2019 Writing Event Knitting Needles

WolfSol

Death by Code
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Words: 2484 excluding the title and inventory item message... I wish the word limit was higher <3
Genre: Horror/Comedy/Action


KNITTING NEEDLES
The day of an eighty-four year old woman involved waking up at five in the morning, feeding twenty-two cats that held the same name (it's not easy to remember twenty-two names on the fly), turning on the radio to heavy metal, and reading the newspaper until tea time. Then after tea there was the Spanish soaps with English subtitles, scrolling through Facebook, watching cat videos and knitting tutorials, and then work at the morgue.

However, Madge's day started off completely different. She woke up at five in the morning, fed Fluffy Mc Fluffington One through Twenty-Two, and then got an unexpected and frankly undesired call from her not-really-a-friend friend, Gale Hubbins, for early tea. The old hag was a wench, a bitch in heat, and a gossiping biddy. However, she traded knitting tricks, tips, and patterns... so Madge tolerated her to an extent, in very small doses.

Now tea time usually consisted of twenty-one sounds of purring (Fluffy Mc Fluffington Nineteen was a mute Persian, thus he did not purr), heavy metal music, and the sweet sound of an elderly woman sipping Earl Grey tea. Of course, only the last sound prevailed when it came to tea with Gale Hubbins.

The beverage shop, Cindy’s Coughy, was quiet despite the morning mutterings and the jovial sip of hot drinks. Gale Hubbins ruined the soft tones of the shop with her scratchy, banshee-like voice, and her very presence made Madge's tea taste like cat shit.

"And did you, did you, oh Lord, did you hear about Mary Beatrice?" Gale Hubbins rambled on, flailing her hand that was garbed in tacky rings. Her wig of choice today was pink, a vibrant, puke-y pink that drove Madge to a fit of giggles. It made her skin look orange and her round glasses and eyes look like that of an owl's eyes. To make matters worse, Gale Hibbins was dressed in a putrid yellow shirt with CROTCHETY printed across the chest, a fluffy, black skirt, and ripped... ripped... brown pantyhose. Needless to say, Gale Hibbins held no fashion sense and no class.

Madge looked down to her distasteful tea, nodding every once in a while if Gale Hibbins grew silent. Otherwise, she wasn't listening. There were far more interesting things floating in her tea, like the dead gnat. It had so much to live for... hearing Gale Hibbins's voice probably killed it, in all honesty. She continued to stare at the gnat until Hibbins continuously called to her. Annoyed, Madge snapped her gaze upward, "What, you old assi bat?"

"Mary Beatrice, did you hear-"

“I don't give a damn about that hussy."

Gale Hibbins blinked, "Why, Mad, watch your tongue. Have some class, we're in public."

"You old bat, they've heard far worse from whippersnappers then they have from an old coot like me."

Poor Gale Hibbins was in shock. For some reason she never grew accustomed to curses, and knowing this, Madge took great joy in practicing her choice of words with color. Teatime with Gale Hibbins involved such antics. It was normal. Next, she would reply with either a wave of a hand or try to start lecturing Madge despite their age gap of twenty years. Yet today was different. Instead, Gale Hibbins looked to the window behind Madge and screeched like an owl. It shocked the denizens of the room, but when they all turned to look, they too screeched.

Having worked in the morgue for twenty some years made one accustomed to the site of gore and death; however, Madge wasn't quite attuned to having a dead body along with her tea. She'd turned just in time to watch a bloodied face slam right into the window, blood splattering in all its glory across the once pristine glass. The sight of blood - forget the oddity of someone smashing their face against the window - made her feel squeamish. Yet the face peeled back only for it to smash against the glass again, the window straining and cracking underneath the stress. Then, several more heads joined in. Blood coated the window as hands, feet, faces, bodies pressed up against the shop in an animalistic frenzy. Gurgles suffocated the soft tones of the beverage shop and drew people up to their feet, gnat filled drinks forgotten.

