Daydream (ONC 2024)

Chapter 4: Witch and the Vampire

With a bag of provisions slung over my shoulder and an unexplained crowbar in my hand, I headed out on my journey to find the rudest man alive. It was a markedly more realistic mission than saving the world but by no means a cake walk. And what I wouldn't give for some cake.

Something was not right with the food here. The monk's flat bread had crunched like dead bugs between my teeth, and the sludge tea he gave me to wash it down was worse. Beggars couldn't be choosers, but I was sure ready to try. I picked a mango from the pinemapple tree and bit into it with reckless abandon only to heave it back on the ground. It was gooey and viscous like biting into a slug, and I spit out black seeds like a Gatling gun.

Nothing like starvation to motivate me to find my way back to the real world.

While the food might be awful, a trip to the mountains had its perks. I could get away from the glazed eyes and watchers. But the walk in itself was torture. At first, I slung my crowbar in the one solid loop left on my tattered jeans, but it smacked the side of my thigh with each step until I settled for dragging it like a cave man. I'd toss it, but monk man said I needed it, and it was bad karma to snub the words of a holy man.

Cobbled paths ground down to gravel that slid under progressively thickening asphalt as I reached the outskirts, and I came to a stop in the shadows of towering office buildings and apartments. They circled the town of huts like someone had played Legos and shoved all the big ones off to the side. Except they hadn't bothered to push them firmly onto the pegboard, and any kid with a level could condemn these crude imitations of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Shuffling footsteps and the clinking of metal on pavement spun me toward an alleyway, and a group of miscreants plopped out of the shadows like the last pieces of candy from a piñata. They circled like partygoers ready to whack me with sticks, and though I likely tasted better than other food here, I wasn't ready to be the main course.

A Neanderthal of a man, big and hunched over, hugged the nearest brick wall with the upper half of a dress form held like a club, and I was spared that assault only because some punk biker girl moved to stand in my face. With the mess of choppy, pitch hair and a tattoo of a skull on her cheek, I figured the ripped off sleeves were intentional fashion and not deterioration. So many spikes wrapped her shoulders and belt that she might as well have been cosplaying a porcupine when the old world fell.

Though her eyes were glazed over like the rest, she had more energy than those I'd met thus far. I assumed anyone holding a lead pipe over their shoulders wasn't about to sit down and knit me a pair of mittens. It took strength to swing that thing, controlled or not, and I prayed these brain-controlled minions moved like Dawn of the Dead zombies. I wasn't a triathlete, and the extent of my martial arts skills consisted of throat punches and a palm to the nose to escape attackers.

If that monk expected me to fight a biker gang of with a crowbar, this was about to be a very short journey.

"One of the sheep wandered out of its pen, Faella," porcupine girl called back to the gang behind her, and I did my best to not laugh. The lead pipe was threatening enough to deter vocalization of my amusement at this newcomer's name being a pasta brand.

"A sheep?" a female voice said from back in the alleyway, much more youthful sounding than I expected from a zombie, and a shadow fell from a second story balcony and sauntered over like she'd hopped off a tin can.

Dark curls captured the light of the sun dipping behind me, flaring out under the brim of a pointed witch hat, and to avoid staring at her black lipstick, I counted the laces down her frilly dress. So many strings looped the fabric that I could braid a life rope, and those combat boots were way better equipped for a trip up the mountains than my worn shoes.