In Media Res: God of Dead Things

Okay, here's a treat for forgottenmachine.

As I was thinking about his 15-minute writing challenge yesterday, I was torn. Essentially, the photo wanted its own story written whereas I wanted to write my own take on it.

Well, obviously, the first story was the picture's story. Here's mine. (At least the shivers are gone when I look at the photo. Either I've written that story out of my system or the angry spirit has gone. But the essence of the title remains.)

Also, check out the other weird photos of the man, Joel-Peter Witkin, behind the grotesquerie.

(Taken from the WireNews Report)

It took forty-eight hours after the release of the 'Shrouded Woman' virus on the web before the dead rose to life.

The virus itself, a sepia-picture of a seated woman shrouded in black with a white dog at her feet, originated from a server in Capetown, South Africa. It punched through firewalls, anti-virus programs and security systems to spread the aforementioned picture on every monitor of the world.

Two days later, the dead rose from the graveyards and mausoleums, the rivers and swamps, everywhere that a dead body could be. However, unlike the movies of zombie czar George Romero, these masses of the undead did not seek living flesh to eat.

Rather, they sought... something. They wanderered the streets of London and New York, they swam the beaches of Patpong and California, they were almost everywhere.

Of course, the world's population did not take the undead rising kindly. Some of them panicked, having been raised on a diet of movies like Night of the Dead and Dawn of the Undead (or even 28 Days After and Shaun of the Dead). Most of the resulting deaths were caused by their fellow living human beings in a frenzy of orgasmic self-defense. There were one or two who died in direct relation to the undead but only because they were trampled by the roving herds of zombies.

Finally, it became clear to the world's authorities when the undead came to a halt at New York's Times Square where pictures of the 'Faded Madonna' had spread on electronic commercial billboards. There, standing before the gigantic picture of the woman whose face cannot be seen, the undead called out with dead tongues and vocal cords in worship.

From the material to the spiritual. From the inanimate to the virtual. Even the dead need their god. Even the dead seek redemption.

Hah! Thirteen minutes total: ten minutes to write, three minutes to edit.

Now back to your regular blogging...