Stanzas: Monthly Chapbooks October 2014: Halloween | Page 12

Apprehension
Paddy Murphy

A

pproaching the gates, Ryan’s heart was lodged firmly in his
throat. Literally. This whole undead situation wasn’t very
accommodating in relation to the natural placement of his bodily
organs. Reaching forward he clasped his hand, rather abruptly,
around the gate handle. He hesitated for a moment, groaned
aloud and stared towards the Georgian house in the distance.
He grunted to himself in the darkness. Were these gurgles of
inspiration and courage? Who knows?
Maybe his atrophied arm just couldn’t muster the strength. It
didn’t matter. He was going through this gate. Sooner or later.
Preferably sooner (according to his very empty, very visible
stomach and later
according to his still vaguely self-aware brain).
He took in a deep breath, that passed down his oesophagus
and into his lungs where it immediately leaked back out into the
cold night air. A few holes in your chest will do that to you. He
looked up at the
stars. Thousands of little synapses floating off in the void.
Synapses that could transmit information that takes so long to
arrive, that the progenitor is dead by the time the message is
received. Ryan’s brain worked like the stars now.
He pushed through the gate as a signal came through: flickering
like a light bulb receiving a little too much power. Don’t. Too
late. His lumbering body was already in gear moving towards
the house in the cold, dead night. He rapped on the door, with
bloody knuckles a handful of times, before a light flicked on.
He waited on a response from the stars in his brain but the void
was all he could see. Those stars could be dead now, after all.
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