Vambi

(Note: This was the result of taking "What do you get when you cross a vampire and a zombie?" and adding the result to the game "Kiss Me, Deer" from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. At an unreasonably early hour of the morning, probably.)

Melanie padded through the forest like a gentle breeze, leaving about as much trace of her passing. Small animals scampered past her, unnoticing and unnoticed, as she sought her next victim. Her senses automatically sifted through the normal stimuli of the woods, checking for anything out of place.
There! Fresh deer tracks, so faint on the winter-hard ground as to be almost invisible. She began to follow them, leaving no tracks of her own. Studying the traces, she smiled; the creature could not be more than half an hour away.
She jerked her head up as a sparrow sang some distance away. With a trace of annoyance, she pursed her lips and responded with a robin's call. Giving a last longing look at her tracks, she turned and crept towards the song.
It wasn't fair! She was a better hunter than Gwen. The two of them were neck-and-neck, with four each. The next target would decide the winner. It should have been hers. But rules were rules, so she obediently ran towards the sparrow with her customary caution, taking care not to alert Gwen's prey.
A swallow sounded, almost in her ear. Marie had arrived. She quickly located her sister's covert and quietly entered. Once the three of them were concealed in the stand of young saplings, she could see the potential victim.
The buck grazed quietly in the adjacent meadow. He was pointed upwind, facing almost directly away from them, but they could see his splendid rack. From time to time he jerked his head up and scanned for danger before returning to his dinner, but failed to see his hunters.
Gwen glided out behind him and began her cautious approach. Once she dropped to the ground a fraction of a second before he looked directly at her. Even knowing where to look, Mel could barely see her sister's carefully patterned dress.
Suddenly Gwen stood up, right at the deer's shoulder. Grabbing his horns, she yelled, "Kiss me, deer!" right in his ear. Mel winced.
Gwen tried to wrestle the buck's head around to face her. He was writhing and lashing out frantically with his front hooves, but for a moment it looked like the girl would win her contest - both of them. Then the deer made a last frantic thrash just as Gwen overcompensated for his last movement, his antlers twisted out of her hands, and with a flash of a white tail he was gone, knocking her to the ground.
Gwen slowly stood up, gave a resigned shrug, and returned to the hunt, brushing past her sisters with a glare that dared them to say anything. Mel held her peace. Time enough to gloat when she had won.
She retraced her steps to the tracks. She found the deer sooner than she had expected; he had taken cover in a little thicket, bedding down comfortably on a layer of leaves. All she could see was a patch of fur on his hindquarters. She found a convenient bush, gave her robin call and waited for her sisters to respond.
Without the slightest sound to warn of their approach, they were simply there. Giving a brusque nod, Mel moved out.
The approach was almost textbook routine. Her prey didn't so much as flick an ear in her direction. She paused by the trees, looking through the screen of leaves to determine the buck's exact position, then with a practiced dart secured his antlers.
As he pulled back in alarm, she said, "Kiss me, deer", in a low, calming voice barely loud enough to reach her witnesses' ears. Then she twisted her target's head around to hers.
All she could do for a moment was stare in horror. Then she snatched her hands away as if they were on fire, and backed out into the clearing, towards the safety of her sisters. The deer followed her out into the sunlight, until they could all see him clearly.
The...thing was a mass of decaying flesh. The hide was falling off in tatters, revealing the wasted muscles underneath. Even as he moved, gruesome bits of flesh were falling off. The eyelids had rotted away, revealing the filmy balls underneath, as had the lips, revealing...
Suddenly all Mel's attention was on the gleaming, razor-sharp, not-at-all decayed fangs set incongruously in the herbivore's mouth. The rotting facial flesh pulled back in a hideous parody of a smile as the thing said quite clearly, "Kiss me? If you insist."
She sat down suddenly as her heel encountered an unexpected hole. She drew in a breath to scream - realizing as she did so that it would be quite pointless; none of them carried weapons - and gagged on the fetid stench of the thing. The mocking smile drew closer as the oddly mellifluous voice said, "Would it be impertinent of me to enquire the name of the one who rather freely seeks this liberty? Yes? Well, I am Vambi, the vampire zombie." She flinched as an almost skeletal foreleg swept towards her in a sort of bow.
"Pleased to make your acquaintance. It has been...a pleasure." She stared, mesmerized by the dripping mouth moving closer, closer. Her last thought before she felt the terrible pain of her throat being ripped out was surprise and, strangely, a sort of resigned amusement at the thing's mocking echo of her own words:
"Kiss me, dear..."

