Jamal Luckett's Amazon Page

Jamal Luckett's Amazon Page
Current list of Published works.

Wednesday, August 7, 2019

View from the Top



She hears incessant moaning rising up from below. The sound slowly forcing violent waves of nausea up from the pit of her stomach. Sitting atop the roof of her besieged home hurt and alone. Desperately she fights back an impending deluge of tears. “Gone," She whispers referring to her family. A lost husband, teenage son and a set of preteen twins. Black smoke billows around her like an acrid veil. It trails from her neighbor’s burning house. Wafting across, her face burning, her eyes. The woman rocks back and forth cradling her blooding knee. She had kicked out the attic window to gain access to the roof. Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea she’d ever had. A coughing fit seizes her. The choking smoke forcing her to lay flat against the roof. What greets her is a clear view of a cloudless sky. The sounds around her do not match the peace and tranquility of the sky above. It’s like seeing a beautiful serene painting while trapped in a nightmare. Sirens blare out from all manner of emergency vehicles. Screams and gunshots meld themselves together. Carrying on the breeze like dead leaves. Over everything, the moaning reigns supreme. The undead surrounds her home. From all sides, they call out for her flesh. On the way home from work she heard the tornado sirens wailing. Paying them no mind and thinking the sirens were just a test, she drove onward. Those precious minutes she had wasted. Had cost her everything she held dear. “Hey, lady you alive up there?” She sits up hearing a man’s voice call out. Cautiously scooting to the edge and peering down. The distant man’s voice is reduced to a muted echo. There below she sees her husband. Nameless among the moaning hungry horde. Stephen had died protecting her and the kids. His beautiful blue eyes clouded over in death. Reduced to vile off white puss colored orbs in their sockets. The right side of his neck torn down to the bone. A tiny helpless sob catches in her throat.

“Yes... Yes, my name is Darlene,” she screams back. The voice comes from a middle-aged man. Perched high up in the cab of a huge rusty red pickup truck. The zombies on the outer ring of the pack. Slowly begin to shamble towards the man in the truck. Which idles growling like a snoring bear at the end the sloped driveway. “Well, Darlene,” He says ducking back into the truck’s cab. “Stay there I’m going to pull up as close as I can.” The rusty red truck sitting on the obnoxiously high muddy tires. Lurches forward slowly gaining momentum as it pushes through the zombies. Darlene leaps to her feet. Attempting in vain to cover her face from the billowing smoke. That dances around her like a malevolent spirit. “Okay,” She answers him. Pain creeping up from her injured knee. A small pool of blood now coats the shingles beneath where she had been sitting. Taking an overly cautious step back, Darlene unwittingly loses her footing. Unable to steady herself, she pitches forward, and gravity does the rest. She falls into the waiting undead arms of her recently deceased husband. The dead man greets her with one final embrace. There amid the coalescing mass of walking corpses. It is not an embrace of love. Like the gentle ones, they had shared together. It is a malevolent embrace fueled by an insatiable hunger. This communal embrace is shared by all within the horde. By any who can clamber close enough to grab a piece of the woman’s body. Darlene is alive when the first teeth break her skin. Her screams drowned out the sound of the big red pickup. Its lone panicked stricken occupant behind the wheel. The man beats a hasty retreat. Crushing meandering zombies as he drives away. All thoughts of chivalry having vanished. Like the unfortunate woman who had fallen from the roof.

Thursday, March 21, 2019

Resist


Resist

   Her senses told her that she is indeed awake. Yet, she knows that her eyes are still closed. She floats in that realm. The one that straddles the line between the light of the world. Versus the darkness of the void. Yet her ears tell her that the world around her is alive. The sounds of the city drift into her muted semiconscious existence. She hears sirens from emergency vehicles. The sounds warble about on the breeze. She realizes that her body is swaying rhythmically as if she’s being carried. Someone nearby breathes heavily from exertion. Their breath coming in hurried gasps. As if they are carrying something heavy as they walk. The soundless void of unconsciousness threatens to pull her back down into the darkness. Shaking her head to clear the cobwebs. Now consciously fighting back against the fuzz seeded within her brain. The young woman feels her memories returning. Going back replaying what she knows. The upscale bar downtown, her and her girlfriends drinking … a lot. The evening plays back in her shattered mind. There was a creepy guy they noticed across the bar. The cadence of the breathing around her changes. She feels herself being shifted about. Then the soft metallic jingle of keys causes her mind to race. The young woman’s eyes pop open. Terror drives rivers of icy fear into her heart. Her vision is hampered by black mesh cloth. “I’m in a bag of some sort.” Her mind yells the terrifying fact as a warning.

