Thank You For Visiting My Imagination!
The Walking Dead Fan Fiction:
CARPE NOCTEM
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"The struggle is real," she whispered while inserting a blade between the zombie’s eyes. Lucky for her, someone had wrapped the woman's head in strips of material, so the sound of her dying didn't reveal the entrance to her hiding place in the trees. High up off the ground and away from the human dangers was her natural environment.
Mekayla climbed back up the tree quickly, before 7 a.m. came and the target woke up. The 20-year-old was tiny and could maneuver through the branches silently and quickly. No adults could climb as high as she could, but they could shoot up into the trees without care when it was dark. The experience led to her constant fears that kept on her toes, taking precautionary measures such as using duct tape as a makeshift nasal strip, so no one could hear her snore at night.
An old pine tree was her halfway point, where she changed direction and started shuffling slowly through the patch of birch trees that were so thin you could hear the shaking of dead leaves if she went too fast. Mekayla finally reached the massive sycamore that housed her for the last two months, and crawled into the huge cushion-lined hole.
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​​​​There were many comforts in her sky home, including an LED lantern with a soft blue setting that was perfect for illuminating the area without being too bright and alerting the world to her presence. ​​​​She pulled her small bag off and tossed it aside before focusing on the second backpack, the one that felt like a 50 lb weight as she crept through the forest top. Sure enough, the prizes inside proved the struggle was worth it. ​​​​​​
​​​​Mekayla hit the jackpot this time, when she found a dead guy with enough food and water in his bag to stay up in the trees for a whole week. "That's cuz I'm smarter than the rest of these old bitches," she talked to herself, "I don't even know how they lasted this long. They looking for houses and stores to raid and find supplies, I'm up in the woods finding the survivalists that didn't survive."
In the bag was much more than just water. He had sports drinks and jerky, granola bars and single-serve packs of nuts. Most important was the small medical kit complete with doxycycline powder and allergy medication.
The fullness of the backpack, as if nothing was missing from it, told Mekayla his camp was somewhere nearby. The quality of its contents told her it was probably well-equipped, wherever it was. She imagined that he had a bomb shelter or cabin around here somewhere nearby. “I will find that shit tonight,” she whispered to herself.​​, while eying the keychain she also found on him.
In all likelihood, she would find it.
All the young girl had to do was crawl down to 20 feet from ground level and look at the leaf patterns in the ground. The forest here was so thick that even the snow couldn’t penetrate the tops of the full old trees. Leaves piled up for years and when a creature walked in them, it left a set of footprints that Mekayla learned to distinguish from deer or human, old or new.
Until then, she had her version of an apocalyptic feast. The beef jerky was the good kind, made of real meaty protein instead of the processed meaty bits that were formed into the shape of a piece of jerky. The granola bar may not have been candy, but with cashew butter it sure tasted like a candy bar!
Best of all, mixed in with the 6 large bottles of electrolyte-laden beverages was 1 secret can of soda, and it had been so long since she tasted soda that she couldn’t do as her gut wanted, and save it.
Mekayla drank half of the lemony-lime drink and then sat back and watched as daybreak came, bringing with it woodpeckers that hopped from tree to tree knocking dust down. When she grew sick of it she grabbed a cord and pulled it, causing a blanket to rise into a canopy position. The invention stopped her area from getting shit on by birds, while also blocking out the light and making it dark enough for Mekayla to sleep throughout the day as the other living humans were out there foraging and utilizing the sunlight.
“Carpe Noctum,” she whispered to herself and drifted off to a sleep full of both dreams and nightmares, and every one of them involved the woman who slept safely inside the gates of The Colony, for now.
CAROL LOVES EZEKIEL
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It began as easily as one slices a piece of pudding pie.
Carol knew what he was doing and made a plan to counter it. She was well aware of Man’s evolved version of bait and wait… She knew that HE knew: the more time he stayed away without returning for some sort of payment, the better the chances of her growing fascination with him.
“I would be ever-so-grateful,” she drawled sarcastically to the empty house, “I’m just so danged thankful for you setting me up like this.” Carol slammed her tiny little homemade pie on the table but it didn’t give the gratifying THUNK she was going for.
Instead, the flimsy home-made aluminum dish gave way and broke the perfect crust in half. Carol reacted with a burst of rage, sending everything on the counter flying across the room with a crash loud enough to call zombies from a block away. She sunk down to the floor and began crying, again, but she had absolutely no clue why.
The pie would’ve still tasted good, broken crust or not. Why was she so upset when everything was going so good for her? Why was she so idiotic and rash? That pie took a lot of effort, now ruined because of her temper. This house was cute, perfect simply because it was the first place that was ever truly hers. She could stay as long as she wanted and under her own rules.
