This isn’t a horror story- it’s not even a scary story.
But if you wonder how it was that I became the writer I am today- and why I chose to write the stories I do it
actually explains a lot.
So let’s begin with
a little snapshot from my life
I’ve titled:
Me, Betsy and The Church Zombie
Clipart By: Ben Blogged
Me and my friend Betsy had our sleepover at my house because I knew where my parents had stashed the Easter Basket Candy- look, horror movies just work more if you can mix Jelly Beans in with Jiffy Pop- freshly popped on your stove- top try it sometime-.
So as usual me and Betsy are out of our minds with excitement over the movies and we kept getting sent down to the gym which also served as our school’s cafeteria for ” Quiet Time ” for talking loud in class.
The Zombie incident happened in the early 1970’s and our school was built in 1905 so our gym was actually a basement. It looked like a gym but no matter how much light they pumped into that room it was always dark.
John B Allen- Seattle WA 1905- I was a student there- 66 years later!
Well, on one of our many trips to ” Quiet Time ” me and Betsy would sit down in that gym, in the half light and talk all about Zombies. Now, I have to explain why exactly it was me and Betsy spent a lot of time in that basement together for talking in class.
First of all, we did talk a lot about Monsters, but we had to talk loud- or mostly I had to talk loud because my friend was going deaf. In fact by the time we were nine she was completely deaf. At any rate, Betsy was just starting to adjust to her hearing loss and hadn’t caught onto things like lip reading or sign, so if you said something to her you had to make sure you said it loud so she got it the first time or you had to say it a bunch of times- which made Betsy cry because she felt ‘dumb’.
Look, Betsy was wearing leg braces and she had a wandering left eye, she didn’t need to feel ‘dumb’ on top of that:
So I talked loud.
All of the time
And we were always getting into trouble for it.
All of the time.
Oh don’t feel sorry for us we got used to getting into trouble for not using ‘soft voices’ and sometimes, because we were on the honor system, we were supposed to take ourselves to the basement and check in. Most of the time we just went out to the playground for 20 minutes and then took ourselves back to class.
Well, Nightmare Theatre did some sort of Zombie Fest and by Easter Sunday Betsy and I were all about Zombies- where did they come from? Did they have stinky breath? How come when they ran their heads didn’t fall off?
We even went up to my unfinished attic and drew them all over the exposed ceiling joists.
And then we had to go to Church – for Easter Mass.
It’s not like this ends bad for me and Betsy.
We were sitting there listening to a story about dead people coming back to life and a story about an empty tomb and crying women-
So I look over at Betsy and she’s already shaking her head.
I am already nodding.
And she looks confused- I knew that look, she was trying to figure out if I had said something so to get my point across I made what we called ” Zombie Arms ” ( you know how Zombies walked with their arms straight out? Those were Zombie Arms.)
Betsy, to clarify things made Zombie arms and went a little slack jawed.
I nodd.
She shakes her head in disbelief.
” Yeah- huh ” I stage whisper.
” Jesus was a Zombie?” she asks- you know loud.
And to make sure my friend can hear me I say, ” yeah and he’s coming back- today “
You know, I’m not sure if it was really that quiet in that huge Church on the day Betsy and I dropped to the floor and crawled up the side aisle to escape the Zombies, but that’s the way I remember it.
And to this day I have this theory.
I think that me and Betsy could go through our entire lives committing one sin after another because I’ll bet to this very day everyone in the Church that day are still praying for our Souls.
I know I do.
And here ends the story about
Me, Betsy and The Church Zombie
photo by: Anodyne
ANITA'S OWL CREEK BRIDGE 