Daikaijuzine

I never quite understood what Charming saw in dead chicks. One would think that a heartbeat would be a key factor that most men would choose to have in a potential lover, but not Charming. No, he liked his women how he liked his booze: cold, stiff, and smelling riper with age. It was exactly these necrophiliac tendencies that ended up unleashing an undead horde upon the land, dooming the world as we knew it. Had he just been able to keep his lips off of the dead girls…

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It all started that night at the pub.

Rumor around the Kingdom was that some beautiful princess had been dumb enough to take an apple from a strange old lady, falling under a terrible curse. Even money said that she was looser than Red Riding Hood’s grandma, seeing as how she had been living in some commune with seven other guys, but I was naturally suspicious of any curse that involved reviving a girl who came pre-entombed in her own glass coffin. For Charming, however, this was a dream come true.

“She’s the one, Jack,” he stated for the fourth time, his voice nauseatingly dreamy.

“That’s what you said about Cindy,” I countered, busying myself with stacking empty shot glasses. Dead soldiers sacrificed to Charming’s cause of ‘True Love’.

“I love her.”

“Which is what you said about that chick with the braids…Rachel? Renee?” I focused on keeping my hand steady as I added another row to the glass pyramid.

“She makes me feel things I’ve never felt, before.”

“And that’s what you said about Odette, and those twelve dames with the shoes, and that fish girl, whatever the hell that was all about—”

“Okay, alright, I get your point!” Charming slammed his pint, causing my lovely tower to crash to the table. The barmaid caught my eye. I shrugged in apology before turning back to the drunken prince.

“Charming, calm down. You’re gonna get us thrown out, and being manhandled by a tree is not high on my list of things to do tonight,” I scolded in a whisper, casting a glance at Cedar, the bouncer. The tree winked. I suppressed a shudder.

“I’m sorry, Jack, it’s just that this one’s different, I can feel it.”

“This one is not different. This one is dead.”

“She is not—” he shouted, before clearing his throat and lowering his voice, avoiding the gaze of the other patrons around us. The barmaid scowled, raising a finger and jerking her head towards Cedar as a warning. One more outburst and it would be the tree for us. “—she is not dead. She is only sleeping.”

“In a coffin,” I began to set the shot glasses back upright.

“So?” He took a long drink from his pint.

“Charming. Think: what kind of woman sleeps in a coffin?”

“One whose beauty is so great that not even the pallor of death can taint it.” There was that god awful dreamy voice, again.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I needed a different approach. “Okay,” I started, putting down my pint so that Charming knew I was serious, “let’s go back in time a bit.”

“No matter what you say, nothing is going to change my—”

I held up a hand, silencing him, “I’ve got two words for you, friend: Sleeping Beauty.”

The colour drained from his face at the mention of his old flame. Beauty, you see, was the cause of my princely pal’s downfall.

Five or six years ago, Charming had, once again, gotten wind of some tragic, dead damsel, lying cursed in her haunted castle, having pricked her finger on a poisoned spinning wheel. Falling madly in love at the thought of her, he mounted his valiant steed and left his kingdom, determined to rescue the fair damsel and make her his bride.

However, when he finally got there, things didn’t really go as planned. The girl was a vision of loveliness, chains of daisies and roses woven into her golden hair, her slender hands crossed delicately across her bountiful breasts. Our boy had been so struck by her beauty that he became overwhelmed with desire and kind of had his way with her prone, lifeless body.

Now before you condemn the man for being an immoral, necrophiliac rapist, you’ve got to understand that he felt horrible about it afterwards. After he finished, sweaty and panting, he realized what he had done and rushed away from the scene, barely even bothering to pull his trousers back up. He told me later on that it had been like some force had overtaken his body, possessing him. He didn’t know what he was doing. It had to have been a side effect of the spell that the damsel had been under.

However, while I bought his story, the judge did not.

In his rush to both have his way with the corpse-like girl and to escape the scene of the crime, Charming had forgotten two things, the most important being to pull out before reaching the point of no return. The second, slightly less important detail was to get rid of the evidence, this being his cloak that had been left in a crumpled heap beside the bed.

