Radley's Labyrinth for Horny Monsters by Annabelle Hawthorne (highly recommended books .txt) 📕

for instance. I just needed his body; his will is completely my own, and his soul is long gone, so there’s never any internal debate. I could tell him to hold on to a grenade, and he wouldn’t know any better. But you, you would take convincing. However, the one thing that takes the most energy to preserve is emotions. I allowed you to keep only a couple, the ones that apply to your dear, departed Alex. Love, despair, loss. I’m afraid that you won’t find much enjoyment in any of your old hobbies.”

“It’s not like I’ll have much time to pursue them,” Dana said. “I plan to give you what you want so you can give me what I want.”

“That is true. I may be many things, but I am definitely a man of my word.” Daryl handed her the clock. “But to clarify, let me tell you what could happen if you disobey me.”

Dana frowned. She wasn’t sure she needed to hear this.

“There are many stages of being undead. For example, my driver is just a meat suit that takes orders. You, however, are a different case. By leaving you with your mind, I am unable to exert willpower over you. As popular as it was to be a vampire a decade ago, why do you think nobody romanticized being a zombie?”

“Because zombies suck.” Dana looked back out the window. “In the movies, they are mindless brain eaters.”

“A popular trope, I can assure you. You see, your mind has control over your body—for now. You are, however, very dead, and as you begin to decay, you will find yourself with some uncontrollable urges. It’s like being on a diet and having to live in a house full of cookies. Eventually, you will snap and bite into anything you can catch.”

“Is that when I start eating brains?”

“Brains are best, to be fair. A person’s very life force resides in the mind. The heart would be a close second. Once your appetite is sated, the decay process will reverse itself, and you will find yourself as you are now. However, I can tell you that the process of murdering and eating another human does put quite a stain on your soul.” Daryl chuckled. “You also run into the issue of being unable to die.”

“I thought a bullet to the brain killed zombies.”

“At best, it severs the connection to the body. Have you ever heard of somebody who gets a brain injury and survives?”

“Like Phineas Gage, right?” An infamous case she had learned about in high school, a railroad worker who accidentally blew a hole through his skull with a railroad spike and lived.

“You got it. Your mind becomes a batch of scrambled eggs, and unless someone patches you up, you exist as a shattered version of yourself, eventually driven insane by your brain's inability to comprehend reality. An eternity passes you by until the universe is eventually eaten by Old Ones.” Daryl stared wistfully out the window. “And by then, your soul will belong to them.”

“Sounds awful.” Dana fought the scream of terror inside of her, the thought of an eternity rotting away. Apparently Daryl had left her with her sense of fear.

“That’s underselling it. Or perhaps you manage to survive until the last human dies, forced to wander the hellscape of Earth until the sun finally burns the place down. You have all sorts of options.”

“But I plan on helping you,” she said. “Because then you’ll let me move on.”

“You’ve got it.” Daryl’s phone rang. “Excuse me, I must take this.” Daryl turned away, sticking a Bluetooth headset in one ear. “Hello? Sebastien, please, you are shouting entirely too much. I am on my way there now. No, I don’t know why she won’t answer her phone. Kali does what she wants. Oh, tunnel ahead, gonna lose you.” Daryl touched a button on the headset, tucking it into his pocket. “Someone is being a drama queen.”

“Trouble at the office?”

Daryl ignored her, staring out the window. Dana focused her attention on the clock, running her fingers over its smooth features. This whole nightmare will be over soon, she told herself. She pictured Alex standing before her on the balcony, staring out toward the ocean, the sunlight making her skin glow.

“It’s go time.” Daryl leaned across Dana, opening her car door. She realized that they were parked at the end of Mike’s block. Stepping out, she held the clock tightly against her chest. Daryl walked behind her, casually assessing the neighborhood.

“Smells like a storm just rolled through here,” he said, staring at the sky. Dana smelled it, but she also smelled sand, smoke, and soil. Approaching the Radley house, she smiled at the sight of the roof over the large, stone walls. This place had always been cool to look at, a mysterious force all its own. They turned the corner and walked between the large stone lions perched atop the wall. It was where the driveway and walkway met up, then split apart. The house was quiet, but it looked like some repairs had recently been done.

“Keep going without me,” Daryl told her. “I’ll watch from here.”

Nodding, she walked up the driveway, the smell of smoke getting thicker. She was nearly at the door when her brain registered that a car had crashed into the front porch.

How had she not noticed that? Looking across the yard, she saw that a large amount of sand had been spread across the yard and part of the porch had collapsed. Was she really that out of it?

“Whoa.” Looking up, she saw a crack in the sky. There was also a large scorch mark in the middle of the lawn, the grass turned to ash. Turning around to face the door, she saw that the porch was soaking wet. What had happened here?

There was no time to think about it. Taking a deep breath, she knocked on the door.

What would she say? Would she show him the clock? Convince him to invite her inside,