#i usually don't post original fiction here since i'm paranoid about plagiarism given how many times my fics have been stolen

[sage-nebula]

Something Like a Modern Fantasy

Notes: So, six years ago, I wrote a thing.

Specifically, I wrote this thing, and I know it was six years ago because I posted it to Facebook and it showed up in the “On This Day” app. And here’s the thing about this thing: This original fic resulted in one of the worst drags I’ve ever experienced, one that honest-to-god almost broke me as a writer.

Let me explain.

Six years ago, I took an advanced fiction workshop for the first time. See, I was a creative writing major in undergrad, and so we were required to take at least one advanced creative writing course (I took two over the course of my time---fiction and playwriting---but that’s not the point right now.) The first time I tried to take the advanced fiction workshop, however, I didn’t finish it. The reason why I didn’t finish it---the reason why I ended up dropping out---was because I submitted this story when it was my turn to submit something for our class of 25 to read . . .

. . . and the professor . . . raked me over the coals for it.

Now, again, our class had twenty-five students in it. But my professor hated this story so much that he went off about how much he hated it, in front of all twenty-four of the other students. He also said, and I’ll never forget this, “There’s so much wrong with this I don’t have time to tell you how to fix it.” Apparently it was the least funny, most horribly written thing he had ever read. I’m all about constructive criticism, but literally nothing he said was constructive. All insults, and no instruction on how to fix it. As a result, I was so completely ashamed and humiliated that I just stopped showing up to the class and took my failing grade, feeling that I deserved it.

Anyway, I ended up taking an advanced fiction workshop with the other professor who taught it a year or two later (because while I could have just given up on writing forever, that’s . . . not really my style), and I worked my ass off and passed that one with flying colors, so it all worked out in the end. The first workshop was a disaster, and the second one was a success. But the point of this post is that I’m going to share with you that fateful story that was so bad that I couldn’t show my face in that first advanced fiction workshop again, because, hey . . . even if (though?) it’s garbage, if nothing else, it just shows how far I’ve come.

So, here’s this.

- - -

Most people go through their lives without anything exciting happening to them. Oh, sure, they go to school, go to work, maybe win a contest or two, participate in some sports tournaments, attend a few concerts . . . but nothing truly exciting happens to them. They live ordinary, boring lives, even if their lives don't seem boring all the time. Most people, through the course of living these ordinary, boring lives, indulge in fiction as a way to break up the monotony. They read books. They watch movies. They watch television, listen to music, and play video games. They let themselves escape to a more exciting, interesting place for short intervals of time, as a way of pretending that living their ordinary, boring lives doesn't bother them. This gets them through until they die, at which point it no longer matters how boring and ordinary their lives are, because they're dead and there's nothing they can do about it.

But still, some of these people wonder, what if life wasn't so boring and uninteresting? What if they woke up one day, and life was suddenly exciting, interesting, and all-around like every fictional book and every fictional movie they'd ever dreamed of living in?

For some people, such a thing sounds like a dream come true. For others, it sounds terrifying.

And for others, well, they really don't have much of a choice in the matter.

- -

The adventure always kicks off differently in each story. For some, they get a letter summoning them to a magical school. For others, they get told that they must take a magical MacGuffin off to some faraway place, all the while avoiding others that try and take it away from them. Still others simply happen upon the wrong place at the wrong time and then spend the rest of their adventure constantly running from those that want to kill them. Actually, all of the people in the above scenarios, at one point or another, run away from people who want to kill them. It seems to a staple of the interesting, exciting life. Well, that, and conveniently being an orphan. You'd be amazed at how many main characters in various fictional scenarios just don't have parents for some reason or another, because parents — above all else — seem to not approve of their children going off on magical, life-threatening adventures.

As for me, well, I'm not an orphan, but I'm not a child, either. I don't even live with my parents anymore. Not that I'm exactly an adult; I don't want to be an adult, and so long as I'm still in college I can pretend that I'm not while still reaping all the benefits of one, such as getting to do whatever I want in my on-campus apartment while not having to pay rent or mortgage bills. Anyway, so I'm not an orphan, and my adventure doesn't kick off with a letter of summons, a "but thou must" quest, or stumbling into the wrong place at the wrong time and triggering a series of unfortunate events.

