Aikion Weird Tales!: Love by Any other name…

The nation of Aikion is an alternate universe form of the U.S.A. in its heyday. The country thrives on its technological discoveries and advices and maintains a peaceful relationship with other nations all over the world. However, the nation’s beginning is doused in mythology: such as the gods of time; mutated creatures, such as dragons;and the list goes on. Due to this, almost anything, nay, truly anything can happen in this country.

Timothy Lamshin was a twenty-six year old who always thought he was destined to live the rest of his life alone. Every date that he had been on seem doom to end badly. The date he had last night justified this thought, for it went well until he mentioned that he was the owner of Laseng Cemetery. For some weird reason, anytime he mentioned his job at the local cemetery, people became…nervous, to say the least. He wasn’t ugly looking: he had eyes that withheld a deep, soulful look; his hair was kept neat and straight to his best ability; and his skin and face was kept clean from unsightly blemishes.‘So why?’ he would think to himself, why do people run when I tell them I am owner of the cemetery? He just couldn’t understand.
He was sitting on his couch, looking at T.V. when he saw a breaking news story: “Luther Manx and his assistant Lorraine have just escaped from Aikion National Penitentiary. For those that do not know, the two are crazed people who believe that they are scientists and performed weird experiments on people. They are considered extremely dangerous and are likely to be wearing a disguise of some sort. We advise--” Timothy turned the T.V. off and headed for the door. As he got outside, he realized that unless he found a girl who could respect his job and had similar personality traits as him, he would spend the rest of his life alone. It was a saddening prospect, but it was one that he had not the time to dwell on. He had to go to the cemetery and open it for the people who visit at night since nobody applied for the caretaker job.
He got into his car and drove as fast as he could to the mountain where Laseng Cemetery was located. If people thought that the cemetery was scary during the day, they would be almost petrified during the night. The’ cemetery, like all cemeteries, had an abundance of trees: crooked; deep brown in color; and devoid of any signs of life except owls, which hooted loudly as if making fun of others’ misfortune. Also like other cemeteries, they had a lot of statues and tombstones: while some of the angelic statues and tombstones were in tip-top shape, most were run-down and crumbling; giving most of the supposedly angelic statues a horrible, demonic look. Unlike most cemeteries, Laseng cemetery was located on top of the largest mountain in or around the city and, ironically, most of the populace in Laseng were afraid of heights; and the people who were not afraid of heights kept having bad dreams about the cemetery from those statues.
Why do I even bother sometimes? Nobody in their right mind comes during the day! What makes me think that they would come during the night? Maybe I should just… Timothy pushed the last thought out of his head as he arrived at the cemetery gates. As he was getting ready to open it, however, a strange lady came up to his car. He decided to roll the window down to see what she wanted. He saw a fat, old lady with horribly pale and rashly skin; dull blue eyes that were turning grey, a crooked nose, and black messy hair.
“Dearie,” her voice sounded harsh and forced as if there was something horribly wrong with her throat, “can you drive me to my fortune-teller shop, please? It is a long walk from here.” Timothy was expecting a slow night anyway, so he agreed and allowed the lady into his car. He backed the car away from the gate, onto the road, and following the old lady’s directions was able to get the car to the shop.
They bothgot out of the car and Timothy helped her to the door of the seemingly small shack. She tried countless times opening the door before turning to Timothy and asking, “Young one, can you open the door for me? I’m afraid my hands are just not what they used to be!” She laughed a bit as she allowed Timothy to work on opening the door. While Timothy was working on the door, however, she pulled out a metallic, glowing club and placed it on Timothy’s spine. The club discharged, causing him to flip and land hard on his head, knocking him out cold. The strange old lady laughed, pulled out a device, and pushed the button it contained. This caused the rickety, wooden door to slide open and the old lady dragged him in.
“I see you have brought us another victim, Lorraine,” Dr. Manx said. He fit the stereotypical mad scientist description: He was balding a bit; he wore a blood stain lab coat from one of his previous experiment; and had the look in his eye as something less than human. “Yeah, but don’t do anything yet, not until I have changed back,” the old lady’s voice had changed: it became more energetic and youthful, but also carried a diabolic tone to it.
