My brain melted like the ice-cream my sister left on the counter last night. Mrs. Lottony, at the front of the class room, sounded like a gurgling crab from Nemo; repeating the same monotone sounds and clapping her hard shell pinchers trying to get attention.

“Class, we are going to explore this subject,” she pointed at a picture of a man. “And this,” she pointed at the picture of a women next the man. “And this,” she tapped the picture of an ape. I wondered where she was going to go from there.

“God,” I whispered, putting my head to my desk, on top of my book; picturing God, sitting here bored with me, hopefully regretting ever making such a creature as Mrs. Lottony. “Please let her see that all brains aren’t exactly like hers.”

I tried paying attention to whatever the class was about, but I had forgotten everything in my boredom. I counted the ceiling tiles, 68. I counted the visible floor tiles, 109. I counted Mrs. Lotony’s buttons on her ugly sweater, 12. I counted the phones hidden under the desks in between my classmate’s knees, 20. I continued counting random pencils, pens, glasses, and ponytails.

Class finally ended, and my mind so far out in the outskirts of the universe that it took me a few seconds to respond to the irritating ringing sound that plunged into my ears, making my drums beat and giving me a headache. I grabbed my things and started to walk out of class.

I walked down the halls happily alone. I smelled something. Sweat, dirty clothes, and Head and Shoulders shampoo.

“Hey Zechie!” the boy said, and put his arm around my heavily laden shoulders.

I let him, he did this almost every day, and he seemed to think I was his girlfriend. I knew that if I tried to shrug him off, he’d beg for something I didn’t want to give. Immature hormonal boys suck.

He was so close I felt that his pheromones were enveloping me, I needed to get away from his sweat glands. I wondered if he had ever worn deodorant in his life. I figured he had never seen the Old Spice commercials that my other youtube nerd friends liked to quote. He probably had never seen the Axe ones either. Sad, sad boy.

“Hi,” I paused to make him suffer. “Luke.” I said as we walked down the halls. I wondered if his father was actually Darth Vader, or maybe he was a mutant spawn of some sort, or was he a storm trooper gone rouge?

Luke’s head nuzzled mine, and my stomach gave a lurch of alarm, I sped my pace hoping he’d leave me alone.

“So, I was thinking, what are you doing tonight?” Luke said in my ear.

I wanted to shout back at him, “Nothing with you!” but I just waited, hopefully impolitely, for him to talk more.

“We could go to that new movie that came out, and maybe do some fun stuff while watching it,” I thought he was high, his breath smelled like marijuana.

Did he really just ask me to come to a movie, for nine dollars of my money to make out with a druggie like him? What a complete….

“Not in your wildest fantasy dreams Anakin,” I ran from him leaving him shocked behind me. I knew now why everyone at school, including my teachers, thought I was gay.

As I was happy with my victory from my speech skirmish with the padawan learner back there--probably still blinking in the hall wondering what he should do-- I walked out of the jail, that the public calls school and started my 15 minute trudge home.

I decided to contemplate my crush. He was a very special boy, an Alfa geek like myself, who was the complete opposite of Luke Skywalker. He was more of an Obi wan Kenobi type, with the humor of Yoda. But, don’t get that combination confused with the 1970’s Spock. He is nothing like Spock. I hate Spock.

I arrived home and collapsed onto my kitchen counter. I relaxed after the long walk, and drank some water out of a pink straw. I lay down my head on my crossed arms on the flat white and cold surface. I stared at my fish Aeon. She stared sideways back at me.

The creature that my parents created 11 years after me came toddling into the room. Her beady violet eyes glared over the counter at me, her small nose hidden by the ledge of the counter.

I looked over at her, only using my eyes, not moving an inch of my body. I did not speak to her; she did not attempt to speak to me. The silent agreement to be good children was like clearing the air between enemies momentarily.

I refocused my eyes on my fish. My sister stumbled out of sight into the pantry, on her piggy toes. I heard a slam, a few clunks, and a slight thud, and then came the sound of her feet again, plopping back to me. I did not move from my position, I was making sure she didn’t try to feed my fish to the cat.

She opened the drawer in from of her face and used her pudgy fingers that looked like baby sausages glued to her hands, to get a butter knife. I was only a little afraid now, but I knew she would not harm my fish.

I watched closely, wondering what the little monster was up too, and hoping I wouldn’t get in trouble because of it. She blinked at me once, I could not see her mouth, but I could tell she was smiling. She reached up and handed me a cracker. I did not expect this from her. Giving me a cracker, was even more of a peace treaty than I had expected.

I wondered if she crushed up some hemlock and dripped it on this cracker. Was she even smart enough to know what hemlock was?

I was in for it now; I could feel the foreboding in my growing and solidifying bones.

I looked at her questioningly; I raised my eyes brows, gesturing to the cracker, looking harmless, yet very mysterious lying in my open palm.

She looked down; I heard a plastic jar open as she walked around the counter to the other side where I was sitting. I saw her tiny hand dig into the jar with the butter knife pulling at a scoop of a light brown substance. She gathered the glop of peanut butter and holding the jar between her body and the crook of her elbow, she piled the squishy oil oozing goop onto the cracker. She stuffed it into her tiny mouth hastily, and I questioned if she could breath.

