Random stories

"Dad!" My boy, Tim, whisper shouted. "She's back."

"Shhh," I put an arm around his shoulder, he buried his face into my cotton hoodie. I looked out the peephole, the only source of sunlight in our boarded up home.

There Maggie was, shambling along with the rest of them. She busted out the robot, then interrupted her groove with the happy feet. Her tattered rags trailed behind her like a bridal train. Her shoeless feet were cracked, deformed, and bleeding form the countless days of dancing.

Presently, she stopped doing the happy feet, and straightened up, facing me. I stumbled back a step, horrified that we had been discovered.

In a few minutes, with Tim still crying into my naval, I gathered my courage to look out the peephole again.

Tim's mom, Maggie, was now leading a jazzersize session. She clapped with vigor above her head while doing high knees, and I could nearly hear her shouting encouragement.

Presently, I hoisted Tim and retreated from the hole into our bedroom, where I bundled us beneath a pile of blankets. Only then did Tom relax; you can't get us while we are in our pillow and blanket fort.

I waited until Tim was deeply sleeping before I crawled out of the blanket fort. The jaunty tunes of a million genres from a million speakers still blared outside. I steeled myself and peeked again at the hoard.

Maggie was long gone, replaced by a mishmash of a variety of groups and peoples. A grandma and grandpa did a very slow waltz, and pangs of guilt assaulted me once again.

Why didn't I join Maggie when she had been turned? The guilt crashed into my skull, and I was unable to control my soaring heart rate. I felt it pound against me like a fist. The roaring in my ears only escalated as I collapsed, and I found myself counting to four again and again as I tried to steady my breathing.

It worked after a time, and eventually I opened my eyes.

"Daddy?" Tim stood before me, holding Blankie. Our vase with its dead flowers lay crumped and shattered beside him.

I immediately grew alert, with no time to spare.

The knob jiggled as a dancer tried to turn it, attracted by the sound of the shattering vase. As the knob wouldn't turn, heavy blows began landing, focused around the latch. The door shook and shuddered as Tim ran to his bedroom, hiding in the closet.

The door gave way slowly, and a sense of calm spread over me.

It was time. It was my time. I tried so hard to keep my humanity. But without other humans, what is there to keep?

I needed Maggie. My boy needed a mother.

I hoisted Tim who did not protest.

"Daddy, no! Stop!" Tim yelled, yet my iron grip did not let up as I unlocked the front door.

We came face to face with a man in business attire. He opened his mouth inhumanly wide, as though the bottom half were on a mechanical hinge.

Then, he sank his teeth into my left temple, from which I still have a scar.

I began doing a jig, which then coalesced into a tango, which transcended into simply tapping my foot, which morphed into a beautiful, entrancing, tap dance.

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Submitted by JohnIsWithYou on Thu, May 18, 2023 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

The dancing plague of 1518 returns and through social media the contagion spreads fast and globally. You're one of the few survivors in an apocalyptic wasteland, hiding from the dancing horde.