The Long Cold Night

Adrenalin driven blood pounding in his ears, Andy rushed through the graveyard on the cold Halloween night. It had been about 10 minutes since he'd seen Joe, but shots had just missed his head a couple times in the last few minutes so he knew he was close. Andy was low on paintballs and hoping to get off just one more clean shot before Joe got him first, he knew that would be all he would need. This was their yearly tradition, a late night game in the creepiest place in town. Last year they had to run from the sirens as some neighbor had called the cops. Andy and Joe figured that since the paintballs were delible and washed away in rain, they weren't hurting anyone, everyone here was already dead anyway.

Rounding a large, nondescript headstone bearing only the letters RIP, Andy tripped on something sticking out of the ground. He turned on his flashlight, hoping Joe wouldn't take notice and laughed slightly at the figure of an awakening skeleton on the stone next to where he had fallen. Then he turned toward the place where he had tripped and his mouth went suddenly dry as he saw a bony figure emerging slowly from the earth. As the hand raised, it developed a fleshy exterior. At the same time the head pushed through and turned slightly toward his light to look at Andy and a groan expelled from somewhere still buried under the ground. Dropping his light Andy yelled for his friend Joe as he took off as fast as he could running away from the creature. The inimical beast sent showers of dirt in every direction as it finally found its strength and burst from the ground just as the light began to fall. Instead of pursuing however, the undead monster set a course for the parking area just across the street from the cemetery.

Andy was never so glad to be in cross country as he was when he looked back and realized that he'd put some distance between him and the...could it really have been a skeleton? Trying to psych himself into going back to check it out, and finding that he lacked the bravado, he heard Joe around the other side of the headstone he was leaning on. Andy put his paintball gun around the corner and emptied the hopper into his friend. Being fully satisfied by the pained grunts and moans his shots provoked Andy poked his head around to stare straight into the maggot filled, now multicolored, eye sockets of another living dead.

Running straight to the car, Andy collided with a sweaty, terrified looking Joe just before the fence.

"I saw a..." Joe managed to choke out through gasps of icy cold air.

"I saw two dead things! Lets get out of here!" Andy's panicked voice cut off his friend in mid sentence and continued to the car without a second thought.

They piled into the car and after trying the engine a couple times Andy looked in the side mirror and saw a hose trailing from the gas tank just as Joe announced the arrival of the three dead creatures, "They're here! Why won't the car start?!"

"O...O...Our gas tank's been emptied, lock the doors!"

As they locked the doors and armed themselves with windshield scrapers and pens, the creatures lined up in the foggy headlights in front of the car. After a short pause three rotten arms reached up to their heads and pulled off...masks. Andy and Joe nearly passed out with embarrassment as reality dawned on them, very slowly, that their parents had scared them out of their wits to punish them for their graveyard paintball. They later found out that it had either been this or jail time as their escapades the previous year had been a little more connected with them than they had initially believed. Fortunately the authorities had agreed that this was fitting and creative way to deal with the situation.


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