Story of the Week #13: Ghoultown

This is a story I’ve been wanting to write for a long time. Honestly, who doesn’t want to write a story about zombies and cowboys? No one, that’s who. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you.

This story, though, got started as something else. I was going to write a haunted house story. I had the plot and the details of the house all ready to go, and I was excited about the concepts. Then something happened, and the story derailed big time. But that’s okay. This story, I think, in spite of the fact that it’s rife with cliches and anachronisms, has a lot of potential.

The main character, Zoe Garrick, is one that I’ve been holding in my head for awhile now. At first, having been inspired by The X-Files and an on-again, off-again interest in the Western genre, I thought I’d write a story, or even a series of stories, about a government agent investigating paranormal and unusual cases in the Old West. The FBI didn’t exist back then, but the Secret Service did. I figured it would be fun, kind of campy, and full of mad scientists and other great villains. Then I remembered that The Wild, Wild West already existed. Ah, well. So I made my character a US Marshall (an anachronism there; the first woman Marshall wasn’t appointed until the mid-50′s, though a woman Secret Service agent at that time wouldn’t have been any more accurate) and took her out of the loop of the paranormal and unusual investigations. And then this story took a darker turn than I had expected, and to my shock, some sort of theme emerged. I’m not sure what it is. And I’m not sure I approve. But that’s not up for me to really judge. That’s for you, the reader, to decide on your own.

So here it is, “Ghoultown”. It’s not affiliated with the band Ghoultown in any way, though I did listen to them a lot while writing this story.

Enjoy!

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Brainz

I took a quick break from writing my zombie story to browse the web, and saw this picture of John McCain: It seriously looks like McCain is about to chow down on a helpless baby. We seriously need to vote for Barack Obama. I, for one, do not relish the idea of cannibalistic zombies in [...]