The Hunting of the Mouse

8/23/11
It was a Tuesday night like any other. I was beat, and ready to crawl into bed and die. I tossed back the rest of the book I’d been nursing, and hit the lights. But then the door burst open, and she came in...and all my plans for the night came crashing down behind her.
“She” in this case was my cat, Felice - better known as Squeaky, though the Brainless Wonder would work too. She fancies herself a great huntress, though she couldn’t catch a cold in the pouring rain - which is a good thing, as she wouldn’t have the sense to come in out of it. She’d just done something loud; I don’t know what, and I probably don’t want to. But I came bolt upright out of a sound sleep with the sound of the crash still echoing in my ears.
I checked the time; it was 4:30 or so in the morning. I groaned, listened for a moment, but the sound wasn’t repeated. I started drifting off again.
Then I noticed something weird. The cat was alternating between silence and brief bursts of rapid scuffling. Slowly the thought percolated through my sleep-deprived brain: “The last time she sounded like that was when she’d cornered a mouse...” This was followed, in short order, by the realization that I was sleeping on a plain mattress on the floor - only a few inches above ground level...
I think I levitated upright. It certainly didn’t involve conscious thought. I turned the lights back on; sure enough, the cat was staring intently under my backpack, occasionally reaching a paw under to try to grab something, albeit fruitlessly. With a certain amount of resignation, I lifted the backpack enough to see a small brown mouse, who stared up at me for a moment before I put it back down.
I headed out of the room with the vague intention of finding a box or something to trap the thing. Sometime while I wasn’t looking, the mouse had abandoned the backpack in favor of hiding underneath a small bookcase in the hallway, still followed by the cat. I returned from my quest with a flashlight rather than a box. What can I say...almost 5 am.
When I located the mouse and started poking at it with something long and relatively sturdy that was close at hand, with Squeaky occasionally lending a paw, it decided enough was enough and scurried into a large pile of boxes, where the cat lost it. The mouse, not her mind; she never had that in the first place. I poked around for a while, then gave up and went back to bed. Not that I slept; fortunately, dawn wasn’t too far off.

8/24/11
3 am the next night. This time, it took me approximately three tenths of a second from the sound of scuffling to go from “asleep” to “OMGOMGKEEPITOFFME” while standing up and fumbling for the light switch. I must have been sleeping more lightly. Gee, I wonder why.
This time Her Ladyship had it cornered under the laptop. I lifted it to check and the thing promptly scampered off into another corner, the cat in hot pursuit. This time I actually managed to keep my wits enough to locate a small box.
I returned to my bedroom, armed and ready for battle. I looked for the cat to see where the mouse was; she was staring in confusion at a completely different corner. I checked it...and it was completely empty of murine life.
The cat had lost the mouse. In my bedroom.
THERE WAS A MOUSE SOMEWHERE IN MY BEDROOM!
I poked into one pile of stuff after another. No sign anywhere. Squeaky was no help whatsoever, making no attempt to locate the mouse herself, though she watched my explorations eagerly. It wasn’t in the closet, around the laundry baskets, behind the mattress, in the blankets - which last point I checked repeatedly...
Finally, as it was an insane hour of the morning and getting worse, I shook my blankets out one last time and set up the bed in the spare bedroom. I left the cat in my room. Let her dig out the creature.
At some point while I was sleeping, my father went hunting and found the mouse (still in my room). Yet once again, it managed to evade both him and Felice, allowing him only a brief glimpse before vanishing into the bowels of the room. Despite a microscopic search of every nook and cranny, the only trace that remained was an occasional ghostly snicker.
(Okay, maybe that was my dream. But still.)



