Hi. While progress in my fantasy story is steady, I sometimes get blocked and so I started writing another story during these "blocks". Its a zombie story with focus on characters and relationships with themes of motherhood, mental instability, loss of humanity, female rebellion and addiction. Its about a burned out, alcoholic suburban mom married to an abusive husband with a twelve year old daughter that finds herself caught up in the usual zombie apocalypse. This is the first page.
Bull in the Heather page 1:
A single ray of sunlight sneaks its way through your half-closed blinds and hits you right in your barely open eyes. Not long after, a tremendous headache tears its way through your skull, the pain soon spreading out to other parts of your body. A simple glance reveals your hair, pillow and the sheets closest to your face to be covered in a thick, chunky substance which you can only assume is your own vomit. Gross, but not new. Your alarm clock reads ten thirty a.m, but you still feel pretty drunk, likely because of the mostly empty bottle of vodka standing next to said clock. Rubbing the bridge of your nose, you try to force yourself out of bed but you soon realize that isn't happening anytime soon. "Fuck," you mutter to yourself. How did you get here? You've been trying to answer that one for some time now. Usually, you end up blaming your idiot parents, your asshole husband Greg or your unexpected child, but in any case you always come up as the common denominator in all those scenarios.
Still, enduring an abusive husband and needing to drink yourself to sleep hardly seem fair trade-offs for some poor decisions and bad relationship building skills. You are both miserable and pathetic, yes, but still not petty enough to pout about your lot in life, especially not with your daughter to take care of considering how useless her father turned out to be in that aspect. As if summoned by your thoughts the well-built, stern faced, ignorant and prone to violence man you call your husband steps into the doorframe. The look he gives you is one of derision mixed in with a little contempt. A sneer, to be more precise.
"Well," he says in his raspy low voice with a sardonic undertone, "this is a sorry sight." You suppose you do look pretty unfavorable in your current state, though it certainly does little for your mood hearing this shit gloat about it. "I was thinking I'd get myself a morning quickie before heading off, but on second thought I'll pass, " he chuckles.
"Good," you answer without moving, trying your best to bring out the loath in your voice. "I'll be sure to throw up over myself more often."
"You are a fucking disgrace Isabelle," Greg says, his sardonic wit now replaced by cold detachment. "Get cleaned up before our daughter sees you like this. She doesn't need to see how much of a fuck up her mother is yet." You can't help but softly laugh.
"When have you ever cared about what she needs?" you ask. Greg seems very pissed off by the implication, mainly because he knows you're right.
"I woke up in a very good mood today, I'm not gonna let an alcoholic hateful little bitch spoil it for me," he says after taking a deep breath. "I'm leaving for work. Clean yourself and look after Mia," he says turning around to leave. "Try not to royally fuck it up like everything else."
You want to get the last word in, but you decide against it. No need for another black eye. You manage to stand after a while despite your crippling hangover. After a quick shower, you feel mostly good if a little dizzy. Looking in the mirror, you look presentable enough after giving your brown, slightly curly hair a brush. You are naturally attractive, although the drinking and stress have certainly taken their toll on you. As you stare into your own different colored eyes, you notice the bruise beneath your brown eye is still evident, while your blue eye looks more irritated than usual. You try to cover up the bruise beneath your eye as best as you can and put some eye drops in the other one. Afterwards, you make your way to Mia's room. Its a Saturday, so she doesn't have school and you don't have work so you are hoping to be able to spend some time with her. You knock at her door, and she tells you from inside her room to come in. She is already up and dressed with a big smile which inevitably brings out your own smile. Thankfully Mia, your twelve year old daughter inherited most of her looks from you. While she didn't get your heterochromia, she has brown eyes which you think are your "natural" color, the blue one being the "wrong" one. Her smile, however, soon deteriorates into a concerned frown. "I heard Greg shouting at you," she says with visible worry.
"Don't call him Greg," you tell her as you lead her out of her room. "Whatever he is, he is still your father."
"Why is father always angry?" she asks. You look around as if the answer is going to come at you by looking around your kitchen.
"He has a lot on his mind sweetie. And I've made some mistakes lately."
"Everyone makes mistakes. But not everyone gets angry like Gre-," she stops as she feels your gaze, "like dad."
"You're too smart for your own good, you know that?" you ask her as you turn on the TV and grab the corn flakes from the top of the fridge. She smiles.
"Smart like my mom."
"Don't go around saying that. You'll jinx yourself."
You put the cereal in a bowl and pour milk in it. As you hand it over to your daughter, you hear the guy from the news saying that the riots downtown are still going strong. Furthermore, the ongoing string of disappearances seems to be going on, and some weird things like car wrecks with no bodies and a crazy bum taking a chomp out of a police officer's arm have also happened. You change the channel and land on of those that play random music videos. The low voice of Kim Gordon echoes throughout your kitchen.
"Ten, twenty, thirty, forty
Tell me that you want to hold me
Tell me that you want to bore me
Tell me that you gotta show me
Tell me that you need to slowly
Tell me that you're burning for me"
Appropriate in a way, you guess.
