I ran down the hall, this time a few things here and there did surprise me. But I just laughed it all off. The screams got louder as I reached the middle of the mansion. I entered a large room which looked like an old ball room and almost all the students were there. I quickly ran to Sora when I saw him. Everyone was talking about what they saw. When I entered all the doors closed and the lights began flickering.

“Oh man, what’s going on!” Sora yelled. Everyone screamed. We heard a loud sound and a few people tried getting out but the doors were locked. You could only hear the high pitch screams of the girls pointing up. The roof began falling down, breaking apart. And I can’t help but feel that this isn’t a part of the act. The boys burst open the doors that are all around the room and everyone rushed out. There are 4 floors above us and they’re all tumbling down in one moment. If anyone’s going to stay here then they’ll surly die. I helped a few people up and helped them out. I quickly scanned the room for any people left. I was about to leave when I realized Sora on the ground with his leg stuck between planks. Blood rushed down his leg.

“Sora!” I yelled as I ran to him. I collapsed onto my knees there and helped him get the planks off of him. I examined the cut in his leg. If it doesn’t get treated then it won’t stop bleeding. IT was rather deep. Sora stared up at the roof.

“Troid, you need to get out of here! Its 4 floors falling! We’ll die!” Then we heard a loud crash and everything was falling down at once. I have to think fast! I quickly jumped up and climbed over Sora. All of the heavy planks fell on top of me and blood spat all over. A wooden piece with a sharp end spiked right through my back and through my chest. I held my body up higher that it didn’t touch Sora. When it all ended I pushed my body up and stood up. Sora was left speechless and didn’t move. He slowly got up and stood in front of me with worries.

“Dude…you just received a massive impact and a stake through your heart. How…how are you still standing?” He grabbed me by the shoulders and stared at me. “What are you?” I pushed him off and shook my head. I took the stake from my chest and pulled it out slowly. Blood spat more and I threw the stake to the side, on top of all the wood. I took off my shirt and touched the hole in my chest with the blood dripping off. I twitched in pain. A light smoke formed around the hole and it grew closed in a matter of seconds. Sora stepped back and tripped over the wood. He stared at me with wide eyes.

“I’m going to repeat myself. What. Are. You?” He asked me, very demanding. I sighed.

“Well…I’m a zombie. Yeah, so? Your point?” His eyes widened and it shot to my chest where the hole was a few seconds ago. That spot was now burning and flesh unravelled and fell to the ground.

“What…why’d you never tell me?” He jumped up and ran to me. I could literally see stars in his eyes. “That’s so awesome!” I blinked and stared at him.

“Wha-?”

“I mean being a zombie must be the greatest thing in the world!” Blink.

“Wha-?”

“I mean you can’t die and if you really want you can start a zombie apocalypse!” Blink.

“Wha-?”

“How long are you going to keep doing the ‘wha’ thing and start telling me about how you became a freaking zombie!” Sigh.

“The serial killer killed me and I became a zombie. That’s it.” He remained silent then sighed.

“How?” He said long and draggy. “Details man, I need details!” I rolled my eyes.

“I-I’m still trying to figure that out. So far my only conclusion is a necromancer brought me back to life.”

“Necromancer? That’s so cool! Tell me more!” I did not expect him to take this so…so…well?

“Umm ok, lets…what the hell am I doing?! We have to get out of here!” I pulled him with me out of the room and down the hall. I let him go as we ran down the hall. We ran out the mansion and saw everyone laughing of how scared they were. They didn’t seem to notice us, which was a good thing because the next second Sora grabbed me and pulled me behind some bushes.

“Dude…” I said rubbing my head. “What the hell?”

“Don’t ‘dude’ me! And look at yourself.” He said then I examined myself.

“What do you mean?”

“Dude…” He began eyeing me. “Go out there with that rotten flesh and show to everyone you’re a zombie.” I lowered my head; this is why I’m so stupid. “Here.” He tossed me his jacket and I quickly put it on. “K, let’s go.” He pulled me up and we waltzed into the crowd, not literally! That would be so weird! A few girls ran up to us and started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Did you two get scared?” They all asked simultaneously then giggled.

“What? No, does this face look like it was scared?” Sora said while hold his chin and showing off his charms. Pfht. Charms? Yeah right! The girls started giggling and pulled Sora and me into the crowd.

“Hey girls, you want something?” We asked the girls who cuddled against us. Honestly, I’ve never been in this kind of a scenario.

“We’re so scared!” They said sarcastically. “Won’t you hold us?” I eyed them with a weird expression. I shook them off and walked to our bikes. Sora did the same and next moment we rode down the hill and stopped back at the school.

“Well…that was a massive waste of time!” Sora complained.

