...

I'm a teenage Frankenstein
The local freak with the twisted mind
I'm a teenage Frankenstein
These ain't my hands
And these legs ain't mine

Teenage Frankenstein - Alice Cooper

...

Kyle tried to wake up. He had never failed at waking up before but there was a first time for everything. His eyes simply wouldn't open. He wasn't paralyzed; he could feel them. He could feel his eyeballs rolling under the lids as he fought to open them. He tossed his head to the side, trying to shake his eyes open. It worked, partially. He felt an involuntary twitch in his fingers. Then his middle sat up. He didn't tell it to, it just did. Since he didn't send the signal, his arms didn't help. They just hung there.

The world was a hazy blur of darkness and gray and blue and light and more darkness. He felt like he was drowning. He gasped and his whole body gave a mighty spasm, like it was trying to run away from itself in all directions at once. He thought he was having a seizure but the shaking didn't continue.

There was a dark blur of a thing in front of him. His right arm lashed out and whacked it in the head region. The thing lunged at him and he head-butted it. The thing dropped out of sight and he heard a familiar voice. He focused on that and saw the source nearby. She was a haze of light in the darkness, silvery gray with dark pools where eyes should be. It was an ethereal effect and it soothed him even though he couldn't understand what she was saying.

She cleaned him off somewhat, crying while she gently swabbed him with wet towels. She said her name was Zoe and she kept apologizing over and over; for the towels, for the cold water, for his nudity and even more towels to cover that up. She put clothes on him. He didn't know who they belonged to, nor did he care. His limbs were twitching and tensing it weird ways he couldn't control. He couldn't remember how to make his mouth say words. He was having a really hard time just thinking in words. Impulses were easier. Instincts.

She put him in a car. He vaguely remembered what one was but the movement of the vehicle once they were on the road really started to mess with him. She started apologizing again. His insides felt like they were going to crawl out his ears. Then his body went into full-scale riot mode as every piece of him tried to reject the abomination the young witches had crafted him into. He was a crime against nature as well as life and death. But while he was a sloppily sewn-together ragdoll, his stitches were very strong.

He blacked out for a bit shortly after he heard the lady in the back seat speak. When he next opened his eyes the car had stopped. Zoe and the lady who said her name was Misty helped him out of the car and into the swamp. Crickets and frogs chirred all around in staccato song. It was dark but he had no trouble seeing. Everything had a silvery haze to it, like Zoe and Misty did. He liked this place better than the towel place or the car. It was cool and damp and quiet here.

The women led him to a stilt house that hunkered above the river. Spanish moss hung from the underside. Somewhere down below, an alligator hissed as they went up.

...

By the time Misty Day got her mud poultice smeared into his stitches Kyle could see both women clearly, as people not specters or silvery witches. He nearly had his body under control. He could sit mostly still while Misty applied the glop. It took effort, though; conscious thought. He wasn't paying attention to what the women were saying or doing until he heard Zoe say she was going to leave.

He panicked and tears burned his eyes. It hadn't occurred to him that she would go anywhere without him. She was the only thing in the world that made sense. Misty was starting to, though, and even she looked like she hadn't thought Zoe would leave. That scared him. He reached for Zoe, trying desperately to tell her that he wanted to go with her or that she should stay but the words were missing and all that came out was guttural grunting.

She came close enough to touch. He caught her hand and reeled her in. He put her hand on his eyes so she could feel his tears. Maybe that would tell her. But it didn't work. She was pulling away, leaving, and there wasn't anything he could do about it. Misty would heal him, she said. But could she explain what he was, how he was and what he was supposed to do with himself?

...

Author's Note:

I tried to resist writing anything this season till this season had more than a couple of shows but I just couldn't help myself. Season 1.5 got really really ugly. I needed something else to think about for a bit and after re-watching episode 2, this zombie drabble just had to come out. Especially since I (a long time Alice Cooper fan) had the perfect song queued up for it. Go listen to it if you haven't before.

"Young witches had crafted him into" was a deliberate tongue-in-cheek reference to the movie The Craft.

I now return you to my regularly-scheduled fan-fic'ing.