The lab that the three were in would be considered- if it weren’t for the fact that all of the experiments done here were half-baked and dangerous--the most scientific lab in the world. Everything and anything you could possibly imagine was in this lab: Teleporters, genetic reconstruction machines, health restoration machines, basically anything you could think of. The old lady got into one of the nearby machines and it whirled and vibrated for what seem like hours. When the machine stopped, a caricature of what a person called a beautiful came out of the machine. She was about twenty-three years old and her face was perfectly formed and so was the rest of her body. The only thing was that her eyes were dark and full of hatred, mirroring what was in her soul. This was so powerful that all who looked within them quivered, whether they meant to or not, with an overpowering fear. “So, Dr. Manx, what shall we do with this guy?” Lorraine said sensuously.
“I’m not sure yet,” Manx said in his pensive stance, “I want to do something…different in a way. I want to… help him…in my own special way…” Manx began to smile his toothy grin. “Help me move this guy to the info-extractor and get ready to throw the switch!” Manx and Lorraine picked up Timothy and placed him onto the machine. The machine was activated and everything about Timothy--his hopes and dreams, where he lived, memories--were all displayed on the monitor.
The two were intrigued by Timothy’s mental state, for a part of him knew he wasn’t destined to live alone, but it was just that the person for him just wasn’t in this city; however, he kept picking bad dates. After looking at the machine they realized that they had the perfect, yet cliché way to help him.
“He works in a cemetery, yet he is afraid of death and dead people… This may be cliché, but creating him a girlfriend from dead parts seems to be the best way to help him help us!” the two said this in unison and laughed. The two set to work quickly, using dead female parts around the lab, going to Laseng Cemetery to borrow parts, and killing some animals to use their parts when necessary.
“Hmm…” Lorraine thought out loud about their creation so far, “Why don’t we change the skin color? I mean, the multi-color look is burning my eyes.”
“You have a point, Lorraine my dear. Hmm…what color to make her…how about blue?”
“Blue, eh? I think sky/robin egg blue seems better.”
“Terrific!” After a few tries, they managed to get the whole body uniformly sky-blue.
“We should give the girlfriend powers, like super-strength and to break away from that stereotype that zombies move slowly, we should give her super-speed and agility. She would also be able to become a ghost only when nobody except Timothy was looking at her and herhealing ability would be at its most effective during this form, for it would completely heal her. They also made her as close to invulnerable as possible and gave her full control of her body even if it wasn’t in her or connected to her. They also made it so that her intelligence was higher than anybody on the planet except Manx and Lorraine and that she could learn anything just by looking at the book; however, they made it where she didn’t know the language at first or where she was.
“Now, it is time to give her life and personality!” the two yelled out in unison again. Now giving life, unlike movie and shows depict, was pretty easy. Only thing that one has to do is to take a small amount of energy from a living person and give it to the thing you want alive. If done correctly, the life force will grow for both sides and such. Creating personality, on the other hand, is harder than one would think, primarily because people minds are always changing and altering over time, thus changing the personality. They decided to simply connect the two mentally and making it where her personality would compliment his. She also would be protective of her family and friends.
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When Timothy awoken the next morning, he found himself in his bedroom without knowing how he had gotten there, or what had transpired during the night, and heard the T.V. on in the main room. Thinking that he just left the T.V. on last night, he got ready for work at the cemetery in his room and walked out to the main room. There, he saw a strange girl around his age lounging on the couch: The had grey, almost white hair; the hair color seemed a bit weak considering she had the lightest shade of blue; her face, arms, and probably other parts too were covered in stitches all around her face; and she was wearing a fancy, white dress. Timothy thought that the girl was…beautiful, in a Halloween-esque way, but that still didn’t give her the right to break into one’s house and sleep on his couch! He proceeded to try to wake her up, but that girl was a deep sleeper, so Timothy decided to try an approach his mother used to wake him up. He began pulling at her right ear as hard as he could and the sound of a loud rip filled the air. He had accidentally ripped her ear off and he screamed as he realized that the girl was dead. If he thought that was freaky, when the girl woke up to his screaming he also realized that she was a zombie.