Beauty became pregnant. Nine months later, she somehow managed to pop the kid out. The child, hungry and none too bright, mistook the girl’s finger for her nipple. The suction dislodged the poisoned splinter, causing the spell to be broken and the damsel to wake.

Because of Charming’s first mistake, poor Beauty now had a child to care for. And because of Charming’s second mistake, she knew just who was responsible.

Charming, you see, was a bit of a momma’s boy, and because of this, he allowed his mother to put labels inside of all of his clothing in case anything ever happened to him. One such label was on the inside collar of the cloak he had left at Beauty’s bedside. She was therefore not only able to find out her assailant’s name and where he lived, but also his blood type and the fact that he was allergic to a certain type of peanut.

The lovely, newly alive Beauty went to the authorities with both Charming’s first and second mistakes. The authorities, in turn, sent Charming a nice little package holding two sets of documents: one being child support papers, and the other being a warrant for his arrest on rape charges. He was tried, convicted, and thrown into the clink, where his princely title was stripped away, all of his land and assets seized, and he met me.

I was in because the judge, a giant, and I had different definitions of the term “liberating” when it had to do with singing harps and golden egg laying geese, but this really isn’t my story.

Five years and one parole later, we’re back to where we started.

“Why…why would you bring her up?” Charming stammered.

“Because, my friend, that’s what happens with you mess around with dead chicks—they ruin your life. Trust me; you think that what happened with Beauty was bad? I have a feeling that this girl—”

“She is different, Jack!” he cried, interrupting me. He slammed his mug, the blood rushing back to his face. I cringed. He was beginning to get loud again. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the barmaid motioning to Cedar. The tree nodded, cracking his barky knuckles as he slid towards us, his exposed roots scraping against the hardwood floor.

“Charming—” I whispered, trying to get him to calm down.

“This girl is the one, Jack! I can feel it!” He rose to his feet, the intensity of his emotion carrying him. Cedar grew closer, a menacing grin on his knotholed face.

“Charming—” I tried again, louder, tugging hard at his sleeve, trying to force him back into his chair, “Charming, if you don’t sit your ass down—”

“She’s going to change my life! She’s going to brighten my world! She’s going to make me thirst and hunger for things I’ve never tasted, before! She’s going to—”

“Evening, gentlemen,” Cedar drawled as he arrived at our table, interrupting Charming’s little rant. I groaned and allowed my head to fall forward onto the table.

Charming turned to face the giant tree, a stupidly drunken grin on his face, “Good evening, Cedar,” he slurred, bowing, “My, you look well this evening.”

That said, he promptly bent over and puked onto the tree-bouncer’s exposed roots.

That was months ago. In retrospect, some of the things Charming said that night had been true: Snow White changed his life. She made him thirst and hunger for things he never tasted before. She also caused him to become one of the walking dead, feasting on the flesh of the living, but really, who’s counting?

Charming, as you might have guessed, didn’t listen to my advice. Instead he traveled into the mountains, where he found his rotting love encased in her glass tomb, a piece of poisoned apple still lodged in the back of her throat. With six of the seven dwarves Snow had befriended looking on, he knelt down, lifted the gold-gilded lid, and placed the softest, sweetest kiss upon her mouth.

Snow’s eyes flickered open, passion evident in the pale blue orbs. Charming, his heart leaping with joy at being able to resurrect his lovely damsel, leaned forward to kiss her once again.

This would be when she snarled out of the corner of her mouth and, grabbing the back of his head, bit Charming’s lips off. Chaos ensued. Charming screamed, struggling to break free from Snow’s inhumanly strong grasp, the dwarves shouted threats and obscenities, pulling and hitting at Charming, as they thought that he was the one attacking their fair beauty, and Snow, the happy little zombie that she was, just cheerfully munched away on the side of Charming’s cheek.

Snow’s evil curse was worlds different than Beauty’s. The witch who had cursed Beauty hadn’t really wanted her dead, per se, just out of the way for a while so that she could wreck havoc on the kingdom. It wasn’t personal, it was business. The witch may have been evil, but she wasn’t a killer.

