Short stories from beyond the zombie apocalypse

The Last Lecture.

The road to university was dreary at best; the early morning light was further quashed by a thick grey mat of clouds covering the sky. Jesse rubbed his eyes, scratching out bits of yellow grime from the corners of his eyes as he did. This studying thing was tough. He had stayed up late into the night, but if he had to be honest with himself, all he had been doing in that time was pretending to study. He had woken up today, realizing that despite reading and re-reading through the prescribed chapters, nothing had actually been taken in. There was no time now, Archaeology was his first lecture of the day. Well he had read the pieces. So if he was asked he wouldn’t have to lie. The light turned green and Jesse prepared himself to pull off as the traffic began to rumble forward slowly. Traffic, what a life.

Zoning out, staring out of the window at the sun's continued poor attempts at illumination; Jesse regretted attending the lecture. Perhaps his morning might have been slightly spiced up had the lecturer actually engaged with the class over the prescribed reading, but no, the lecture had merely resumed with all the gusto of a crumpled parchment. With a sigh he continued staring into the matte grey sky. Things had been getting him down lately, and this shoddy cloudscape reflected his broodiness perfectly. This early morning archaeology double was doing him no good today, getting up on days like this was such challenging enough, let alone on limited sleep. He looked around at the class, absently wondering who else had bothered, surprisingly the class was more than half full, but what a dejected bunch they were, Jesse could tell that most of the class like him, had not been able to summon up the motivation to read through the lengthy document last night either, in fact Mr Robinson was looking the worse for wear too, clutching a coffee, and looking about as good as the weather. The lecturer droned on about the prehistoric remains which could be found in mid Africa and their implications about early society and the dawns of mankind, an interesting topic at its core, but it was handled in such a way as to be all drivel, and seemingly little actual substance. Little substance would be how he would describe life recently; Jesse had really been struggling with motivation these past few weeks. Under normal circumstances, he considered himself to be a conscientious and diligent student. Well that was his own opinion, but still, things were seldom left for the day before, and today he had managed a double whammy, actually sacrificing sleep time, but for no tangible gain. His scanty recollections destroyed his ability to take any real understanding from this lecture. Thinking of his cat settling into the last of the warmth from the covers did little to lighten his mood. No Jesse was the grim clouds personified.

Shit!

His slow mind had just churned up a geology assignment, with the last related recollection being 'putting it off again'. With a dull shock he realized it was due in a couple of hours. There was very little hope of finishing it, yet he could hardly bring himself to care. Surely normally he would have been scurrying around trying to make a plan, even resorting to copying if needed. But not today. Perhaps it was the lecturers’ drone. Either way Jesse felt content to just sit, and let his impending doom approach. He felt absolutely no inclination to do anything whatsoever.

Things were just getting him down lately and this numbness in his core; he just wanted to feel something!

He had tried talking to classmates, but it was all drivel, people complaining about their own lives, in fact people seemed to be complaining about almost everything. The early morning banter was gone, scarcely remembered, and instead these last days had been filled with morbid talking about problems, issues, deadlines, challenges. It was as if being unpleasant had become fashionable overnight. What infuriated Jesse was how most of these people seemed to have no legitimate case for such angst; they would sit and complain about the insignificant hitches in their cushy, padded little existences. People were so self obsessed sometimes, it disgusted him.

He needed think, to distance himself from it all, a holiday would have been nice, but for now the best he could do was look out of the window, and onto the city spread out around the university. Perhaps one ray of sunlight?
No such luck, endless dreariness and a city full of people with problems stretched away into the distance. Jesse switched off, for a moment he was done with this world, he couldn’t go home and escape into his Xbox. Out of sheer respect for the lecturer, he composed himself so that he would at least appear to be listening rather than blatantly sleeping on the desk. Right now Jesse was content to keep up the attempted attentive angle to his slouch and wait for some life to unfold. Maybe something interesting would happen.

Something tugged at Jesse's attention and he felt his mind return to the realm of what was generally accepted to be reality. His eyes gradually refocused. Mr Robinson seemed to have stopped. Indeed he was standing ashen face contorted. Shards of ceramics were spread on the floor around his feet, how had he not heard that happen? The class was sitting in a stretching stunned silence.

