HYPER-PROMPT COLLABORATIVE STORIES
COVID Apocalypse: The Zombie Variant
It all started in Tokyo
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The smell assaulted her before she even realized what was happening. The sensation was confusing, because — she was told — COVID had taken her sense of smell, and her memory, away. But this was…special. Her eyes closed against her volition as she breathed in a lungful of the sweet, musky odor.
For a moment, she was transfixed. Her mind flashed back to the one place she wished to never see again, Tokyo, September 1st, 1923. She could feel the ground start to shake as high above, glass jars rattled, before jumping off the shelf in a cascading storm of broken glass.
Master Yaoki had tried to protect her, but a falling beam had killed him on the spot. Nefarious fumes from the broken jars had combined and stopped the aging process in her sixty-two-year-old body; until COVID came. For the first time in 100 years, she was sick.
She started to lick herself. Was she crazy? No, just sick. Sick of her current existence. The musky odor revived her senses…
“Puffy, is that you?”
Puffy had no clue of what was going on. It was clearly time to move on. All those unfortunate putrid bodies were making her sicker.
“Wait…Puffy?”
“Mom, it’s me!”
Puffy! She felt her insides stirring. She wasn’t supposed to remember! They said she never would!
“Puffy…..are you…here?”
She wanted to throw up, from the adrenaline or the acid on her skin, she wasn’t sure.
If this was really Puffy, things weren’t going to end well.
This can’t be happening, not again. She remembered Puffy’s mangled body, the way her flesh drooled over the counter leaving red stains on the carpet. She could see Puffy’s face. That weird expression of surprise and horror as the cleaver ripped into her cheek. She can’t be alive. Not again.
“How did you do it, Puffy?”
“It’s the COVID, Mom. I caught the zombie variant. It comes after all the letters from the Greek and Amharic alphabets. It won’t arrive here before a few dozen of years. But Master Yaoki…
