Ancil“It’s me, your son Jed….” I however seemed to be talking to myself as my father continued to stoically progress towards me. “You want something to eat dad?” I said as I slowly and very cautiously backed away. “You look a bit hungry. The doubles you bought the other day are still there. I know how much you love doubles. It…” Before I could finish my sentence he lifted the ax and swung it at me almost going away with my head. Luckily I managed to just barely evade the first attack. Also escaping the second one, I leaped up onto the bed and shouted, “Woi dad that’s not cool.”
He groaned in reply, then reached down to the floor and picked up, of all things, the gun that I had dropped.
“Oh shit!!” I shouted. Without a moment’s hesitation, I picked up the basketball shaped robotic metal ball of Ray Carter and tried to get him to respond but to no avail. It was the first time that Ray Carter remained unresponsive to me. He proved himself to be very useful in my plight to survive but I needed him more than ever now and he wasn’t there.
I darted around the room and away from danger as quickly as possible as my father pointed the gun at me. Luckily, I was able to somehow scamper around him and make it out of the bedroom safely before running off towards the front door with Ray Carter still nestled under my arm. My father however keenly followed behind me with the gun in hand. I kept on running. I ran down the stairs, and made my way outside into the blinding darkness of the night, the strong taste of sweat and tears in my mouth. I turned around every so often to see my father chasing after me, along with the dirty and dark remains of my house towering above the landscape in the distance only lit by the moon.
My father’s pace was none to contest with as his arms swung at his sides like an Olympic runner. Propelled by fear and adrenaline I somehow was able to match his pace until eventually I began to grow weary. I heard grim groans and the trampling of grass from what seemed like all around me and I had a feeling that the noise wasn’t only coming from my father. It seemed like hundreds of loud groans in chorus and it sounded like it was coming from figures very close to me but in the blanket-like darkness I couldn’t see anything.
I ran up Calvary Hill a little bit until eventually got to a hill slope on the other side which I quickly made my way down and kept running until I arrived at the main town of Arima which was just as dark. The town smelt strong of rotting flesh but the bodies that had been on the ground from the Midnight Robber’s invasion weren’t there anymore. Where did they go? I began to question the logic of dead bodies just getting up and walking off like zombies. My previous experiences proved that it was possible but I tried to find even a glimpse of improbability among the whole thing for the sake of my father and for the sake of my own survival.
I ran deeper into the dark town and found myself jumping over cars and running past old dirty buildings. For some reason a few of the cars were on fire and I could have sworn that I saw a couple of shadows moving as I ran through the street but I was too aghast to even take much notice.
My main goal was to find a place of safety and the only place that came to my mind was Xin-Zee’s 24-hour Chinese restaurant where I had worked a summer job the year before. The doors of the Chinese restaurant were always open so I decided to run there hoping that I would find the doors unlocked. Luckily enough, I did. I burst through the main entrance and as soon as I did, I frantically fished through the darkness pulling tables and chairs with one hand and barricading the make-shift metal door with the other. I then took a mop that I found, stuck it through the door handles to keep it shut, and slowly backed away from the barricaded entrance, my eyes wide and my breathing shallow.
There was no sign of my father, so I was convinced that he had lost me. I sat down on the floor in front of the door, laid my head against a table breathing a long and heavy sigh of temporary relief. Crying was my only freedom from the hell hole that I had found myself in again. I contemplated just ending my life right there and then. The pressure was getting to me. I wasn’t positive Jed anymore. I had no one to live for. I had no one to be strong for. There was no more Megan, Melanie, Ravi, Marsha, Cornell, Samantha, or anybody. There was no more family; my dad, my mom, my little sister. They were all gone and here I was, all alone, fighting to prolong my inevitable demise. So what was the point of being strong anymore? I was about to find out as the lights of the Chinese restaurant suddenly flickered on.
The bright piercing light dazzled me for a second causing me to squint a bit. When my eyes eventually adjusted to the sudden change in brightness I looked around, wide-eyed and alert, until I finally made eye contact with a Chinese man standing outside the bathroom area of the restaurant with a bloody meat cleaver in his hand. It was easy to see that the same thing that had happened to my father had happened to him. His body was pale, half rotted and his face was powdery white. There were some maggots eating away at the hand that held the meat cleaver and I cringed at the very sight of it. It was disgusting. As I looked at him I began to remember what Megan’s father had said on the video Sam played in the Red House. “When the bodily functions of man fail, the possibilities are endless. The body becomes a shell that is begging for life. Begging to become something or someone.” I then started to connect the dots. My father died, so his body was used as a shell for something else. What was that something? Powdery white face, pale skin, and rotting flesh…JUMBIE!!!
