Feast of Flash - Honorable Mention - Angel Zapata

Angel Zapata is one of the most creative and prolific flashers writing today.

Not content with one genre, AZ can lay down some mean horror, prose, poetry and literate fiction with the best of them.

His Honorable Mention story for FOF is a stylized dark tale of thankfulness. You can find his musings at his hip blog: A Rage of Angel.

The Ash Blossoms
By Angel Zapata


After the last apprehended vampire was set ablaze, the small group of survivors realized it was Thanksgiving morning.

“What is there to be thankful for?” Joshua spat. “My wife, my children slaughtered by those fiends.”

“All of our friends and family murdered.” Kira’s midnight blue eyes grew glassy, haunted. “And some of them impaled by wooden stakes with our very own hands.”

With the undead invasion came the ungodly resurrection of loved ones. Neighbor was turned against neighbor, husband pitted against wife. Some unfortunate souls were forced to burn their only children.

“My mother was such a gentle creature,” Conrad recalled, stoking the bright embers of the pyre with his walking stick. “But following her…transformation, those dark words she whispered to me prior to my…my beheading her was such horrible filth!” He collapsed to his knees and wept openly in the dirt.

Kira rushed to his side.

“We’ve lost so much.” Benjamin was perched on a craggy mass of granite. “Yet we four live to honor our dead.”

In unison, they scanned what was left of their once quaint township. Along the borders of the east, smoke and flame still raged through Footfall Forest and the Shortgrass Hollow. To the west, Hermit Bridge was a splintered mess of barn wood at the bottom of Clawhart Creek. And at the north and south points, sprinkled atop fields of mud like the feathers of fallen angels, were a community of animal carcasses.

“How can we ever hope to find joy again in this life?” Kira had her hand on Conrad’s shoulder. “I’m past the child-rearing years and will never again know what it feels like to be a mother.”

In frustrated anger, Joshua kicked a broken wagon wheel and cried out in pain. He bit down hard on his palm and allowed his oily blond hair the opportunity to hide his eyes.

“What now, Benjamin?” Conrad stood from the ground and stared at his childhood friend. “Do we leave this place?”

Benjamin hopped down from where he sat above them. His bare feet were layered in thick scabs and his ragged pants were damp with dew. One errant ray of sunlight cut across the dusty sky and struck him in the chest. His heart began to grow warm.

“We rebuild,” he said.

“Oh?” Joshua said snidely. “Out of the ashes and all that—”

“Exactly,” Conrad interjected. “It’s what my mother would have wanted.” He smiled and Kira smiled back. “It’s what all the great people of our fine village would have wanted.”

Joshua cursed under his breath.

“There won’t be a feast this Thanksgiving,” Benjamin admitted. “But I’m grateful for you all.”

“Look!” Kira said excitedly. “Near that rubble.”

Amidst a pile a charred bones and shattered pottery, a solitary purple Aster bloomed in perfect symmetry of season.

“New life,” Conrad said in amazement.

“I, for one,” Joshua said as his comrades slowly turned and faced him, “am thankful to be alive.”

As luminous sunlight engulfed the weary band of pilgrims, each in turn repeated the very same words.


* * *

From a great distance away, the only surviving vampire of the Clawhart massacre continued to flee west, the sun a constant threat at his back. Up ahead, the outskirts of a sleepy, little town guaranteed a peaceful night of shelter and hot blood.

He was exceedingly thankful.