BLUSANG ITIM (RE-IMAGINED) - PART 2

“Hey miss, mind if we tag along?”

The lady in black stare at the group of a bystander with disgust. These dogs are blatantly hitting on her the way they smother her body from head to toe with their twinkling eyes.

“Come one. We don’t mean harm. Actually, we are going to protect you from maniacs on your way.” The man in open button polo pulls his pants up a notch as he winks to the lady.

“Why don’t you just die.” The lady in black utter with a venomous look at them. But the bystander like it more when they found out that their prey fights back; the game would be more thrilling for them.

Yet before they start their lust-fueled plan, one of them starts to scream out of nowhere. When all eyes turn towards him, everyone grew pale and starts to scramble away; pissing their paints in the process.

What they witness is the raw vision of death; of flesh disintegrating while it is still alive. Entrails sloshing into a liquid the poured hapless on the ground while leaving nothing but eyeballs and bones intact as the only remains of the corpse.

The rest out of panic tried to run but on their way, they too succumb to the unseen hand of death that touch unknowingly.

It took a second before the lady in black is now surrounded by rotting cadavers. But to her surprise, each of them begins to move and approach her with their odd, wobbly gait and empty eyes turn to her.

“W-Wait…” Jessica backpedals but the walking dead continue towards her until they slowly dropped on their knees and bow their head on their already loose neck. The scene could be taken as something like that of a fairy tale when gallant princes kneel before the gorgeous princess.

The catch, however, is that a pinch of horror seasoned the tale of Jessica in reality; her loyal princes are nothing but corpses that refuses to die to serve her.

She can’t understand yet how on earth this abominable miracle happens. She only remembers waking up with the black dress on her and smelling a fetid odor coming from the outside of her boarding house. Once she went out, she found her landlady at the gates of her house already decaying.

Terrified and clueless, she runs as fast as she can away from her house. As she looks back to it, she demands her legs to go faster despite her limited movement due to the black dress as she saw the dead body of her landlady starts to stand up and look towards her direction.

She was huffing heavily when she came across an appliance store. When things seem to be getting normal, Jessica found that something is entirely different now to her face.

The countless warts on them are now gone.

She continues her aimless journey around the town and slowly tidbits of answer start to fall in place although in the most bizarre manner.

Upon stumbling with other people, she discovered that after a brief moment with them they all starting to decay in the most gruesome way. Even their right to scream is taken away from them once their flesh began to rot.

And every time a helpless individual die out of decay, they will always come back to life and follow her like a lovesick puppy trailing her and yet doesn’t try to do any harm. With all her knowledge taken from countless zombie films she binged watch before, she is glad that in real life they don’t actually pounce on you for your brains.

But the strangest thing of all that happens after she dons the black dress besides the living dead is that she is starting to become the beautiful swan she wanted to be.

After her encounter with the lewd bystanders (who are now trailing behind her like a squad of soldiers from darkness), she looks herself once more to a nearby glass window of a jewelry shop and gasps upon seeing another transformation.

Her lips now are fuller and her then thick cartoon-like brows plastered on top of her bulging eyes are now trimmed with precision. There is a glow all over her countenance that even she can’t help but be tantalized.

“I-Is this..me?” She gropes her face and surprised how smooth it is just like the silk she’s been stitching before in the tailor shop.

She pinches her supple cheeks and starts closing her eyes.

“Oh God, this must be a dream…”When nothing changes on her refection, she slaps her face gently in rapid succession.

Upon looking once more in the glass window, the one who still stares at her back is no other than the face of the goddess that she becomes.

“Calm down. You are not dreaming. You just died.” Jessica’s hair stands erect upon hearing once more the voice from her bedroom. She even forgets about how this nightmare (although she now considered a beautiful kind of nightmare) all started with; from the nameless voice that hides somewhere inside each every fabric of this black dress.

“I am dead? What do you mean I am dead?” Alarmed by the words she heard, she looks again once more in the glass window and traces her face for any signs of slightest decay.

“Yes, you died. But after death comes rebirth. You are not the same person anymore.”

Jessica was never a fan of riddle or any puzzling wordplay. How come she died and reborn again? Is this all the doing of the black dress?

“Is that even possible?” She asked himself but at the back of her mind, the answer is just plain obvious even for a grade school. She looks around and saw the growing numbers of living dead moving towards her like a flock of astray sheep minus the meek guise.

She even managed to notice that some of them are her former co-workers at the tailor shop. Those who didn’t even give a damn about her; the ugly girl who doesn’t have a life since day one.

But now they are now kneeling before her and reaching out to her with their fetid, bony hands in undying devotion as if she is their personal Virgin Mary in black.

“Maybe I am not Jessica anymore…” She once more touches her face as she takes a look at the army of undead ready at her disposal; willing to do abide any command from her with their immortal loyalty.

And who cares if their flesh is already shed and their body is overflowing with an aroma that only death itself could love?

“Tell me what should I have to know more about this dress.” She smoothens the black dress and starts her journey again in the middle of the dead night.

For the first time today, Jessica breaks a soft smile on her face. Tonight is the night that her direst desire will be fulfilled although by the hordes of deathless beings that once look down on her with contempt and disgust.

It was the closest thing she can think of on being crowned and serve as a princess; a kind of royalty that all woman has secretly willing to die for just to have a piece of it in their lifetimes.