Posted on 2011-10-31

Once upon a time, the small town of Lowbury was run autocratically by one young lady, a miss of approximately one and twenty by the name of Miss Dilemma Brickbarn. She had a heart of lead, a head full of sawdust and a fist of iron, but because she outranked almost everyone else on the social scale, she was more than happy to make others dance to her tune.

Some had tried to keep her in line, but her father was an invalid in his own mind, her governess was more interested in snagging their well-to-do neighbor as a husband, and the only male who was socially superior to her was a crotchety gent by the name of George Kingsley. But he was years her senior and she gave no more thought to his wishes than she did anyone else's.

Dilemma, smug in the knowledge that she had arranged the marriage between the governess and their neighbor, Mr. Easton, decided she was going to match up every single individual she could find. The downtrodden masses of Lowbury, it seemed, had no choice.

Her latest project involved one Miss Henrietta Jones, a girl who lived at Miss Goodwin's school for girls. Getting on in age, she was forced to either work at the school, or find a husband, but Dilemma took it into her head that the lowly farmer chosen for Henrietta, Mr. Swallow, was a poor choice.

Henrietta, she argued to Kingsley, was someone's natural daughter, to be sure, but must be at least the child of a duke or a bishop. A young lady with such manners, such poise, deserved better than to live her life on the Swallow farm. (The fact that the Swallows were tenants of Mr. Kingsley only made Dilemma that more determined to find a better husband for Henrietta.)

And that person was Mr. Elton John, the vicar. Henrietta would make the perfect minister's wife, and Dilemma did not like the looks he gave her when he thought she wasn't looking. She noticed everything, else she would not be very good at being supreme dictator of Lowbury, now would she?

So she ignored Mr. John unless Henrietta was there, and then she let them both know, in no uncertain terms, that she expected them to make a match of it. They ignored her, so she made them pay. She made them spend an evening listening to her father expound on the virtues of gruel.

Mr. Kingsley, who seemed to enjoy discourses on breakfast grains, tried to take her to task for such heavy-handedness, but got nowhere, even though he warned her that one day she would find out what happened when her friends turned on her.

"Oh, fiddle dee dee!" she insisted, borrowing a line from another great tyrant in fiction, Scarlett O'Hara.

"Mark my words, you will rue the day you decide to lord it over those less fortunate than you."

Speaking of those less fortunate - that would be Mrs. Gates and her spinster daughter, Miss Gates. Dilemma took great delight in torturing them, especially when it came to their granddaughter and niece, Miss Lame Hairwax.

The Gates' thought Lame could walk on water, but that was ridiculous in Dilemma's eyes, because she was the only one who could accomplish that feat.

However, Dilemma had a dilemma. Mr. Elton John tried to propose to her instead of Henrietta, Henrietta got proposed to by Mr. Swallow, and Dilemma made her turn it down. Mr. Kingsley got to tell her that he told her so. Fortunately, Mr. Easton's son, who had been raised by his late mother's parents, the Templemountains, was to visit. What a distraction from Dilemma's dilemma!

Furter Templemountain (he was christened Frankfurter, but no one called him Frank) was a handsome man, but not handsome enough to tempt Dilemma, especially after Miss Lame Hairwax came to visit. The two of them always seemed to be together, even when they were not. (See how observant Dilemma was?) To add insult to injury, Mr. Kingsley seemed to admire Lame, as well.

To make matters worse, Mr. John left Lowbury without her permission, and came home with a wife. Not only did Dilemma not approve of anyone marrying behind her back, but Agnes Falcons John was rather ugly. There was something not quite right with the woman, as if she might fall apart at any moment. She was also quite rude, speaking in grunts and groans, as if opening her mouth was too much for her.

Marriage, too, did not seem to agree with Mr. John. He looked almost as bad as his wife. He should have stayed home and married Henrietta, as Dilemma wished. It served him right, then, that several spots on him looked like rotting flesh.

Things began to go downhill from there. Someone began eating Dilemma's household staff. The turkeys thrived, sure, because they were left alone, but she could not get anyone to answer when she ran for tea, let alone get a decent cup of the stuff.

Then, the Eastons disappeared. Furter seemed to not care, and then he, too, started to break out in Mr. John's rotting flesh rash. Dilemma's father had a visit from the Gateses and their niece one day, and they must have given him an illness, because afterwards he took to wrapping himself up all day and moaning constantly.

After that, the Slaws had a party that Dilemma was not invited to, and the guest list included the Gates family, Kingsley, the Johns and Furter. Someone was going to have to pay for that, too.

Even Henrietta started avoiding her. It could have been because Dilemma made fun of the crush the chit had developed on Mr. Kingsley, or it could have been that she had taken up again with Mr. Swallow, the farmer, without Dilemma's approval.

In an attempt to pull her small dictatorship back into place, Dilemma decided to organize a picnic for everyone on Box Hill.

Unfortunately, Dilemma had to open her big mouth one too many times at the picnic and she managed to insult Miss Gates. Kingsley was about to chastise her for the faux pas when Furter stood up and groaned. "Food!" he demanded. "Eat!"

"Yes, yes," Dilemma impatiently agreed, and was surprised when the few servants she had left all ran off, screaming. "What? You get back here!" she demanded, but they ignored her. She turned, and there were several people (if one could use that word) staring at her.

"No," she whispered, backing away. "No."

"Food," Henrietta moaned, reaching for Dilemma. "Swallow..."

"Yes, whatever," she replied. "Marry whomever you want! Just leave me..."

"Eat," Furter said, spitting out several teeth. "Now..."

"Run, Dilemma, run!" Kingsley shouted, and practically pushed her down the hill, grabbing her arm to keep her from falling. "We'll make for the old abbey ruins!" he said, pointing the way.

"Wha? What are those?" Dilemma could not help but look over her shoulder at the stumbling, moaning bodies following behind.

"Your happy little townspeople? Oh, they are just the living dead," he said, gasping for breath as they ran. (I told you he was a bit older than Dilemma.)

"You mean... zombies?"

"Well, duh. Now, c'mon, Dilemma, before I leave you for bait so I can save myself."

He might as well have done so, she thought a half hour later, as they tried to hide in the old ruins of Danwell Abbey. He didn't tell her that zombies could climb walls. And walk through door openings where there were no doors anymore. Or just reach over and... Oh! There went Mr. Kingsley! The zombies had him, and were pulling his brains up through straws. She thought she'd just slip out of the way when someone, Miss Gates, perhaps, looked up and moaned. "Dilemma..."

And that was when their attention was diverted to the young lady who had caused all their troubles, the one girl who had thought she was above them all, who tried to make a dystopian society out of Lowbury.

There was no where for Dilemma to run, and they backed her into a corner of the crumbling abbey wall before settling down to feast on her arms, legs, head and, yes, brains.

Her brains were rotten, and the zombies all died of food poisoning, a previously unknown way to kill them off. Henrietta, who had just been faking her infection, made a fortune off finding bad people and feeding them to the living dead.