Jeff Strand - The Sinister Mr. Corpse

"Eat him!" Brant repeated.

The crowd just stood there, looking collectively baffled.

"It's a lie!" Stanley insisted. "If you eat me you'll just be a cannibal! And that's shameful! Nobody likes cannibals!"

"Eternal life!" Brant shouted.

Charlie stepped forward. "Yes, eternal life!"

The crowd surged forth, mouths open.

Stanley turned back toward the structure and fled. He didn't have far to run, but Brant intercepted him and delivered yet another one of those manly punches. Brant grabbed Stanley by the shirt collar and shoved him toward the oncoming hungry crowd.

"Fuuuuuuuuck!" he shouted.

And then he was caught in a swarm of bodies. Fingernails dug into his arm. A set of teeth bit down upon his leg.

Though the crowd was making too much noise for this to be true, Stanley was sure he heard Brant's cold, cruel laughter.

Stanley screamed and kicked and flailed around, but he couldn't get away from all these people. Charlie bit down on his arm, hard, ripping off a thin strip of flesh. A young woman grabbed it from between his teeth and shoved it into her own mouth as Charlie wailed in protest.

He kicked, getting a little kid (shit, he's not even out of elementary school!) in the face. Stanley's shirt ripped in half and within seconds had vanished from his body. He felt at least four different sets of teeth on his arm, and somebody bit down on his thumb almost, but not quite, hard enough to sever it.

"Please!" he begged.

His thumb came off.

What was going to happen to him when there was no flesh left? Would he actually become the skeleton from the posters? Would he still be alive?

An elderly woman thrust her face toward his eyeball, as if preparing to suck the orb out of its socket. Stanley gave her a head-butt and heard something crack that didn't belong to him.

"What the hell are you people doing?" a woman screamed. She'd somehow gotten hold of the megaphone. "This is insane! Leave him alone!"

The crowd's hysteria was too intense. They continued ripping at Stanley's clothing and flesh. One particularly crazed-looking gentleman had a pocketknife and was trying to saw a chunk out of Stanley's belly.

The pain became overwhelming…and then Stanley felt at peace. This wasn't happening to him. This was happening to some other poor zombie bastard. He was doing just fine.

He looked at the psychopaths trying to eat him and decided that, no, this was happening to him, but he was detached from the proceedings.

This must be what it felt like to die.

Of course, the first time hadn't been like this, but go figure.

So many things he'd never be able to do…

…tell Martin just how much he truly valued his friendship…

…meet Veronica's lesbian girlfriend and envision the oh-so-naughty things they did to each other in the privacy of their bedroom…

…reconcile with his parents…

…punch Brant again…

…smell a daffodil at dawn on Easter morning (where the fuck had that come from?)…

…hear gunshots…

No, wait, he'd just heard gunshots.

He became very much re-attached to the current situation as he realized that somebody was shooting into the air. A cop. Cops ruled.

"Back off!" the cop shouted. "Everybody!"

Though nobody technically backed off, they did cease the cannibalism. Stanley scrambled away from them, trying not to look at all of the chunks missing from his body. He was shaking and absolutely terrified but knew that if he could just get back down into the bunker…

"No!" Charlie hollered. "Eternal life!"

He rushed toward Stanley. Another gunshot rang out and he pitched forward onto the ground, bleeding from the chest.

At least three women and one man screamed.

Stanley continued scooting backwards. His arm twisted at a weird angle and this time the crack definitely belonged to him.

Brant was still standing around. The sick bastard looked like he was enjoying this. He'd lost his mind.

The crowd began to move forward again.

Apparently gunshots weren't much of a deterrent when potential eternal life was available.

This may be the end of me, Stanley thought, but I'm going to make sure it's the end of Brant, too.

He jumped up (which really hurt) and ran (which hurt even more) toward Brant. He let out a screech that he hoped was intimidating but probably wasn't. The lack of intimidation value became clearly evident as Brant stepped forward to meet his attack.

The cop fired more gunshots into the air, but they had no effect.

Stanley knew that he'd need every last bit of strength to pull off what he intended to do, and though his strength was in limited reserves at the moment, he certainly had willpower. Having another arm would've been helpful along with the willpower, but he'd make do with what he had.

He grabbed Brant by the back of the head and slammed his face into the open part of his stomach. His arm cracked again, and a lovely piece of bone poked through the skin, but he held on for as long as he could. Which ended up only being another second and a half.

Brant stood up straight again and wiped off his wet mouth. "What the hell-?" He hadn't actually eaten anything, but nobody else had to know that.

The crowd tackled Stanley and brought him to the ground again. He hit arm-first and wished he hadn't.

"Listen to me!" he screamed as loud as he possibly could. "The chemicals…they transfer!" He pointed a crooked arm at Brant. "It's inside him! His body carries it now! Eat him!"

Brant's expression quickly switched from "What the hell is he talking about?" to "Oh shit!"

And then things really got out of hand.

Several people in the mob immediately turned on Brant. He tried to run but they took him down before he made it three steps. There were too many bodies involved for Stanley to see exactly what happened, but there was shrieking, spurts of blood, and disgusting smacking sounds.

Stanley actually felt a little sorry for him, even as the insane folks in the crowd bit at his own body.

One man tried unsuccessfully to push his way through to get at Stanley. Stanley saw the look of realization on his face as he decided that if Brant had the chemical from eating Stanley, so did everybody else who'd dined.

He bit into the neck of an obese woman. She cried to claw out his eyes but he got a nice big mouthful.

Two other people went after him.

And as the feast went into full swing, Stanley again detached himself from the proceedings and floated into a happy place where people rarely if ever tried to eat each other.

"And we're back with Frank and Freddy's Morning Zoo! Wow, how about that incident with Mr. Corpse, huh?"

"That was just plain wacky!"

"What did they say, five people dead? Over a hundred injured?"

"A hundred and sixteen, I think."

"Wow. That's a pretty impressive injury count. For those of you at home who've been too drunk to follow the story, apparently a crowd of people who'd formed some sort of cult around Mr. Corpse became convinced that eating his flesh would give them eternal life!"

"Cuckoo! Cuckoo!"

"Heh heh heh, cuckoo is right, Frank. Police are still investigating, but word is that people in the crowd started trying to eat each other!"

"Mmmmmmmmmm! Yummy!"

"I've gotta say, if I were going to eat somebody, it sure wouldn't be Mr. Corpse."

"I agree with you there. I bet he's all gamey."

"So who would you eat?"

"Oh, I can think of about ten people off the top of my head. Cheerleaders, mostly."

"Heh heh heh. Anyway, Mr. Corpse is alive, as far as we know, but a lot of him is digesting in the bellies of some very disturbed citizens. I wonder how pissed off they'll be when they develop stomach cancer or something and realize that they don't have eternal life?"