Unholy Trinity: Home … by Anthony Ferguson

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

Home

Keira was waiting on top of the hill overlooking my old school. I could always count on my wife, even after the plague.

“You find them?”

I nodded. “Just Mum… Dad was her first meal.”

She hugged me.

“I loved them too.”

“You ever wonder if the undead have memories?”

“Huh?”

“Mum and I had a ritual. Every morning on the way to school, I’d stop here and turn toward our house. She would be on the back porch waving.”

I pointed to the place I had tethered Mum.

There she was.

I raised my arm and waved to her…

Neighbour

On the streets of my childhood, a sound brings me running. The house two down from my parents, a woman in the back yard. A stranger. She is backed against the fence. An undead child, pigtails hanging over ruined face, encroaches on her.

I reach in desperation for a garden stake. Nod at the woman. Her pupils dilate. From behind I smash the dead thing’s head, even as the woman screams, “Noooo!”

Puzzled, I drop the weapon, as she runs to the fallen child and cradles the dead thing in her arms.

“My daughter,” she screams at me. “My baby.”

Goodbye

I find Keira in the lounge room, she has her back to me.

Edging closer, I see she is picking up our framed family photographs and gazing at them. Memories of our wedding day, holidays in the sun or snow. Happy days.

She turns and I see she is crying.

“I’m sorry I didn’t give you children,” she says.

I touch her hand, ignoring the ominous bloody wound on her upper arm. The harbinger of doom.

“It’s okay.” I squeeze her fingers.

I raise my other arm toward her head, the one holding the knife.

“I love you,” I say.