This is so stupid. Not a zombie. Come on.
This is one thing he can't help but laugh at-
or try to. It's implausible. Not her.
This is Bad Girl. With a disturbing new look. This is a young woman three years dead pointing her tits and glinting eyes right at him. Try to laugh. Baby wants another go and this is a dream. This -heh heh- it's a -heh- ha ha ha- a hologram. A really good optical illusion built in three dimensions by laser beams intersecting where she's standing on her rotten feet.
Laugh at her because Bad Girl is one girl you killed personally!
Bad Girl says his name. Almost singing it with a mean set to her jaw. Her brackish pearl perfect teeth flash behind lilac-petal lips. This is so B-movie bad it's gotta be laughed at. Even if Bad Girl were here right now it would be impossible for her to be in this condition. This condition.
Look at it. So convincing- dead as hell, that's a *Zombie*. This zombie in this empty Hotel.
Really? Let's be realistic.
Travis knows he's awake, he sees it's really her dead-baby hectic face brown-apple shining over there. It's not a demon, it's technology.
A good hologram can be awfully deceiving; fascinating devices. The up-to-the-minute ones display every detail to the tiniest distinction, even from kissing-distance. Except for the fact they're inherently intangible, holograms are as good as real-life nowadays. He read that in a magazine or something…
so feel confident.
She --a real Bad Girl zombie, not this light-shell reproduction here-- would have a lot more problems than a ghastly complexion. Unchecked rot in a temperate coastal environment would have Bad Girl little more then a stinky leather-clad skeleton, if she hadn't been erased by the United Assassins Association's cleaners upon her inglorious demise.
Which she was.
Anyone with a firing cortex knows the fragile vocal chords and the milky ocular orbs are the first to liquefy after death. Bad Girl's voice. Her eyes. Muertos.
She just ruined her own illusion by saying "Tra-vis Touchdownnnn," so laugh.
Someone went to a lot of work to impress him in this way.
And he's impressed to death. It's so good he'll enjoy it.
This is the best show ever. I mean classic. Gotta be an elaborate gift from Sylvia. A real-life Resident Evil. Cool. Scary chic…
way more impressive than a Murder Mystery dinner or crashing a 'haunted' house for all you adrenaline junkies.
It'd be great if Sylvia were here for me to protect but who's complaining?
Night of the Living Fun?
Sweet.
Bad Girl?
This lighting makes you look awful.
Gone-Over Girl.
Travis laughs and it might sound genuine echoing in the dim Grand Lobby. It's her campy-movie cue to join in with an uber-creepy cackle, but she's just staring. Of course. She's saving a shrieky giggle for a real high-intensity moment when it'll scare the shit out of him. This is so cool. Who should he thank?
Bad Girl smiles with half her face and swings her dirty, petticoat-puffy babydoll skirt coyly. One sliding step in his direction and the shadows from two lone cut-glass sconces turn her maroon dress black and leave only her pupils shining. Ooooh, nice touch.
Little rust-orange stuffed chairs and petite coffee tables arranged for flow of movement have this squat-audience presence. It's smells a little old-dingy under the faded cleaning product odor. Naturally, the winter blizzard has been walking and talking all day and night, and a tuneless whistler can barely be heard far away, at the top of the building.
This is overkill with a twist. The dynamic's a little different this go-round but the set's spot-on.
Travis figures Bad Girl must have followed him out of the dark bar when he ran out of coins for the juke, just now. In there with him when he didn't know, watching him when he thought he was alone, milling around the Granite Peak Lounge.
His hosts leave him a stocked bar, but charge an lb dollar and a half for a three-minute song. So shrug. He's in there before the quarters are swallowed up with only the AutoJuke7000 and the shelf lights on because all the tinted spirits up there looks nice and antique-y with all the amber wood. Little air bubbles ascended in the juke's neon tubes way on the far side of the dance floor, tables and booths. The whole place unchanged in a hundred years but for the labels on the bottles and that circus-colored stereo.
So sample the best agave. Pretty good.
