Story #11 - Exaggerated AND Twisted!

Kelly Hanken

“Lemon Flowers”

The first crack against his skull sounded distant to him, a report of gunfire at a military funeral across the valley. The second was much closer to home and softer, somehow, more like waves at a beach, or a watermelon in a Gallagher act.

The guy above him smelled like he kept fish in his freezer – rotten fish. He imagined hundreds of rotting, foul sea bass in a freezer, mouths open in the middle of a rendition of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”, all looking depressed that they just couldn’t get eaten in time.

Another kick and everything went black.

When he awoke it was in a field, dusty and downtrodden with only a few lemony colored flowers to make it seem homey. He sat up and viewed the world from two perspectives – the one from the eye still in its socket, and the one presented by the eye hanging against his cheek. His head felt concave and he had a very sudden urge for a drink or sixty. No pain, though, which was a blessing.

The sun was setting on the two horizons he could see and it was a bit disorienting so he reached up and replaced his eye in its socket. Just another night out. When he tried to stand, he found himself in a shallow grave, recent rains having driven the dirt into muddy streams away from him. He was an island in a muddy ocean and that wouldn’t do.

He had to admit that this undead shtick was fun for the first few months, but now that he’d harassed everyone in his hometown to the point where they had a watchtower waiting for him, it seemed to be kind of pointless. It was time to set his sights higher – higher than either horizon and higher than the lemon flowers growing in the fields. Maybe it was time to step up to bat – get his bearings and go back to school (night school, with a hoodies and three cubic liters of cologne every night), maybe round up others of his ilk and form a union. Hell, Hollywood probably had a use for them. They used reanimated-from-beyond-the-grave scripts, after all – why not the same for Undead Americans? He was just as much a citizen as anyone else, after all.

A new goal in mind now that he’d tired of getting his head kicked in by angry townsfolk, he turned himself as though on a lazy Susan and started for the west – wherever that was.