   A door opens somewhere near her then shuts quickly. It is then that she realizes the sounds from outside have been muted once more. “I'm inside now.” She tells herself on the verge of hysterics. “Now it's just us.” She hears a male’s mousy voice whisper in a hushed almost gleeful tone. “The creepy bastard from the bar.” Her mind drudges up the memory out of the alcohol muted subconscious of her mind. The thought rears up as if trying to free itself from a bubbling tar pit. “I went into the mouth of the alley to smoke…” She traces back the events. Like walking down, a long dark foreboding hallway. Knowing that somewhere in the shadows dangers is waiting to take her. “He spoke to me, I turned around ….” In her mind, she searches for clues. Like watching an old detective show on TV. A show that has been interrupted by static during a piviot moment in the story. “His hand was a blur of movement. Then everything in her world went black.” There she’s all caught up on the show now. But she knows she not going to like the ending. From outside the bag the keys jingle again. She feels herself being lowered down. A new sensation greets her. As her body comes to rest on something hard. A floor perhaps one that is not carpeted. In the outside world, a door is being unlocked. But inside her mind, her father speaks to her. “Virginia, honey…” she can see him now. Dressed in his pristine blue police uniform. He strokes her blonde hair. Kneeling his lanky frame down to her eye level. “Sweetie just because you are short. Does not mean you can’t be tough. It doesn’t mean anything” he told her. Gently placing a kiss on her forehead and wiping her tears away. The next day he enrolled her in a karate class. It was run by one of old his partners Marvin. A huge black man who had become like a second father to her. All throughout the years of her training that followed.
            
      A foul smell filters down into the bag. Accompanied by a cool breeze. Hearing the creak of a rusty door hinge squealing. The putrid odor is mixed with the dank musty smell one finds in a damp basement. Except this basement is filled with dampness and rotting meat. If she had listened to the two greatest men to influence her life. She knows beyond a shadow of a doubt. That she would not be in this life-threatening predicament. None of that matters to Virginia now. With all the subtly she can muster. Laying on the floor in what must be a gym back of some sort. She flexes her feet and hands. Becoming keenly aware that she is not bound. Her hands and feet are free much to her relief. She is indeed small in stature. The young woman knows this fact. But what she lacks in size. Virginia makes up in ferocity. A soft moan from somewhere below catches her attention. It is immediately followed by another and then joined by several more. “Now for the new girl.” She hears the male’s voice. Up from below comes the sound of feet dragging across a floor. The sound of a light switch being flicks echoes around her. She pushes all that back as she feels a body near her. From outside the sack, there’s a tug. Followed by the sound of the bag’s zipper being pulled down. Virginia has closed her eyes once more. She waits coiled, tension rippling through her muscles. But her breathing is slow and easy. And when the man reaches for her. Believing her to still be unconscious from the blow to her head. She strikes the moment his fingers brush her arm. Much the same way a Venus flytrap is triggered by its unsuspecting prey. The scream of anger tears itself from her throat. It startles the kneeling man. He is caught off guard by his “victim.” Driving the palm of her right hand under his chin. His head snaps back from the teeth-rattling force of the blow. Her attack is coordinated and relentless. Just like Marvin taught her. “Don’t stop until your attacker is incapacitated or yields.” Her small left hand delivers a coordinated precise strike to the man’s exposed throat. Virginia leaps up from the bag on the floor snarling. Without pausing, she grabs the hair on both sides of the creepers head. Pulling the stunned man’s head forward. The tiny young woman delivers three lightning quick knee strikes. Each blow decimating her attacker’s face. The first blow ruptures his bottom lip. The second sends the man’s two front teeth skittering across the hardwood floor. And the third audibly crushes his nose. With a flailing hand, the kneeling man interrupts the barrage of blows. By forcefully shoving Virginia violently backward. He stands cackling in a sinister rage. “You bitch ... you broke my nothse.” The last word comes out comically from his destroyed face. However, there is nothing funny about the man’s rage. Nor does she find his size to be a joke. She sees that carrying her tiny hundred- and twenty-pound frame. Would be like a child cradling a teddy bear to this stocky man.  Pausing briefly, she steadies herself for his charge. The alcohol and blow to her head taking their combined toll on her movements.
      
