One challenge I enjoy is the Microcsms prompt. This week, spinning the wheel we have to include, as our first line, a famous last line, use the setting and genre and keep the word count under 300. So here’s my entry. The three requirements for this week are: “Is it about a bike?”; Police Station; Horror 

‘Is it about a bike?’

Why do they think it’s something so mundane?

‘The cheese sandwich?’

‘Cheese sandwich?’

‘I stole Peterson’s cheese sandwich. Brown bread. Well, granary. No crusts.’

‘No…’

‘I mean, I could buy him another, though he’d have to live with crusts.’

‘It’s not about any sandwiches. Or bikes.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘Then why am I here?’

‘Have you seen yourself?’ Their self-awareness is a joke.

‘My shoes? I never liked brogues. They give your feet a mean vibe.’

‘You don’t get arrested for your choice of footwear.’

He pulled off his foot and studied his boot. You’d think that would give him a hint.

‘Anyone wearing deck shoes should be locked up.’

Here it comes, the laugh and his face splits. He dabs at the suppurating wound.

‘I seem to have cut myself.’

‘It’s just your face coming apart. Stage four. When you reach stage five, we can get the paperwork sorted.’

Finally, his expression shows a smidgen of anxiety; he pokes a finger into the hole, ripping it further. The finger clatters to the floor.

‘Oh god, nooo.’

‘Yes sir, you’re a zombie. It seems you disturbed a stage three, who infected you. And don’t do…’ Too late, he nervously cracks his fingers. Why do newly metamorphosed zombies crack their fingers? He’s lucky that he only loses four. I hope he’s left handed.

The cracking shifts his nails and soon enough his teeth join the debris on the floor as he grinds them in frustration. That’s stage five and they can no longer infect anyone – nothing to scratch or bite with so I let him out but not before he dislodges an ear.

It’s sad, this recent outbreak of zombitis. Where will it end they ask? Usually in a bin-bag I answer.