Mouth. Peanut butter. Sticky.

She was mocking me.

I gagged and my eyes started watering at the sight of it. My face contorted the more she shoved it into her mouth. I was being tortured and she was getting the entertainment she was betting on. She thought she was the queen, and I was a gladiator in her arena that she could toy with all she wanted. Sick creature. Why did my mom even want another baby?

I had to leave the room to escape the sound of the cracker being saturated and soaked with both her saliva and oily peanut butter in her mouth like a blender. I started to run to my room, yearning for the comfort of my laptop and bed. I didn’t reach it though.

“Stop!” the mini monster called to me, before I could reach the stairs. “You want a snack?” I was going to strangle her.

“Attie! I don’t want,” say it you can do it, I told myself. “Peanut butter!” the word dirtied my mouth, and I rushed to wash it out with my tooth brush.

My dad was probably around somewhere, in his office maybe, hiding from my sister. I wondered if he had wanted a second child.

I was upstairs on my face book when I heard the car pull into the drive way, my mom was home. “Zechie!” she called from the floor beneath me. “Dinner!”

I came down and sat at the table. I stared at my sister in her ugly white high chair, which undoubtedly had peanut butter in every crevasse of it; stood near the table. I ate my dinner, with my mother, her life completely bent on the every wish of the monster in the thrown next to her; and my father, who I thought did not notice most of my life. After dinner, I happily watched my baby monster being taken into her lovely dungeon, and then laid in her crib, caging her so that I and my parents would not get gnawed upon in our sleep.

The work I was assigned by Mrs. Lottony sat on my bed. I looked down at it, and wondered whether it would really matter if I completed it or not. I looked at the first question, still not understanding the subject that she wanted me to learn.

1. What do you use to pick things up?
My hands.
1.
How many times do you wash your hands a day?

What kind of a scam survey is she running? I put under the question: 100 times more than Luke Skywalker
2.
What do you want to use your hands for when you grow up?
I want to be a depressed emo druggie that works at McDonalds and uses my hands to make burgers.

I figured it was a clear enough answer to her question. I went to bed and tried to forget about the questions.
School was almost bearable, until I arrived at my last class.

“Hey baby,” Luke was trying to seduce me, repulsive. “What’s up?” I couldn’t even count the pimples on his face. Never mind his neck, and I think there was one in his ear.

“Hi,” please don’t make me talk to you. “Anakin,”

He scowled at me. I smiled back as sweetly as I could.

I imagined him pulling out his green light saber with his dorky cyborg arm shouting bravely, “How dare thee Sith! I am not my father!” Then he would proceed to use his none existent self-control to threw me around the room with the force.

“Why do you keep calling me Anakin?” He said raising an over grown eye brow above his bloodshot brown eyes. I hated him.

“I don’t know, maybe because you remind-” There was a very loud scream, a smokers cackle mixed with a long high pitched wail. Everyone froze, I heard a moaning noise and more screams. Mrs. Lottony ran into the room, her leg was bleeding and her navy nylons were torn and her skirt was ripped.

“What’s going on?” one of the favored students tried to say before a person- I thought I would never see- entered the room. A man, bloody, pale, and most of the skin on his cranium was missing and some of his skull was chipped off, his face was fallen and his eyes couldn’t focus on an object correctly. His arms lead him around slightly and his feet stumbled his clothes were pretty normal other than the blood stains covering the front of his shirt and sleeves. Everyone screamed in the room even, Anakin, I didn’t, my prayer had come true, a zombie, my zombie. I wanted to run up and hug it, but I also feared for my life.

Everyone had cleared out of the room in terror except for me. The zombie had chewed on Mrs. Lottony’s leg, she was screaming away, I grabbed a desk it was pretty light, so I threw it at the zombies head.

I got the flag pole instead, the zombie walked toward me, I wacked him with the end of the flag pole and he crumpled, I ran out in the hall to get more help, if anyone dared, the football jocks ran away, the cheerleaders clinging to their backs, so much for our fearless leaders.

The only people left in the hall were my friends, all the nerd kids, the gamers, and the alpha geeks. Our weapons were bad; heavy text books, pocket knives, the gamer boys had, and random items such as chair legs and staplers.

My friend Matt, a gamer, walked to my side, armed with a cigarette burned toilet seat. “Hey, you ready to beat the undead skin off this guy?”

“Yep,” I said and ripped the flag off the pole I was wielding.

The zombie clomped into the hallway, and all of us readied ourselves. We had all played the games, watched the movies, read the books, bought the posters, and we were prepared for the zombie apocalypse more than any other psychotic person out there.

A person ran in front of me and slashed the zombie with a pocket knife. That is what started the up roar of cutting, chopping, kicking, and hitting that lasted for twenty minutes. The zombie was finished off probably two minutes in, but I always have to follow the rules, rule number 2: double tap.

Everyone was finally done and all the weapons were raised in the air while we cheered. I raised my pole, and someone had stuck the head of the zombie on to it. It dripped blood down onto my hand.

The evidence of the attack was everywhere in the hall way. Spurts of blood on the walls, floor and ceiling, zombie body parts scattered all over the place, and bloodied weapons discarded in the mess.










We left the gore behind us, leaving it to the surprise of the adults, when they would arrive in the morning.
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