Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

They found my letter beneath a pile of charred journals and melted glass.

It had no envelope. Just a folded scrap of brittle paper, edges curled like a withered leaf. The ink was smudged, but the words were still there—scrawled in blood, ash, and trembling hope.

I wrote it for her.

But it was never meant to be read.

Rae was gone.

Or changed. Or beyond what "gone" even meant in a world where the dead wandered.

The night she left, the sky cracked open with lightning.

She stood at the edge of our shelter, her silhouette rimmed with firelight, her body twitching like a marionette on the brink of breaking.

Her voice was almost human. Almost.

"If I stay," she whispered, "I'll hurt you."

I didn't believe her.

I told her she was stronger than it.

I told her she was still mine.

She kissed me with cracked lips.

Held my face like it was something worth remembering.

And then she walked into the smoke, barefoot and burning, like some myth torn from the bones of an old religion.

I tried to follow.

I lasted three days.

But I knew I wouldn't survive long without her—and that she wouldn't forgive herself if she ever returned and found my corpse.

So I stopped in a library.

Charred pages. Shattered silence.

I found a blank sheet wedged between two encyclopedias.

It smelled of mildew and ruin.

But it would do.

I wrote her a letter.

Rae,

I'm not angry you left.

I'm angry that I wasn't brave enough to go with you.

I still feel your kiss in the cracks of my lips. I still see your fire when I close my eyes.

They said the world ended in war and hunger.

But for me, it ended when your name no longer echoed down the hallways.

I wanted more time.

I wanted a stupid future. Arguments. Rotten coffee. Morning breath.

But we got ash and fire. And in it, we still found something like love.

If you ever read this, know that I didn't survive long.

But even if I'm gone—

I loved you. In all your forms.

In blood, in flame, in silence.

You were my apocalypse and my salvation.

– Yours, even in dust. This chapter was originally posted on M^VLEMPYR.

I left the letter near our firepit.

Tucked beneath a stone where we once slow-danced to a tune only we could hear.

I don't know if she ever found it.

I don't know if she could read anymore.

But sometimes, when the wind shifts just right, I smell her—

Burned roses.

Char.

Salt.

And I pretend she reads it.

And cries.

And comes home.