The thud of flesh on flesh echoed in the abandoned churchyard. Cries, yelps and pitiful moans of pain punctuated the sounds of the beating.
"Alright David. Cool it, we don't want to kill him." A stocky man with a shaved head said, heaving himself up from the head stone he was resting against. His fellow, David, taller and darker, did as he was told. He gave one last kick and guffawed stupidly at the sound he elicited.
The man on the ground, coughed and gasped desperately at the air, blood dribbling thickly from the corners of his mouth. He was young, mid twenties, with once white blonde hair, now sticky with muck, and sharp blue eyes, dulled with pain and blackening from his savage beating.
"Listen here you little faggot." The stocky man snarled, grabbing a fistful of the blonde hair and dragging the man near upright. "I warned you, don't fuck with us again. You made a fool of me for the last time you creep. David, who is he sleeping with?" He said, his voice sinister.
"Uhh, Robert ...Cha...amp...Champlin." He said slowly, stupidly, reading off a gravestone.
"You heard him. Guess you and Rob Zombie are gonna be getting real cozy." He said, dragging him by the hair to the grave and throwing him into the dug up pit.
He landed hard, six feet down, into the coffin. The wind was knocked out of him and he couldn't even scream as the lid was slammed shut.
Darkness pressed in on all sides. The air was thick and foul, ripe with decay and stagnation. He screamed himself horse, pounded on the lid till his knees and knuckles were bloody, and cried until his tears ran dry. He lay, apathetic and watched the minutes tick by on the illuminated face of his timepiece. The body under him, Robert Champlin, was lumpy and cold, the flesh not yet stretched taught over the bones. He was recently dead.
Three...two...one... hour three came to a close, and with each passing minute he felt the air lessen around him. He sniffed and looked away. He'd be dead in a few short hours. By six a.m Reese Daniels would be no more, never to be found, hidden in a fresh grave with Rob!
A soft gust of breath cut Reese's brooding short. Like the flutter of bird wings, it tickled the back of his neck. His tears returned as he quickly tried to rationalize a breeze sweeping through a sealed coffin six feet under the earth...
"Who the hell are you?" A cool male voice whispered against his ear.
"NnooooooooLetmeout!! Noooooogodnooooo!!!" Reese shrieked, the moan spilling off his tongue as he renewed the banging of his bloody bruised fists against the wood.
A cool stiff hand curled around his mouth, ending his scream in a muffled wail. An arm looped around Reese's painful ribs and held him to stop his thrashing, sliding him down so he was seated between two legs, his head on a hollow soundless chest instead of another head.
"Will you cut that out, you'll wake up the whole damn cemetery. If you keep screaming like that you'll run out of air sooner." The voice, whom Reese could only assume was Robert, said snipishly. "I'm gonna take my hand away, but if you start screaming again we are going to have a serious problem. Do you understand?"
Reese nodded, trying to master himself and stop his tears, calming his rapid breathing. The hand was removed, brushing his tears away in the same motion.
"There, see, I'm not such a bad guy."
Reese whimpered. A corpse was talking to him!
"Don't hyperventilate, look seriously, do you want to suffocate on your own breath? Relax, I promise not to eat your brain." He whispered playfully. "Want a cigarette? I've got one somewhere." He said brightly, shifting to rummage in his pockets.
"Wha- what!? No, what the hell is wrong with you? Did your brain rot out, you can't smoke in a coffin! I'll run out of air!" Reese yelped, being shocked back into speech and hurriedly flipping to scrabble blindly for the zombies hands.
"Hey! Watch the hands! Buy me dinner first." He said unconcerned and Reese fumbled, but eventually managed to grab the cold lifeless hands. "I was joking."
It was pitch black, but Reese didn't need to see the face, inches from his own, to know Robert was smiling.
"Shut up! Don't talk! You're fucking freaking me out! You're fucking dead, so act like it!" Reese said, near panic, slightly hysterical. "I have to get out of here." He whimpered to himself.
"Yup, you are losing your mind from being here so long, just imagine how crazy I am. The witch will be here soon and we will all pop out of the ground like daisies." He said with a yawn. "What time is it, just after witching hour, right?"
Reese glanced at his watch, fully intending not to answer. It was three ten in the morning. Reese gave an indignant...squawk, for lack of a better term, as Rob pawed at his buttocks and shifted him back in between his knees.
"Budge up sweet cheeks, you're sitting on my nads and not in the good way."
"Ugh, you are so vulgar." Reese said distastefully, grateful for the darkness to hide his blush.
"Oooo," Rob cooed. "Don't be such a stiff, I'm the corps here, remember?" He chuckled, but hadn't moved his hands. Instead he slipped them into Reese's back pockets. "You have a nice ass." He said with the air of complimenting him.