      A moan come through the open door behind the man. This time the sound is louder and more menacing than before. Her attacker turns towards the sound. The light from the door cascading over his damaged and bloodied face. But she can still see the confusion etched upon the man’s face as he speaks. “Jennifer … Deborah …. Sss Samantha ... Annn … Angela. What are you doing?” He stammers. Calling out these seemingly random female names. Speaking the way, one does when greeting old friends. Whom you haven’t seen in years. The bloodied man stands there enraptured. As if he’d successfully extracted these women’s names from the “recently deleted” bin of his mind. Virginia moves in to take full advantage of the creeper’s distraction. She pauses mid-step. A grimy grey hand appears. Silently slithering around the man’s broad shoulders. The putrid limb moves like sensual lover’s caress. A fear so palpable washes over Virginia. In her mind’s eye, she watches as her own soul. Leaps from her rigid and immobile body. And takes off running down the darkened hallway. Before vaulting out the front window of the house. “I …I don’t understand.” The creeper utters breathlessly. The hand and arm that come into view. The appendage is a sickly pale grey greenish shade. Rotting sores of blackish decay cover the limb. “Did you all come back to be with me.” He says hope tinging his voice. A ragged smile touching the corner of his split and swollen lips. She can’t see what’s coming up the stairs. But the moans have risen to an eerie crescendo. They seem to come from a multitude of hoarse throats. “I’m sorry I hurt you all.” He offers an apology to the unseen entities coming up from the basement. Several more hands clamp on to the man. Virginia is forced to cover her nose. Using her tiny bruised hand in a vain attempt to ward off the stench. That now fills the hallway. Without warning the head of a woman lashes out. She clamps her teeth down on the creeper’s jaw. It takes all Virginia’s fortitude not to vomit. As the woman’s face comes into view. She looks as if she is rotting away. Large sections of her face have decomposed down through to the white bone beneath. Her eyes are glazed over white jellied orbs.

     The Creeper begins to scream. A high-pitched shrill sound one never expects to hear from a man. The woman shakes her head the way a shark does. Prying loose a chunk of flesh and chewing. With all the vigor of a dog with a stole morsel of food. A second woman’s head appears. This time latching on to the man’s throat. The scream turns into gurgles of “I’m sorry.” As more heads latch on to the creeper. He sways drunkenly in place. Trying in vain to fight off the mob of decaying women attacking him. “Move now …” Virginia hears her daddy screaming in her mind. She launches herself at the man in the hallway. With all the force she can muster. The tiny woman rams her assailant. He falls forward into the basement down several wooden stairs. Taking his throng of cannibal admirers with him. She pauses in the dim light. The tangle of limbs comes to rest at the bottom of the stairs. A dozen rotting sickly colored women grab at the creeper now. They tear at him with decayed fingers and broken yellowed teeth. Opening him up like a pinata filled with delicious raw meat. His screams grow fainter from under the pile of bodies. As his body spasms uncountably. She sees more figures coming around to join in on the attack. One woman her body showing signs of a savage beating. Stops staring up at her with glassy white dead fish eyes. Virginia gasps as the woman steps over the squirming mass. She whirls about slamming the door and twisting an old deadbolt into place. Virginia wills her rubbery legs to move. “Time to see if, I can’t catch my soul.” She thinks aloud. Now finding herself sprinting through a living room devoid of furniture. All around her the walls are covered. With neatly cut meticulously place newspaper articles. “The Duffle Bag Killer strikes again.” A bold headline proclaims from the front page of the local paper. As she whirls about the room desperately taking in the macabre scene. She sees women’s pictures in the articles on the wall. The most recent article pinned neatly on the wall closest to the door. Steals the breath from her lungs. It’s the girl, she saw staring up from the bottom of the stairs. The one who looked at her as if she were a meal. The screams from downstairs have ceased now. She hears the first bump on the door behind her. Virginia runs from the house into the chaos of the night. Sirens wails, fires burn, gunshots echo, screams carry by. And everywhere people are frantically running about. Virginia utters a single tiny cry standing on the small porch. Realizing the reality of her situation. Which has gone from bad to hell on earth. In only a few short moments. She leaps off the stairs and straight into the apocalypse.