Zombies is the New Pink

"First it was vampires, then werewolves,
then it was them gremlin thingys,
and then vampires again -" he coughed,
spraying gelatinous ooze -
"Now it's zombies.  Everywhere you go,
you can't escape the goddamn things."

He paused to suck on a tentacle.
"Don't know why.  They're about as scary
as chicken with their heads cut off,
and mostly computers now, anyway. 
Give me a monster who can sink
his teeth into you."

Beneath the table,
the grandchildren rolled their eyes
at the end of their retractable stalks. 

"Now, back in my day, the monsters
had character.  Give me The Thing, The It,
The Creature of the Goddamn Black Lagoon.
Back then, one unfathomable beast, alone,
could make the whole town tremble with fear.
And do you children know why?" 
He thrust an ominously-clawed fingertip,
quivering with age, in their direction.
"You know why?"

"Because they had character," the kids droned,
bored out of their terrible little minds. 
The oldest one popped the rubber bands
on her braces; the others just fidgeted. 

"You better believe they did. 
You kids with your CGI and your Myspace pages,
your rap-metal remix over the closing credits -
no wonder it takes a hundred of you
to raise any sort of a scare." 

Satisfied, the Old One sat back,
tucking a bloodstained napkin beneath his chin.
The kids relaxed; it was finally time
to have their dinner. 

-- D.J. Sylvis

Unless otherwise mentioned on any individual page, all text is provided under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Send email to D.J.