A cry drifted through the window, while distance had consumed most of the volume, none of the blood chilling nature had dissipated, and the shriek struck Jesse in the back of the neck. In a state of confusion from the scream Jesse watched as life continued to play out, the lecturer, slowly fell forward, then gravity, sensing its victory, grabbed hold and viciously pulled the man down, the lecturers head smashed the front writing bench, and from the sounds the collision made, Jesse instinctively knew the man was dead. Jesse’s body continued to sit, while his mind waded through thick mud. The dead man lay on the floor. The weight of a person leaned against Jesse, Jesse felt he might also pass out himself. As blood drained from his face, so color ran from the world. Jesse felt something inside him flip, and darkness was growing at the edges of his vision. The dead man slowly climbed to his knees, a powerful grip wrenched at Jesse’s shoulder, and the only solution his deranged mind could find for the situation was as old as time itself. Adrenaline filled Jesse, basic reactions took control, his body was playing catch-up now, making up for sitting numbly in shock by compensating with speed. Jesse twisted out of the grasp, forced himself up on to the table. The scene around Jesse was utterly unreal, his class mates were a mess of writhing limbs. It was as if everyone had simultaneously forgotten everything they ever knew about rows of benches and human appendages, and given those two factors, were now trying to free themselves from the senseless tangle of wood and metal. Jesse stepped down to the front of the lecture hall, using the desks as a sort of staircase, a hazardous stair case, strewn with chaos stricken bodies. On foremost bench a wayward hand learned how to grab, unfortunately the first object of it's triumph was Jesse's foot. Jesse helplessly keeled over forwards, arms windmilling as the ground and the solid oak lectern rushed to crush him. Time stretched as the lectern grinned up at his head, it would be the second piece of furniture to break a man’s neck today. Jesse knew he was dead, his mind knew it, he was now experiencing reality as he never before had, his mind was clinging to it last living moments, each millisecond a month, each detail crystal clear. Jesse observed intricate patterns in grain of the oak. A beauty of natural precision, enlightenment called to Jesse, he heard the scrabbling of fingernails on wood, overlaying it all a single glorious note from a distant bird. An image flashed in his mind, this must have been that famous thing that everyone spoke about, the brain, living through its life, reviewing its fondest memories. Except the brief flash was like nothing Jesse expected. Another. A body, a position, something seen somewhere. His muscled tensed, but not an all out last minute senseless tense of death, rather they flowed. Tensed, with purpose. Jesse watched as his head was rotated and he escaped the fatal corner. The grain continued to pass before his eyes, the side of the lectern. Images. A screen, ballet and gymnastics. Flow, shift. The grain of the carpet now filling his mind, yet occupying none of it. Geometry, intricate. Perfectly predictable. Hands forward, head in, back arched. Snap. The world spun. Jesse was standing unharmed, face centimeters from the blackboard. His confused body gathered itself. Bile rose. Jesse vomited spectacularly onto the board.

Lumps and globules of last nights beans and who knew what else thickly made their ways down the board. Jesse stared at the colors, watched as the little rivulets began to form from areas of greater volume, and start to trickle down the board. A heaviness was tugging at his limbs, it was as if he had cut himself on in some energy plane, and said energy was now bleeding from the gushing wound. He forced himself to turn from the sights and bile smells of his innards. It was a slow turn. A heavy one, where the mind knows it must observe, but also fears the observation itself, so the internal fight is displayed through the slow turn. The dead lecturer stood. Stood was a generous term, slumped vertically with a lopsided, tilted back head that suggested at least a few broken neck vertebra.The impossibility tried to topple Jesse’s, mind and body, but it was too numb for the wavering to penetrate his limbs. The sound of fingernails desperately seeking purchase on smooth wooden surfaces still filled the room. A few of the students on the outermost seats had either fallen outwards onto the floor or had managed to untangle themselves, and were starting to pick themselves up of the floor. Juliet, Mrs. Hand in the air cause I know it all always, was one such. Her neck was not ruined, so her eyes made contact with Jesse’s. Cold contact, contact that sliced straight through him, walls and time itself. The staring gaze jolted Jesse, and suddenly he was back. Prof. Robinsen took a dragging step toward Jesse. Jesse gave the room one more passing glance. A cold fear was in charge now, and the fear's confusion told that this was a situation which was beyond him.

