Anything But Zombies by Gerald Rice Read Free Book Online Page B

actually, maybe abandoned newborns isn’t the comparison I want to make. That’s kind of depressing. Nobody wants to read about that. I apologize.
    What I’m saying is that the cherry cola, though it would later do awful things, is deserving of our empathy. First it was confused and frightened. But as time moved on, it began to feel rage. Deep fury. Typically, Gertrude’s Soda lost its carbonation in a couple of weeks, but the cherry cola’s rage was so intense that its level of carbonation more than doubled.
    The cherry cola did not think in English, so to do a literal transcription of its thoughts would mean that much of this narrative would be self-indulgent gibberish. Instead, as your omniscient narrator, I will take it upon myself to translate its thoughts into language that makes sense to you, rather than making you do all of the heavy lifting.
    â€œ Hate everything. Kill . . . kill . . . kill . . .”
    Which would be your exact attitude in its position. Don’t try to deny it. You wouldn’t be the merry cherry cola that tried to bring a sense of wonder and delight to children everywhere.
    I know you’ve got a lot of questions already and I’m not going to be able to get to all of them in the allotted space. Every time you demand some exposition, it’s at the cost of a wonderfully gruesome death scene later, so take that into consideration when you start asking questions like “How was the cherry cola aware of the concept of death?”
    You just have to know, huh? And those of you wanting answers are probably the same people who will be complaining about how long it took the cherry cola to get out of the can. “It took over a thousand words for it to do anything but swirl around, being angry!” you’ll say. We could already be at an awesome gory death scene, but noooooooo, you want everything to make sense!
    Fine. It was witchcraft. Those nekkid dancing Wiccans instilled the cherry cola with a magic that made it aware of the fact that you can murder somebody.
    Pretty scary stuff, isn’t it? A rage-filled cherry cola that knows about death? It sure would be inconvenient for humanity if it got out of the can.
    Every once in a while, the cherry cola would hear Voices from Beyond. They were muffled and the cherry cola didn’t understand the meaning of their words.
    â€œ Don’t just stand there all day with the refrigerator open! ”
    â€œ There was ketchup in there the last time I looked! ”
    â€œ That’s just the date the store has to sell it by. It’s not like it suddenly turns to poison on the expiration date. Just drink the milk!”
    Did these voices belong to Jesus Christ?
    Of course the cherry cola was aware of our Lord and Savior! How could it not be? I’m not trying to turn this into a Jesus-themed story, but if you keep asking questions like that I will break out the Good Book and start quoting the appropriate scriptures.
    Yeah, I didn’t think so. Let’s move forward.
    It was a dark night (though the cherry cola had no concept of night) in the middle of winter (though the cherry cola had no concept of winter) when a flu-ridden (though the cherry cola had no concept of influenza or inoculation) Pete, who was Gloria’s son, got out of bed to poke around in the refrigerator. As always, he was annoyed that no new food had materialized since the last time he checked. In the Star Wars movies, food materializes in refrigerators all the time , thought Pete, who didn’t pay very close attention to the Star Wars movies outside of the swordfights.
    As he moved items around, hoping that there might be a previously hidden turkey, he saw, way in the back, the can of cherry cola.
    He didn’t feel like a soda (or “pop” as some heathens call it) at the moment, so he ended up eating half of a packet of premade squeezable guacamole and then went back to bed.
    Ha! You thought he