You jolt up suddenly as you hear a faint scratching on some wood. You rub your eyes, removing the sleep from them. The couch you were sleeping on was a little rough on your back, and you groan as you pry yourself from the cushions. Legs wide, you lean your head down as you let your body and mind wake up. You attempt to shake the sleepiness from your mind, but you are groggy from the nap. Raising your arms up over your head, you stretch as far as your shoulders will allow you to. You let out an emphatic groan in an attempt to push the soreness out of your body. Your shoulder blades pop as the air leaves your joints.
You hear the scratching again, surprising you. You are unsure if it is the scratching of the wind pushing a branch against your home, or if it is something else. You start to feel unnerved as the scratching continues. You realize that the scratching is coming from somewhere in the house. You start to walk around, frantically looking for the source of the scoring. You stand at the foot of your stairs leading up to the next floor, but the sound is dimmer. You look in the rooms on the first floor, but every room is empty. Your family is gone, nowhere to be seen.
You walk over to the doorway of the basement and put your ear to the darkness. You hear the scratching and it is louder. You feel a pain in your chest and you start to feel sick. Fear is taking over your body. Something is not right. You look for the nearest weapon, and you find a sharp kitchen knife that is dirtied with crusted food. You clench it fiercely as you pull out your smartphone, turn on the light function, and flash it as you start to descend the stairs. The wood creaks with each step, adding to your uneasiness. You start to reason that it must be an animal that found its way into your house and is looking for a way out, you try to reason with yourself. Probably a mouse or a rat. But you know you’re lying to yourself. You feel a presence down here that you don’t want to see.
As you are two steps from the bottom, the scratching stops. You can hear yourself breathing as you are almost completely encased by darkness. You shine the light around as you stop at the last step. You slowly move the light from left to right, looking for anything that would cause the noise you heard upstairs. Suddenly, you see the back of a foot and part of someone’s leg. You freeze for a moment, and then move the light over. A person stands there in front of you, faced away and their head hanging to the left. Their right arm is resting on a wooden shelf with large splinters digging into their fingers and hands. Blood is dripping onto the shelf and floor from the hand.
You take a closer look and you recognize the clothes the person is wearing. “That’s...that’s...” Just then, the person’s head slowly raises. It starts to turn around. You can see the blood stained into the front of the shirt. The knees are scraped and ripped, exposing grey flesh. You look at the face and see your significant other. But it’s not your significant other. You see their mouth ajar as saliva and blood drip out of their mouth. The stench is almost unbearable, overwhelming you. You look at the eyes, but you don’t see your significant other. You see a monster. Your heart drops as you are frozen. The monster who used to be your significant lets out a large groan as they start to shuffle over to you.
This week on the podcast, we had a lot to discuss. We start off the discussion by discussing the future of zombies. Is the trope played out, or are there more stories waiting to be written? Next, we finally answer the question a listener posed to us in December: what, in particular, influences us four hosts to choose and play the games that we do? Next, we catch each other up with the games that we have been playing briefly before discussing the results of the social media polls. Sink your teeth into the brains of this episode!
Intro: 0:27
Zombies discussion: 25:40
Listener question: 58:05
Social media polls: 1:27:30
Patreon Shout Outs: 1:54:46
Image by Keith Allison licensed under Creative Commons Attribution
Recorded January 25, 2019
