The Demon Escape Plan
By Matthew Tyler
It has come. The inevitable end of all we know. The slow
scrape of lifeless limbs scratching closer and closer to your door. The low, guttural
moan of a body driven by one basic, carnal desire. The zombie apocalypse or ‘Zombocalypse’
has arrived. We all knew it was going
to happen. Romero wasn’t just making a shocking piece of film in 1978 with ‘Dawn
of the Dead’. He was making a documentary, only… he just didn’t know it.
The pounding on the front door finally reaches its crescendo
and the living dead run riot throughout the house… only it’s empty. A dull
spark fires in a long-since-dead neuron in a zombie’s head as he sniffs and
thinks
Gosh, that smells remarkably like gas. I won’t
ponder that too long, because brains.
Fucking boom.
The house was a goddamn booby trap and you have successfully
taken out a sizable chunk of the army trying to taste what your idea factory.
Yeah, the zombocalypse happened, what of it? You were READY. You had planned
for this. You made sure the house was airtight, jerry-rigged a fuse and left
the gas on. Meanwhile, you hear a dull thud in the distance as you take a swill
from a well-earned victory mojito from the safety of your impenetrable fortress.
Everybody has their zombie escape plan. If you were smart, you made yours
around the time they decided to take out that Usain Bolt character during the ’28
Days Later’ period. Zombies + Cardio = You having a BAD time. You basically
have no-one to blame but yourself if you’re caught with your pants down when a
brain-hungry drone bashes down your door. But enough about Mormons
(ZZZZZZZING!). But seriously, there is a website that has done all the hard
work of mapping out the fucking WORLD for zombie danger zones, supply caches
and whatnot.
But all of a sudden, the victory mojito is slapped out of
your hand by a powerful, unseen force. Your hardened attack hounds have been
reduced to whimpering cowards, hiding under their paws. Objects start flying
around the room and it becomes inherently clear that this shit ain’t normal. It’s
only when you start hearing echoing clip-clops, Gregorian chanting and the sky
begins to rain fire that you realize you’ve been ‘demon-d’.
Like I said, EVERYONE has a zombocalypse plan. Even if
people won’t admit it, they’re secretly plotting which of their friends they’d
save and which family member they’re going to sacrifice to save themselves.
PLOT SPOILER: it’s the fat one. It’s ALWAYS the fat one. But seriously, if your
house becomes inhabited by an irritable demon with a penchant for banging doors
late at night, which of your closest family members/ friends is going to
believe you? At least with a zombie you have proof.
If we have learnt anything from demon movies, it’s that
demon attacks almost always happen when the victim is alone, terrified and will
almost NEVER be caught on film. At least not in a believable way. There will
always be a way to deny what the victim is showing you.
‘BUT I WAS FUCKING
FLOATING! YOU CAN SEE IT RIGHT THERE ON THE VIDEO! RIGHT FREAKING THERE!!!’
‘Maybe you ate a lot
of helium that day. Did you ever think of THAT?’
So what do you do? I have put a lot of thought into this.
The first thing I would do in this situation is tell someone. Hell, I would
tell EVERYONE. But like I’ve already said, who’s going to believe you? Well,
this is where the first stage of my plan comes into effect: planning.
PLANNING
You need to get this in early. I’m talking get started RIGHT
NOW. You tell your friends, you tell your family something along the lines of:
‘Look. There is a good chance that one day in the future, I will
be harassed by a demon with a grudge. I’m gonna need you to believe me when
this happens, just so you don’t think I’m insane.’
Obviously – and logically – the person you’re talking to
will probably stare you straight in the eye while you say this and lie
blatantly to give you that sense of security. They’ll agree with what you say,
of course they’ll believe you! But you’re not stupid. In their position, you’d
be straight on the phone to some friends to take the victim away on a ‘nice
vacation’.
So you need a ‘safe word’. A word that when used in
conjunction with your confession that Casper visited last night and now you
need new crockery, means that the person listening to the story must
ABSOLUTELY, without a skerrick of a doubt believe your babbling incoherentness.
So if you’re screaming about how you were given a new perspective of your
apartment when the demon mounted you to the ceiling for the better part of an
hour last night, remember to drop in that pre-programmed safe word so your
friend takes you seriously. This is important. No-one gets through this shit on
their own.
RE-ENFORCEMENTS
You need to get to a priest, STAT. I mean, these guys devote
their lives to the idea that there is an ultimate good and an ultimate evil in
everything we live through, why would they NOT believe you?! RIGHT?! All
logical ‘mental-health’ reasons aside, you get to this priest as fast as your
nibbled-by-hell-goat legs will take you for some information. You need allies
or this demon shit is going to get out of hand faster than you can say ‘Beezlebub’.
So now you’ve got holy water, symbology and the freaking HAND OF GOD at your
disposal! You’re set, right?!
The thick, wooden doors burst open and the pews start
splintering right in front of your very eyes. Your priest does his very best at
spouting the right lines, but stops when it becomes painfully obvious that the
horrible droning you’re hearing is just the demon singing along. Turns out, the
demon skipped school the day they were teaching how he should be afraid of God.
The priest turns to you and with a bashful blush, shrugs before he legs it. I
think now would be a great time to initiate part three of the plan.
ROAD TRIP
Think of this part as a pub crawl of everything holy. You
hop in your car and you troll every church, mosque, prayer rug, holy hill,
voodoo doll or ghostbuster until you find the right fit for your demon problem.
I mean, have you ever seen a demon attack anyone in a car? NO! Think of your
car as your home away from home for now. Get out and see all the sights you’ve
never seen before! Just don’t ever stop moving.
So by now, you’ve either found the right religious deity to
ward off whatever ails you… or you’re in terrible… terrible trouble. Hey, I mean,
it’s a reality that you MIGHT face. Even in your zombie plan, there’s the
POSSIBILITY that one of the sneaky suckers will work his way through the razor
wire, endure the brunt of the claymores you’ve set up and play a game of ‘chew
the carotid’ with you. You know what they say about the best laid plans. There
might be one last thing you can do though…
BARRICADE
Final quarter. Last minute of the game. Hunker down, the
best defence is… well basically a really fucking good defence. That’s just
common sense. Ever watched Supernatural? What’s the one thing the boys use when
the time to knuckle down and get their slay on? Salt. Sodium freaking chloride.
So first, get your hands on as much of that stuff as possible. They say an
unbroken ring of salt is impossible for demons to cross. So get creative! Try different
shapes and sizes. You might be a prisoner within the ring, but don’t let that
smother your creativity. Heck, develop a healthy dose of agoraphobia and extend
the ring around the house! Just be sure the ring remains intact. A strong gust
of wind and you’re up the River Styx without a paddle. There are NUMEROUS other
materials used to ward off grumpy ghouls, so if all else fails try some of
these!*
*Or all. Try ALL of these. We’re beyond conservative
treatment at this point.
- Frankincense
- myrrh
- sage
- sandalwood
- charcoal
- pine smoke
- anything really smelly. (Apparently, demons are quite
picky about the way their victims smell.
Goodbye ‘Joop’, hello Odour Au
Naturale!)
If all this fails… you have done something terrible. This
demon guy wants you and you deserve to get got. Hope this helps kids!