Instead, it starts with me opening my front door and hitting a zombie in the face with a baseball bat. And let me clarify: this is an actual zombie, not someone pretending to be a zombie, or my drunk neighbor stumbling home at three in the morning, so piss drunk out of her mind that she looks and acts like a zombie. No, this is an actual zombie, of the eat-your-flesh-and-brains for breakfast variety. It'd actually be kind of cool, if it didn't reek of dead flesh, and ooze all over my welcome mat.

At least I wasn't too attached to that mat.

But anyway, that's how the whole thing started. In case you're wondering, I was holding the bat because I was getting ready to go to batting practice. Not that I'm on the baseball team or anything, but sometimes I like to just go down the batting cages and hit a few rounds. It's good for getting out anger, you know, without actually hitting someone in the face. Besides the zombie, I mean. But if a zombie was standing outside your front door, moaning and probably about to gnaw your face off, and you just so happened to be holding a baseball bat, you'd hit it in the face, too.

But there we have it — the "just so happened," the convenient coincidence that goes along with every sort of story like this. Well, I guess we had to have it somewhere.

Anyway, so that's how it all began. I was on my way to batting practice, I opened my front door, saw a zombie, and hit the zombie in the face with the bat. I didn't even really think — I just swung. And I guess all those years of batting practice have paid off, because the zombie went down pretty hard, fluids oozing out of its face where proper blood should be. It didn't die — blunt force trauma won't kill anything that quick, and anyway, aren't zombies undead anyway? Can't kill what's undead. At least, I don't think you can. I didn't stay long enough to check. It was stupid of me, but I just hopped over the zombie, didn't even bother to close my door, and took off running to see if the rest of the campus was overrun. What? I was excited! It's not every day that you open your door, see a zombie, hit the zombie, and then get a chance to jump over it and check out the rest of campus. And with a campus this small and this mundane, completely boring and not exciting in the slightest, the chance of a zombie apocalypse is a pretty big deal. It's something to get excited over.

But there was no zombie apocalypse. When I went down the stairs and got to ground level, everything and everyone looked normal. There were no more zombies, no lumbering corpses, no moans or odors of dead flesh — nothing. Just me, holding my goo-covered baseball bat, a zombie twitching in front of my open front door upstairs. Good way to start the morning, I guess, but for some reason I didn't even really panic. I just stood there, looking at the rest of the ordinary, still-alive people around me, holding the bat and probably looking like an idiot.

Well, at that point, I had two options. I could either, A) go back up and check on the zombie (who, incidentally, turned out to be my roommate; I felt kind of bad for hitting him in the face when I found that out, but since he was already a zombie, there wasn't much I could do for him; a band-aid wouldn't fix it, and anyway, since I left the door open he could get into the apartment just fine, so I don't think what I did was that terrible) , or B) leave. So of course, I did what any reasonable human being would do in that situation.

I left.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where I lost all choice in the matter. Because if you're faced with a zombie upon opening your front door, and you happen to be holding a bat, chances are you're going to swing the bat to hit the zombie. And at that point — or maybe the point after you check to see if the rest of your campus is infested with flesh-and-brain-eating corpses — you have two options. You can either go back to your life as normal, and have the adventure end there, or you can leave, and thereby get contracted into going on an adventure.

I left, and so I was contracted into going on an adventure. It's really as simple as that. Once I turned away from the stairs and went off in search of finding out why there was a zombie in front of my door (or really just doing something about it, because the why wasn't as important as the can you please take this away it really smells rank and it's getting ooze all over the place as far as I was concerned), I was roped into whatever would happen next, whether I liked it or not. It would have been that way no matter what I did, so long as what I did didn't involve going back up to my apartment, going inside, shutting the door, locking it, and then going back to bed.

But since that's the case, I really wish I would have done something other than go to public safety for help.

