Zombie Christmas

You'd be surprised at how many Christmas horror stories I had to wade through before I settled on this. It's The Dead of Winter by William T. Tripp.

(Link)

Description:

"It's winter in the zombie apocalypse, and three men see a light in the east. What could it mean?"

Eh? Get it? Three wise men? Jesus? Dead of Winter? Get it? No? Then I'll tell you. This is a story about Melcher, Jaspar, and Ballard, three dudes that see a search light in the zombie apocalypse. Just in case you didn't know, the three Magis' names were Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. There's no freaking way you would notice that, though, unless you read the description and the title and then the story and then made a blog post about Zombie Christmas and read the title and description again and said to yourself, "Oh. Huh."

Well the three wise men go toward the light, encountering no zombies on the way. Once there, Melcher runs ahead when he hears an infant crying and startles a man, who they promptly kill. Turns out the dude's name was Joey. Eh? Get it? Joseph? Baby Jesus? Get it?

So the kid's cries attract Herod, or the zombies or whatever, and the light stays on just long enough for a man named Red to come with his helicopter, piloted by a man named Donnor, and shoot all the zombies. Get it? Like when Santa Claus came and visited the manger?

The End.

Other than the weird Christmas Easter egg thing, this story was spectacularly uneventful. It is a really good example of zombie fiction that fails at even using the zombie gimmick to prop itself up. Let's analyze for a sec.

First, Melcher is a former "squad leader" for the National Guard. This means that the author probably hasn't been anywhere near the military, but that's not a huge issue. It is incredibly cliche to have a former military guy leading a small band in zombie fiction, and it also ruins the Magi metaphor. What, now he's like the equivalent of a Roman soldier? I know you looked up the three magis' names, you could have just read the rest of the page. I don't think it's too highbrowed of me to expect that. Although the names are pretty damned half-assed.

And the zombies are named Zed. Man, that seems clever, almost like you ripped it off, dude. Maybe you can give me some advice, I am writing a story about really short people that don't wear shoes and have curly hair and hang out with wizards. I'm thinking of calling them fucking Hobbits, what do you think?

The names I can overlook, but there was absolutely nothing original about this story. He described the zombies in their cars, unable to get out as if it hadn't been in every zombie fiction ever, and went on for like half his story about how they still performed useless, muscle-memory tasks. What next, will you describe that they smell like rotting flesh and amble slowly? Or that they eat human flesh? Good thing there is something else to this story.

Oh wait, there fucking isn't. It wasn't even original in its shittiness, like the other stories I review; it was an utter waste of time. I would have learned more if I had used that time to find out how many times I can blink in a minute--over and OVER.

Ratings:

Christmas Allusions: Fail out of 5. What the hell, dude? I hope you really think Santa Claus saved Jesus from the Romans and that the three wise men fucking brutally murdered Joseph. The only creative part was the last paragraph being a parody of The Night Before Christmas, and I'm pretty sure the author copied that down from his sixth grade science notebook from the time he showed it to all his friends and they laughed sooo hard!

Emotion: 0 out of 5. You can have an unoriginal story and it's fine as long as you have emotions, but the most we got out of this guy was Mary being teary-eyed. And even at that, these dudes stormed in and killed her husband and she was just like, "What did you do that for? Now he won't be alive anymore." Then the wise men got on the chopper with Santa and everything was right...

Zombies: The point of them is to be scary. They are literally like the worst thing we can think of. But no, let's just write a story where the only danger is Melchior being too jumpy and slaughtering Jesus's dad. Sorry if that seems sacrilegious, don't blame me, blame the guy that wrote it. 0 out of 5.

Overall: 2 out of 5. I'm not worse off having read this. Still, it was pointless. But don't take my word for it!


Just take a look, it's in a book, at amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall

Frustration Event

This week it's Extinction Event... err, sorry, EXTINCTION EVENT by Wil Adams. But first, Wil, you have to add another "l" to your name. Only Wil Wheaton gets away with that, and just barely.

(Link)

Now, Will, let me tell you when I read your description, I knew this was a fit:

"One of the hottest e-short stories of the year is Extinction Event. A first person account of the end of life on Earth as we know it."

