“don’t go in there†it was rolling around in his head like an endless Taoist mantra; (“c’mon START you piece of shit!!â€) He only wanted to see his Aunt. He was free to do that! He could remember free. Free was before the scare. Was before the disease; was before the flu bug had changed, then changed again. Always one step ahead of the medication. It wasn’t a flu bug anymore. It was something else. They had all coped remarkably well considering. Considering people just wouldn’t die! It was simple really; he had read about it when the “flu†had come to the town. It wasn’t that people didn’t die. It wasn’t that the dead lived and walked and ate the living. It was the “fluâ€. Some kind of parasitic mutation. Oh there were reams of information on it! The scientists knew what it was, they had dissected the first few. The person was dead. Sure as hell they were! They must be! They were certainly dead! The flu was alive though! And like some puppet master it was controlling the bodies of its host! Taking root in their brains, their tissues, their blood and muscles. Driving the car whilst the lights were well and truly off! (“please START!!â€) It helped to think of them like that. A car was just a box that was only dangerous if the driver was a lunatic or couldn’t drive very well! This was the same. Your aunt caught the flu, she died and then started to eat your family. You ended up having to smash her face in with the wooden chair from the kitchen. It didn’t matter though, she had died of the flu! All you did was break the car so it couldn’t be driven anymore! It didn’t matter if you thought of them like that. It somehow helped. “Don’t go in there! Your Aunts not well!†He went in anyway. There she lay on her bed. She didn’t look that un-well; her skin was shiny like it was over stuffed and stretched tight and her eyes were the oddest shade of yellow. Like old ivory. Considering she had the flu she looked alright really! Then he noticed the straps across her chest. Thick leather straps; maybe belts tied together? They were deep in her flesh; wrapped around her body and then under the bed. Tying her down. Shit! They were deep in her flesh! In fact they were “in†her flesh! Gouging into the flesh as if they had eaten their way in. Aunty had turned to look at him. Then she screamed and thrashed wildly. The belts cutting deeper into her body, ripping into the flesh and scouring the bones clean of skin and sinew as they did. The flu had congealed her blood into thick viscous gore. It oozed rather than flowed onto the bed, covering the sheets like a dark red jelly. It wasn’t his Aunt trying to eat him! It was the flu! Yearning this beaten up old motor into life so that it could feed and spread and grow! Later that night the flu had somehow thrashed that “old banger†into hyper-drive and lurched it screaming and puking and dripping and sodden into the kitchen. They were all sat around the table listening to the few broadcasts that could still be received through the digital radio stations. Military stuff mostly. How to kill them; how to disinfect afterwards. Medical stuff on understanding it all. Emergency stuff on where to go and what to do. Most of it a placebo of information designed to make you feel better when the world had in fact gone to hell! That old banger screaming into the kitchen and then lurching across the room to tear his father limb from limb in bloody visceral ruin! Mum screamed! A high pitched wail of the banshee that just tore apart the sounds of the carnage and blended in unholy symphony with the screeching of his Aunt. Then she was dead!. His Aunt moved like a gory hurricane and had torn the face off his mother with one wild thrash of clawed fingers. The blood seemed like it glowed against the darkened filth of his Aunts gore. Like the red of a juicy apple when the world didn’t involve phrases like “don’t go in thereâ€! The chair had worked well! Sure it had! The Military on the radio had said anything that “wrecked the car†would work! The first strike had caught his Aunt on the side of her head. Caving in her skull and spraying filth across the kitchen. She span from the blow and fell across the corpses of his Father and his Mum. (“Hi Mum! “your looking well!â€) Another two or three blows had splintered her shoulder and spine. The last blow smashing her head through the wooden kitchen table in a shower of gore and wood. That car wouldn’t be going far for a long time! It was fucked! Take it to the scrap yard! That last swing had done it! He remembered slipping in the gore. He remembered hitting his neck on the kitchen unit. How long did it take? It was in the medical reports they had listened too. Seven hours he thought he could remember. “Wow Mum you look great!†She didn’t. She looked just like she had when her face was ripped off! She was crawling along the floor, dragging herself with ripped fingernails across the cheap wooden laminate; sliding on the “slug trail†of blood that oozed from where her face used to be. He tried to move again. Damn, must be the crankshaft! The motors turning over but the wheels just wont go! He couldn’t feel her on his legs, couldn’t feel anything as her teeth entered his calf muscle; couldn’t think about anything other than putting the car into gear and cruising into the sunset! (“please start!â€) word count = 985 inspiration: the usual: Romero and World War Z. I like to twist perception. turn things personal and remove the formats of conventional story-telling. Changing normality for casual insanity with a twist of reality. Hope you enjoy it!