Snow, however, needed to die. She had dared to surpass the reining sorceress’ divine beauty, a crime that could not be forgiven. Being savvy to workings of evil spells, the sorceress knew that the cure to any poison she would give the young girl would be broken by a single, simple kiss. Snow would wake up, continue to be devastatingly beautiful, and all of that hard work would be for naught. She had to find a way to keep Snow dead.

So she added a little extra ingredient to the poison she used. Now, while a kiss from a love struck prince would awaken Snow, she would hardly be alive. Instead, she would rise from the grave one of the walking dead, doomed to continue to decompose and rot for all eternity, thusly keeping the sorceress’ mantel of “fairest in all the land” intact.

Little did the sorceress know that being one of the walking dead had a small, teensy tiny, itty bitty, rather crucial side effect: the hunger for the flesh of the living. Oh, and the ability to pass this hunger and undead state onto others.

Peachy.

Snow, finally tired of chewing on Charming’s face, let him go. He tumbled over backwards, landing on three of the dwarves, and promptly died of shock. The remaining dwarves all rushed to Snow’s side, reaching to wipe the blood and gore from her face, trying to determine the extent of the wounds that that awful cad of a prince had inflicted upon her.

Snow sat up, welcoming the dwarves to her with open arms, thinking dwarf flesh sounded like a rather tasty dessert.

While his beloved was ripping apart her tiny little friends, Charming arose, resurrected by the power of the spell. There was a second before the hunger took over where he wondered why there was a gaping hole in his face and he was sitting on a small pile of cowering, screaming midgets. However, the moment didn’t last, and he was soon picking beard hair from between his teeth. He pulled his rotting damsel from her tomb, and they embraced, sealing their love as what was left of the dwarves began to stir.

Sleepy, the seventh dwarf, watched the entire spectacle from his hiding place behind the barn door. At the sight of his reanimated comrades, he promptly fainted. The group moved down the mountain, forgetting about their unconscious friend.

And so it went, this small mob of the walking dead moving from village to village, kingdom to kingdom, attacking and snacking on everyone they could find, adding them to their ever growing army of drooling, bloody ghouls.

I was on my third bottle of Godmother Brand Before Midnight Ale when I heard the news of the zombie advance. It didn’t take me long to figure out that it was my dumbass friend who had started the whole mess, and I couldn’t help but feel slightly responsible. Gathering as many survivors as I could, I formed a small militia in hopes of taking down the corpse of the man who had once been my friend.

Unfortunately, most of the survivors I found managed to make it more on dumb luck than any actual fighting skill. Our numbers quickly dwindled. In the end, there were only five of us left: myself, Sleepy, Wolf, Goldilocks, and a small, but formidable dragon who went by the name of Elliot. He ate a lot, but we were grateful to have him with us. He was our ace in the hole, zombie flambé being the most effective way of destroying the shambling creatures.

But still, he was only a very small dragon, and we quickly found ourselves trapped within the walls of what remained of Charming’s original kingdom. The zombie army scratched at the walls, their undead fists banging at the door of the cramped little cottage the five of us still held. Elliot was in position in the doorway, Goldie and Wolf watching me for the signal to open the door, unleashing fiery fury against our attackers. Sleepy snored somewhere in the back of the room, the noise an eerie harmony with the screams from outside.

As the tension mounted, a small bead of sweat made its way down my cheek. This really was our last stand. We were backed into a corner. We were not leaving this place alive. I knew this. My comrades knew this. It was over. But that didn’t mean we had to give up. We were going down fighting. I owed them that much.

I raised my hand. All eyes were on me. Sleepy continued his snoring. This was it. There was no going back.

I quickly brought my arm forward, screaming a battle cry. Wolf and Goldie threw the bolt, their voices joining mine. Sleepy awoke with a gasp as the door swung open, Elliot letting out the deep breath he had been holding for the last few moments, fire exploding from his mouth.

And then, all was silent.

You know, after you get used to them, dead girls really aren’t that bad