Fearing for their lives as well as their confused customers, the employees hustled the handful of consumers to the backroom. The action was considerate and just, but such things wouldn't save them. The glass shattered and a wave of graphically hanging, damaged, eaten meat sacks flopped around the shop. Moving erratically, they stumbled throughout the shop until they too reached the backroom of the store. The backroom, crowded already, broke into utter chaos yet there was nowhere to run. Like lambs to the slaughter, the dead feasted on the living while Madge washed her hands in the little girl's room, having emptied her stomach of what little tea she'd managed to drink. Right after the first four heads slammed against the window, she'd fled to the bathroom to vomit. Damn, blood really did upset her stomach these days. Turning from the sink, she leaned against it and scrounged around in her faux-leather purse. She cursed at her empty hands, having desired a cigarette or two, but nothing of the sort came up in her cramped, old bag.

Old Madge, being eighty-four, was fragile, and when she took one last look in the bathroom mirror and placed two fingers to her lips before placing them on her hip, spitting out a "tsssss" to express how riveting she appeared... she wasn't particularly expecting the crime scene that awaited her. However, as fragile as she may be, it didn't quite harm her aged heart. Why, a moment ago she was getting on Gale Hibbins's nerves (not a difficult thing to do) with colorful words, and now here she was vomiting up gnat-filled tea at the site of blood. Forget the ragged bodies with their intestines hanging out, their faces and appendages half-eaten. She'd seen enough innards to last her a lifetime, but blood... now that was a different story. It lingered, stained, and was utterly revolting.

The beverage shop was a mess. Windows were shattered, cups and plates scattered, and the tables were in disarray. What in Lord's name had she missed? She walked to her table and quickly grabbed her cup of godawful tea and took a long, slurping swig. Yep, still tasted like cat shit. Slamming the cup down on the table, she turned to eye the lobby with a blank stare. "Gale, you ole harlot, where you at?" She spoke loudly, her scratchy, nasally voice echoing. Yet, to her utter pleasure, no response came. She always did hate Gale Hibbins's crotchety voice. Nevertheless, the mess of the shop did disturb her. She turned, hands clutching the purse closer to her torso, and eyed the windows with a critical gaze. Perhaps the young whippersnappers were into smashing their heads against windows these days? Not that she would know, she wasn't much into television, internet, and all those fancy man-made contraptions that condoned laziness and brain rot. Unless cat videos were involved.

She would've pondered over it more, unaware that the majority of the customers that had dined beside her and the shop's employees were all dead in the adjacent room, but when she heard a gurgling groan that reminded her of Fluffy Mc Fluffington Nineteen's sound of unique coughing, she finally looked to the door across the counter that led to the backroom. There, a middle-aged man leaned against the doorway. His hair was a bloody mess, its blond color distorted with fleshy gore to the point where the locks themselves appeared red, and his clothes, street attire, were tattered and torn as if he had been mauled by a cat. However, no cat could bite a big chunk out of a grown man's head, flesh and skull. He stood there and swayed awkwardly forward, shuffling like a drunkard. "You all right, boy," she inquired, glaring through her glasses, "you know you got a hole in your head?" The fellow didn't reply with words, but he did splutter out with a guttural groan. The action drew a bubble of blood from his lips. Madge grimaced, "You going to clean this mess up?"

The man stumbled to the counter, arms outstretched like a raw chicken. He staggered into the counter, almost falling flat on his ass, and set to fluttering his fingers toward her. "I know, I'm a sexy, wee girl, but have some manners." Madge raised a brow, even wagged a finger at the man, but when a second drunkard wandered out from the backroom, she started to notice a resemblance. A woman joined him, wearing a putrid yellow shirt with CROTCHETY script written across the chest; however, she managed to slide-stumble around the counter. Unlike the man, her neck was wide open. Skin flapping in the wind as she mooned Madge with her assortment of guts. Even a large chunk of her arm was missing, a side of her face ripped back, and half of her pink wig was matted in gore.

She smelled it before Gale Hibbins came. Death. She'd grown accustomed to the smell to the point where it no longer tickled her senses. Much like when she lost Fluffy Mc Fluffington Twenty-Three, the poor fellow had died in his sleep, and she hadn't noticed until he'd decayed. Of course, that made no damn sense. Gale Hibbins was alive and kicking when Madge had left for the little girls' room. She would've asked the old bat if she were okay, but by the sight of blood and bodily damage, she found it a waste of words. At the realization that she was possibly seeing something from a bad horror movie, she dug into her faux-leather purse and produced a pair of knitting needles. "Come any closer, you hussy, and I'll stab your eyes out."

