jacob? Jacob are you alive!?” She runs over to her son, rolling him over to look into his eyes. Jacob was covered with small bruises and scratches, no doubt at the hands of his younger sister. But, the important part…his eyes…they aren’t like his sisters

A blur of motion appears behind the mother and her son. Amy had regained her footing and is about to begin her attack anew. The first instinct the mother has is to protect her son, so as she embraces her boy like a human shield. Something catches her attention coming across the room. A man!.. Well, a teenage man…but a man nonetheless. He enters the living room from the kitchen, wielding a machete. He’s still eight feet away from the mother and son when young Amy makes her move for the woman who, once upon a time, was her mother. As Amy reaches for her, the man let his machete fly. Connecting with the toddlers chest in a terrifying “thunk!” , that sent the young girl reeling back, falling to the side..
“Are you alright?!, your son, is he one of them?” the strange man/teen said. He walks over to the window investigating the backyard and surrounding area. Seemingly considering what to do about his new “friends” and the situation he and them are now in.

“I…I think we’re fine. My sons hurt, but….oh, Amy! What happened to Amy! Wha…What did you do to her?” the mother said. Sobbing, rocking her son in her arms, both of them are visibly shaken. The woman has just dealt with enough traumas to last her the remainder of her possibly short life, and lord only knows what Amy put her brother Jacob through.

“I did what had to be done m’am. Your daughter well, she wasn’t your daughter anymore, almost nobody is who they once were it seems. but, i'm afraid my work with her isn’t finished yet. However, we need to get you and your son somewhere safe at the moment. I’ll deal with your little girl alone. Do you think you and your son can get up to the tree house out back?” The strange teen says. He seems to be in complete control of the situation, as if he had planned for the exact things that had taken place this evening..And had been planning for these things to take place for a while.
“ye.., yes I think we can get up there…are there any of those…things…like Amy out there?” the mother said. She hated herself for calling Amy a “thing” but this strange young man that magically appeared in her house just in time was right, the Amy she loved was gone.

The teen looks out the window again, “no, you have a pretty good, sturdy fence around the yard. The coast looks clear, and your girl is getting up to come at us again, now go!” the mother takes her son under her arm and heads toward the backdoor to the yard, and the waiting safety of the tree house. She stops for a moment to look at her daughter, as a brief final goodbye. Then looks at the teen.
“What’s your name, young man?” the mother asked. The teenage man briefly looked at Amy with both apprehension and delight. He let the latter emotion fade as he looked back the mother’s way…….
“butters”
--------------------------------End scene--------------------------

That entire story line, and the majority of what’s to come, has been inspired by this forum. Specifically chatting with Waldo butters in the chatbox. With a group as diverse as the members on here, it’s quite easy to find inspiration from even the simplest of stories people chat about. An example I can give here is, butters and I somehow got on the subject of melee weapons. That is a rare subject for me to discuss, as I truly don’t believe in a zombie apocalypse enough to plan ahead…having weapons readily available seems an odd thing to consider. I do however; agree with butters assessment of the machete being an excellent melee weapon to have on hand. The jogger storyline already existed, at least in my head at the time we were having this conversation. At the mention of the machete, I knew….it was going to be flying at someone. One of the kids was already a goner, of that I was certain…So which one? The twist I originally thought of was, the son was turned instead of the daughter. That would create a more dynamic scene here, in this part of the storyline. Why is the unturned girl dragging the undead boy? How did this little thing defend herself so well? The possibilities for that are seemingly endless.. The problem with that is, as the story progresses, it will be more important to have the son as a supporting character. The reasons for that I cannot go into right now, but a five-year-old girl could simply not play the role he will have to play.

The small point taken from this section of story is, something as seemingly silly as a conversation about a machete can become so much more….when put in the right hands. Next section will reveal more from my conversational creativity, and subsequently allow me to be a bit more open about the source material. So for now…

Todd out