20

Dear Dead and Mummy

Lottica shrieked. Louder and louder, beyond terror, beyond panic, right up to complete psyche-altering hysteria.

A very predictable reaction when confronted in a cemetery on Halloween by newly risen zombies. And Lottica’s response was more understandable in light of the fact that those flesh-challenged ghouls happened to be her very own parents.

"Lottica, dear, do calm down. I'm afraid you'll blow your larynx out," her mother cautioned from the sarcophagus from which she was awkwardly climbing out.

"Yes, little daarling. Aren't you happy to see us?" her father asked as he swung a crazily twisted leg over the sarcophagus edge to join his wife.

Somewhere in the deep recess of her mind that was still Lottica and not a supernaturally terrified preteen, her dad’s use of daarling, his term of endearment, struck a calming nerve.

She stopped screaming. But continued to clutch Nick's arm, sure that her fingernail marks would be deep in his forearms for days. Nick responded by pulling her closer to his side.

"Nick, what a good brother you are," cooed Linda Breima, noticing his protectiveness.

Nick was in no state to appreciate his mother’s compliment. Her head was wildly askew, her chin pointed up and twisted in such a way that she looked like she was peering back over her shoulder. One side of her face was a blistered mess, the other side a smooth pasty white like weeks-old tapioca. Her once glossy auburn hair hung in sheets as if sections had been ironed flat.

Then his father chimed into the incomprehensible comedy of terrors. "Have you grown since yesterday? Let me have a good look at you, my boy." His not-quite-dead-anymore dad reached out with his left arm, which flipped around like a pinwheel as he tried swinging it around Nick’s shoulder.

Nick wondered how his father could have a good look at anything since his left eye appeared to be falling from its socket. When he moved his head from side to side, a glaring gap revealed raw tissue near the bridge of his nose. And Deilune was shaking his head fervently, as if his son's natural growth in the last few months was much more incredible than his own sudden appearance from beyond the grave.

Lottica and Nick remained in limbo. Who could blame them? Their parents had just risen from the dead, not angelically reborn, but catastrophically reanimated in the same form in which they had died: twisted and maimed by the explosion and fire. It was hideous and horrific. Yet their parents' voices were warm, concerned and caring. It didn't make sense. It couldn't be real.

Nick tried to express this, though, admittedly, in a rather indelicate manner. "Dad…Mom…I'm assuming you're not going to suck out our brains or feast on our intestines."

His mother’s already fleshy puzzle of a face took on an even more puzzled expression. "Nick, honey, what are you talking about?"

"You're dead, Mom. Or you were. You and Dad were killed in a gas explosion three months ago. The house burned down. And somehow you and Dad just came back to life."

"Stop talking nonsense, Nick. Your father and I have been here in the garage trying to finish that last coat of varnish for the new kitchen table before you and Lottica got back from the movies. How was the movie?" She glanced casually around, her poor head rotating much further than it should have.

Nick looked to Lottica in wonder and then back at his father who was experimentally flipping his left forearm around in circles on the universal joint that was once his elbow.

Their father was figuring it out.

Deilune Breima brought his good eye around and took in his wife, the mausoleum, the sarcophagus bashed into the metal door now swinging open in the cold moonlight. He examined the lid of the sarcophagus that had broken in two pieces, one still covering the lower third of the sarcophagus, the other on the floor. He crouched down beside it and peered through the heart-shaped hole the Kareima had melted.

He rose and looked more closely at how he was dressed. He had on his most formal suit and tie. He began to wildly tear at it.

"What are you doing, Dale?" Linda, demanded, shocked and then exasperated as her husband pawed at his shirt with his still-functional right hand. His shirt buttons popped off and pinged on the cold stone floor. The mausoleum had become that quiet.

Suddenly a bluish light peeked from beneath his shirt. His children and wife watched in wonder as Deilune Breima pulled his shirt completely open to reveal the source of the light. In the middle of his now-translucent chest, embedded a little left of center, beat the Kareima, the Heartstone of Lebreima.

At the sight, their poor undead mother, fainted.