Carol was one of those girls that moved from her Daddy’s into Ed’s when they married, making this the first place she ever lived in without a male that got off by dictating rules. Rick Grimes included. Not only did she not have to answer to anyone, but she sure got a lot of that ‘alone’ time she was willing to run away for.
The first week was spent repairing what was needed and locating sources of food that were almost completely replenishable. It all started with a creek on the property that hosted deer that visited daily. The rows of berry bushes were bristling with all sorts of birds, and the lack of walkers led to further exploring. She found the bordering property to have a decades-old garden overgrown with potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, even onions that propagated without human’s hand.
Next door was a commercial property that was completely surrounded by a large strong fence. The only entrance was Carol’s backyard and no one was coming in without going through her front door. It was the closest thing to Eden she’d seen since Hershel Greene’s farm.
No one knew she was there except for Ezekiel and it didn’t seem that he was coming back. His absence should’ve been fine, since it was exactly what Carol wanted, or so she thought. The longer he went without coming back, though, the more she forgot about and even started to hate the solitude.
And in that way, Man’s ultimate master plan worked. Carol longed for Ezekiel to come back and her greeting was just as expected, when he returned after 26 days.
Carol WAS grateful. That’s how easy it started.
Ezekiel’s absence reaffirmed that she was indeed a human-loving mammal, and one that craved for his return. If he didn’t, Carol decided, she was going to have to go on the road to find other survivors.
This was the longest he went without coming back. After the days of rehearsing her “I’m Leaving Again” speech, it all went out the window. Carol gazed upon him and for a brief moment all the anger was gone. She looked at him as Ezekiel: but saw her long-forgotten friend Tyrese.
Both men had skin that could only be described as the color of oak. Varying shades of beautiful oak that encased strong and muscular faces, but when she looked real close she knew they were very different men.
Tyrese was a fighter, suspicious like Carol herself. It was part of what drew them together, but when no one was around and the two of them could talk freely, Tyrese was a lover. He spoke soft, and kind. It was the very thing that made her think of her much-missed friend. Ezekiel spoke and she listened, and then when she spoke, he listened just as attentively.
Few men in her life had spoken to her as if she was equal and she could count them on one hand: Tyrese, Daryl, Ezekiel. Carol cherished every one of them, and often wondered if Daryl would be mad at her forever. Whenever thoughts of him, or Maggie and Glen’s unborn child, or little Judy popped up, she exercised with a fervor that would make her wiped out and sore. It was her punishment for being such a rotten person, a crummy friend.
She returned her thoughts to the happy present in front of her, and Ezekiel’s bag of goodies that was always overfilled.
Once upon a time it would’ve been the massively large cat on his side to hold her attention but Shiva knew Carol would get to her later. They became great friends, Ezekiel’s tiger and her, but more exciting to the loner rebel was what gift he would bring for her this time.
WHEN DWIGHT MET NEGAN
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“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
“Oh I finally got a reaction out of the LADY.”
Sherry bowed her head to the ground but there was no place to look, that wasn’t a reminder of the brutality and devastation that this man brought upon them. Negan was an EVIL MAN. More so than any she had ever met, and she HAD met her share. Her daddy beat her, her brother beat her. Heck, her first boyfriend, Merle Dixon even beat her the first time she told him NO.
Dwight was the only one who never laid a violent finger on her, and now her one piece of goodness in this whole fucked up world was going to die too.
Blood dirtied the ground around her, making it hard to reconcile her own thoughts. Dwight was screaming in agony and bleeding to death in front of them and her sister was chained to a post, nothing more than charred bones now. Sherry had no one to help her.
“C’mon speak up,” Negan yelled, “you got something to say?”
“Take me instead.”
“Don’t fuck with me pretty young thing.” He grabbed her rear end and gave it a squeeze, hard enough to cause a pain-filled whelp. “You better not even try to play me. Your sister said the same thing and I burnt her dead. Just like the lying witch that she was, strutting around here shaking that magical spade-shaped ass. She had that big boyfriend too.” He laughed like a maniac before adding, “I bet he made her feel AWFULLY SAFE, huh?”
Negan turned to the handful of his captive followers, “you guys remember that big ol’ boyfriend of hers. He was grabbing onto her and not letting that fine piece out of his sight.
WOOO-EEEEE, she thought she was mighty special. Wouldn’t have been so bad if she didn’t know it right? Who needs a woman acting special?”
Grabbing Sherry by the shoulder, he pushed her down and thrust his groin in her face. “Down there, on their knees. It ain’t just a metaphor anymore. They can be special when I tell them to be, not a minute more. Not on my dime or my time.”