"Stop! What is your deal!?!" Reese couldn't escape, he had nowhere to go and banged his head on the coffin top and he squirmed.
"It's just a bit of rigor mortis." He said casually, the smirk playing in his voice as he rolled his hips to Reese's. "What's wrong, never woken up with a stiffy in your pants?" He asked squeezing Reese's bottom.
"Somebody save me!!!!"
As if in answer to his plead, the coffin lid flung open and cool, fresh air momentarily stunned Reese as moonlight flooded his vision. Rob was illuminated by the sudden onslaught of starlight and it seemed to make a halo around him.
Reese flushed dark as his protests died in his throat. Rob was so...not what he expected. His hair was collar length, messy and black, his skin white and bloodless, but his eyes sparked with the inner fire of life, a bright, cool grey-blue color. Black stitches marred the milky flesh, a long jagged stretch of them tracked across his face from his right side chin to left side temple. Another row adorned this throat like a choker or a wicked smile, curving from ear to ear. He wasn't the rotting, horrific, green monster he had anticipated at all!
"What in the sam hell is going on here?! Robert! What did I say about bringing boys over to spend the night!"
Reese whipped his head around to see who had saved him. A formidable looking, very busty, woman was standing at the grave's edge looking down on them. She was dressed all in black with a sleek cat winding between her legs.
"Oh but Mama!" Rob whined dramatically. "Just this once, we didn't do nothing, honestly!" He said with a grin, wrapping his legs around Reese's bottom and slamming them together.
Able to maneuver without cracking his skull, Reese ripped himself away from Rob and jumped to catch the lip of the grave and haul himself up. Robert got up much slower, his joints audibly creaking and when he cracked his neck it sounded like snapping bones.
"Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhmmmoooootheeeeerrrrfffffffuuuucker!!!!!" He groaned as loudly as he could, stretching his arms above his head and arching his back. "Wooh!! That feels good." He said hopping to his feet with more vigor and vitality. "Hey, where are you going?" He called as Reese took off, limping a bit from his beating.
"I'm getting the hell out of this freak show! I have enough bullshit to be getting along with! I don't need horny zombies and AHH!" He flinched throwing his arms up to protect his head.
Mama's cat had scampered forward to bar Reese's path, at the last second transforming into a man. A very drool worthy man. Built in every sense of the word. Muscular, handsome, and rugged with a gaze that took the breath away. Being completely nude, excepting a...patch of fur, also probably helped.
"Mmmmmm," He purred silkily. "Where are you going?" He stroked Reese's arms, dragging a rough tongue up his chin. "Why don't you stay, you look like you could use some grooming.
"Marius, down. Come here you lousy Incubus." Mama scolded him. As soon as Marius leaned back with a pout Reese hurried back to the graveside. Zombie v.s Incubus; he'd rather take his chances with the zombie.
"Don't worry, I'll protect you." Rob said extending his arms invitingly. Eh...no. Reese took refuge behind Mama.
"Uh-uh honey, he is your problem. You brought him to life, you take care of him."
"What?"
"Haha! Are you serious!?"
"Hmm, interesting."
Reese looked at Rob, who was patting at his chest experimentally. "I didn't bring him to life! You did you're the witch!"
"Baby, do you really think only women are witches? You have a lot to learn. Rob will teach you. If you are a witch, that means one of the coven has fallen and I have to go. I'll warn you, he's a handful. That's why I wasn't going to use him anymore."
"Two handfuls." Rob said, taking full advantage of Reese's distraction to get behind him and crush him in a hug, groping at him shamelessly.
Reese didn't even try and get away. He was too stunned to even move and gapped at Mama like a fish outta water. "I'm a witch? And I have a pet zombie..." Mama nodded at Reese and Rob chuckled.
"Whoof." He barked playfully.
"But...what do witches do?" He asked finally shrugging the zombie off.
"Honey, a witch can do whatever they wanna. You already raised the dead."
"You bet he did." Rob snickered.
"Anything else is below that. Make yourself a billionaire, take over a country, do nothing." She said, pulling out a wand and rapping Marius hard over the head with it. He was forced back into a cat and scooped to her bosom. "Your powers peak during the witching hour though to dawn. If you want to put Rob back to dead, do so before then." She clicked her fingers and vanished in a cloud of purple smoke.
"I am a witch....with a pet zombie?" He mumbled numbly. He looked over to Rob.
"Whoof?" He said innocently. Something in Reese crumbled and he sunk, weak kneed, to the ground, his face in his hands. He looked exhausted and confused, in pain and lost. "Alright, no woof." Rob said stooping to scoop Reese up under his arms and pull him back to his feet. "Let's go big guy. We should get out of the graveyard before we are arrested and no offence, but you need a bath. Not even vampires think dried blood on the corners of the mouth is attractive."
