I gave birth to a teenage Zombie!

The police had told her never to let her daughter in the house at any time; that she was hooked on some kind of new drug called Zombadrine
but which the drug addicts called “Zombie”.

But how could she turn away her own daughter; the child whom she had brought forth from her own womb and fed upon her own breast and yet, now her daughter was banging on the door and it was the middle of the night and she was scared.

“They only come out at night”, the police officer had told her, “Its one of the side effects of the drug. It makes their skin and eyes sensitive to sunlight”.

“The way you talk, it sounds as if she’s become some sort of a vampire”, she remarked; laughing, unintentionally, because she was just so flabbergasted by it all.

“I’m afraid, that’s not far from the truth”, said the police officer gravely, “She might not try and bite your neck but she may well try and kill you”.

“Kill me?”, she’d said, unable to believe what she was hearing, “My sweet, kind, gentle daughter?!”

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this”, said the policeman, looking down at the spiral pattern in her carpet and shifting uncomfortably, “But your daughter is not the same girl that you knew. She’s not in control of herself now. And Z-heads… I mean Zombadrine addicts… going through withdrawal from the drug are known to be
violently aggressive and even psychotic. They only seem to calm down once they’ve got the drug in their veins, then they go to sleep”.

There was another loud bang at the door, bringing her sharply back to the present, and then she heard her daughter screaming through her letter-box.

“Mother! Let me in mother! Please”, she cried.

Her voice sounded so strange, almost like it was someone else and it was rasping, like something or someone unearthly and shrieking, like one of the dead shrieking out of the torment of hell. Was that what the drug did to your voice? “It’s horrible! Horrible!”, she thought.

She put her hands over her ears but it wasn’t any use because, as well as the screaming and the pounding outside the door, there was also her own screaming, pounding maternal instinct. This was her own daughter! Her own daughter in pain, for god’s sake, needing her help. She couldn’t just ignore her like she was some stranger.

But then she screamed, “Let me in you old whore! Let me in or I’ll fucking kill you!”.

That brought her back to her senses. Her daughter would never have said that to her.

Whatever was outside was not her daughter. It was the thing which she had become.

But the banging and the screaming continued and now she was banging at one of the glass window panes in the door. If she broke that she could get her hand in and unlock the door, “Oh god! Oh god!”, she prayed, “Help me and help my daughter please!”.

Then she heard the glass break and the back door open.

“Mother!”, called the rasping voice, as she just managed to scramble upstairs and into
an upstairs bathroom, locking the door behind her, “I’m in the house, Mother!” and she heard her daughter, or the thing that her daughter had become, laughing darkly; strange, cruel, vicious, mad laughter that she never could have dreamed would ever come out of her daughter's mouth.

And then she started to think about what her daughter looked like; not as a young, pretty girl but now; what the drug might have done to her face. The policeman had said, “You won’t recognize her. All the addicts that I’ve seen have wasted away; their eyes sunken and glaring and their bodies thin like some sort of skeleton”.

She had been angry when the policeman had said this, “How can you talk like that about her?!”, she’d said, “I am her mother. Don’t you have any respect for other peoples feelings”.

“I’m sorry”, the policeman had said, “I know I sound callous or harsh, but you should be afraid of your daughter now because, she’s not the same person, she’s dangerous”.

And then he’d told her about the bodies; the bodies that he’d seen of people who had been murdered by these Zombie addicts; people who had disturbed them while they were robbing their house in the night, “As dangerous as disturbing a wild animal, I assure you. These people were practically ripped to pieces”, he said, gagging at the nausea which the memory brought back to him, “And, if I can save your life by making you fear your daughter then I'm doing something good”.

Then she heard her daughter climbing the stairs.

“Oh god! Oh god!”, she thought, “What am I going to do. I have to accept that my daughter is dead. That the thing coming up the stairs is not my daughter. I’ll give her whatever she wants. Money. Anything, just to get her out of the house”.

Suddenly the phone downstairs rang. It rang a couple of times and then it stopped, then the mobile phone in her pocket started vibrating and she answered it, whispering.

“Yes?”, she asked.

“This is P.C. Forbes, I visited your house this morning. It’s about your daughter”, said the policeman on the other end of the phone.

“Yes! Yes!”, she whispered excitedly, “I know. She’s in my house. She’s coming upstairs. You’ve got to help me, please!”.

The policeman sounded stunned, “I’m sorry madam, but that just can’t be. You see, we have your daughter’s body down at the station. She died of an overdose, about two hours ago, the doctor says”.

Then she heard a loud banging on the toilet door which made her jump, “Open the door, mother”, said the voice of the thing outside, “Open the fucking door!”.