Roots of fatigue had grown from the floor and wrapped themselves around Jesse’s feet. Fear lent purpose, purpose lent strength. Jesse ripped up the roots and took a step away from the dripping board. Another step. It felt like he was dragging a small person on each leg. Tough, but do-able. Jesse side stepped the lecturer, whose arm had lifted in his direction, definitely time to leave this crazy place. He hurried over to the double door and swung it open. With a last glance at the insane class, he closed it with a bang.

The corridor outside was quiet, grey tiles and white painted walls and ceiling. Neutral colors, academic colors. Normal. Quiet. Jesse walked down the passage, this was the only lecture hall on this floor. But downstairs was another.ced up had the lecturer actually engaged with the class over the prescribed reading, but no, the lecture had merely resumed with all the gusto of a crumpled parchment. With a sigh he continued staring into the matte grey sky. Things had been getting him down lately, and this shoddy cloudscape reflected his broodiness perfectly. This early morning archaeology double was doing him no good today, getting up on days like this was such challenging enough, let alone on limited sleep. He looked around at the class, absently wondering who else had bothered, surprisingly the class was more than half full, but what a dejected bunch they were, Jesse could tell that most of the class like him, had not been able to summon up the motivation to read through the lengthy document last night either, in fact Mr Robinson was looking the worse for wear too, clutching a coffee, and looking about as good as the weather. The lecturer droned on about the prehistoric remains which could be found in mid Africa and their implications about early society and the dawns of mankind, an interesting topic at its core, but it was handled in such a way as to be all drivel, and seemingly little actual substance. Little substance would be how he would describe life recently; Jesse had really been struggling with motivation these past few weeks. Under normal circumstances, he considered himself to be a conscientious and diligent student. Well that was his own opinion, but still, things were seldom left for the day before, and today he had managed a double whammy, actually sacrificing sleep time, but for no tangible gain. His scanty recollections destroyed his ability to take any real understanding from this lecture. Thinking of his cat settling into the last of the warmth from the covers did little to lighten his mood. No Jesse was the grim clouds personified.

Shit!

His slow mind had just churned up a geology assignment, with the last related recollection being 'putting it off again'. With a dull shock he realized it was due in a couple of hours. There was very little hope of finishing it, yet he could hardly bring himself to care. Surely normally he would have been scurrying around trying to make a plan, even resorting to copying if needed. But not today. Perhaps it was the lecturers’ drone. Either way Jesse felt content to just sit, and let his impending doom approach. He felt absolutely no inclination to do anything whatsoever.

Things were just getting him down lately and this numbness in his core; he just wanted to feel something!

He had tried talking to classmates, but it was all drivel, people complaining about their own lives, in fact people seemed to be complaining about almost everything. The early morning banter was gone, scarcely remembered, and instead these last days had been filled with morbid talking about problems, issues, deadlines, challenges. It was as if being unpleasant had become fashionable overnight. What infuriated Jesse was how most of these people seemed to have no legitimate case for such angst; they would sit and complain about the insignificant hitches in their cushy, padded little existences. People were so self obsessed sometimes, it disgusted him.

He needed think, to distance himself from it all, a holiday would have been nice, but for now the best he could do was look out of the window, and onto the city spread out around the university. Perhaps one ray of sunlight?
No such luck, endless dreariness and a city full of people with problems stretched away into the distance. Jesse switched off, for a moment he was done with this world, he couldn’t go home and escape into his Xbox. Out of sheer respect for the lecturer, he composed himself so that he would at least appear to be listening rather than blatantly sleeping on the desk. Right now Jesse was content to keep up the attempted attentive angle to his slouch and wait for some life to unfold. Maybe something interesting would happen.

Something tugged at Jesse's attention and he felt his mind return to the realm of what was generally accepted to be reality. His eyes gradually refocused. Mr Robinson seemed to have stopped. Indeed he was standing ashen face contorted. Shards of ceramics were spread on the floor around his feet, how had he not heard that happen? The class was sitting in a stretching stunned silence.

