Wannabe

Every nook and cranny of the room was crammed with people. Except for the area where Bobby Truebenacht sat. Everyone noticed him just enough to make sure to stay away. He sat alone on the beer-stained sagging sofa.

"Rhett! Did you see the game last night?"

Rhett Hazeman, Omega Chi president, walked right passed Bobby toward Sammy Marlboro. They started reenacting parts of last night's games with an invisible basketball. If only Bobby were as popular as Rhett and Sammy. The ladies loved them too. Even Sammy's nasty, trailer trash mullet didn't stop the girls from flirting up a storm with him. All the girls were clamoring for even just a moment with Rhett and Sammy. Even their two cronies, Mile and Merrick Smithers, brothers from Oregon, seemed to have girls crawling all over them.

Bobby observed everything and everyone around him. To fit in, he had to mimic someone. It might as well be Rhett. He watched his every action. Bobby started. Rhett was walking towards him.

"You're always over. You wanna be an Omega bad, don't you?"

Bobby's stomach spun with nervousness, "Not that bad." He hated that he cared so much about what people thought. He hated that he felt like he was dying inside every time he had to watch fraternity parties from the sidelines.

Rhett nodded, "Sammy and I think it's time to help you out. We can initiate you if you want."

Too nervous and shocked to speak, Bobby offered a slight nod in reply.

"Meet me on the sidewalk right outside the house in five minutes."

Bobby nodded the same hesitant nod. Rhett nodded in return and walked out of the room, winking at a tiny Asian girl as he turned the corner.

Bobby weaved through the crowd of people and finally found himself on the sidewalk, pacing back and forth as he waited for Rhett.

After what seemed like hours, Rhett, Sammy, and the Smithers appeared outside the front door. Mile was holding a wooden breadbox. "Get in the truck, Bobby."

They knew his name?

Rhett pulled keys out of his pocket, spun them around his index finger and pointed towards an old red pickup truck with his head. Rhett and Sammy got in the cabin and the rest piled into the small bed. The engine roared and the truck bolted out of the parking spot.

"Listen," Mile yelled over whipping air, "We're going to drop you off at the edge of town, you know, by the woods." Bobby nodded and Mile continued, "Spend the weekend in the woods. Alone. Use only what you can find out there and the contents of this breadbox to survive. Make it back to the frat house midnight Saturday night and you're in."

Bobby had watched lots of Survivor Man but he didn't think that qualified him to survive in the wilderness. Despite his fears, he found himself nodding. What was he getting himself into?

Rhett didn't even slow down as the Smithers brothers threw Bobby out the side of the truck. He careened down the hill and barely managed to stop himself before hitting a redwood. All the stress of the party and interacting with the elite members of Omega Chi was beginning to make Bobby sick. His blood sugar was getting low. He opened the breadbox. One bepto bismol colored package of Sweet'n'Lo. Anger welled up inside of him. They were such punks. But he needed the fraternity. And at least the Sweet'n'Lo would help with his blood sugar.

He opened the package and poured it into his mouth. Sugar had never tasted so good. It wasn't sugar. It was coconut powder. His tongue began to swell and his throat began to close up. He tried to call for help but it was futile. Only gentle moan-like sounds escaped him. Panicked and confused he fell to the ground and began to cry as he struggled for his last breath.

The Breadbox

It was a dark night. It was a stormy night. Far down wolves howled and wailed at the black, moonless sky like clerics of some primeval sodality. Aqueous orbs tumbled and twirled from their cumulonimbeous birth to the lonely earth below, shattering into millions of featureless specks - bursting and breaking their bodies on the windows of the house where, inside, it was warm and dry.

The last embers of the hearth fire were dying slowly as the old man sharpened his knife on the leather strap, crouched like a wizard at the cauldron. It had to be sharp. It would be sharp. He tried to avoid the thought of another night holed up in this old cabin. The rain and perhaps the wolves had driven them away to seek shelter, but he knew they would return. He could try and make a run for it but on foot and in his condition he’d make it one, maybe two miles before they caught his scent and chased him down.

The knife was sharp enough. He cracked the barrel of the shotgun – still loaded. Four shells left in the box. That meant five shots. That wasn’t much, but with the windows securely boarded, plenty of food and water, he could last four more weeks if he was careful. He stabbed a piece of spam with the knife and let it slide down into his mouth. The saltiness of the meat made him thirsty.

