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    Diary of A Suburban Zombie
    Diary of A Suburban Zombie
    Diary of A Suburban Zombie
    Ebook127 pages1 hour

    Diary of A Suburban Zombie

    By Mel C. Thompson

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    About this ebook

    Many of these stories are perfect reading for Halloween, but they are also good genre-fits for goths, punks, or those who like the moderate side of horror. The work contains an assortment of vampire bats, angry pumpkins, insatiable zombies, whimsical gods and ill-natured UFOs. These short stories cover the range of paranormal and Halloween-oriented lore. There are mailbox ghosts, unemployed movie monsters and deranged poets taunting the world. The book's evolution has been continual. It first started out as a short pamplet for Halloween poetry readings in the Bay Area; but then, as time went on, more and more stories were added, some that verged on being adult themed. Hence this book has been moved to the adult category (just as a precaution).

    The stories range from truly infantile to broadly philosophical to somewhat erotic. None of the works are r-rated or x-rated, but some are more suitable for young adults than others, though, in today's world, the whole thing might get a g-rating anyhow. The book is perfect to bring to Halloween parties as most of the stories were designed to be read aloud at spoken-word readings in under five or six minutes, some are as short as two minutes long. For a voracious reader, the whole thing would take less than an hour to read. (But recently, some longer stories have been added, some up to ten pages; and some of the later works verge on social commentary; and there are overtly anti-PC messages toward the end.) In print format, the work is over a hundred pages now.

    Many of the ancient horror-creatures in this book are updated to a modern environment with some of the monsters even having cell phones and jobs to attend to. And while many of the musings are tame compared to violent Hollywood horror flicks, there is still enough blood and violence to placate the restless reader. As the author is more known for his philosophy works than his genre work, the characters do end up musing about the meaning of life and worry about the direction their lives are taking (however, as with real life, most end up failing to arrive at any firm conclusion).

    Note: Most of the works in this book originally appeared in poetry form, and this is still the case with the paperback version of the book. The Smashwords version you see here was rewritten entirely for a prose-oriented audience and some of the plots were changed once the strictures of verses were put aside for this special edition.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMel C. Thompson
    Release dateDec 29, 2019
    ISBN9780463505359
    Diary of A Suburban Zombie
    Author

    Mel C. Thompson

    Mel C. Thompson is a retired wage slave who survived by working through temp agencies and guard agencies. Unable to survive in the real world of full-time, permanent work, he migrated from building to building, going wherever his agencies sent him, doing any type of work he could feign competency in and staying as long as those fragile arrangements could last. He somehow managed to get a B.A in Philosophy from Cal-State Fullerton in spite of his learning disorders and health problems. Unable to sustain family life due to depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, lack of transportation and lack of income, he lives alone in low-income housing and wanders around California on buses and trains. He began writing at the age of 14 and continues till the current day. (He turns 64 in June of 2023). In his early years he wrote pathetic love poetry until, in his thirties, he was engulfed by cynicism and fell in with a group of largely antisocial poets who wrote about the underground life of drugs, sex, alcohol, poverty, prostitution, heresy, isolation and alienation. In his fortes he turned to prose and began to write religious fiction with an emphasis on the comedic aspect of theology and philosophy. He now writes short novels focusing on the attempt to find meaning in a economic world beset with money laundering, unethical marketing, contraband smuggling, human trafficking, patent trolling, corrupt contracting and every manner of spiritual and psychological desperation and degradation. When he is not writing, he wanders from hospital to medical clinic to surgical room attempting to sustain what little health he has left after a lifetime of complications resulting from birth defects and genetic problems. When he is able, he engages in such hobbies as reading, walking, yoga and meditation; and whenever there is any money left over from his healthcare-related quests, he goes to wine tastings and searches for foodie-related bargains. Before the pandemic, he spent many years gaming various travel-points systems and wrangled many free trips to Europe. He is divorced and has no children, no pets, no real estate, no stocks nor any other assets beyond the $550 in his savings account. His career peaked in the early 2000s when he did comedy gags for a radio station and had about 10,000 listeners per week. However, currently, he may have as few as five active readers on any given day. He no longer has the stamina to promote his work and only finds new readers through ran...

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      Book preview

      Diary of A Suburban Zombie - Mel C. Thompson

      Batwing And The Age of The Emperor Bats

      Return To Table of Contents

      Ten million bats were emerging from caves; huge, empty buildings; deteriorating houses; and the shells of rusting cars, buses and trucks. They were swarming in from every former nation of the now disintegrated United Nations, all convening in the now-abandoned Westminster Abbey. They had inherited a world that human beings could no longer manage or live in.

      Had any humans remained on earth, they would not have understood the deliberations of the bats who would be ruling the world. They could not have imagined how exactly a government of bats might work or what plans they might have for the planet which was now theirs.

      It was true that the human blood line had survived, but only because an outcast scientist, Batwing, had discovered, at the brink of humanity's decline, how to combine bat DNA with human DNA. The procedure was pulled off with a common injection and the formula was surprisingly simple. Batwing would experiment on himself first, and the experiment was successful. He became half bat and half human.

      Only a handful of people believed the procedure would work, and not everyone found the prospect of becoming a bat attractive. But Batwing saw the future, and it was not fully human. The people who went along with the procedure became hybrids, grew wings and took to the air. The hybrids were quickly assimilated into the hierarchy of the bat world. The population of bats increased tenfold as the hybrids bred like rats, wing-rats to be precise.

