Morpheus Tales Undead Special Issue Ebook

By Morpheus Tales

The zombies are coming! The Vampires are coming! The ghouls and ghosts, the dead are coming! The Morpheus Tales Undead Special Issue is here! Featuring zombies, vampires all manner of undead are hidden within these pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Morpheus Tales
• Release date: Apr 14, 2012

Morpheus Tales

Morpheus Tales began in June 2008, and publishes a regularly quarterly fiction magazine, and an accompanying free online non-fiction magazine, (in January, April, July and October), and as many special issues as we can manage. Free previews, free downloads, and ordering information can be found on our website: http://morpheustales.wixsite.com/morpheustales

Book preview

Undead Special

The Drip By Ray Gunn

New Thrills By Gary Hewitt

Sam By Eric S. Brown

Princess By Brandon Layng

Never Trust A Vampire By L.B. Goddard

Warm Body in a Cold World By Lori Bowen

Sweetbread By Tonia Brown

The Pit By John Grover

Acceptance By Jason A. Lavertue

Ghost Light By Kristi Petersen Schoonover

Substance Sixteen By Sarah Reece

Worms By Jeremiah Job Levine

In Gray By Christopher Allan Death

Cover By Ash Sivils - http://amptone.deviantart.com/, www.myspace.com/ashtastica

Proof-read By Writers Services - http://www.myspace.com/writersservices

All material contained within the pages of this magazine and associated websites is copyright of Morpheus Tales. All. Rights Reserved. No material contained herein can be copied or otherwise used without the express permission of the copyright holders.

It echoed. The sound repeating against the confines of the red Coleman cooler and the drop’s impact in the water playing over and over within the ripples.

It was grating on his nerves. Sitting in the house on a dining room chair and trying to eat, JD couldn’t get the drips out of his head and they ruined his appetite. He wiped the barbeque sauce from his slack lips with the suit sleeve.

Placing the small cleaned bone on the plate with others, he had grown impatient with the bothersome noise and left the two thumbs waiting for him to return, after he had found drywall compound to fix the ceiling. He gave the hand-less man at the head of the table a swat as he passed, catching his finger on the City of New York employee badge. JD needed to take his anger out on something before he commenced breaking things.

Breaking things wouldn’t be good for him; the neighbours could hear and bring the wrong kind of attention. Recently released, JD had no intention of going back to where he had come from. The dirt was still fresh beneath his nails.

Down the creaking stairs he went, into the basement, hoping to find the tools he needed. The Coleman cooler was a bit of luck, finding it sitting in the front closet. The white inside was stained pink but it served his purpose as water catcher. The leak was there when he entered the house two hours previous and he thought he would be capable of coping with it.

Clicking the light on, JD shivered at the sight of the autopsy tables filling half of the basement. They were a familiar sight. The one in front of him appeared to be heavily rusted.

What kind of shit were you into Mr. No hands? JD asked the air around him. His breath would have been thin fog… if he had any. Government employees like you have no purpose with a body slab.

Through the floor above he could hear drips hitting the cooler. Scanning a workbench he spotted a roll of drywall masking, a tub of compound and a toolbox.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Biting the tape between his teeth, grabbing the handles of both tub and red painted metal box, he made his way up the stairs, stopping only to slobber a curse over the cardboard when an incisor clattered to the wood step. His grey pallor flushed slightly as his ire rose. He needed to eat in order to get better and he couldn’t eat when – Drip – he can’t even hear himself think.

Jaundiced eyes scanned the room, he sensed something different and noticed that Mr. No Hands’ smile was gone. The man had smiled when he died, a black gummed grin, had thanked JD before the tire iron smashed the side of his skull in. The smile stayed, like he was enjoying the punch line of a dirty joke. What JD saw in front of him was the loose jowled grimace of a man who just realized the joke’s on him.

It did nothing to help JD’s nerves. Drip.

Drip. If he was going to survive the night he needed to fix the leak and eat. He had survived so long because he knew how to get food fast. The Americas were the ideal place for him since he’d come over with the Conquistadors. First feeding on the Natives who were slaughtered by Spanish blades and then making his way through the English settlements that came later. The wars of revolution providing him ample sustenance. The growing population making it easy to disappear, his crimes hidden by escalating crime rates in the metropolitan areas. Until a few days ago, when he was shot having a midnight street bum snack. The bullet hole through his chest itched even then as he kneeled down to open the toolbox. The toe tag forgotten by the funeral home chaffed his big toe.

The dining room lights caused the knives he found inside to gleam.

What have we here, Mr. No Hands? He was awed by the wickedly curved blade of the skinner, the straight edge of the three pound cleaver, the thin serrated fillet knife and the cutters. Sticking out like a sore thumb was the flat putty knife. Unlike the others which were all cleaned and oiled, this one was stained with old compound. Drip.

There was a new sound; the groaning of straining metal. JD told himself it was pipes settling.

He lifted the putty knife from the box, careful not to cut himself on the other contents; his body could not withstand more damage.

Already he felt the organs loosening inside of him; the heart slackening in the chest cavity sloughing onto his diaphragm with his lungs, liver resting in the nest of his intestines, intestines threatening to unfurl through his anus. He needed…

He chided himself for wasting time and popped the lid on the compound. Using the chair he had been sitting on, JD took a closer look at the ceiling. The white glob threatened to fall off onto the carpeted floor. Drip.

He wasn’t surprised to see the spot had been patched before. Stuffing the end of the masking tape between his teeth, he pulled and yanked out a canine that clung to the adhesive. Flicking the tooth off in irritation, JD placed the masking over the thin crack and smoothed it out. Slapping the compound on and filling in the spaces in the woven adhesive. Groan.

Getting down from the chair, JD examined his work and was pleased with himself. He pulled his seat back up to the table and sat. No sense of urgency left, he resumed his meal of fingers. Severed end of the left thumb in his mouth, he sucked at the marrow and blood as if he were an infant with a soother. It wasn’t long before he was reminiscing about his past dinners. MISSING posters stapled to telephone poles with Xeroxed faces floated through his rejuvenating brain. Synapses fired as the posters changed to waxy complexions on milk cartons. Taste buds revitalizing with the tang of juices staining his tongue while he remembered glossy flyers taped to convenience store windows. His remaining teeth held strong in their sockets when he gnawed the flesh from the bone and Amber Alerts flashed on the television screen of his memory. Mr. No Hands’ meat was a tad gamy but…

It’s one way to make a living, he said to the silence of the room. or rather to get living.

He felt no remorse. No more than a wolf for the rabbit he tears apart or the eagle for the snake it slits with the hook of its beak. Every hunter has its prey and if JD was to guess; Mr. No Hands had had his share of prey.

Creak. Snap! Patter, patter, patter, drip.

He jumped in his seat at the sound of the leak’s return. It was the sound of rain on shingles and it came from the other side of the ceiling. His patch job held. He had no idea for how long and the ravenous cast of his eyes said he hoped it was time enough to finish the main course and be halfway to the highway in the Chevy Blazer he saw in the garage on his way in.

Thumbs done, he decided with a smile on his strengthening lips, that he would use Mr. No Hands’ own cleaver to separate the thick arm from the body.

The weight of the steel helped but he still had to hack to get the tendon and muscle to release the bone at the shoulder. Drip. That one was behind him, hitting the half full cooler. He hesitated with the bicep clasped between his teeth.

Jesus Christ, a ghoul afraid of a little water, he joked with himself. This is getting silly John Doe. Relax and enjoy your food.

The