But he wasn't interested in drinking, and if he were he wouldn't do it in the cavernous Granite Peak Lounge. So he was strutting to his room, bored, thinkin maybe- warm bath and a smoke? billiards? sexy movie, bit of manga? video game?
sexy video game?
Shhhhhh-hckk
A paper-soft sound just behind him made Travis spin so fast he clocked his elbow on the corner of a square column he was passing. If he had taken the tequila bottle with him it would have shattered like a bomb when he whirled like a panicky tella-novella queen. His glasses almost achieved lift-off.
Spaz much? Jesus, man.
Travis Touchdown giggled to himself. Who else was there to giggle to? There wasn't nobody, that's who.
So- he was striding to the wide carpeted staircase again, looking to the soft gold light on the landing up there when Bad Girl swayed from behind a column. Her bare worm-white shoulders hooked forward and her head hanging low with her bad eyes on him and she doesn't breathe or blink but sways a little because her equilibrium is all off- he doesn't know she is here with him until she taps her baseball bat on the tile floor twice, at home plate.
No manic spin this time. That just hurt! Loud like a shot, the sound made his heart double over for a split-second, a giant gasp super-cooling his teeth.
Try to turn. Guess who it might be
don't die with an idiot scream on your mug
Travis does an about-face. Not ready, but ready for the firing squad. His own assassins.
That's when she waved with her little fingerless bat-gloved fish-belly hand. The digits jerking spasmodically like talons as he saw her and peeled his lips back like a dog. Her other hand had the bat, chipped and splintered sharp on one side of the fat round end. The white friction tape on the handle of it blackened in the death grip of her dainty little lady fingers. The tendons making the hand grip the ash handle so tightly were greasy yellow and showing in high relief all the way up her fetid arm. His baseball babe.
No.
Try to breathe. Can't be sure- not quite-- she's blonde, and the silhouette sure gave him a start. The bat especially. Chilling to the bone, man, she was scary when she was alive…the batting gear and Lolita-naughty frock… just for a heartbeat, he thought --!!!
But it couldn't be her.
Couldn't be.
And dares to say it.
That dark head nods, just two little dips of the dirty-blonde curls.
Travis Touchdown circles slowly to the right, further from the stairs but enough so if she follows, the light from the front desk sconces must fall on her face.
Quick, her black ballet-flats skim the rug in a rubbery shamble, strafing him. Her head bobs all around but her eyes never leave his.
Woah!
Her first shuddering move scared him badly.
Creepy, dude, she looks all dead.
But it's just the dark.
"Bad Girl?" Muscle memory tenses his right hand around the handle of an absent weapon. The katana's up in his suite. On the fourth floor. At the end of a five and half minute hallway, last door, and locked. It should be at his hip but he left it behind for no good reason.
Pretty stupid.
Now, the light is all over her face and he knows for sure- it is the former-second-deadliest, most-insane-adversary-ever: B to the G fucking Bad Girl.
When he recognizes her features, relaxed as they were when she expired three years ago, Travis is wondering who expects him to buy this.
thinking no way this is so stupid
Not a zombie-
come on
at the moment his vacation truly started.

He steps backward. She doesn't move and he does it again. Step. Sliding the other leg under him like lazy moonwalker. Follow me. Another exaggerated back-step, raising his eyebrows at her in a little whaddya-think-about-that-eh?
Bad Girl's platinum eyes locked pinhole-bright on his face.
She's slumped, shuddering in place a little bit, as if with mild Parkinson's disease.
One step back feels like putting extra tension on an elastic band stretched to snapping point.
Follow me, Bad Girl.
Can't you?
No. The beams will be interrupted and she'll disappear, so the program only lets her walk so far. Tech's got it's limits- he should go somewhere else and see what other cool places she'll pop up--uugh -sniffing some rank ribbon of air wafted just right by a draft, Travis makes a face. Garbage stink, offensive. Standing around in the Grand Lobby, hanging out. Travis is all eyes and frills and chills just coolly regards with putrescence presence, chillin.