Yes, even the author agrees it is great. No, no, I get it, it's 2012, very clever. I'm not so sure what the picture is supposed to be there... the main character has nothing to do with the military, even defies governmental authority in the story, but there are no military men. Anyway...

I actually liked some of this guy's descriptions; it seems like he's a student of art or something. But just when he's about to do something great he does something haphazard that makes me feel like I'm reading unedited drunken rantings. For example: "I paused for a moment to ponder: what happened to all the existentialists, the religious, the nihilists? They had all disappeared once it was clear the world was endiwlefj FUCK YOIU I"M NNOT DRUNK" Okay, that's not really in there. Here's an actual example:

"The yard in front of the duplex is surreal--like a work by Dali or someone. A Buick--front end crumpled around the trunk of a palm tree--near the verge of my yard. Two SUVs lay like beaten dogs at the junction between the street and the sidewalk. The body of a young Oriental woman has rolled from one of them and lies like exotic flotsam in the green grass of my lawn. If I look closely perhaps I will see the gray color of her brain through the jagged fracture that mars her otherwise flawless face. I do not look."

At first glance this paragraph seems kinda artful, other than the weird emdashes. But then you're like "the verge of my yard?" That's odd. "I sat on the precipice of my chair reading this." And who makes a simile of beaten dogs like that... does this guy beat dogs enough for them to be a clearer image in his head than a car on its side (which we've all seen)? And do people still use the word Oriental? Isn't that supposed to be offensive? And mars is just a strange word altogether. Isn't grass almost always green? And this is only magnified by a bitchload of typos sprayed throughout so I have to wonder what's really going on here. This was my example of a good paragraph of his. The bad ones go something more like, "In she rushes, and without a 'hello' a 'bye your leave' or anything more than..." The fuck? And I promise you I gave you more context and preparation for that sentence than the story did.

So when I get to the part where culturally his Latino woman literally leaves him a note like, "It is your responsibility as a man to figure out how to save my life so you have to do it," and you're like "Is this unreliable narration using absurdity to-?" No. Because he does save the entire world, single-handedly, because of his Latin machismo, by getting on the internet and telling NASA all they need to do is launch every nuclear warhead on earth at the moon to knock it out of the sky (no, don't even go google that, it's NOT fucking possible). If you think I'm joking you clearly haven't read any of the stories I've reviewed so far.

Ratings:

Drunk: "On a scale of one to ten, I'm soooooo wasted." Or watching TV or trying to escape a burning building or something. I'm not going to be a grammar nazi, because I'm convinced anyone with eyes could fix these grammar mistakes.

Badassitude: 10 out of 5. Yeah it was really edgy when you used all those ellipses, and mentioned the cat eating a child's eye and a woman clawing her face open and a crushed stroller and took the extra letter off your name and, shit, man, I don't know where the hell you get all these badass ideas.

Conflict Resolution: 0 out of 5. Come on, man, anything would have done better than "but I have to prove I'm a man...fuck it, MAGIC, the end."

Overall: Uh...2.5 out of 5. It wasn't so bad until the second half. But the second half was complete shit. Wish I had something more entertaining to say to that. Uh.... uh.... poop! HA!

Haha seriously poop. Get it? amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall

Shit Sense

Let me explain. Today I read two short stories. The first was a gay romance about angels and demons and it was just too boring to review. It turned out to be just like a pretty crappy story surrounding a gay sex scene, and I didn't have it in me to make a bunch of gay jokes and call it good or whatever so I decided I needed to find something truly shitty to read. I mean, I pride myself on being able to spot good material just by the cover and title on the first try, so I was disappointed. But then I saw this one and my shit senses tingled. It's called Fear Sense by Ron Schrader. Heh, no offense if your name is Ron, but it just seems like you're already at a disadvantage with that name because your parents have got to be weird.

 

(Link)

Check out the cover! That font just says Ron all over it. And the shitty ominous wolf behind the cloud of MSPaint spray-paint mist? This looks enthralling. Here's the description:

"After a vicious attack on their village, Aiden and Cade escape to the mountain with only their rifles and wits, hoping to find safety from the beast and it's killing spree. They soon learn that they are not alone and in fact are being hunted. 'Fear Sense' is an easy read that both teens and adults will enjoy

Note: This short story is 4,126 words in length.