Reese gingerly touched his mouth, feeling the crust of blood and dirt and tied to brush it away. Robert led him by the arm out of the forest of graves and down a path away from the direction of the main road.
"Where are we going?" He asked warily, pulling away from the icy touch, it hade him uncomfortable and not because his skin crawled.
"There's an old house up the hill behind the trees. Us zombies use it if we aren't put to dead at night. The witches coven owns it." He explained, giving up his grip and letting Reese walk on his own.
"So, what do witches do with zombies? Why bring them back to life in the first place?" Reese said, relaxing and allowing more of his true personality to shine through the last traces of his horror. He was more skeptical of things. Was there truly a point of bringing back a person who staggers around slowly, feasts on human flesh and was obviously perverted as all hell?
"Well, some use us for extra hands, guards, errand boys and girls, company, pets." He grinned at Reese who almost smiled and had to look away. "No, but mainly for information. We aren't just a pile of rotting meat. You ever stop to really think why to kill a zombie you have to destroy the brain? We are smart. We've lived and died, we've seen what lies beyond this world and can retain more information because of it. We are problem solvers and have seen the world from the outside. The other side doesn't exist in our timeline. We can see things in the past and the future and have them exist at the same time. The zombies that freak out and begin to rot and groan and drool are the ones who tried to tell how everything pans out in the end. A capital offense and a sign the zombie is ready to return home. If he's rotted he can't be brought back, see?"
Reese thought about all of this as they climbed a hill, the trees blocking out the moonlight. "So why do zombies eat human flesh?"
"Oh, who doesn't like a nice thick cut of meat to suck on." Rob said seductively. Reese wacked him hard across the chest, winching as his knuckles throbbed painfully. "Ow! Damn, alright, don't be so sensitive." He said in mock hurt. "If we are left alive to long we crave living flesh. Being trapped too long in a cold lifeless body drives us quickly into insanity and somehow we rationalize that eating the living flesh will help."
They reached the hilltop and found a large Victorian era house standing dark and quite before them. The inside was pleasant, surprisingly. The furniture was old, but we'll kept and soft. No pealing paint, no chipped pictures, no cobwebs or flickering lights. It was like being in somebody's rich, elderly mothers home.
Rob, after only a moments struggle, picked Reese up and put him on the bathroom counter, having given up trying to coherence him into doing so.
"Will you not! I don't like you touching me and grabbing me and pawing at me like some kind of toy!" Reese said angrily. "Just keep your hands to yourself."
"Ha! Not happening. Sorry studly, but I like touching you, deal with it. Now come here and take your shirt off." Rob laughed then stated bluntly, taking Reese by the knees and pulling him the the very edge of the counter and setting himself between his legs.
Before Reese could do anything except look disapproving and slightly panicked, Rob wrenched his shirt up, trapping his head and arms in it. He retrieved a bottle of rubbing alcohol and began dabbing at the bloody and sickly purple and blue ribs.
"Wow, you pissed somebody off didn't you." He said conversationally.
"You are impossible!" Reese fumed, his voice muffled by the fabric before he wrenched it away and threw it at Rob.
Rob let the shirt fall listlessly to the floor, a sour look on his face. "You are a wretched little man. You do know that right?"
"Then leave me alone." Reese said, giving him a push and sliding off the counter. He hadn't taken one step when a sharp pain shot up his leg and it gave out. Rob caught him, a hand on the scruff of his neck, his other catching him by the belt and crushing them close together.
Reese looked up, wide-eyed, color soaking his skin and flooding his body as his heart jumped in his throat. Rob held his gaze, his face impassive.
Reese started, as if suddenly realizing what he was doing and tried to worm away from Rob's embrace, panicked by the feeling of heat in his own body. Rob held him tighter and they grappled with each other. Pinned against the wall, hands firmly keeping distance between them, Reese bared his teeth at Rob who leaning his weight against the warm body, arms on either side of his head, glowering inches from Reese's face.
Your lips are warm to the touch, your skin is warm to caress, you can lie without a trace and on the outside you are alive, but you are dead inside. You are buying your own scam, so, tell me how you really feel, Reese." He whispered darkly.
The tension held, taught like a rubber band and thrumming around them. Suddenly the broken bruised hands, that had tried so hard to keep the distance between them, fisted the worn black shirt over the hollow chest and dragged Rob against him.
His lips seared against the cold flesh of the other as the nerves sparked and crackled, raceing along their bodies in the wake of exploring hands.
"Reese I never thought I'd ever see you again." Rob breathed softly, running his fingers through the blond hair. "I know you're confused and don't remember me or the accident, but don't run, please. I missed you so much."