Part 1:
I walked down the creaky stairs to the abandoned building’s basement. It was damp, dusty, and empty. Until I turned the light on and saw the barrel.
Part 2:
I heard a beeping noise coming from the barrel and noticed a light on top started blinking. As I approached the rusty metal barrel, I saw the glass window on top. Is that… a face?!
Part 3:
I couldn’t believe it! There was a human corpse inside this barrel in this old, dingy basement! My mind was so rattled I hardly noticed the beeping was now accompanied by a sickening bubbling.
Part 4:
The beeping and gurgling from within the barrel seemed to grow louder as my mind started to realize what my eyes perceived: the corpse—it was coming apart!
Part 5:
I watched in abject horror as the flesh continued to fall freshly away from the rotted bone and muscle, polluting the bubbling vat. It wasn’t long until the eyelids dissolved, revealing unseeing dead eyes.
Part 6:
My body was frozen leaning over this toxic barrel of human remains, watching as more flesh and more gore dissolved into the unknown substance. The beeping and gurgling now overridden by my screaming mind.
Part 7:
I stared as unblinking as the melting corpse in front of me, made sickly aware of how I, too, am a mass of muscle, tendons, bones, and skin. So easily torn asunder by time and toxic chemicals, now black with rotted flesh.
Part 8:
Why is this morbid monstrosity here? Who left this ancient corpse, now eroding before my eyes, in this old, abandoned basement? Why, after all this time, is the light blinking, why is it bubbling, what is happening!?
Part 9:
The cold, slimy skin has fallen mostly away, leaving a ghoulish creature of putrefied muscle, blood and bone. As the nightmarish face was revealed, the gurgling inside the barrel seemed to change.
Part 10:
The dark ichor in the barrel was now thick with dissolved human flesh. I couldn’t help but peer closer into the window, hypnotized by the zombie now smiling at me. I almost didn’t notice the sudden movement within the barrel.
Part 11:
It all happened so fast! It MOVED!
The corpse looked right back at me!
It stared into my stunned eyes, with the look of a beast hungry after decades of sleep, and slammed it’s decomposed hands into the glass… the only barrier between us!
Part 12:
You think I would have ran! But instead I stood in frozen terror as abomination let out a deep, guttural moan. The coldest dread washed over me as I watched the thin glass shatter and knew it was too late.
Part 13:
There was nothing I could do as the zombie-like monster escaped from the barrel. As I lie here and it eats it’s first meal, I only wish I could warn others of this creature: Hideous, Ravenous, Hungry, Dead.
Or should I say: Nearly Dead.