Now, the girl was very disoriented from waking up to screaming and was quite freaked out, however, when her gaze landed on Timothy, she fell in love with him hard and fast. The effect he had on her was so great that her heart actually started to beat for five whole minutes before stopping again. She decided to try to speak to him, but only grumbled and distorted sounds came out of her mind. Timothy took this as a sign that she was about to attack and ran back to his bedroom to grab something to smack her with. The girl, however, could tell that she should leave before he came back; when Timothy came back and saw that the girl was gone; he was both happy and afraid, for there was a zombie on the loose that needed to be captured before it hurts or maims somebody. He decided, though, that it wasn’t his place to capture her. This city doesn’t even respect me! Why should I risk my life for those ungrateful people? And with this line of thinking, Timothy left for work.
Meanwhile, the young zombie was wondering around the shadows of the city. She had realized that that boy whom she liked so much had screamed because of her, so there had to be something wrong with her; and that was why she was lurking in the shadows; to avoid causing the same reaction with the people she saw.
When she was in one alleyway, she saw a broken mirror shard in a trashcan. Even though she had never seen a mirror before, she realized that the strange thing in the mirror was her. Now she knew why he screamed--she wasn’t a normal color like the people in the city and her face was covered in stitches while the other people faces were smooth. Finally, she noticed that the people were speaking a strange language and calling each other things in the language. She felt overwhelmed, but decided that she would try to fit in no matter what so that she could be more appeasing to the boy. She decided to first focus on her mind so that she could communicate with people and know her way around the city; however, this would be a problem, for she looked demonic and corrupt. She began looking around the alley for something to cover herself with and she found an old, moth-ridden cowl with a hood nearby. Seeing no other alternative, she put it on, put the hood on her head which covered her face quite nicely, and walked out from the dark alley.
Even though people were looking at her funny, she was happy that nobody did anything really harsh towards her, for she didn’t know what she would do.She began listening to people’s conversations to try and learn a few words, but she didn’t learn anything important until she heard some kids talk about homework.
“This homework assignment blows, going to the library to look at definitions of word! Words are boring!” one kid screamed toward the sky a bit overdramatically.
“Take it easy! The library here is pretty good andbesides, it is just homework.”
Even though she had no idea what they had said, she knew that the kids were as confused about something as she was about the whole city and decided to follow the two to this thing called ‘the library.’
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When she finally arrived with those kids at the library, she was surprised to see all those weird things on the selves. She went up to one of the selves and grabbed the weird thing. When she opened it, she felt some of the information from it flow into her; however, since she didn’t know this, she went to the next book and continued the process. About eight hours later, the girl had read half the books and learned more than enough words to communicate with people and formulate ideas and strategies. Now I am not a simpleton walking around the city absentmindedly. But I still look like a monster and… her mind began to blank out as a strong sensation began in her stomach and spread through her body. She felt this sensation hit her brain hard, but her senses didn’t dull, instead they strengthen; she could hear steps coming her way, but she was too dazed by her this strange sensation to come up with anything.
“…Err…lady,” the librarian eyed the zombie girl with disgust and zombie girl looked at the librarian with… a blank stare. “The library is closed and you must leave now. Come back tomorrow, o.k.?” The girl left the cavern of knowledge in a manic rush.
If I had stayed there…I…would…have…ate the librarian…What is that delicious aroma? Her whole body seemed to shake with hunger; to her, it felt as if she would fall apart if she didn’t eat anything soon.Her body began following that scent, noticing it becoming more tangy and energizing to her. Soon, her mind began to only sense that smell, all of her other senses just stopped working. She soon came upon the door of a butcher shop and looked inside, drooling like a wolf as she saw all of the different kind of meats: pork chops, tenderloins, t-bones, cuts of turkey, chicken. She could smell the blood dripping off of it and it was too much for her. She grabbed the door and ripped it clear off the hinges, flinging it threw a window of a building on the other side of the street. Not even the deafening, high-pitched alarm could frighten her away as she greedily began to eat all the food.
It would be another four hours before she gained back any resemblance of cognitive thinking. I need to leave…now! Bye, my beautiful meats. She managed to free herself away from the butcher shop and began walking through the town. I have disgraced myself. I mean, why would somebody date a person who has the eating etiquette of a wolfish pig? At least I know now that I need food to control myself. Also, I’m still not close enough to winning over that one boy’s heart…figuratively speaking of course. She was drooling when she thought of the word ’heart.’ I need to learn self-control if I’m to win his…love!