- -

In my defense, I didn't know what else to do. I guess I could have called the Help Desk, but what could they have done, filed an incident report to public safety to get them to take care of the zombie? Yeah, as if. I figured I'd cut out the middle man and just go to public safety myself.

I should have known better, all things considered.

"Uh, excuse me?" No response. The woman behind the little window just kept typing on her computer, completely oblivious to my presence. You'd think the fact that I was holding a baseball bat might've got her attention. I mean, I had no intention of bashing her skull in, but I could have, and usually that makes all the difference in any and all situations pertaining to weapons. "Excuse me?" Still no response. Maybe I should have brought a box of Krispy Kremes with me. "Excuse me!"

"What?" Finally. Even if the response was less than friendly, it was still a response. I tried to make my voice polite again, but I wasn't too sure I succeeded.

"There's a zombie in front of my apartment. Can you send someone over to do something about it?"

"What?" The woman's voice still wasn't friendly, but now it wa a little less angry, and a little more confused. I tried again.

"There's a zombie in front of my apartment. I opened my door, and it was standing there, so I hit it with my bat." I held up the bat and she looked at it, frowning because of the goo that was still on it, I guess. "I think that knocked it out, or at least stunned it or something, because it went down pretty hard and didn't move aside from twitching after that. But anyway, I guess it's probably still there, and I want someone to go take care of it. Or at least make sure that it's not still there, I don't want to get mauled the next time I go back."

The woman stared at me, and I stared back. For a few minutes, there was no sound except for that which the other public safety "officers" made behind her, filing reports or whatever it is they do. Mostly all they ever do is issue parking tickets, so I guess maybe they were filing those into the system. Finally, the woman asked, "Do you think this is a joke?"

"What?" It was my turn to be confused. "Uh, no, a zombie in front of my apartment is pretty serious business." I didn't want to think about what ResLife would fine me for zombie stains on the carpet inside.

"Here at public safety, we work tirelessly to ensure the safety of the students, staff, and faculty on this campus," she continued, and I guess I should have seen where it was going then, but part of my mind got distracted wondering how they factored frequent trips to McD's as "working tirelessly to ensure the safety of the students, staff, and faculty" on the campus. "We do our best to respond in a timely manner to every report, to make sure that every safety regulation is followed, to investigate each matter as seriously and swiftly as possible."

"Great. Then you're going to send someone to deal with the zombie, right?"

"That means," the woman continued, and her voice was rising at this point, so I really should have gotten the message that this wasn't going to end well, "that when we get fake reports — when we get little practical jokes by students, we take those seriously as well. They are not appreciated. They are not amusing. If we had the same power as the police department, I can assure you that you would be arrested for this insubordination!"

"Uh."

"Please leave. Do not come back here again unless you have a serious problem."

"I do have a serious problem. There's a zombie in front of my—"

"Leave!"

Well, in all honesty, I wasn't that surprised. Put-out, I guess, because this was the one time in which public safety could actually be useful, and they'd failed me. But surprised? Nah, not really. Like I said, they were never really useful despite that woman's speech about how they worked tirelessly to blah, blah, blah, and so I hadn't really expected much from them, especially since I'm pretty sure they were not prepared for a zombie apocalypse. For a mass onslaught of parking violations? Definitely. For zombies? No.

Of course, that gave me the idea that maybe I should say someone was parked illegally in front of my apartment building, and then just drag the public safety officers up to my apartment once they got there. But then, if there was someone parked illegally by some chance, the officers would be too distracted in writing their tickets, so that was a lost cause, anyway.

At that point, I was at a loss for what to do. I figured that I could go back to my apartment, but by this point the zombie would probably be awake, and I didn't want to get mauled. There was still the option of calling the Help Desk, but again, what could an incident report do for me now? And then I could always go to the university center, but I didn't see what they could do, either, except maybe make me a new ID card for the zombie. Out of all the resources on campus, that only left ResLife, Health Services, and the Academic Advising/Resource Center. ResLife would just fine me for zombie stains, Health Services was only ever useful for hounding people for vaccination records, and the Academic Advising/Resource Center was just useful for administering tests and telling you to take classes that you didn't need while never offering you any real help when it came to registering for the classes that you did need.