8/25/11
Enough is enough. Two nights of severely interrupted sleep is unacceptable. No more Mrs. Nice Cat.
Over the course of Thursday, I gave my room a complete cleaning. There is nothing remaining on the floor for an intrepid mouse to hide behind. I’ve added another couple mattresses to the stack, putting me a slightly more comfortable distance from floor level. And to complete preparations, I set up by the door a nice mouse-sized cave of boxes...with a trap inside. (Don’t worry, it’s the humane kind. Unfortunately.)
Now it’s all up to the Mighty Huntress.
...We’re doomed.

9/21/11
Fast-forward almost a month. We had about given up hope that the thing was coming back...thought it might have finally come to its senses and stopped taunting the cat. I was starting to use the floor again, and in fact had put a box directly in front of the trap arrangement.
But then our less-than-welcome nocturnal visitor emerged once more from whatever deep, dark hole it was dwelling in.
Once again, I was awoken by the sound of thudding paws - at only 12:30 AM this time. I reached for my bedside lamp, discovered it was no longer there, and walked - rather jumpily - across the room to find the lightswitch.
Once again, the cat was dabbing a paw at the space under the backpack. I spent a few minutes debating how to corral it before it got tired of its cover vanishing and returning repeatedly, and started to make a break for it. The cat moved one way. The mouse moved the other. A moment later, Squeaky was poking hopefully into one corner, while the mouse crept quietly behind her and made for the nearest small, dark passageway.
Which happened to be the area between the trap setup and the box I’d put in front of it, which - completely unintentionally - was perfectly mouse-sized.
So when I picked up the cardboard on top to check, there was the mouse, curled up quietly in the trap. I put the trap in a box, yelled at the cat until she left it alone - at least until 5AM, at which point she got kicked outside - and went back to sleep.
Now the hard part: what to do with the thing.

What? I was hungry.

You can eat
Every piece of the pie that caught your eye -
Your repast tonight,
You can gorge
Chow down each cheesy treat piled high with meat
In its box so bright.

But don't forget who went to the store
And on whose card it's gonna be.
So darling, save the last slice for me.

Musical Mayhem

You know, I probably should have taken warning when the first piece the choirmaster gave us, something nice and easy to start off the semester, was "Poor Wandering One". Oddly enough, though, each piece just has one peculiarity.

Some advice for the songwriters:
Incantations #2: You should screw the lid back on your accidental container. If you want it in a certain key, just write it that way; you don't need to sprinkle sharps and flats everywhere to get that result.
Psalm 23: Not every measure needs to contain a triplet. Many songs are perfectly content with twins.
Sail Away: Measures are not islands, nor will they run away if not connected. You do not need to to bridge them all with tied notes.

Pretty songs, though.

Young artists

Nice thing about college, you get weird graffiti. Currently there are slogans ranging from the educated - "We hang petty thieves and elect great ones to office" - to the random - "Welcum [sic] to your DOOM!" - to the just plain incomprehensible: "End the Fed", "Defeat is (not) bitter sweat - unless you swallow it".

I also kinda like the stencil of a cat with a hand choking it, saying "HALP!"

Why sleep is important

Don't ask why the car would be pointed along the railroad track.

Ode to a Rusty SUV

That fateful night the car was stalled
Upon the railroad track
I did not see the train approach,
It smashed into my back.

Rust Angel, will you bear me?
Rust Angel, will you save me?
Will you keep me from above,
And save me for the ones I love?

The car went flying through the air,
And flipping end to end.
It landed by the tracks, and rolled
Down from that fateful bend.

Rust Angel, will you bear me?
Rust Angel, will you save me?
Will you keep me from above,
And save me for the ones I love?

The car was smashed beyond repair,
The wheels spun fitfully.
But I was only bruised and scratched,
As I crawled from the debris.

Rust Angel, will you bear me?
Rust Angel, will you save me?
Will you keep me from above,
And save me for the ones I love?

Profitable careers

Glazier at Crystal Lake
Starbucks in Springwood
Purveyor of explodium to Hollywood

Braaains

I know, I know...gleeful mutilation of a sacred classic.

O country stalked by terror plague
By waves of undead grain
Your mountain heights no refuge prove,
Yet less your open plain!
O Zombieland, our Zombieland!
More shotguns do we need,
Or they may overwhelm us yet,
And on our brains soon feed!

O trampled now by undead feet
That leave a rotting mess,
And mutilated chunks of meat
Still wrapped in shredded dress!
O Zombieland, our Zombieland!
How long can we survive
When zombies round our walls abound,
With hordes yet to arrive?

WoW...

Dashing through the town
Seeking things to slay
See me hunt them down
Slashing all the way
Spells fly everywhere
Making flashing light
What fun it is to hack and slash
And murder things tonight!

Oh, swords and spells,
Swords and spells,
See me gleefully
Hack to pieces anyone
Who crosses paths with me!

How to scare a parent

Walk out of a pathogenic microbiology lab involving playing with disease-causing organisms (obviously...) with your hand dripping red.

I'd forgotten how messy Gram stains were. Emphasis on the "stain". I spend the next few days with hands decorated with large purple, red, and brown blotches.

Observation

It's mildly embarrassing to be scarfing down pizza during a lecture on healthy eating.

Phrases I can no longer hear without snickering

Gazebo/spatula/tuberculosis
Two, four, six, eight
He's dead
Que sera, sera
I hold your hand
It could be worse
Ramparts
Tracts of land
Fjords
Who's next
Warehouse
Tequila
Everything is going to be all right

And more...

Live and learn

Today's lessons:

Snow is wet.
Wet glasses are slippery.
Sledding down a bumpy hill imparts fairly severe jolts to aforementioned glasses.
Glasses coming off in mid-slope is somewhat distracting.
And a distraction while going downhill very rapidly, on an unsteerable sled, while suddenly finding oneself unable to see, is somewhat...painful.

Are we feeling enlightened yet?

Been done, I know...

But these two were practically made for each other.

You better not fear, you know it's your fate
Edward is here, and he thinks you taste great
Sparkly vampire's coming to town.

Fixated on you - you've nearly died twice
He's baring his fangs; is he naughty or nice?
Sparkly vampire's coming to town.

He sees you when you're sleeping,
He knows when you're awake,
He watches through your windowpane -
Close the drapes, for goodness' sake!

He says that he's changed, he wouldn't hurt you -
Are you that naive, to think it's all true?
Sparkly vampire's coming to town.

Sleeeeep...

This is your brain.

This is your brain on finals.

Any questions?

Blackboard Evolution

Most of the honors classes use the same classroom, which is somewhat...peculiarly designed. Among other things, there is one large chalkboard up front, which some of the instructors use, and one in an awkward corner in back, which nobody uses. This semester, some students apparently noticed that.

Near the start of semester, someone sketched Plato's Cave on it, complete with a guy holding up a rabbit's head in front of the fire, which was reflected on the wall. Over the course of the next few weeks, the rabbit shadow grew more and more complex, as people added details.

Next, the whole thing was erased and replaced with a remarkably detailed sketch of a horned, bat-winged creature looking off to one side. Eventually, someone added a stick figure of a big-haired, beflowered, crazily grinning woman in that direction. Next time I saw the board, she was blowing a kiss to the creature.

Honors students are strange.

Weather hates me

1) The weather has been nice for weeks.

2) Wed is my longest day, and this week I have a particularly difficult exam as well.

3) It is currently blizzarding, and is scheduled to do so all day.

Who says the weather isn't sentient?

Oh, hey

I have a blog, don't I.

2 + 2 actually does add up to 5, with a bit of creative rounding...

2.4 + 2.4 = 4.8, right?

So therefore...




I'm glad I don't use this for anything serious.

License Plate of the Day

CTHULHU

Another fun one: ADHD. Warning other drivers, maybe?

UPDATE: JAYN. Firefly fan, maybe?

Requiem for an Analogy

"Writing is like a candle. As the flame of inspiration is applied to the wick of potential, it melts the wax of raw imagination and causes it to flow freely, gradually hardening into lumps and runnels of completed story. Then you can break them off and throw them at people.
...This analogy stopped making sense a while ago, didn't it."