About the Author: Ron Schrader has been writing since as early as grade school, focusing primarily on short stories. In November 2012 he finally made the decision to begin publishing his work. Ron's stories are written for adults, but kept clean enough that his own young children can enjoy them as well."

Aiden and Cade? Who names someone Aiden? Hey, by the way, by young children how young do you mean? 'Cause like I'm pretty sure you graphically described a lot of violence in here including a guy with a severed leg bleeding to death in front of the main character. I'm glad I didn't read this to my five-year-old daughter before bed, because she would be terrified of your shallow descriptions of manikin-like emotions, Ronald!

This story is best reviewed by plot synopsis. So Aiden and Cade, a pair of boys that are more bi-curious than the duo in the gay erotica I read earlier, are trying to get to the mountain peak. Almost immediately Cade is half eaten in the most confusing scene ever written. They see the beast's eyes and then: "I pulled my rifle out, aimed and fired. The canyon echoed into dead silence once again. I rushed to the two black lumps that lie on the cold canyon floor, lifeless in the pale light of the rising moon." I can only assume this means he killed the black lumps dead. Since they are lifeless.

Well the lumps turn out to be living things, neither of which are lifeless, and one of which is a mauled Cade. Cade sa...ys...some...th...i...n...gs....dramatically in annoying ellipses, but then suddenly Ron realizes he has only written like a thousand words and has to drag this story on a little longer. Aiden decides to carry Cade, they find a cave where a villager dies in front of him, Cade can then walk again because it's more convenient for him to be standing away from Aiden for the part where Cade gets attacked again, and he dies after all. Piss luck.

Aiden realizes that the cave from before was the beast's den and he is pissed off and gonna kill it even though the two times he has shot it before did basically nothing. Don't worry, Ron has this covered. Aiden goes into the den and is promptly and casually killed.

Then he wakes up. Fuck you, Ron.

Well, at least the story doesn't end there. Cade comes and helps calm a freaked-out Aiden. "It's just a dream bro... No, I didn't mean you should stop holding me..." Then Aiden explains that there was a strange mist right before sunset and a stranger came to the village with insane eyes like he'd seen some crazy shit then the village was attacked. That jolts Ron, who, like a teenage girl that bumped into her friend at the store and wanted to tell everyone how "ironic" it was, literally says "with a sudden fear in his countenance, 'It's really foggy out right now, and the sun is about to set.'" Get OUT.

They go outside, and sure enough there's a crazy dude with wild eyes, and they shoot that bastard dead! Teach you for seeing beasts.

Well the beast doesn't come after that and Ron ends his tale with a "maybe there was no beast after all, maybe they were just imagining things, or maybe..." Yeah. Maybe they committed murder for no reason. You think about that, Ron? I'm gonna give this story to my children now.

Ratingsss:

Grammar: 0 out of 5. One minute they we're just walking then, I couldnt follow the story becau'se the phrasing got all not normal and misnaturalized with apostrophe's added in random places.

Plot: 1 out of 5. He had conflict. Oh wait, then it was all just a dream. But it was psychological. But not in the way that he investigated any feelings at all, especially not ones concerned with shooting a complete stranger dead in the middle of the street.

Beginner's Luck: Nah, now I'm just being mean. Don't stop writing, Ron. Do go back and edit your stuff. But then again, he did say he had been writing since elementary school. It all makes sense now! This is the story from elementary school, right? I should publish my stuff from school. I wrote a series about a kid that saved a family of tigers, and one about getting sucked into a game of Risk. But then Jumanji came out. Fuck you, Robin Williams!

Overall: 2 out of 5, I guess. This story was not tense or scary like it was meant to be, but it seems like he knows that and aimed it at teens, or preteens or something. You remember Goosebumps? That shit is not at all scary if you read it as an adult. But, it also didn't have people bleeding to death pleading for their children and shit. I guess the point is: find your audience and stick to it, Ron.

If you want to read my story about the board game coming to life, go to amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall