Derek Goodman - The Reanimation of Edward Schuett

The light outside had changed by the time the door finally opened. He stood on the far side of the room from it, not even looking, but as soon as the door opened just a crack the smell grew stronger. He turned to it, and a small thing darted out and toward another door. He wasn’t fast enough to catch it, and the other form missed it as well. It went through the door, shutting the door behind it, and he could hear it babbling, saying things he couldn’t understand. Eventually the noise stopped, and there was no more scent. He shambled about some more, not concerned with the fact that he hadn’t done anything other than that all day.

Time passed. He didn’t understand that, nor was he capable of wanting to. Sometimes that small thing would come back, and he would try to catch it again, but it was always too fast. It felt familiar somehow, much in the same way the other form shambling around the room did, but this thing didn’t have the honey scent and therefore it was not something he couldn’t try eating. He was aware sometimes of hunger, and when it got truly bad he couldn’t move quite as much. Many times it got so bad he fell to the floor, unable to pull himself back up. The first time this happened, he was there for a very long time before the meat appeared in front of him. The meat was putrid and rotting, and he didn’t know how it had come to be right where he needed it, but it was enough to restore some of this strength.

The food continued coming, but only when he was at his weakest. Eventually he saw the small scampering thing place it there in front of him, then scamper away to some hiding place. He didn’t know why it did this, nor did he care. He just accepted it.

The small scampering thing didn’t stay small. He was unaware of years passing, but the thing was always there, always growing. Sometimes it would stay in the room long enough to talk to him, speaking words that meant nothing, leaving only when he tried to kill it. It began to look more and more like the other form in the room, despite its ragged clothing and skinny body. Or maybe it was because of the ragged clothing and skinny body, since the form had wasted away to little more. Somewhere in his head there was a part of him that still felt more for this thing than just the lust to rip it apart and eat its flesh, but even on the rare occasions where that part of him surfaced it didn’t stay long.

He wasn’t aware enough to realize the moment when everything was different. The time came when he was too weak to move, and the thing came in and left meat for him and the other, but it didn’t leave. As he ate and regained his strength, he heard that the sounds it made this time were so much different than normal. Crying, the old him would have known it as, but now he couldn’t recognize it. It left the door it normally used open wide and sat down on the floor between him and the other, and it had something in each hand. He didn’t know what to call them anymore, but Edward’s mind, now coming up from its dreaming memory, recognized them both. His daughter, now a young woman after having stayed with them for so long, had a bottle of whiskey in one hand in one hand and a razor blade in the other.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she said, or at least that was what he thought she said through the tears. “I’ve tried. I really did. All these years I thought you might come back. Shows just how fucking stupid I am.”

She took one last swig from the whiskey bottle, waited for her long-dead parents to come for her, and then, right as their stiff fingers were about to touch her flesh, she put the razor to her carotid artery and pulled it across her skin.

For the first time since the dreams had started, Edward woke screaming. But the memory didn’t fade away with sleep. The memory continued coming back to him even in full wakefulness. He felt Dana’s blood splash his skin and watched her pleading eyes as the light faded from them. She had to be in her late teens by this time, for she had developed an ample bosom just like her mother’s, and that chest stopped rising and falling as she collapsed to the ground. She’d been with them that whole time, never leaving their side, always hoping in her childish way that her parents would come back to her. She’d never left, never tried to rejoin other people. Maybe it had driven her mad. Maybe she had gone nearly feral, no longer even capable of living around anyone that wasn’t part of the walking dead. Or maybe she had just loved them too much to let them finally leave without making sure they had one more meal to keep their strength up.

“No no no no oh God no!” he screamed inside the van. Liddie was next to him, shaking him by the shoulder and telling him to wake up, it was only a dream, but he was already awake and the memory continued.

His fingers went right for the wound at her throat, where they found enough purchase under the skin to rip her throat clear off. Julia didn’t bother trying to pull off pieces but instead dropped to the floor next to their daughter’s body and bit into the face, her teeth popping Dana’s eye before pulling it from the socket and chewing. Dana still had enough life in her to try screaming at that, but all that came from the ruins of her throat was a wet gurgle. They continued eating, gorging themselves until their stomachs distended. And when it was all finally over, they both stood up and walked out the door in the direction of that sickly sweetness that had enticed them for so long. If there had been any part of them that had been aware of what they were doing to their own flesh and blood, it had been unable to surface through their bloodlust.

“No no no no,” Edward continued saying, but it was no longer a scream. He’d been so loud moments earlier that his throat already felt raw, but still he continued to mutter as the tears streamed down his cheek. The memory was so horrible, so overwhelming, that he thought he could still feel Dana’s hot blood covering him. As he came back to himself, however, he realized it was nothing so horrible. Liddie had joined him on his seat, and she clutched him tightly as he rocked and shivered.

“Shh, it’s okay,” she said. “Whatever it is, it’s okay.”

“No, no it’s not,” Edward said. “I killed her.”

She stopped rocking with him for a moment, then caught herself and joined him again in the gentle movements. “Who? Who did you kill?”

“Dana. I killed my Dana.” He knew that wasn’t technically true, since Dana had really been the one to take her own life, assuring that there was no way she would come back like her parents had, but it was true enough. And saying that he had killed her didn’t even feel as horrible as the truth. Simply killing his only daughter would have been the better option.

“Edward, it was just a dream.”

“No. No it wasn’t. She’s dead. She’s been dead all this time and I ate…” He couldn’t allow himself to finish. It was too much. Everything everyone had been saying about him all this time was true. He was not human. He was a monster, a disgusting thing that had no right to continue existing on this Earth. “Kill me,” he said. “Please, for the love of all that’s holy, you have to kill me now.”

“Edward, no. I won’t.”

“Kill me! I’m nothing! I’m a thing! I can’t…I don’t want to…”

“No,” she said softly. The word was so calm that it brought him back to himself a little, at least enough that he was able to look her in the eye.

“I don’t deserve to live,” he said.

“I won’t kill you, and I won’t let you hurt yourself either,” she said. “Not now, not ever.”

“But I’m a monster.”

“I never believed that, and I never will. That wasn’t you. You had no control over it. But you have control now, and I believe you’re strong enough to face it. You can go on. And I can help you, if you want me to.”