Tattooed Mistakes: The End

We Won't Get It Back When We Die

(Happy Halloween! It's time for the finale of the Tattooed Mistakes series!

I got this absolutely horrific idea soon after writing Far From Over, but I thought it was too dark to be the "canon" ending to the series, so I decided to write two alternate endings, one good, one bad. This is the bad ending, We Won't Get It Back When We Die, and the good ending, I Know That We're Gonna Be Fine, will come within the next week. As usual, kokinu09 edited a little promo video for me, so please check out her YouTube channel  to see that, and here is the theme song playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbVNF5KuY3tmYoY5r3-4_cXuO0PzWstLp)

Trigger warning: suicidal ideation, discussion of trauma, character death

Won't Get It Back theme songs: Close Every Door from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, Don't Come Home by Emma Blackery and Blue Beyond from The Fox and the Hound 2

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~And you'll always wait for me to come home~

Being in the containment facility's hospital wasn't that much better than being in the prison. He had the tiniest bit more freedom, and the room he stayed in was a step up from a cell, but this was still zombie containment. And he was still a known murderer.

When he told Hazel what he had been experiencing, what he had been seeing and hearing, and that he wanted to be checked into the hospital, she didn't know how to respond. But she knew he needed help, and he wasn't going to get it in Zombie Town, so she agreed, through her tears, to take him there. Zephyr had sighed in relief when he heard.

It had been just over a month since then and once Alonzo was in the hospital wing, he easily fell back into the mindset of when he was confined to a cell for a year. His mom, his sister, his boyfriend and his friends had each paid a handful of visits, when they could. He had a therapist. He had (experimental) medication. He had small portions of brain food in his meals, gradually weaning him off from his addiction. He had, at least, some kind of treatment for his PTSD and his hallucinations and his persistent intrusive thoughts, as his therapist called them. But he was here for the same reason as when he had been locked up roughly two years ago; he killed a human.

He was treated differently to the few other zombie patients there. He was always followed by a patrol guard everywhere he went. He had daily Z-band checks. He was kept away from mirrors and other reflective surfaces, whenever he could be, after he described the zombie he tended to see in them, and what it told him.

It wasn't enough.

It didn't look like these pills were working.

"Why are you still here?"

"I'm you," if he looked up, Alonzo would have seen his reflection shrug. A reflection that had taken to appearing even without a mirror these days. The sound of his own voice, distorted and monstrous, grated against his ears but he didn't bother trying to block it out. It wouldn't help anything to try, "What, did you think I'd just disappear?"

Alonzo gritted his teeth. He'd been told not to respond, not to acknowledge it. He knew it wasn't real. He knew it was nothing but a hallucination. But after all this time, it just felt... natural. He was sitting on his bed with his back against the wall, with nowhere else to be and nothing to distract him. Therapy and examinations and taking medication kept him occupied. Meals could trigger something but he'd do everything he could to overpower the zombie when he was being watched. Then after it was all over, he'd be alone with his thoughts for a while.

The zombie was a part of his life now. This was just... life...

No matter how much he wished it would end.