Undead Vocational Training

Written for the Daily Flash Fiction Challenge with a word limit of 300.

The prompts: This story must contain the line "I don't like this place."

Undead Vocational Training

Headmaster Quimby floated silently over the instructor working with one of the new students. There seemed to be some sort of problem with the class LURCHING 101; Quimby didn’t like problems so he decided to listen in.

“I don’t like this place,” the little boy said looking around at the upturned tombstones eerily visible in the bright light of the full moon.

“What do you mean? This place is great! You have everything. No parental supervision so you don’t have to clean your room or bathe. The food is great; even better when we go on field trips to densely populated areas. Your entire existence is dedicated to scaring the living. What more could a zombie want?”

“I’m not sure. All that I know is this place gives me the creeps. I want to run and play in the sun not stumble around in the dark with my arms stretched out in front of me. Whose idea was that anyway?”

The instructor was caught off guard by the question. Regrouping, he said, “I think someone saw it in a movie once. Anyway, you are a zombie and sooner or later you will have to start acting like one.”

The headmaster had seen enough. Something was wrong. No one assigned to him ever failed to fall right into step with the program. Someone had screwed up somewhere. He put in a call to the Limbo Personnel Distribution Center. Twenty minutes later, he was still on hold. Those bureaucrats down there were so inefficient it was scary and Quimby didn’t scare easily.

Finally, someone picked up the line and said, “LPDC how can I help you?”

“I have a problem,” Quimby said. “One of my students doesn’t fit in. I think you sent him to the wrong place. His name is Casper.”

Word count 300