“Yeah.” I agreed. “I died, can you believe that?” He started laughing then patted my back.

“Ok listen. It’s still hard to process this all so you mind not making such jokes? I won’t be able to take you serious if you do!”

“Hey! You’re not the one who died!” I joked anyway, but it wasn’t a joke really.

“I know, I know, no need to remind me!” I rolled my eyes and entered the school. “Dude…what’re you doing?” He asked. I sighed.

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m going back. If the teachers are back then I could at least have a few periods left.” He sighed long and tilted his head back.

“Ok, fine. You go back while I start an early weekend. Woohoo, by the way I’ll be calling you later ‘cause you are going to explain to me more about your zom-“ I quickly held my finger to my mouth to show him to shut up. “Your extraordinary ordeal. K?”  I nodded and walked into the school and made my way to the class. The halls were empty and when I entered my class the only person, other than myself there, was Ace. He sat at the desk right in front at the window. He simply turned his head to me when I entered and looked back out the window. I don’t know why I’m here and not out with the people or with Sora. Actually no, I know why I’m stuck here. It’s because the clouds are starting to disappear and the sun will be out in about a minute. Yeah, yeah, I know I live right around the block and I can get there before the sun comes out but I don’t wanna be marked as an absentee if the teacher comes back, I’m the good boy you see :D. Nah, I lie. I’m too lazy. I walked to the back of the class and sat at my desk. Ace doesn’t look as bad as he did this morning. After what seemed as forever as silence, he finally asked me something.

“So…how was that haunted mansion up there?” I shook myself out my trance.

“Oh! You mean the one up the mountain?” He turned to look at me.

“You did go, right?” I nodded. “And?”

“Boring.” He shook his head and looked forward. “So why are you here?” I asked him.

“Why wouldn’t I be? I’m always here and…”

“Your cousin, hey?” He nodded.

“I can’t believe she did that. Such a fool that girl…and how’d you know anyway?”

“Girls.”

“Typical. So why are you still here?” I was about to answer when I realized that wouldn’t be such a good idea. I could just say that I forgot something here and have to go home because I don’t really want to sit here in awkwardness with him. But I can’t do that ‘cause the sun is so bright at the moment. The sun is literally almost touching my skin, which would be a real bother, and even worse with Ace here. I just stared at the board and examined the room. This is so boring! The sun started entering the room and always made its way to me. I grabbed my book bag and walked quietly to the door.

“No skipping class.” He said not even turning his head. I sighed and slid down the door. He eyed my suspiciously as I covered my face with my book bag.

“You’re not normal, are you?”     

“What do you mean?”

“You always loved the sun, and now you hate it?” This is bad!

“Well, it got too bright for me.” He smirked then his face became expressionless.

“You’re not normal, are you?” He said. I don’t know why but in the way he said it he meant something other than the normal ‘normal’. I stared up at him expressionless. The next thing I know was a sting feeling on my legs. I twitched in pain and realized that my legs were burning. I quickly pulled them back and jumped up. I opened the door and jumped back from the sun. I was about to run away but I stopped in my tracks when I saw Ace’s face. What do you expect? Mouth wide open, screaming in fear, not knowing what’s happening. That’s what I expected, that’s not what he did. He simply smirked and looked away. I couldn’t believe it! That jerk! Did he know? Or did he have suspicions and now it’s confirmed? Wait…could he also be a monster like I am? Hmm, it’s not entirely impossible. There’re a lot of supernatural beings in this world. Ace covered his mouth and from what it looked like he tried to resist laughing.

“What’s so funny?!” I yelled at him. He failed and burst out in laughter. “I asked you a question dammit!” After what seemed like minutes he finally calmed down and took a deep breath. He looked at me with a serious face but couldn’t hold it for long before he burst out in laughter again.

“What the hell Ace?!” I yelled at him which made him shut up immediately. He pointed his index finger at me.

“Hey!” He began. “Hey! Don’t speak like that!” I glared at him.

“Why?” I asked him, rather confused.

“You’re making fun of the dead if you talk like that!”

“Fun of the dead? I am the dead! Show some respect!”

“Show some respect to the person who brought you back!” My mouth fell open.

“You were the one who brought me back?” I couldn’t believe it!

“You can’t remember? You were there!” I looked down. I winced in pain as the sun reached my legs. I jumped back against the hall wall. I stared up at him, waiting for a better answer. Ace sighed and held his face in his hand.

“Fine. I’ll tell you what happened.” He finally said. “But you have to keep it an absolute secret.” I was about to say ‘I’m dying here’ but I’ll only get yelled at again, so instead I sighed.

“Well you keep mine I keep yours, but If you’re going to talk can we please do it somewhere with no sunlight?” He began laughing and stood up. He grabbed his book bag and walked over to me, blocking out the sunlight.

