Bovicide, Zombie Diaries, and the Legend of the Brothers Brown

by Stephen Bills

  * * *

  A light spring breeze wafted across the street. Samuel Winslow’s house beamed light onto the dark front lawn, as it had for a fortnight. Usually Samuel’s neighbours were happy to leave him alone with his weird stories and absurd paranoia, but now they were starting to worry.

  One such neighbour, Gladys, was preparing morning tea for the Church of Idryo’s women’s fellowship, pausing occasionally to wonder if Samuel was all right before assuring herself that if Samuel needed anything he’d be the first to ask, loudly and brashly. But since Gladys needed a cup of sugar to finish her lemon slice, she decided to ask Samuel for it, just in case.

  Gladys took off her apron, put on her jacket, picked up her measuring cup, and stepped into the night. When no one answered her knocks, she opened Samuel’s front door.

  “Hello?” Lights were on in the empty living room. The kitchen table was set for two, but the scraps on the plates were growing mould. Where was Samuel? The whole house was dead silent.

  Gladys crept out of the kitchen, her measuring cup in one hand, and checked the lounge. Had something happened? Samuel had always kept a loaded shotgun above the mantelpiece, “just in case”.

  It was gone.

  Chills shimmied along Gladys’s arms and she turned slowly and checked the bedroom, the bathroom, the lounge. Samuel had disappeared. No missing clothes, no signs of struggle, no body. What was the emergency? Why had he left so abruptly, taking nothing but his shotgun?

  Unless he was still here…

  Gladys turned to the steel cellar door. Samuel had always taken great pride in his cellar. Was he down there? Had he tripped and fallen? Did he need help? She threw the door open. The light inside was already on.

  “Samuel?” she called. “It’s Gladys, from next door. I just want a cup of… shit.”

  The empty measuring cup tok’d six times down the wooden stairs before coming to rest beside Samuel Winslow’s bloody corpse.