Somehow, Someway, her mind had led her right back to Timothy’s house. Maybe fate wants us to be together, her heart had beat again for a minute due to the warmth that the thought gave her. She entered and began rummaging through the boy’s stuff. She learned that her object of her affections name was Timothy and that they had a lot in common. She found it extremely ironic that he worked at and owned a cemetery and then started to rearrange everything back to the way it was when she heard the sound of tires squealing. She knew it was Timothy somehow, and even though she believed herself unready, she prepared herself to meet her love interest.
When Timothy opened the door to the main room, he was surprised to see the dead girl standing there, as if it was waiting for him. There eyes met and the two stood there for what seemed to be hours, frozen, waiting for one the other to act.A few minutes painfully ticked by until the girl finally gathered enough courage to say, “Hi,” which came out so low that it was barely understandable, but Timothy understood and couldn’t believe it. He thought about running, but instead he timidly said, “What did you…Did you just…I must be dreaming.” He gripped his head in a vain attempt to wake himself up; the girl laughed at him, saying, “You have a weird sense of humor, I like that.”
“You did speak! Aren’t you…well…dead?” The girl hesitated before saying “Uh…I’m as alive as I feel,” she then tried to change the topic, but Timothy then asked, “Do you have a heartbeat?”
“Only when I see you,” she muttered under her breathe so he couldn’t hear; she said out loud, “Err…No, I do not.”
“Then, you are dead!” Timothy started to become hysterical; the girl was afraid that his screams would bring over unwanted people and she found it completely necessary to hit Timothy hard enough in the head to knock him unconscious.
When Timothy woke up, he found himself on the bed, gagged, and the girl sitting onhim to prevent him from escaping. He tried to throw her off of him, but she didn’t even bulge when he began to wriggle his body; furthermore, her silky, white dress kept tickling him, making it hard to gain enough momentum to push her off.
“Now, I am going to remove this sock from your mouth and when I do, don’t scream. Stay calm, I just want to talk and besides, I have already eaten awhile back, so I don’t have a bloodlust…so to speak.” She smiled a bit in an attempt to calm him down and it almost worked until Timothy noticed chunks of meat and dried bloodstains on her teeth, which strengthened his fears. The girl saw this and decided to say, “Well, if you’re still afraid of me, I could just have that dirty, rancid gym sock in your mouth and push down on your dust harder causing…forcing air out of you, thus causing you to breathe in more of those fumes.” Timothy calmed down a bit, primarily because he really didn’t want to breathe in that smell, but a small part of him really wanted to get to know this…girl better. When the girl saw he was ready to comply, she removed the sock from his mouth and threw it away. Timothy began breathing in more deeply, although he was still was restricted by this girl sitting on him.
“So…what is your name” Timothy asked this a few moments after deciding he might as well speak to her.
“I suppose I don’t have one yet…I think I shall call myself Tequil…”
“Why Tequil? Why not Mary or Karen?”
“Why Timothy? Why not Thomas or Carl?” Tequil thought that she picked a good name and even though she loved Timothy, she wouldhate anybody who laughed at her new name.
“I was just kidding, calm down,” Timothy was quite surprised at the fact that only a few seconds ago he was afraid that she was going to eat him and now he was treating her as a newly found friend. “Hey…Tequil, what time is it?” When Tequil told him the time, he realized that he was late to work and he began to panic.
“Calm down! What’s wrong?” Tequil felt his heart race and saw that he was perspiringquite a bit.
“I have to go to work! Get…off!”
“Timothy, are you stressed out by your job?”
“Gee, whatever gave you that idea!” Timothy’s voice at this point was full of bitterness and hatred.
“Hmm…I see…” Tequil got off of Timothy, for she knew that humans needed air to calm themselves properly without fainting; Timothy was, however, not thinking about catching his breath, but about going to work; so as soon as Tequil got off of him, he accidentally threw himself to the floor on his face.
“Well,” Tequil was trying her best to not laugh at his misfortune, but was finding it hard to contain herself, “I see that you are in no condition to go to work today, but fear not, I shall try to fill in for you!” Tequil hugged Timothy very close to her then ranout the room, closing the door behind her. Even a talking zombie is still a zombie, no brains. I mean, it is not like I’m locked in or anything…He was surprised to find out that not only the door was locked, but that he also heard his car rev up and drive away.
