bluedreaming

Fandom: Original
Rating: T
Length: 100 words
Content notes: non-specific references to nonfictional massacres
Author notes: The bones of this story came to me as a mental image, initially prompted by a revisiting of We Do Not Part by Han Kang, the dry bones in Ezekiel 37, and the reclamation of residential school victims, among far too many other examples. Take the accountability of ghosts and the physicality of zombies and frame them as a reminder rather than a thriller. Then this prompt came up and it felt like a perfect match.
Summary: Human memory is both long and short, aided by reminders that can’t be dismissed.

There are so many movies about zombies, but when it really happened, it wasn’t like that.

It’s impossible to pinpoint the first occurrence. It probably happened in a lot of places around the same time: practically an indictment, all told.

We didn’t understand, not at first. Just dead bodies, standing. Where did they come from? How were they there?

But the crowds. The silent faces. The fact that they couldn’t be budged.

Massacres are too large a horror for the mind to truly comprehend, until the bodies climb out of the ground and show you.

The dead never leave us.