by M. R. Holman
falling and he found that the zombie from the Ferris Wheel had given him one of his glow sticks. It was green, just like a great deal of his own rotting flesh.
Soothing, dulcet tones echoed across a field. He looked toward the source of the music and saw another crowd. This one consisted entirely of people either sitting down or lying on the ground. They would be easy prey, the zombie thought.
Due to the amount of pills he had taken, he had great difficulty in walking and an even greater difficulty in navigating his way to the crowd. The music became louder and softer, louder and softer, but he could not find it. He discovered eventually that he had been looking at the stars as he walked, and once he looked at the crowd again, he was able to navigate toward them much easier.
The zombie began to run, driven by his desire to feast and the fear that he might once again fail to capture a living human to eat. He picked up speed as he neared the crowd. They seemed to have no idea that he was approaching as they continued to lie in the grass and listen to the music playing. When he was ten feet away, he tripped. He slid all the way to a group of festival-goers who were lying in the grass.
"Bluuurrrgghhhh," the zombie groaned into the grass. He flopped over and lied on his back beside the group. It seemed that they had noticed he joined their group, but they did not seem to mind. One of them handed him what appeared to be a tiny, badly rolled cigarette.
The zombie had been a smoker during the non-zombie portion of his life, so muscle memory took over and he took a puff of the funny looking little cigarette. After a few moments, he forgot all about eating the group and just laid in the grass and looked up at the stars while the music played.
A few minutes later, the funny little cigarette was handed to him again and he took another drag. He felt as though he was melting into the grass. He felt, at once, as heavy as a boulder and light enough to float into the sky and join the tiny pinpricks of light that were becoming increasingly clear and vivid in his usually poor vision.
After the third time that the funny little cigarette was passed to him, the zombie fell asleep and did not awake until the next morning. The stages were gone, the music was gone, the Ferris Wheel was gone, and, most disappointingly, the crowds of highly edible humans were gone. That was severely disappointing to the zombie because he was hungrier than ever after smoking that strange cigarette.
The zombie rose to his feet and began to trudge across the field in search of his next meal. Although he did not capture any humans, he reasoned in his zombified mind that he had had an excellent day nonetheless. He hoped that he was still undead and in the same area next year so that he could do it all over again.
Loch Ness Monster: Ordering an Electric Guitar
In a massive underwater cave deep below the storm tossed surface of the loch, on a steely grey Scottish afternoon, the Loch Ness Monster held a telephone to its ear. She had been on hold for the better part of thirty minutes, and was beginning to lose her patience. Nessie did concede, however, that at least the hold music was good. She tapped her fins along to the beat of a rock and roll guitar riff, and looked down at an electric guitar of her own which was placed upon the surface of her coffee table.
This guitar was the reason that the Loch Ness Monster was currently on hold with the guitar manufacturer. It had been delivered to the front doorstep of her cave roughly an hour previous, and upon opening the packaging, Nessie discovered that it was hardly built to the specifications she had ordered. Nessie watched as it began to float an inch or so above the surface of the coffee table as her pet salmon swam idly past it. She pinned the guitar back down with her tail and patted her salmon on its slimy triangular head with her telephone-free fin.
She sighed deeply, bubbles rising to the ceiling of her cave, as a new song began to play. This was getting ridiculous. She had paid for a very specific product, and she expected a certain amount of customer service to come along with it.
There was another problem that was quickly arising, aside from the problem of being on hold for over half an hour. Nessie would have to return to the surface to breathe soon, and she did not want to miss her chance to speak to a customer service representative and have to go through the whole process all over again. She could hold her breath for hours at a time, but now that she thought about it, it had been several hours since she had visited the surface and she was beginning to feel a bit lightheaded.