A cry drifted through the window, while distance had consumed most of the volume, none of the blood chilling nature had dissipated, and the shriek struck Jesse in the back of the neck. In a state of confusion from the scream Jesse watched as life continued to play out, the lecturer, slowly fell forward, then gravity, sensing its victory, grabbed hold and viciously pulled the man down, the lecturers head smashed the front writing bench, and from the sounds the collision made, Jesse instinctively knew the man was dead. Jesse’s body continued to sit, while his mind waded through thick mud. The dead man lay on the floor. The weight of a person leaned against Jesse, Jesse felt he might also pass out himself. As blood drained from his face, so color ran from the world. Jesse felt something inside him flip, and darkness was growing at the edges of his vision. The dead man slowly climbed to his knees, a powerful grip wrenched at Jesse’s shoulder, and the only solution his deranged mind could find for the situation was as old as time itself. Adrenaline filled Jesse, basic reactions took control, his body was playing catch-up now, making up for sitting numbly in shock by compensating with speed. Jesse twisted out of the grasp, forced himself up on to the table. The scene around Jesse was utterly unreal, his class mates were a mess of writhing limbs. It was as if everyone had simultaneously forgotten everything they ever knew about rows of benches and human appendages, and given those two factors, were now trying to free themselves from the senseless tangle of wood and metal. Jesse stepped down to the front of the lecture hall, using the desks as a sort of staircase, a hazardous stair case, strewn with chaos stricken bodies. On foremost bench a wayward hand learned how to grab, unfortunately the first object of it's triumph was Jesse's foot. Jesse helplessly keeled over forwards, arms windmilling as the ground and the solid oak lectern rushed to crush him. Time stretched as the lectern grinned up at his head, it would be the second piece of furniture to break a man’s neck today. Jesse knew he was dead, his mind knew it, he was now experiencing reality as he never before had, his mind was clinging to it last living moments, each millisecond a month, each detail crystal clear. Jesse observed intricate patterns in grain of the oak. A beauty of natural precision, enlightenment called to Jesse, he heard the scrabbling of fingernails on wood, overlaying it all a single glorious note from a distant bird. An image flashed in his mind, this must have been that famous thing that everyone spoke about, the brain, living through its life, reviewing its fondest memories. Except the brief flash was like nothing Jesse expected. Another. A body, a position, something seen somewhere. His muscled tensed, but not an all out last minute senseless tense of death, rather they flowed. Tensed, with purpose. Jesse watched as his head was rotated and he escaped the fatal corner. The grain continued to pass before his eyes, the side of the lectern. Images. A screen, ballet and gymnastics. Flow, shift. The grain of the carpet now filling his mind, yet occupying none of it. Geometry, intricate. Perfectly predictable. Hands forward, head in, back arched. Snap. The world spun. Jesse was standing unharmed, face centimeters from the blackboard. His confused body gathered itself. Bile rose. Jesse vomited spectacularly onto the board.

Lumps and globules of last nights beans and who knew what else thickly made their ways down the board. Jesse stared at the colors, watched as the little rivulets began to form from areas of greater volume, and start to trickle down the board. A heaviness was tugging at his limbs, it was as if he had cut himself on in some energy plane, and said energy was now bleeding from the gushing wound. He forced himself to turn from the sights and bile smells of his innards. It was a slow turn. A heavy one, where the mind knows it must observe, but also fears the observation itself, so the internal fight is displayed through the slow turn. The dead lecturer stood. Stood was a generous term, slumped vertically with a lopsided, tilted back head that suggested at least a few broken neck vertebra.The impossibility tried to topple Jesse’s, mind and body, but it was too numb for the wavering to penetrate his limbs. The sound of fingernails desperately seeking purchase on smooth wooden surfaces still filled the room. A few of the students on the outermost seats had either fallen outwards onto the floor or had managed to untangle themselves, and were starting to pick themselves up of the floor. Juliet, Mrs. Hand in the air cause I know it all always, was one such. Her neck was not ruined, so her eyes made contact with Jesse’s. Cold contact, contact that sliced straight through him, walls and time itself. The staring gaze jolted Jesse, and suddenly he was back. Prof. Robinsen took a dragging step toward Jesse. Jesse gave the room one more passing glance. A cold fear was in charge now, and the fear's confusion told that this was a situation which was beyond him.

Roots of fatigue had grown from the floor and wrapped themselves around Jesse’s feet. Fear lent purpose, purpose lent strength. Jesse ripped up the roots and took a step away from the dripping board. Another step. It felt like he was dragging a small person on each leg. Tough, but do-able. Jesse side stepped the lecturer, whose arm had lifted in his direction, definitely time to leave this crazy place. He hurried over to the double door and swung it open. With a last glance at the insane class, he closed it with a bang.

The corridor outside was quiet, grey tiles and white painted walls and ceiling. Neutral colors, academic colors. Normal. Quiet. Jesse walked down the passage, this was the only lecture hall on this floor. But downstairs was another.