Gale Hibbins was either deaf, stupid, or disbelieving of Madge's threats as she shuffled forward, mouth agape like a fly trap. It was only natural for Madge to do just as she promised. Of course, it wasn't easy for the eighty-four year old to stab two dull-ended knitting utensils into a zombie's eyeballs. Aiming was hard, but it was the fifteenth strike that did it. Even so, the needles only went so far, and it was a struggle. Gale Hibbins was a slow sport and so smacking her repeatedly with knitting needles wasn't particularly hard; however, stabbing at her really-not-a-friend friend while trying not to be scratched or bitten - she wasn't quite sure why Gale Hibbins wanted to bite her but she didn't question it - was proving to be difficult. This was especially so when the needles wouldn't budge further in. To make matters worse, the drunkard from earlier had managed his way around the counter. Acting like a fish out of water, he stumbled toward Madge.

A battle cry and she pulled her needles out of Gale Hibbins's eyes and bopped her on the side of the head with a hand. It only made Gale Hibbins pause in her sluggish movement. "I'll do it again, Gale Hibbins." Madge swore, bearing her needles at the ready as if they were dual swords. Judging by Gale Hibbins's eyes, they might as well have been.

The blond zombie limped along and waddled past Gale Hibbins. His mouth floundering as he gurgled and directed an arm at Madge. She raised her knitting needles higher, right leg strutted out as if her sweatpants had a slit to show it off. "I can kick you in the nuts faster than you can say 'ouch,' you whippersnapper." The warning was ignored as a spasming hand flapped onto Madge's wrist. A curse fell from Madge's mouth as she batted it away, knocking the dead man back with her purse with a blow to the head. A blow of which was soft and nothing compared to the treatment Gale Hibbins had received.

It's why Madge supposed the old bat decided to try again, outraged at the unfairness. It was only right to strike her old friend with her purse then, but Gale Hibbins simply absorbed the blow as she stumbled straight into Madge. Now, Madge had been a bouncer at a bar back in her hay day so she could most definitely support her own weight and lift forty pounds of cat litter like there was no tomorrow, but Gale Hibbins was heavy. As soon as she'd limped into Madge, the two toppled over onto the floor in a bloody heap.

Knitting needles slipped from weathered fingers and skidded against the linoleum. It's when Gale Hibbins tried to take advantage. She snapped her teeth, lips smacking obnoxiously, and sprayed Madge in a shower of blood and spit. The sight and the feel of blood on her skin and clothes were absolutely atrocious, forget the fact that Gale Hibbins's was practically trying to eat her face off. "Just had this dry-cleaned!" Madge swore once more as she swatted the old zombie atop the head. The slap jarred her friend for a moment, just enough for Madge to push her away. Whether the action was surprising, Madge was actually as strong as she claimed, or Gale Hibbins was weaker than the gnats in the tea, the old zombie fell backward into the legs of the drunkard.

Madge took the sudden slip of freedom in stride like a smooth dance move as she searched for the pair of knitting needles. Thankfully she found them... albeit they were lying across from her near the door that Gale Hibbins had come from. To make matters worse, there were more drunkards fumbling around at that very door. Like the two zombies before her, they too sported fatal wounds and matching gore, and limped around like noodles. They were stuck in the archway with arms aimlessly reaching out, pressed up against one another as they all tried to enter the lobby at once. Lord knows how long they'd been there watching Madge strut her stuff. The thought made the old woman cackle as she looked back to the pair by her feet. The younger of the two zombies shuffled toward her again, and she kicked out at his ankles. Zombie ankles must've been weak as the drunkard staggered and then tripped all together.

Freedom once again at her fingertips, Madge rolled onto her knees and pushed upward. The action was slow, but the zombies were even slower. As soon as the drunkard had discovered the art of crawling Madge had gotten back up on her feet and shuffled across the room. It was then, as she got closer to the archway stuffed with zombies, that the guttural cries began to irritate her. To drown them out as she attempted an unladylike crouch for her needles, she hummed the Jitterbug theme song.

+Knitting Needles were returned to your inventory+
 

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