The nail-studded bat he used to destroy Sherry’s husbands’ skull hung at his side in a way that left her face to face with it. The nails bent flat against the wood now, as if even they submitted to Negan. He pulled it up and smelled it, and then shoved it back down and into her face, “is this what he smelled like all of the time? Was he on steroids because, GOSH, I think I can smell the testosterone in his blood. It almost makes me want to take a nice big filet of him and sit for a King’s meal.”
Turning back to his men he laughed, “nah we can’t do that, it would make us cannibals and the bible forbids THAT.”
Darkness was starting to settle around them, turning the blood from a scarlet red to a dark oozing black. Sherry had just a moment to think about the odd cold feeling of the blood as it soaked into her jeans, before Negan’s loud voice boomed again.
“It’s getting about time to stoke that fire, don’t you think Billy?, Get that bitch burning big and bright so the whole danged world knows we’re here. Get that other bitch out of here because I don’t want my new lady looking at things like that.”
Sherry sat still, praying she would not have to look up.
“That sister of yours thought she was pretty special huh? She was hot, that’s for sure.” The tyrant leaned down and whispered in a most terrifying tone, “well I guess she’s super hot now?”
As she sobbed, Negan announced to the others, “I don’t think women that are emotional like this can handle seeing their exes on a day to day basis.” He walked over to where Dwight was, bleeding from the slice that ran from his cheek down to his throat. “If I let him live she’ll probably cry and think about him every time she sees him. I kinda think he needs to die too, to ENSURE that I get what I need from… What’s your name again honey?”
The crying prevented her from speaking on demand. Negan lifted her by the hair and screamed, “WHAT’S YOUR GOD-DAMNED NAME BITCH?”
“Sherry.”
“Alright then, Sherry. See how simple that was? It’s just a name. And what’s his name?”
He referred to her beloved husband, who had stopped screaming, and lay unmoving. She answered quickly this time, “Dwight.”
“Chuck get over there and stand the guy up. Let’s see what we have going on, what makes him so special.”
Dwight was motionless as they pulled him up and dragged him over. The cut on his cheek was saturated with dead leaves and gravel, like a natural band-aid, and no longer bleeding.
Negan instructed, “clean that mess off I wanna see it.” The blood flowed again, and the tyrant ran his finger in the blood to make it extend up around the side of his neck that was not cut. “See I did this before,” he looked at Sherry, “to the face of this other guy who kept taking my lady’s eyes away from me.”
Sherry could hardly stand and was trembling, so Negan came close enough to grab her around the waist and hold her up.
“I want you to imagine this if you can…” He pulled her to Dwight, in order to illustrate with his fingers, “I cut that other man just like I did your husband, and let the blood drain all out to avoid THAT mess” gesturing to her bloody pants. “Then I made another cut like this, and would you believe how easy it was to pull that damned skin right off his head? I thought of it because of that movie, you know the one…” Negan rambled, “where the maid is stuck to a hook behind the door and then all of a sudden she survives and runs outside just to BAM get run over by a damned F’ing truck. Can you imagine fighting to survive, just to get run over by a damned uneventful TRUCK?”
Negan looked at her as if expecting an answer but allowed no time for her to give it.
“Anyway,” he continued, “I pulled that face off and do you know that woman had a heart attack right there in front of me? If I kill him are you gonna die or kill yourself or something like that?”
“No.”
“Okay boys fix him up,” Negan directed Chuck and Billy, to do something that Sherry would never forget.
With the fire roaring and Dwight completely unable to fight and defend himself, they held his face on the fire until his skin bubbled and his long blonde hair left nothing but its stench behind.
They dropped him on the ground, where he convulsed until passing out and Negan pressured her, “So I can get him some medical attention right now, or I can just kill you both and save us a lot of time if you are one of those ‘I’D RATHER DIE IN EVER-AFTER MATRIMONIAL BLISS'” he cried in a mocking tone, “bullshit you married people always are willing to die for.”
Gesturing to the side, Sherry saw eight people, including only two females and they were both overweight. Negan asked, “why shouldn’t I save myself all that pretty girl problem and just kill you right now?”
Without a thought Sherry answered, “because I’m the only one who doesn’t have to lift a roll for you to get a nibble.” Standing straight and tall she pushed up against him and whispered, “plus I’ll give you head right now in front of all these people if you want.”
All of a sudden Sherry looked like a new woman, the scared and shivering fearful love of Dwight’s life was gone.
Like a switch was flicked, transforming her from GOOD GIRL to EVIL BITCH in an instant.
She looked Negan back in the eye and asked him, “right?”