“Too bad there was no alcohol in this shack,” he thought. Not that he’d drink any. Sure, it’d take the edge off, but he needed that edge if he was going to survive this. He could still hear the wolves howling, but now it sounded less like a spiritual cry in the night and more like the barbaric yawp of a crazed warrior standing over his slain opponent, blood still steaming and sloshing out in waves while the dying heart convulsed in reflexive spasms.

“They must’ve got one,” he thought. Whether they did or whether the wolves would turn after eating their rotting flesh was a frippery he didn’t need to waste time thinking about. A swear left his lips. “Shit.” He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know anything.

Knock, knock, knock. They were here. He crouched down near the couch, the hair stood up in the back of his neck and he prepared himself for the barrage of pounding and moaning that would soon begin all around the cabin. He waited.

Knock, knock, knock. “Hello? Is anyone in there?” Knock, knock. The doorknob clicked and clacked as whoever it was tried to open the door. More knocking and then the voice again, that of a young girl. “Please, let me in.”

The old man peered through the peephole and saw a girl, maybe 19 or 20 standing outside; a dark sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over her blonde hair. She was soaked. He unlatched the bolts and chains and removed the board laid across the frame and opened the door, ushering the young woman in and then quickly relocking the door and replacing the heavy board that barricaded it.

“Who are you? Where did you come from?” barked the old man.

“My name is Shannon, we were camping up at Deep Creek when they came,” she said tearfully. “My family is dead. What are they?”

“The living dead,” said the man, avoiding any chance for misunderstanding.

“What do you mean?” asked the girl.

“What I said. Like the Book of Revelations says, the dead will rise, the sea will yield up her dead, yadda yadda yadda, and so here we are.”

The arrival of the girl meant company, but it also meant danger. Four weeks turned to 2, maybe 3 with an extra 140lbs to feed. His chances of making it on foot were even less now, unless… no, no, thay wasn’t a viable option. Her couldn’t be like them or leave her to them.

Now that she was here though, a dreadful realization came into his head: the breadbox. She couldn’t touch it, she couldn’t touch it. She must never open it or touch it.

“Don’t touch the breadbox.”

“What?”

“Leave my breadbox alone. Never open it.”

“What? Okay fine,” the girl answered confused.

“It’s just – I don’t like – Don’t mess with it or look inside. I have a phobia of people messing with my breadbox.”

“Okay,” the girl said, unsure of how to react, unsure about whether this cabin was actually safer than the woods, even with them out there. At least it was better to be locked inside with an old kook and his vagaries than be outside with a group of cannibalistic undead. The breadbox looked normal enough, and she was fine with leaving it alone.

“You hungry?” snapped the old man.

“No,” Shannon said, pulling her knees up to her chest as she sat against the wall.

“There’s beans on the stove.”

“No thank you, I’m not hungry.”

“Well you will be soon enough.”

Five days passed by with no sign of life or them outside the cabin. The rain had stopped, but no birds sang, and at night there were no more cries from the wolves, not even the crickets chirped. Shannon’s initial concerns about the old man faded as time passed on. Since his initial warning about the breadbox, he hadn’t done anything crazy or irrational. In fact, he had proven quite saavy and aware of current events, movies, etc. He reminded her of her grandfather except he was clean shaven and her grandfather wore a well-trimmed moustache. She had never seen him touch the breadbox or open it. Her curiosity grew day by day.

On the sixth day, she decided she would wait until the old man fell asleep in the late afternoon, as he had for the five days beforehand, then she would quickly flip open the lid of the breadbox, see what was inside, and close it just as quickly. A short glimpse would be all she’d need.

About four-o’clock, the old man’s eyelids started to droop and before long, his breathing took on the unmistakable rhythm of slumber. She crept quickly and quietly across the room to the counter where the breadbox lie. Her fingers steadily reached for the small handle, wrapped around it, and gently lifted up to reveal the inside of the box.

The old man was ripped awake by a powerful force, as if someone had tied a speedboat to his chest and pulled him off the beach at full power. Then he felt the freezing cold and the void and blackness all around him. He struggled for breath, as he floated helplessly about, the young girl slowly rotating a few feet from him, mimicking the rotation of the blue planet below. As each one of his cells was cut to shreds by the ice crystals beginning to form inside them and as his lungs sucked in on themselves like a vacuum packed steak he had two almost simultaneous thoughts: he should’ve taken his chances with the zombies, and that stupid girl opened the breadbox. She opened the damn breadbox.

written by Jordan Faux