So all in all, my options were pretty slim. Given that I didn't want to go back to my apartment (at least not alone), and given that I also couldn't make use of any of the available "resources" on campus, I did the only thing that made sense at that point.

I went to go see my best friend Kyle.

- -

"A zombie?"

"A zombie."

"In front of your apartment?"

"Yep."

"And you hit it with your bat?"

"Uh-huh."

". . . No fucking way." I knew he'd react like that. But see, the thing about Kyle is, while he says "no fucking way" right off instead of giving some long-winded speech about how I should only talk about serious things and not joke around, he doesn't mean that he doesn't believe me. He just means that he thinks there's no fucking way there could have been a zombie in front of my apartment. And despite how it sounds, that's not the same thing. "You've gotta show me this shit."

"I will, if you'll move your ass and come with me." I walked away from his apartment, only pausing at the top of the stairs to let him shut his door and lock it. Not that he has anything worth stealing in there except his laptop, but you know. "It might not still be there, though. I didn't kill it."

"Of course you didn't kill it, it's a zombie. It's already dead. Undead. Whatever. But you're just saying that now because there wasn't an actual zombie, so nothing's going to be there when we get there."

"Like hell, dude. There's zombie ooze all over my welcome mat."

"Sure there is."

"You'll see."

Kyle's on-campus apartment was across campus from mine, but the campus was so small that it only took about five minutes to get from his place to mine, even taking into account the fact that we had to dodge kids on scooters and weave our way through the parking lots. When we got back to my apartment, the zombie had moved as I predicted, but it didn't go far. Not only was the ooze still all over the place, but it made a trail through my open door, leading right to the zombie, who was rolling around on the carpet.

ResLife will have a field day with those zombie ooze fines, I swear to Christ.

"Holy shit dude," Kyle said, and I glanced over to see that his jaw was dropped. Well, that's a decent reaction, at least.

"Told you so."

"No, seriously, holy fuck." Kyle walked into my apartment, which I thought was pretty batshit stupid considering it was a fucking zombie that was rolling around (moaning, too — seriously, was it getting some strange, freaky, orgasmic reaction to the cheap carpeting or something?), and leaned forward a bit to get a closer look at the zombie. "I think that's your roommate."

"My what?"

"Your roommate. Ryan. Isn't that Ryan?"

I walked up to join Kyle in the doorway, standing a bit behind him even though I was the one with the weapon, and leaned forward to get a closer look. In case you were wondering, yeah, this was when I found out that my roommate was the one I bashed in the face upon opening my door to find that there was a zombie there. Again, he was already a zombie. There wasn't much I could do. And from the way he was taking pleasure in rolling around on my carpet, I really don't think he cared too much. "Yeah, I guess that's him. Kind of hard to tell, since there's a gaping mouth where his face should be."

"I'm positive that's him. Dude, your roommate's a zombie. That's pretty fucked up. Think they'll give you a roommate transfer if you ask for one?"

"Well, considering public safety thought I was bullshitting them when I told them about the zombie in the first place, probably not."

"You went to public safety? Man, that's so weak."

"Shut up, I didn't know what else to do."

"Point taken."

The zombie — or Ryan, I guess — kept rolling around on the floor, pausing every few moments, yet then going right back to it. He kind of reminded me of my dog. She'd do that sometimes, too. After a minute, I asked, "So, what do you think I should do?"

"Ask for a roommate transfer."

"I mean besides that."

"Dude, I don't know." Kyle shrugged. "I've never had a zombie roommate before."

Well, there went all my options. I had no resources on campus, my best friend didn't know what to do, and my roommate was a zombie that was currently rolling around on my carpet and showing no signs of stopping. There was really only one thing I could think of to do at that moment, and if my fate to go on some quest hadn't been sealed before that moment, it was definitely sealed right then.

"Well, I guess I can just go home for the weekend."