      The rulers were called The Emperor Bats, and some had human faces. Yearly they convened at a winged-mammalian parliament of sorts. They discussed, in mind-boggling detail, and in wildly complex dialects, the affairs of fruit bats, flying foxes, vampire bats and mouse-eared bats.

      Batwing said, in his keynote address, I always knew humans were doomed from the start. Their economy always revolved around outsourced slaves. The slaves would make all the products and grow most of the food. Steel ships would carry it all across the ocean; and giant supermarkets, big-box stores and e-merchants would then sell it all off. It was a world of infinite layers of managers, bureaucrats and middlemen. How could the world sustain such enterprises forever?

      Batwing further reflected: There were times when, in the midst of such deliberations on the human race, I might suddenly see a bat flutter out of an attic somewhere, land on a bush and start eating berries. And at times like this I'd realize that life never required computers, corporations or colleges. Those were merely human games that would only last so long as humans did, and thank God humanity did not last. Finally we are free of the outdated, endlessly-controversial, mind-numbingly technological lives of hyper-intellectualized apes. Thank God that's over!

      The Cathedral erupted into a kind of bat applause, consisting of wings beating together and squeals emerging from every corner of the roof. Batwing, seeing that his hybrid species had prevailed and that his message was understood by everyone, spread his enormous wings and flew to Italy for the summer. The convocation dispersed in chaotic ecstasy as the memory of the human race slipped away forever.

      *

      Vampire House Problems

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      You have no idea how hard a vampire bat's life can be. You fly around all night looking for some overheated person who left their window open. And they better be a deep sleeper too, since bad things tend to happen when a person wakes up while you’re feasting on blood from their neck. Call me picky, but I only like female blood, and so that further limits my choices.

      Not every species of vampire bat does this: but before I can suck on someone's neck, I have to turn into a full-size human wearing a tuxedo and all. Then, after I do the deed, I've got to morph back into a bat again and fly out the window I came in. And if the window lock doesn't hold and the window slips shut, I have to turn back into a full-sized human, wearing a tuxedo and all, open the window back up, then turn back into a vampire bat again and fly out. Oh yes, and if a person wakes up and grabs you while you're in human form, you can't turn back into a bat till they let you go. If they detain you that way and daybreak hits, you could melt on the spot. It's a total energy-drainer just trying to come back to the casket each day still alive.

      Okay, so I get back home last night, and, wouldn't you know it, while I was gone some vandal kids found my lair and began playing in my casket. You can tell they were smoking dope because the smell is still totally pungent. Add to that the fact that they spilled a can of coke in there and you have a real nightmare. I noticed they left a pack of matches behind and a half-empty pack of cigarettes. There were two beer cans with a bit of beer still in them which, by the time I returned, had generated yet another foul smell. The brats left behind a couple of girly magazines and had plastered some punk-rock stickers on the outside of the casket. Attempts to peel those stickers off only resulted in the casket getting further scratched up, and now I'll have to pay a cabinet-maker to refinish the outside at no small expense.

      So now here I am trying to sleep inside this casket, and, to add insult to injury, the ants have detected the  remnants of the spilled cola and have decided there's sugar to be had in here. And so while I'm trying to sleep, they're biting me and crawling across my face and making me itch all over. It's mid-morning and so I can't get out of here and try to get this mess cleaned up. Tomorrow will be an even worse day, because you can't imagine how hard it is to be a vampire bat after a night of tossing and turning in continual discomfort. I already have insomnia, so this situation is going from bad to worse.

      I have had all night to think about revenge. It's true I could try to draw on my spiritual resources and arrive at a place of acceptance and forgiveness. But the vampire bat gods, as you could imagine, are not real big on acceptance or forgiveness, given that they command us to drink blood and stuff, so I'd kind of be starting from scratch if I tried to go the love-and-tolerance route. What I'm basically left with is an eternal grudge and raw anger. It's not a side of myself I'm so proud of, but the vampire bat culture is the only one I've lived in and a religious conversion just isn't in the offing. My conclusion, and it may not be one you're comfortable with, is that the kids who raided my casket last night had better be prepared to die a merciless death.

      *

      Them Woods

      Return To Table of Contents

      I'd stay out of them woods if I was you. If you want to live till morning, then you'd best head in the opposite direction. I'm telling you, them woods is just too much trouble.

      Don’t say you weren't given no warning. It's not on my conscience if you disappear in there and never get heard from again.

      Them woods has got seven-foot-tall women. Each of them scream like cougars and howl like crazy wolves. They got bullwhips and daggers and pitchforks. They cook men alive in there.

      Them woods got people making bug stew with rats eyes and pigeon wings. They toss in some dog guts and possum skin and just keep stirring that wicked black cauldron of theirs.

      Them woods has got cannibal midget warlocks that torture people with giant spiders. They put folks in snake dens and watch as they beg for mercy.

      I once seen a horse with a headless rider come out of them woods; and the horse's face was mad with terror. We all ran for our lives when we seen it.

      Them woods has got some crazy lawmen all dressed up like dictator cops. Sometimes you catch sight of them patrolling the perimeter of the borderlands between their world and ours.

      I heard they got all kinds of spooky scientists in there, strange, ugly men with twisted faces working in dark dingy shops. They hook people up to machines and test on them with wires and tubes and pins; and all the while you’re laying there writhing in agony. The big boss of them scientists just looks on and grins as you're head is almost exploding.

      The people in them woods got pet lizards, some of them twenty feet long. I seen one with six rows of teeth. It roars all night until dawn like

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