Zombie Drabble #393 "Through The Kitchen Window"

The soap bubbles are bursting one by one, big ones first. Her hands are pushed into latex gloves that stretch and snap into place. Through the kitchen window there comes a cool breeze carrying the smell of barbecuing and the sound of a dog barking and a distant siren.

She scrubs and rinses a plate, places it in the drying rack. She does the same with another. The dog has stopped barking,  the siren persists.

Someone falls over the back fence, lands heavily in unraked leaves. She watches them struggle to unsteady feet, begin shambling towards her. She stops scrubbing.

18 comments:

  1. Yay, open comments. At least for now. ;-)

    Anyway, love this one. I can see the scene, and the use of short sentences keeps the action moving. Also, I DO want doing the dishes to be more interesting, but I'll be fine without any zombies showing up in my backyard. Just sayin.

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    1. Thanks! :-) Yeah, you don't want zombies complicating your household chores. It's just not worth it.

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  2. I like the short choppy sentences a lot. It sets up the action well.

    good job

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  3. Zombies and hand washing dishes, two of my least favorite things. I like all the little details - the quieting of the barking dog, the siren and the unraked leaves. It makes the scene feel real.

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  4. Ah! This is creepy! Damn, stuff like this never happens when I'm washing the dishes. :-)

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  5. I like the intrusion of the unexpected into the mundane - I had a vision, for my piece, of a woman who day dreamed herself a super-hero and doing super-hero stuff who is suddenly snapped back to reality only to find herself doing the dishes.

    100 words was not enough to draw the scene as completely as I would like to have done. So I went another way. But I like what you have done here - shewn a slice of a much larger story. Well Done.

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  6. I like the short sentences that read almost like stage direction, peppered with vivid details that make it definitely not stage direction. Well done. Those pesky zombies are at it again!

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  7. Is it weird that my heart is beating a little faster? I thought not. :) Nicely done 100, David.

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  8. I enjoyed this. My only critique is that if you didn't have zombie in the title, i might not have gotten that.

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    1. But I did so you did! :-) I actually do that to differentiate the genre drabbles by category (SF, Fantasy, Zombie) but I've also found that it aids the reader in approaching the piece with the correct set of assumptions. I also like to use the actual title itself — though i didn't do that with this one — to give the reader a bit more information. I don't think of it as cheating, because it's gotta have a title anyway. :-)

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  9. I have a confession! I love Zombies. My friend and I are going to try and be extra on "The walking Dead" Its filmed semi close to where I live. great post!

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    1. Thank you very much! I hope you get on TWD, that would be awesome. :-)

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