Another song started on the phone, and she placed it on top of the coffee table, next to the electric guitar, wishing in vain that she had made the call on her cell phone, but it could not get a signal in the cave. She swam carefully but quickly past her possessions and furniture, most of which floated idly a few inches above the floor of her cave, and exited her front door, taking great care to make sure her pet salmon did not get out. She closed the door that was disguised as a large slab of rock, and pushed off hard against the muddy floor of the loch.
She considered, as her long reptilian body undulated through the water column, that either the guitar manufacturer had produced many faulty guitars, which caused all of the customer service representatives to be busy, or that the customer service employees were just too incompetent to answer the phones on time. Either option was disappointing, considering the amount of crypto-currency that she had paid for the custom made guitar, but she hoped that whatever was going on at the customer service center of the guitar manufacturer continued to happen until the very moment she returned to her telephone.
Her smooth, oval shaped head broke the surface of the water. She breathed deeply, filling her lungs with hours of fresh air. The storm continued to rage above the surface of the loch. She had been unaware that one had been happening. There were no boats or fishermen to be seen, and she was grateful of that. Keeping a low profile was key to a happy life for a Loch Ness Monster.
Nessie ducked her head back beneath the choppy surface and dove with rapidity toward the entrance of her cave, hundreds of feet below. Soon, she was opening the door to her cave once more, and she darted inside and shut the door. Her pet salmon greeted her merrily as she opened the door. She tossed it a Salmon Scooper, a line of treats made specifically for pet salmon, from a container beside the door, and began to quickly make her way inside. In her haste to reach the phone, she knocked over a lamp. Deciding that retrieving it could wait until after the phone call, she left it on the ground and raised the telephone to her ears. It was still just playing rock music. She rolled her eyes.
"This is Cryptophone Guitars' customer service line, how may I help you?" A shrill voice suddenly spoke through the telephone, halting the rock and roll music immediately.
"Oh, hello," Nessie said excitedly in her thick, gurgling Scottish brogue. "I ordered a custom made electric guitar, and it is not made to the specifications I requested."
"A, uh, custom guitar?" the customer service representative asked. She sounded like an elf. Most customer service representatives seemed to be elves. Nessie assumed that it was a fitting job for the majority of them, given their helpful natures.
"Yes, it is a guitar made so that a lake monster such as myself could play it. I'd like to -,"
"I'm sorry," the customer service elf said, cutting her off. "I'm afraid that customer service is only for product returns and refunds."
Nessie was dumbfounded. Was there really nothing else they could do for her? She did not want a refund or a return, she just wanted modifications to be made. Modifications that had been agreed upon in the first place.
"I do not want to return the guitar and I do not want a refund," Nessie said as politely as she possibly could. "I would just like to arrange to have it modified as I had originally specified."
"What is your name?" the elf asked impatiently.
"Nessandra. I go by Nessie, though,” she said to the elf as she silently reproached her pet salmon for swimming under the television stand. She was always worried it would knock it off of the stand one of these days. Given the fact that her cave was filled with water, it would likely not break whe
n it fell, but it was not a chance she wanted to take.
"Well, Nessie, I'm afraid we can only offer you a refund, and only if you wish to return your Cryptophone Guitar."
"Is there any way you could just transfer me to the guitar building department so I could speak to a builder?" she asked as she eyed the sea foam green electric guitar lying on her coffee table.
"I'm afraid not," the elf said waspishly.
"Why not?" Nessie asked, the politeness quickly leaving her voice.
"Because we are actually not affiliated with Cryptophone Guitars in any capacity other than customer service. We're a third party customer service company hired by Cryptophone to arrange returns and refunds."
"Wha-... You don't even work at Cryptophone?" Nessie asked, bewildered.
"No... I'm actually at an undisclosed location more than a thousand miles away from Cryptophone guitar headquarters."
Nessie understood that the customer service elf was likely trained to refer to a script when dealing with customers, but that did not assuage her frustration. This was not real customer service. "May I speak to your supervisor?" Nessie asked.
"Hold please," the elf replied coolly.
Nessie released a deep grumble which shook the stone walls around her as the hold music began to play once more