C.E. Murphy

You ever get the feeling your life is a string festooned with bells and tie4d to hundreds of others you don't know anything about? And that sometimes somebody pulls their string, and your bells ring?" Gary looked at me a long moment before rather gently saying, "Yes and no, darlin'. We all get that feeling from time to time. Difference is, with you, it could be real.

All thinking things fear. Sentience, perhaps, is facing that fear and conquering it rather than succumbing. A tiger will drown in a tar pit, but a man who can clear his thoughts may survive.

I suppose I knew on an intellectual level that graves weren't especially made for getting out of. I mean, you start with a hermetically sealed casket and then you dump six feet of dirt on top of it. Over time the earth gets compacted, which can't make it easy to dig through. So even if you're a very angry and determined zombie, you've kind of got your work cut out for you just escaping from the grave.Which was, I suppose, why we got hit with an initial wave of zombie bugs, birds and rodents. I bet some people would say if you've never picked undead mosquitoes out of your teeth, you've never lived. Under that definition, I'd be just as happy to have not lived, thanks.

To my embarrassment, I was crying again. Real girl tears for the second time, these ones born out of frustration. That didn't happen to me very often, but I hated it when it did. It was faulty wiring in the female body, tear ducts attached directly to the frustration meter. Trying to explain to men that no, I wasn't being manipulative, I just couldn't stop my eyes from leaking salt water, only added to the aggravation.

Logic was puny in the face of my wrath. Logic was puny and magic was mighty: I had just gotten rebirthed, refilled and renewed, and was fast on my way to resentful.

Desert heat or not, the idea that my younger self was facing her last moments was a bucket of cold water in the face. I didn__ like her, but she appeared to have her shit together in a way I hadn__ for a long time, and she had, frankly, deserved better than me. I tried to wet my lips, had nothing to do it with and croaked, __orry._ __on__ be sorry. Be good. Be right. Be a hero.