Tequil knew that Timothy would be mad at her, but she knew that he needs rest. Luckily for me, it is still dark outside, but the sun will probably be rising in four hours. Since she read books on drivers, cars, and maps of Laseng, she easily drove the car to the cemetery. She unlocked the gate and drove the car up to the parking area on the mountain. When she reached the summit on the mountain where the cemetery was located, she was surprised that the state of the place was so bad.No wonder he is so bitter, this place would drive me crazy as well if I had to look at it for fourteen hours a day. I should try to fix this place up for him. The act of beautifying the cemetery took two hours since she was taking her sweet time with the project and was admiring her handiwork along the way. The cemetery was exponentially improved as a result of her: The marble statues and headstones were return to their former glory and had a gold trim to give it an elegant look; she also re-did the gates with white gold paint that she made with the knowledge she obtained from the library; finally, she replaced all of the dead and wilting flowers with fresh ones and placed extras on the gravestones.
When she was done, she went to the side of the caretakers’ building, sat down, and allowed her mind to float. It feels weird being here, like I belong here with…my people… She saw the sun beginning to rise and decided to go hide in the building to avoid people from spotting her.
Timothy, in the meantime, was trying to open the door and go to the cemetery, but without his key, the house couldn’t be opened or closed, entered or exited. Can’t believe that I have been locked in by a zombie that can talk and drive a car! But I suppose she is smart enough to handle the cemetery…I mean, whom better to know the needs ofa cemetery than the dead? He continued to humor himself in an attempt to keep calm and cool, but it was an attempt in futility. He couldn’t keep his mind off the cemetery and a strong psychological need to see how Tequil and the cemetery began to form. If the people of the city see Tequil, they are going to think that I created her and they would come after me! He began to freak, but realized that he had a spare house key under his bed. After a period of feeling very foolish, he grabbed the key and ran to the bus station to get a ride to the cemetery.
When he got there, he was dumbfounded by how better the cemetery looked. He was also surprised that there were actually people visiting their dearly departed. One of them came up to him to congratulate Timothy on the renovations, but Timothy’s modest forced him to say, “Well, it wasn’t me, but a good friend of mine’s who fixed everything.” Tequil, who was now hidden within the caretaker’s office, overheard him and thought, He called me a friend! That is one step away from best friend, which is one step away from lovers, which is one step away from being married! Her mind, however, also pointed out that she was dead, so why would anybody marry her? Especially since she looked like those old artifacts called baseballs that she had read about with all those stitches covering her body.
In any case, after the cemetery closed down for the day, Timothy found Tequil in the office and said, “Tank you.” His voice seemed to waver a bit when he congratulated her. “You don’t know how much this act means to me.” Tequil decided to probe him further and Timothy began to explain why the graveyard was so cherished by him.
“When I was eighteen years old, I had moved here from Zanzubar to attend college here. After buying a place to stay and paying forcollege classes, I was broke and in dire need of a job to continue to live here. The only job I could find, however, was at the cemetery as an assistant to the caretaker here called Kenny. When I told my friends that I had gotten the job at the cemetery, they didn’t like that and demanded that I quit. However, I still neededthe money and continued working there, so my friends dumped me. I began working at the cemetery; interestingly enough, I began to become friends with Kenny. A lot of people thought badly of him, believed he was either crazy or a mass murder, but he was neither, I’m sure of it. He was just a regular person, who was very caring of people, even though they thought so lowly of him. He became a father-figure to me, a person whom you truly did want to emulate when you became older. So I was shocked that this old man was arrested for having an organized crime organization.
“As you may have imagined, I was upset, but I decided to look past his crimes, however heinous they may be, and focus on the good he did do. He was convicted and sentenced to death; when he did,I was the only one who went to the funeral. In Kenny’s will, he had left to me the graveyard. I have been trying to take care of this place, but, even when I did graduate from college, I was having difficulties trying to balance this with my private life…I almost thought that I had…thank you again, Tequil,” there were tears in his eyes as he finished the story. Tequil hugged Timothy and started to console him, saying, “I…don’t think he was a part of the crime organization.”
“Thanks Tequil, you are a good friend.”