Try to look for the equipment, something that might look like a projector or a gun barrel. Where are the machines, the lenses…
He's taken his eyes off her, just a sideways glance at the peripheral and way way way too fast she closes the distance between them. Travis yelps. He falls back, bandy-legged, trying to run and leap simultaneously.
Sorry, Travis, this spaz attack will cost you your life.
Bad Girl swings low, racking his shin and nearly sweeping both legs, catching his shirt and some flesh with an icy-hard grip before he topples and can roll away.
Like needles bursting his bubble, her fingernails digging at his sternum are a good indication this is no game.
Face to face it smells bitter like almond extract and rotten ramen. The diminutive fist shredding his flesh is arctic cool, but it's just holding. Bad Girl is looking into him. Leaning closer and closer, it's heavy input; too much to deny- the intelligence burning from that face like sin, supremely lax like a mortifying nineteenth-century death-portrait woken -Travis pushes her shoulders, twists at her wrist until it must release, but she's much stronger than him-- she's glued to him and he's forced to meet her gaze.
Can she still enjoy being in complete control? Sadism post-mortem?
Her eyes are so wide-terrible and she's just inches from his face.
The fuck the fuck, the fuck is going on here?
"The monkey thou-ought it was ah-all in fun…" singing with a long dead voice that was crazy and child-like to begin with, singing in his face with that tannery fog oozing out and coating his throat, sing-songing god no and he's barely on his tiptoes thin stream of blood from his chest soaking into his waistband warming pubic hair teeth flashing from haunted lighthouse awful eyes dead-baby confirming you can't handle this
"POP!! Goes the weasel!" time for the screamydoll giggle. Doesn't disappoint. Travis has no thoughts, just blurred ravens swooping all around. Maybe she can feel his heart under her knuckles. Trying to punch out at hummingbird's pace. There's a bone clatter of the bat bouncing by her ruddy-purple ankles and rolling by their feet.
Are you fainting, you pussy? Hyper-ventilate and pass out now.
He will, he's gonna pass out.
Please pass out.
"I can't lose this time, asshole. No way." Smugly bobbing her head like a spoiled girl with a secret. "For you." There's something at the bottom depth of her breathy words, an extra factor lending thunder to her snarky tone. "To win. Just so you know."
On the air, invisible intelligence reads his response and debates the next action it in a millisecond. Whatever to prompt the scream dot exe runs.
Travis just shudders like an electrocuted man when she cups the nape of his neck with her clammy fingers.
The fingernails with their black crescent moons at the base just scratching lightly… the other hand tensing and flexing, greasy with hot blood. She'll bite him now.
Panic, like water, can't be compressed.
He puts his hand on her face to push her back and wishes he hadn't.
rotten pumpkin oh god don't touch her
Trying to wrench out of her marble grip with no purchase, helpless to block her rancid tarantula hand scrabbling at his stomach, he
can't get away oh God oh Fuck can't stop her from doing anything i can't ! oh shit lord please fuck help your son now !!!
She says tickle party!
and claws his belly- here.
Stabbing five fingers deep into muscle with glee- there.
Even kicking and kneeing her, chopping her skinny wrist with all his strength, he can't block her from tickling him. No one could know but Travis Touchdown- and he's got no time to reflect- but he's never been so terrified in his whole miserable life.
She's loving it
pinching and digging for his guts
laughing banshee-loud this is
Foreplay in Hell
"Faaaaaahhck! NononoNOOOO--AAAAAAAHH!"
Loud and long, climbing in pitch and octaves, Travis's scream shreds the air as he writhes like a stuck pig. Both hands on her horrible smiling face can't turn it a little. Not a little.
Her petite late-pretty face is wormy-vegetable-sick touching it, stop touching it--
she nips at his thumb with a wink- "Arn!"
Fuck!!
She tosses him, just a sad sack, easy to hurl twenty feet through the air with an over-hand pitch.
Surely to someone it's a comical slide, skidding on his neck with his jaw bouncing and his ass and feet in the air over his head.
Thudding hard and sprawling on the riser at the base of the stairs, Travis is To Be Continued.

***

***continue to Chapter 2: Mask of a Red Death