- - 

Okay, so maybe going home for the weekend wasn't the best solution to my problem, either. I still couldn't go into my apartment, because even if he was just rolling around like my dog after eating kibble, there was still a chance that zombie-Ryan could jump up and maul my face at any given moment. That, and going home wouldn't exactly solve the zombie-Ryan problem. All it would do was postpone the fact that I had to deal with it until I got back, unless my drunk-ass neighbor happened to look in my open door at one point and see zombie-Ryan rolling around on the floor. Granted, I doubted anyone would believe my drunk-ass neighbor any more than they ever believed me, especially since she was drunk all the time, but hey. I could try.

Anyway, so going home wouldn't really solve the zombie problem, but it was all I could think of to do in that moment. I guess in a way I was panicking, but not in the screaming fit way of panicking. More of the I just did whatever came to mind first brand of panicking, and since that panicking allowed me to drive home without crashing the car, I figured that was a good thing.

Home was about three hours away, so even though I left at eleven AM, I got there at about two-thirty, which was fine. It was a Saturday, which meant my parents would either be at home or playing golf or something, and they'd be happy to see me home for the weekend. Probably, anyway. It was hard to tell with them sometimes. Anyway, I fully expected them to be home, because as mentioned before, I am not conveniently an orphan. That's not how this story is going to work. No way, no how.

But I guess stories can't function if the main character can just run home whenever they want, either. And I guess that having parents there sort of induces that "run home" feeling. And I guess since I lost all choice in the matter the second I decided to leave my zombie roommate rolling around on the floor, some divine forces from above were going to step in and make sure that I couldn't get all comfy-cozy at home, ignoring my destiny or whatever the hell it was that caused my roommate to turn into a zombie and then roll around in the living room.

That was the best reason I could come up with, anyway, for why — when I used my key to get in the front door and walked into my living room — a middle-aged couple that was not made up of either my mother or my father was sitting there, watching television, the house filled with furniture that I didn't recognize.

"Uh." It was my default response for when my brain was too broken to think of anything else, okay? And for the record, the middle-aged couple that wasn't made up of either my father or my mother seemed to have brains as equally as broken as mine.

"Who are you, and what are you doing in here?" the man asked, standing up from his reclining chair. I held up my key by way of explanation.

"I live here. Or I kind of live here, anyway. This is my parents' house. Speaking of which, where are they, and who are you?"

"This is our house," the man said, indicating himself and who I assumed to be his wife. "We've lived here for thirty years, and we don't have any children."

"Then explain to me why my key works," I said, holding out the key. He didn't take it. "I'm positive that this is my parents' house. I grew up here. We never lived anywhere else. I was just here two weeks ago to do laundry." Hey, don't judge me, you never really need to do laundry until you run out of underwear. "Seriously, what the hell is going on?"

The woman looked somewhat scandalized, either by my presence or my language. Hey, it wasn't nearly as bad as what I could have said, but then, I guessed they might be one of those couples that's traumatized by everything "our nation's young people" do. There are some older couples like that out there.

"Look," the man said, apparently doing all the talking for him and his wife. "I don't know where you got that key or what you're playing at, but if you don't leave right now, I'm calling the police."

"Leave and go where?" I asked, and I don't even know why I bothered. "I can't go back to school, there's a zombie in my apartment. And I would go to my parents' house, except this is my parents' house, even though it's apparently not now." The man seemed to have no sympathy for me, and his wife still looked scandalized, so I sighed. "Fine, fine. I'm going."

And go I did. I walked out, but I made sure to check the number on the mailbox and the outside of the house. There was no mistaking it. It was my parents' house, the house I was raised in, the house I'd just done my laundry at two weeks ago.

Only, apparently it was no longer my parents house, but instead the house of some middle-aged couple that I didn't even recognize. And when I tried calling my parents on my cell phone, all I got was a "this number has been disconnected" message.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still pretty sure that I'm not conveniently an orphan, but again, if nothing before had sealed my "you're set to go on an adventure now" fate, this did it.

And to be honest, it kind of sucked.