“Ok then. Come.”  I quickly stood up and followed him to a classroom on the other side of the school, where the sunlight is blocked by the mountain behind it. I went to sit on the middle front desk. Ace paced the room as a teacher.

“Ok then. What do you wanna know?” He asked me.

“What are you? How’d you bring me back?” He sighed.

“It’ll take long to explain both so which you wanna know first?” I thought for a moment.

“What are you?” He nodded and sat on the teacher’s desk.

“I…am a necromancer.” I smiled. “I guess you thought of that, huh?”

“It was one of my thoughts.” I admitted.

“Ok then. Well I’m going to tell you, I’m not the one who brought you back. Well, to be honest. I was not the one directly. There’s another guy, my partner. His name is Amaimon.”

“Amaimon? That’s a weird name.”

“Shinigamis are born with strange names. Don’t interrupt me again! Amaimon is my partner, he’s a shinigami like I just said. He needed a few fresh bodies for his experiments, he’s sorta a scientist. And…then he heard of the serial killer at that time and thought he could use the bodies that were left behind. We tracked him down to a house where we found four bodies, one I recognized as a dear student, Troid Renton Hunter, one of my rivals. Amaimon took this as an opportunity and made you a zombie, as you already know. He took the other three bodies with him to his lab to experiment on. He says his plan is to create artificial life. He used you to see how long dead flesh can roam on Earth, but don’t let that worry you! He has made many zombies before now and the latest one before you lasted for 50 years so you’ll be fine. Now you don’t know this but even though you’ve been like this for over a month now, you’re still not an official zombie yet. Ugg and this is why it’ll take so long to explain but I don’t even understand it myself. But to make someone a zombie it’s not like what you see in movies, meaning getting bitten or whatever the stupid public made up. You went through surgery and your organs were replaced with altered ones. No, I don’t have an idea what he means by ‘altered’ but I guess it’s some weird shinigami power that necromancers can’t understand. Now listen up and you can’t repeat my words to anyone. K?” I nodded. “Shinigamis and necromancers are like vampires and werewolves, mortal enemies. Yet Amaimon and I are partners, we are breaking the law, but we haven’t been found. So that is why you can’t repeat my words to anyone!”

“Hey, sorry for interrupting but what’s the difference between a necromancer and a shinigami?”

“A shinigamis job is to kill people unexpectedly and take their live force for their own. Meaning they kill people at random times, even if they’re good or evil to help them survive, think it as their meal. And because its random means that the balance of the world will be kept.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m saying if there aren’t accidents or illness and everyone lives a happy long live and die of old age, how will the human race ever evolve? And the human race will become selfish; everyone will be going on about how they won’t be able to die and nobody can hurt them and they can’t get sick. It’s disgraceful. Humans are disgusting creatures, anyone can see that. Also…the human race needs a little push to evolve, and pain is the perfect thing used to help them strive for evolution. So a shinigami’s job is to help humans evolve. There’s more to it but Amaimon refuses to tell me more ‘cause we decided to have a little fun in our boring, miserable lives. We’re having like a ‘war’ against each other and we can’t give out any secrets which can let one of us go against another. Ok and a necromancer’s job is a little different. We see over the people who the shinigami kill. Some of us who play dirty even steal information from the dead, increasing our I.Q. And a few necromancers are even worse and bring the dead back to life, but as their slaves. Again I can’t say much about us but even I don’t know what’s the real difference between shinigamis and necromancers, when I became a necromancer I thought it was completely the other way around. Shinigami being a God of Death I thought that they control the dead and necromancers bring them back to live. Ahhhh I don’t understand anything anymore! Aggg!” I rolled my eyes. “Anything else?” I thought for a moment.

“Who is this Amaimon person? And where is he?” He started laughing. He fell off the desk and rolled on the floor. He has some really weird mental issues, when he starts laughing he can’t stop. I can’t even figure out why he’s laughing!        

“As I said he’s my partner. If I’m right he’s at his lab now, busy conducting final experiments on the bodies. I don’t know what artificial life really is but from what I’ve heard, it’s human and animal bodies combined. Does it make any sense? Anyway he told me that I should tell you that he wishes to see you again for like ‘checking up’ on his creations. And he told me if you resist that I can drag you out into the sun for as long as I like. The only problem with that is that you have to stay alive and I need to drag you to him, so my genius diabolical plan to kill you failed.” He sighed.

“Tell me something.” I insisted. “You told me I’m not ‘completely’ zombie, so I’m still human?”

