Exploits of Ninja and Child - zOMB: Zombie Ninja Battle!

The morning was light, sunny, humid, the sky filled with the sound of garbage trucks and UPS deliveries. Another active day. Another day to walk the streets and seek the bounty befitting ninja services. The afternoon remained crisp and warm as Ninja passed through the empty city. Not a soul outside. All hiding away from the sunny open air and the tightly confined public spaces, tucked away with the squeal of popular fear mongering, glued to their televisions and twitter updates, only blinking after commercial breaks.

By dusk, the nightwalkers have risen, taken to the streets. While the politicians hide from train travel and the students fear eating pigs, there lurks a darker foe than flu: The Lazy Zombie virus is upon us.

Code Name Alice is chanting as a monkey, shaking her tiny fists at the night.

"Come out you Zombies! We're ready for a fight!" Telepathy is strong with this one.

Amidst the stumbling bodies of the slow and inept infected, a strong, fearless zombie emerges from the ground: A Zombie Ninja.


"zOMB!" screams the vile villain.

"Bring it." Ninja and Child brace for impact from the zombie strike.

Code Name Alice prepares with a sonic, "Hah!" and butterflies appear around the zombie, throwing it off balance. He hacks at the air, splitting wings, powdery dust of flight falling into his eyes.

"aaaaRRRGGGH!" He moans, rubbing his face in agony. His left ear falls off as his arm brushes the side of his head. He doesn't appear leprocitic; the ear had been hanging loose from a previous battle. He charges at our heroes. The charge is fierce, intense, savage, with the hunger of the undead, yet infected by the lazy virus, he trots forth in slow motion.

As the zombie ninja approaches, Code Name Alice ramps up a monkey howl, heaves it forward and spits it down at the oncoming legs. The slow motion rush of the zombie becomes a quick canon burst through the air as the figure trips and is hurled forward. Sleep Deprivation Ninja's foot appears in front of the zombie's head, blocking the blow with a richochetic force outward, sending the beast back from whence it came, to join the less equiped, the infected underdogs, slithering around in the gutters, awaiting their feed to come to them.

Even a ninja infected with this virus is useless. Fear not the pig, it is the zombie that will destroy humanity.

Unexplained Absence... or Schrödinger Post... or Sorry, I'm Dead

If you are reading this, it means one of two events have achieved reality:

1. I've become too busy to write and I've neglected my task of bumping the auto-publish on this post another month.
2. I'm dead.

I know option #2 is kind of a shocker but it's a possibility. So, if you know my true identity (such as a family member or a trustworthy friend who also happens to be a reader), please call me and bug my living ass to write a post.

At this point, one of two things will happen, respective to the two potential realities above. Most likely, this will result from one of my relatives or friends calling me and collapsing the uncertainty of my living status into a definite state. Here's what will happen:

1. I will come to my senses and start posting daily once again, altering history by ripping this post off the blog and resetting its scheduled auto-post for 1 month in the future.
   
2. Another post is already scheduled to go up automatically next week. Each week a new post will be automatically published, continuing the saga of Ninja as Child, which are my autobiographical essays. Since I may be dead, I don't mind revealing at this point that although all of my posts begin with real events and usually digress into fantasy or dream, the Ninja as Child saga is completely true to my memories (fantastical, they may seem).
   

I can't be certain, at the time of writing this, of how many Ninja as Child posts I've been able to setup for auto-publication but, hopefully, they will be enough to shed some light on who I am and where I came from. And, maybe, just maybe, my beautiful daughter is reading this and following along with her father in his adventures through time. If you do not see a post next week, it means that I failed to catch up and write extra posts each week. If that is the case, I apologize profoundly and I deeply regret that my memories are gone for good.

I love you baby girl. And, whatever happened, I'm sorry.

XOXO Sleep Deprivation Ninja (aka daddy)

P.S. There is also a special post scheduled to go up on my birthday in the year 2029. I would have been 50 years-old at that point.

EDIT: 8:02am: OK, Just got a phone call. Since I answered it, I suppose I'm not quite dead yet. W00t!

Ninja as Child - #19 - Secret Clubs Part 2

Continuing the story of Mike and Rodney:

Mike has a car magazine and Rodney is standing by him, quiet as usual, looking over at every other page. "Check this one out. The wheels turn 90 degrees so you can park sideways."

They continue to talk about the cars--the conversation withers as I stare at Rodney's shirt. There's nothing special about the shirt itself. I'm actually staring right through his stomach. Suddenly, my fist is at my focal point and Rodney is keeled over, grabbing at his intestines, trying to gasp for air. Mike lowers the car magazine, unaware of what just happened.

"Did you just punch him?"

I'm stunned. I don't know what just happened.

"Wow," Continues Mike. "You O.K., dude?" He grabs his brother and helps him back to their apartment, leaving me shaking my head, wondering why I just punched my friend.

Today, I'm the secret club of the Lonely Fist.

