The boy with the blue and red bike made it clear to the hill that he was not afraid to go down it. The hill stood there and taunted the boy. Walking the red and blue bike to edge of the hill, the boy peered over and saw a distance to the bottom that was probably somewhere near one million feet steep. The tall, green trees laughed at the boy. The boy puffed out his chest and the trees went silent.
The black asphalt that leads the way to the bottom of the hill had no particular emotions about this epic event. It was just an asphalt road that’s sole purpose was to be tread on and to allow other people to use it for their own means. But the asphalt didn’t care, because it never knew any alternative. It didn’t care if the boy made it to the bottom of the hill and pumped his arms excitedly in the air with triumph, or if the boy fell on his way down the hill and cracked his skull open with his brains splattering everywhere. What did the asphalt care if it had splattered brains all over it? Who did the asphalt have to impress?
The hill, on the other hand, had great interest in this event. Just as it had great interest in every car or bike that went up or down the hill. Ever since that damn asphalt road came along, the hill was being used. No longer was it a haven for rabbits and foxes, bees and flowers, worms and all those other beautiful bugs. Now most of its trees were cut down and the cars pumped their exhaust out into the hill’s lungs. The hill wanted the boy to fail, just like it wanted every car to fail as it went up or down the hill. Whether a tree fell in the boy’s path or he hit a rock on the road, the hill would not allow the boy to make it down alive. No more bikes, no more cars, no more sneakers pounding along the road. Only the boy’s brains splattered all over that damn asphalt.
The bike was probably more excited than the boy about going down the hill. The boy had always ridden the red and blue bike a block this way and then a block that way. The boy lived on top of a hill that was blocked on one end by a long fence that belonged to the crazy neighbors and on the other end was blocked by that amazingly steep descent of a hill that the boy had always been afraid of. The bike, being a bike, and having the instincts of a bike, wanted to travel far and long. But the boy kept the bike in the garage where it was dark and lonely because the garage was always mopey and the cars thought they were too good to be friends with the bike. Well, now, it was the bike’s moment to shine. It loved when the boy rode it, but it was getting tired of just seeing the same old road. It needed to get out, to go down the hill, to see what was beyond the hill, to know more than that depressed garage and those snotty cars. The bike would feel the exhilaration of its wheels ripping across the asphalt and screaming goodbye to the world the hill confined it to. (more…)
The Boy and The Bike (by Brian Van Slyke)
Zombies: The Musical (by Brian Van Slyke)
We are a hungry horde of Zombies
(hungry horde of Zombies!)
The only thing on our minds is your brains
(Your brains! Your brains!)
This will come as no surprise (Surprise! Surprise!)
But we are at your doorstep (Doorstep! Doorstep!)
Before the day is over, before the day is over
We will have beaten you, we will have eaten you
Before the day is over, we will have you beaten and eaten!
The cry wasn’t very far anymore. Brad knew that they would be here soon. If he went to the front entrance and looked through the glass doors, he would probably be able to make them off in the distance. He knew they were close though; the songs never lied. Sure, they would exaggerate, or maybe be even borderline offensive – but the details of the songs themselves were always true. The style changed, but the message always remained clear: there was no escape, there was no hope, and the zombies were going to eat your brains.
“Why brains, anyway?” Brad asked the CEO of Z-Productions, which was only the hottest new television, movie, and music production company in the world.
“It’s simple word association,” the CEO said. He titled his sunglasses down so his eyes peered over the frames, which was generally associated as a ‘cool thing to do’. “When people hear the word ‘zombies,’ and are told to demonstrate what it reminds them of, they generally stick out there arms like so,” the CEO made his arms go stiff in front of his chest and moved them up and down slowly, “and then they start saying ‘braaaaaains’. We researched it. Four out of five zombie experts agree.” The CEO stared over his frames for a second longer, to add an extra element of cool, and then shoved the glasses back to their proper spot.
“That’s what I think of, too.” The middle aged, balding, and somewhat ugly bus driver named Earl had piped up. Jerry, the police officer; Marissa, the housewife; and Cindy, the girl-who-didn’t-take-any-of-society’s-shit all nodded their heads in approval. Cindy and Marissa were attractive looking, of course.
“I don’t know, doesn’t it just seem kind of like an overplayed idea? Something that we’re consistently bombarded with already? What about originality?” Brad said, determined to keep his mind somehow off of the impending doom that approached him in the form of his former friends, schoolmates, family, and loved ones. The CEO pulled his glasses down in a cool way once again.
“Dude, I didn’t get rich off by being original. I give the people what they want: Zombies that crave brains. When the public demands zombies, that’s what they’re talking about. Otherwise, we wouldn’t really be looking at zombies here, would we?” Earl the bus driver nodded his head as if he had just heard something profoundly philosophical. Jerry cocked his shotgun, Marissa sniffed, and Cindy let out a snort because she was too cool for these losers that she was trapped in a mall with.
Like every utility, electricity had been missing for days. It was a hot summer afternoon, and the lack of air conditioning made the mall almost unbearable. The only reason the five survivors remained held up together in the mall was for the small fact that it would be more uncomfortable in the middle of the zombie horde baring down outside. The cry rang out again.
We’re a bunch of zombies! Ain’t no way you’ll stop us!
We’ll come for your brains, we’re coming for your brains!
There’s a thousand of us, and there’s five of you!
But we’ll each get our chance to chew!
About
Stop The War of 1812 is an attempt to collect fiction shorts by people who want to make their stories available for world to read. These aren’t stories we want to make money off of; they’re simply works we put effort into and that we want to share because that’s what we like to do and what we’re good at: story telling. Hopefully in time these stories will be sorted together into compilations of different types, both online and in print. Please feel free to read around and to submit your own work!
