Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

I didn't notice the mark at first.

It was small, hidden beneath my collarbone—half bruise, half burn, shaped like the crescent of a jaw.

It wasn't a bite.

It was him.

The world ended, and people got hungry—for food, for warmth, for touch.

He got hungry for something else: permanence.

We found each other in a flooded church, scavenging the same can of peaches. I let him have it. He offered a flashlight. That's how love begins now. Trade-offs.

We traveled together after that—just two lonely ghosts with skin.

He was soft-spoken, always alert. Too alert.

I mistook vigilance for care. Maybe that's on me.

He never asked me to stay.

He never had to.

His fingers said everything when they traced the edge of my jaw at night.

"You're safe with me," he whispered once.

And maybe I was.

But safety isn't freedom.

The mark came during a fever dream of a night.

We'd cleared an apartment tower, found wine in the broken minibar. We drank.

He laughed, I cried. The world spun too fast.

We kissed like we'd never get another chance.

I didn't remember the pressure of his mouth on my chest.

Didn't remember the heat of his lighter.

Didn't remember the exact moment it stopped being about love and started being about proof.

Next morning, the skin there was raw. This chapter's true source is My Virtual Library Empire (M|V|LEMP-YR).

He called it an accident.

"I was drunk," he said. "You leaned too close to the flame."

But he looked too proud when he said it.

Like he'd carved his name into a tree.

Only the tree was me.

I should've run then.

But you know what's worse than being marked?

Being alone.

Weeks passed. We fought together. Slept together. Hid together.

He never hit me. Never shouted.

Just… claimed space.

In rooms. In beds. In me.

One night, we took shelter in a museum.

Art still clung to the walls—portraits of people who mattered.

He stood behind me while I looked at them.

"You're the only masterpiece left," he whispered.

And his fingers brushed the mark.

Like a signature.

The infection took him two days later.

Bitten during a bridge ambush.

He hid it. Told me it was a scratch.

He smiled too much. Kissed me too long. Slept too close.

When I woke, he was gone. Left a note:

"You're mine now. Forever."

I found his body in the museum foyer.

Tangled in the arms of a headless statue, bleeding from the eyes.

He'd turned. Then turned again.

I sat beside him for an hour.

Then I burned the whole museum down.

The mark never faded.

Not fully.

I cover it with cloth. Sometimes paint. Sometimes ash.

But in the mirror, I always see it.

Not a scar.

A warning.