Alert: Lazy Zombie Virus is Spreading!!!!!1!!one!

There's a pandemic going on. Code Name Alice has sensed it and thrown the warning. All agents are on high alert. At 7:19pm PST, a massive viral outbreak of the Lazy Death took hold of our city. As fools rushed into traps lain by the infected, they too became infected. Within hours, by IQ, the lowest 15% of the population was completely taken over by the disease.

Sleep Deprivation Ninja and Code Name Alice stare down at the ragged streets of downtown Seattle, piled high with infected villainy. They step near a financial investment adviser who is wearing a $2K suit, with a purple tie befitting a pimp. The business man is slumped against the wall outside Nordstrom, eyeballing passersby.

"I'm trying to conjure a plan that will incite you to come over here and insert your brain into my mouth." Says the lazy zombie, staring at us, drooling with eager yet ineffectual lust.

"Good luck with that." Says Ninja. "What seems to be working for the other lot?"

The investment zombie attempts to shrug but his shoulders are too lazy and he just twitches a little up in his neck, moans a pathetic grunt and collapses to the ground, apparently of fatigue.

A scream. Ninja and Child look over to see a zombie holding a cheeseburger, far away from his face as a vagabond lunges for it, only to receive a sharp bite to the neck from the infected trickster. One more down. But the scream didn't come from this pair. Only a few feet away, a young girl stands at the bus stop, pinned between two languorous laggards, laying on the ground, attempting to trip her by aimlessly rolling as slowly and lifelessly as they can muster toward her unprotected legs.

"Fear not, young lady." Says Ninja with a commanding hand.

"WTF?" Says the girl. "Has the world gone totally, like VR or some bunk? If A-N-Y-one comes near me, I'm going to mace your face!" She produces said accoutrement.

Ninja decides to back off, seeing that the girl is pointing the spray not only at the lethargic zombies but also at him. She has this one under control. "Right." Says Ninja, vanishing as he does.

The virus continues to spread. Be on the lookout for inert instructors, careless caretakers, lackadaisical lawyers, apathetic assistants, somnolent insomniacs, passive police, slothful senators and loafers of all kinds--especially those with pockets of drool forming on their chins. They may be infected.

Code Name Alice: Ninja

Ninja as Child - #18 - Secret Clubs Part 1

I'm 7 years old and we are moving back into the Sunny Brae Garden Apartments in Arcata, CA. The buildings are the kind of salmon pink you get after a decade of sun wash over a bad idea. These apartments are where I would learn how to skateboard, play video games, tear the legs off of Water Striders, talk about girls in "that way", and, best of all, to form secret clubs.

There were a few other kids around. My brother, of course, two years older and always the wiser, made connections over every child's mutual love, the Nintendo Entertainment System, which we got as a joint present from our grandparents at the previous x-mas. I too used the power of gaming to join social engagements but I had a penchant for the trees and wandering around in secret or unexplored locations.

Mike and Rodney were also brothers. Rodney was the same age as my brother but Mike was a whopping 4 years my senior. Together they were like ancient sage travelers, come to impart wisdom on the unfortunate inexperienced. I made a habit of knocking on their door almost daily.

They would wander with me and we would talk about the birds and bees, and everday, it would seem, we had some new secret club, which was probably my idea after a while--always trying to create consistent patterns.

On this day, we find ourselves lurching through the rain soaked blackberry vines until we all stand staring down at a dead cat.

"Is it dead?" - Me

"I think it's dead." - Rodney

"Yeah, dude, it's fucking dead." - Mike

This is where Mike picks up the cat by the tail and whips it around like he's a human windmill, letting go right at the apex. It soars, spinning out through the sky, beyond the blackberry bushes, until nobody can see where it might land. The second it vanishes from view, someone makes a sound, "reeaooowww!" For a second I think that it was the dead cat, but I remember that thing about dead animals not being able to talk. I piss a little in my pants with a keeled over, gut-clenching cackle befitting a lunatic. This is the first time I remember letting my bladder go at a joke. I mosey on, slightly behind my friends, inspecting my zipper for wetness, embarassed and worried that my social faux pas might be spotted. As we saunter back to the apartments, I whisper, "Hey, now we're the Dead Cat Club."

Haiku: Dead?

Auto blog posts rule,
Too bad I couldn't be here:
I think I'm dead.

Notes from the insomniac night

It's become apparent to me that I need to write more. There are so many beginnings of novels and stories in my library--so many wonders to discover. I'm living at night now. It doesn't seem that long ago that 1am was early for me. How I've become so old. My mornings are sleepy, exhausted, sore. I can't move, let alone think. But at night, my mind races, my body wants to jump. I feel the urge to burst out the front door and run screaming into the night. I could do this. naked. I could face the chill of the spring night air, flapping around, free and adventurous, a bird on the hunt for some evening prey. I could just run out there, freezing as it may be. What would happen, I wonder. What would I find. Enough of this; a ninja wonders on nothing that can be realized in a breath. Here I go.