Twenty Years Hard Labor - Part I

I've been reading an anthology of horror stories - all about zombies.

So I'm inspired to try to write my own "living dead" story, and I've decided to write it on this blog. Hope y'all enjoy it.


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“Twenty years of hard labor. Bailiff, escort him out of the courtroom.”

Gary sat in stunned silence. He looked over at his lawyer and received a sorrowful look for his trouble.

“Look, Gary, we can appeal. I’ll file it right away. We can probably get you out on bail while you wait for it to be heard. We will beat this thing, OK?”

Gary nodded, his mind whirling. Don was supposed to be the best, but from the first moment Gary had stepped in the courtroom two weeks ago, nothing had gone as the lawyer had told him it would. He felt the world crashing down around him now, and his legs were so shaky he needed help from Don and the bailiff in order to stand up and walk around the defendant’s table.

“You going to be okay, Gary?” the lawyer asked.

“No. I’m going to have the life sucked out of me - even though I’m innocent. Of course I’m not going to be okay!” Gary said sharply.

“I’ll come to see you tomorrow morning so we can sign the appeal papers,” said Don. “I’ll have you out on bond before they can chip you, okay?”

“Sure, whatever.” Gary replied. He turned his back on the lawyer and looked at the bailiff. “Let’s go.”

The bailiff clamped one cuff around Gary’s wrist, put his arms behind his back, and fastened the other cuff. Gary could feel the chill of the cold metal and realized that in a couple of days, coldness might be the only thing he would be able to feel. He shivered. Together, he and the bailiff walked slowly to the holding cell that would be his home for the next 24 hours.

“Twenty years as a zombie…” said the bailiff. “hope you enjoy it. The girl you killed wasn’t much older than twenty.”

“I…didn’t….kill….anybody, you moron,” growled Gary. “I was going to marry that girl, in case you weren’t paying attention at the trial. I am the last guy who would want to hurt her!” Now his thoughts turned to Mary Ann and the night he came home and found her lying on the kitchen floor of their apartment, broken and bloody.

“So you’re innocent, just like everybody else, huh?” snorted the bailiff. “If I had a dime for every ‘innocent man’ we send to the graveyard shift, I’d be rich.”

They reached the cell, and the bailiff closed the door. Gary turned around so he could unfasten the cuffs through the bars. “See ya around, zombie!” taunted the bailiff, spinning the cuffs on his finger as he walked away.