50 & 100 Words

Brain Dead, Need Brains

Thrifty Words 50 #31 & 100 #10: Zombies

Humans have a long history of being enamored with monsters. From Scylla and Charybdis, Grendel, Martians, Cthulhu, Vampires, Frankenstein’s monster, and zombies to name just a few.

Modern-day zombies are portrayed as shuffling dead who feed on living flesh or brains (White Zombie),(The Walking Dead), or super fast attackers (World War Z), even benevolent protectors infected with the T4 virus (Last Mayor of America book series). We even have an entire culture surrounding the zombie apocalypse.

Let’s not forget the lore of the Haitian Zombie and its bokor master.

We have cartoons, comics, TV shows, books, and movies about zombies. We have memes. My favorite memes are about the cellphone zombies.

As a teenager, I remember accusations of being a boob tube zombie, those who watched too much TV. I wasn’t among that crowd and neither were my kids. But my youngest, born in 2002, definitely has the potential to be a smartphone zombie.

This week, I challenge you to write exactly 50 or exactly 100 words about zombies. Whatever the word zombie conjures in your mind’s eye.

Please choose only one category in which to write: 50 words OR 100 words. Submission guidelines for each are below.

Remember, in order to be considered for the challenge, you need to write exactly 100 or 50 words (contractions such as ‘you’ll’ and ‘y’all’ count as one, as do articles ‘a’ and ‘the’ ‘and all 23 auxiliary verbs ‘am’ ‘is’ ‘are’ etc. Hyphenated words count as one word.)

Please use the kicker 100 WORDS or 50 WORDS and ‘Thrifty Words 100 Challenge #10: Zombies’ or ‘Fifty Word Challenge #31: Zombies’ as your subtitle and submit by 6:00 pm.EST on Friday, 2 April. All stories submitted by the deadline will be released the following morning in the weekly roundup.

A reminder: we will only publish one story per author to the roundup. If you submit more than one story, it is most likely that the first story submitted will be chosen for the roundup. You may submit Thrifty Word stories outside of the theme challenge anytime. They will be published in the Thrifty Words section but not included in the theme challenge roundup.

Don’t forget the upcoming cash prize essay contest. The prompt will come just after Easter.

You can get started by following our Ko-fi page and even buying us a coffee!

https://ko-fi.com/thebadinfluence

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