“No, no.” He laughed. “There’s no way your human! But…what I mean is that normal zombies don’t feel pain and their skin don’t burn as easily as yours. Normal zombies are created by high ranked necromancers by just reviving them, but Amaimon shared the info with me that shinigamis are slowly progressing to creating zombies. You are one of those test subjects.” I’ll be honest, I don’t like the feeling of being called an experiment…test subject…a failure…I guess because I was created by shinigamis and not necromancers that that is the reason I’m not a real zombie. But I’m still grateful of having my undead life, this way I can find and kill my killer.

“When will I see Amaimon?” He looked up and thought for a moment.

“Wow…time really did pass so fast…huh…”

“When?” I asked directly at him, demanding an answer.

“Tomorrow.” My eyes widened, so fast. I won’t be able to think everything through clearly. “And I need to tell you something. If you planned something this weekend you gatta cancel.”

“Why?” He rolled his eyes.

“His lab is on the on the other side of the country.” For the record, we live in the USA. “And he wants to see you first thing in the morning so we gatta like leave now! Wait…you didn’t have important plans, right?” I shook my head. “Good.”

“And you’re paying flight tickets!” He rolled his eyes.

“Right, right. I’m pretty rich you know? I’ve lived for a little more than 500 years now.”

“And you still look like a teen, I’m impressed.”

“According to necromancy time, I’m but a mere toddler.” I looked at him, clearly astonished.

“Awww, little baby!” I said messing up his hair, I obviously regretted it because next second some sort of staff was stuck into my stomach and I was pushed back to the back of the class. I fell onto the ground and blood dripped from my fore head.

“And that’s another thing. Zombies don’t have blood.” I quickly stood up and stretched out my muscles. I then examined the staff he held in his hands. It was long, if you were to keep it straight up then it would be taller than Ace, and he’s the tallest in our school. If you look closely at it, it’s made entirely out of bones and at the top there are 4 smaller bones holding a ruby in a radiant shape.

“What is that?” I asked.

“My rod. Haven’t you heard of a necromancer’s rod? Or do you prefer the term staff?” I shook my head.

“Anyway, didn’t you say we’ve gatta leave now?” He nodded.

“I did, so follow me.” He held up his hand and the rod disappeared. I followed him out the room and down the hall. I stopped when we reached the side of the school where sunlight shone through the windows. I stayed in the shadow and stared at Ace as he walked on. I leaned against the wall and waited for his stupidity to end, which might that a while. I sighed, quiet at first, then the second time loudly that he’ll hear it. He turned around immediately and slapped his face.

“Yeah, I’m stupid. So? How did you even survive this last month?” I held up my index finger and middle finger, showing two.

“Two things. One, long pants, two, hoodie. Two reasons its different today. One, it felt hot today, two, there was clouds.” He looked at me oddly.

“If there were clouds then why would it be hot?” He asked me.

“Troid Renton Hunter, defying logic since 1995.” I said. He smirked then sighed.

“Well it’s not like I can give you my clothes or anything, I’ll surly regret it hm…you wait here and I’ll go see if I find anything long in the lost and found, k?” I nodded. He ran in the opposite direction, away from me. I slid down the wall and rested my head against it. I waited for what seemed for like an hour before I felt something thrown against my face. I opened my eyes and shoved the clothes off my face. It was a sweat pants and a sweat jacket. I held it up and took a sniff.

“It reeks! Wasn’t there anything better?!” He stood in front of me, laughing.

“It was either that or a bikini; I can go back and get it if you want?” I face palmed and quickly pulled on the jacket. I grabbed the pants and pulled it on then placed the jacket’s hood on. I then walked ahead of Ace down the hall. I could hear him smirk behind me and he ran up to my side.

“So…you know how and where we are going, right?” I asked as we exited the school.

“I’m a bit older than 500, I’ve travelled the world many times before. Why would this time be any different?” He asked as we got our bikes.

“’Cause this time you realized you used up all your money and we’ll be stuck in the desert when the sun will come out and I simply die.” He rolled his eyes and we started peddling. I don’t know where though. “Hey. Shouldn’t I pack or something? Clothes? Food? Something to keep me busy?” I eyed him as we turned into the street.

“Is there a problem with the clothes you wear? You’ll anyway be half the time naked for testing and you’ll wear white jump suits. I already told you I’m rich so food isn’t a problem. And really? You a kid or something? But what do you have on you at the moment?” He asked me as we rode up the street.

“My school stuff, phone, a tomato ham and cheese sandwich and 20 bucks.” He gaped and looked at me.

“Dude…..”He began with a smile. “You brought a tomato ham and cheese sandwich?!”

“Don’t. You sound like Sora if you do that.” He laughed and pedalled faster.

“We’re going to my place first and get a few things, that includes better clothes for you. No offence dude, but you look like a naked dead cat in that.” I nodded and followed him up the road.