1992
There are zombie children from hell in the kitchen. I can't tell how many, but I know they're there. I can hear them, dancing mindlessly around the table, yelling "La la la la la la" *thud* there goes another cat - damn. I haven't been liking the cats much lately, but they deserved better, they would've had a chance if I'd released them out in the wild, in the toxic waste dump down the road like I'd been planning to, but no - zombie children from hell, and that's it for the cats.
One of them keeps saying "Do you want another one", and I see, in my mind's eye, the unholy tower of english muffins that they parade around, their wrinkled grey leathery skin, their beady little glass eyes, their misshappen skulls housing God knows how many flavors of oatmeal for brains, "Do you want another" as they open up the bag of english muffins, fork split, remove sides and pile in center, REPEAT, ha ha ha ha ha, REPEAT, I'm really getting pissed off now; I really wanted an english muffin for breakfast.
Maybe they'll get into my collection of famous rhinocerous hunting knives...
Of course, the kitchen is a place fraught with peril for a zombie child from hell. Mine is, anyway. There are traps set, all about it, traps just waiting to be sprung by the unwitting zombie child from hell (and have you ever met a witting one?).
There is the bag of cinammon bread, bound by the little wire thing with only one end, so they can't untwist it; you know the kind, you can get it at any decent supermarket. The metal chopsticks, so that if they do succeed in getting slices of bread out of the bag, when they toast them the toaster will jam (I throw the switch to enable the "fry zombie children mode" feature every night before I go to sleep) and they'll use the conveniently placed metal chopsticks to pry out the bread and - ha ha!! - ZAP.
Then there is the obscure African medical text, next to the blender, and the Compleat, Unabridged multimedia Joy of Cooking on CD ROM - the version that includes five recipes using zombie children (they're at the end - look them up - they're under 'Z'), including fricasse and mousse.
The self-activating power tools with deluxe heat seeking attachments are sometimes useful as well.
Of course, the cupboard has a full assortment of rat poison lollipops and apples with razors in them, but most zombie children from hell keep away from that sort of stuff these days.
If I mentioned the biological warfare experiments in the refrigerator, you'd think I was joking, of course, everybody jokes about their little biohazard zone, but not everybody has venusian tofu churning madly in its little plastic carton waiting to be freed by some unsuspecting zombie child from hell. Yes, just think of all those germs that were out of a job when the cold war ended and the defense budget was cut. They're all on unemployment in my refrigerator.
"La la la la la la" - crash - bang - they've run out of cats and are into the furniture now, I can see in my mind the broken chairs and tables as the zombie children from hell dance, leathery midget dervishes around a tower of english muffins, the trick table having failed to collapse on them when the ran under it - are they too tall, and so failed to run under it, or did the electric eye that triggers the table simply not work again as it is prone to at the most incovenient times?
I envision the house's defense systems finally kicking in and decide to bring up good background music for it, and imagine my horror to find that the CD player was *filled* with B52's albums from another life and there was simply not a good recording of a black mass anywhere within eyeshot and I simply could not conceive of shaking my cosmic thing under these circumstances.
When it's over - and all good things must end, and this, too - after the final crashes and bangs and the shattering of glass and the faint, burning chemical smell, mixed with that odor of flesh - I hope they didn't get Rob and Cath - as I hear the sound of the wok spinning down in the middle of the floor; as I hear the power tools drop to the shelf, and the laser defense system whirs softly to itself and the console displays views from all reality levels of the kitchen, from the satellite overhead - yes, the satellite of love - well, I join with the neighbors as they build the bonfire; I chip in my two cups of gasoline (from the lawnmower; the lawn has been dead for years, anyway, ever since the chemical spill from the cantaloupe truck), I buy a bag of popcorn to eat in mindless ritual as I watch the show, I turn back as the greasy black smoke pours from the pyre and the "la la la la la"s are now punctuated by "sizzle" and "hiss"; I wonder who the hell I'm going to find at the bottom of the garbage disposal when I clean the kitchen; and I think, well, that's the only real way to deal with zombie children from hell. I wish they'd left me an english muffin, though.