Dilapidated
Definition
Something that is dilapidated may not have been literally pummeled with stones, but it might
look that way. Dilapidated derives (via the English verb dilapidate) from dilapidatus, the past
participle of the Latin verb dilapidare ("to squander or destroy"). That verb was formed by
combining dis-, meaning "apart," with the verb lapidare, meaning "to pelt with stones."
look that way. Dilapidated derives (via the English verb dilapidate) from dilapidatus, the past
participle of the Latin verb dilapidare ("to squander or destroy"). That verb was formed by
combining dis-, meaning "apart," with the verb lapidare, meaning "to pelt with stones."
The mob was getting closer. At least the ridiculous pitchforks they insisted on waving around had
slowed their progress through the densely packed trees. That and they’d had to stop earlier in the
chase for medical attention, when one particularly enthusiastic mob member had accidentally jabbed
another one in the face.
All of which bought me more precious minutes with which to escape.
Not, as i looked ruefully down at my ravaged body, that i was going anywhere fast. Those villagers
were fast and accurate with their sling shots - one of their thrown missiles had caught my right leg
bone at exactly the wrong angle, snapping it so the jutting edge poked right through my skin and
saluted the sunlight sky with every juddering step i took.
Being an undead meant that it was not the life threatening injury it would be for a living human - my
blood moved so ponderously that at times it appeared more like a solid than a liquid, but it sure made
running away difficult.
But if the villagers caught me they’d definitely do their best to burn me to ash - and there was no
coming back from that.
I cursed. It was all that damned writers fault. Sure, relations between the living and undead had never
been all that great - they saw us as disgusting and unhygienic perverts of the natural order and we
saw them as violent, entitled, sociopathic brats who burned everything down to the ground if they didn’t
get what they wanted. I mean, literally. I’d never met such a pyromaniac species before. That dude
who stole the secret of fire from the gods initially sure had a lot to answer for.
But even then, we’d mostly kept ourselves separately. The humans stayed in their settlement and we
stayed wherever they weren’t. I’d been perfectly happy with this arrangement, as had most others of
my kind.
Then that stupid, idiotic, incredibly short-sighted write had to and write that novel about forbidden
romance between a human woman and her undead lover.
Sure, quite a few people had gone ‘oh, how romantic’ but mostly what it’d done was shoot the undead
right up to the top of the list of ‘Creatures Considered Dangerous to Humanity.’ Not only was most of
humanity sickened by the thought of the living and dead copulating (a sentiment that I wholeheartedly
agreed with - all that body heat, pumping blood and sweat, disgusting. Living bodies were just so loud
and...sticky) but, in order to make the male protagonist more appealing (and to demonstrate the ‘power
of love’ as well I suppose) the antagonists in the book weren’t the far more judgmental and fire happy
humans, but the other undead.
The undead aren’t herd animals. We don’t need communities, we don’t need packs and we definitely
don’t need a leader. We all have our own individual reasons for being undead and to be quite frank
we’ve got enough of our own stuff to be contending with, let alone the heavy baggage that other
undead would naturally bring with them. We’re basically natural loners and we’re happy like that.
In the book, the writer, in his wild delusions, sets up this intricate fake social hierarchy for us and turn
us into savage, mindless, bloodthirsty power hungry gangs that are only too willing to track down the
human woman and rip her limb from limb due to some imagined slight.
Not unlike the mob behind me come to think of it.
Long story short, the stupid book gave the humans the perfect excuse to start wiping us out, seeing
as we were nothing more than savage monsters willing to slaughter innocent human women. Never
mind that it was fiction. Never mind that five peaceful minutes in an undead’s company would prove
that slander completely inaccurate.
At least the witches had been allowed trials.
Not that that helped them.
Behind me, the mob howled.
I tried to hobble faster. Big mistake as my leg then snapped completely in two and i fell face forward
into the dirt.
I let out a frustrated gurgle. The sound of my wrath muted by the soil filling my mouth.
“Oh dear, so you perhaps require assistance?” a polite, well bred voice asked from somewhere about
me.
I twisted my neck. An attractive woman, of middling years but well preserved, was standing above me,
sun parasol held daintily in her white gloved hand. Her yellow dress was out of date - bit skirt and
cinched in waist, but beautifully immaculate. It was indeed a peculiar sight to see in the middle of this
forest.
She held out her hand and, without really thinking about it, I reached up and grasped it. She pulled
and hauled me upright with surprising strength and then grabbed me when my legs buckled under me.
slowed their progress through the densely packed trees. That and they’d had to stop earlier in the
chase for medical attention, when one particularly enthusiastic mob member had accidentally jabbed
another one in the face.
All of which bought me more precious minutes with which to escape.
Not, as i looked ruefully down at my ravaged body, that i was going anywhere fast. Those villagers
were fast and accurate with their sling shots - one of their thrown missiles had caught my right leg
bone at exactly the wrong angle, snapping it so the jutting edge poked right through my skin and
saluted the sunlight sky with every juddering step i took.
Being an undead meant that it was not the life threatening injury it would be for a living human - my
blood moved so ponderously that at times it appeared more like a solid than a liquid, but it sure made
running away difficult.
But if the villagers caught me they’d definitely do their best to burn me to ash - and there was no
coming back from that.
I cursed. It was all that damned writers fault. Sure, relations between the living and undead had never
been all that great - they saw us as disgusting and unhygienic perverts of the natural order and we
saw them as violent, entitled, sociopathic brats who burned everything down to the ground if they didn’t
get what they wanted. I mean, literally. I’d never met such a pyromaniac species before. That dude
who stole the secret of fire from the gods initially sure had a lot to answer for.
But even then, we’d mostly kept ourselves separately. The humans stayed in their settlement and we
stayed wherever they weren’t. I’d been perfectly happy with this arrangement, as had most others of
my kind.
Then that stupid, idiotic, incredibly short-sighted write had to and write that novel about forbidden
romance between a human woman and her undead lover.
Sure, quite a few people had gone ‘oh, how romantic’ but mostly what it’d done was shoot the undead
right up to the top of the list of ‘Creatures Considered Dangerous to Humanity.’ Not only was most of
humanity sickened by the thought of the living and dead copulating (a sentiment that I wholeheartedly
agreed with - all that body heat, pumping blood and sweat, disgusting. Living bodies were just so loud
and...sticky) but, in order to make the male protagonist more appealing (and to demonstrate the ‘power
of love’ as well I suppose) the antagonists in the book weren’t the far more judgmental and fire happy
humans, but the other undead.
The undead aren’t herd animals. We don’t need communities, we don’t need packs and we definitely
don’t need a leader. We all have our own individual reasons for being undead and to be quite frank
we’ve got enough of our own stuff to be contending with, let alone the heavy baggage that other
undead would naturally bring with them. We’re basically natural loners and we’re happy like that.
In the book, the writer, in his wild delusions, sets up this intricate fake social hierarchy for us and turn
us into savage, mindless, bloodthirsty power hungry gangs that are only too willing to track down the
human woman and rip her limb from limb due to some imagined slight.
Not unlike the mob behind me come to think of it.
Long story short, the stupid book gave the humans the perfect excuse to start wiping us out, seeing
as we were nothing more than savage monsters willing to slaughter innocent human women. Never
mind that it was fiction. Never mind that five peaceful minutes in an undead’s company would prove
that slander completely inaccurate.
At least the witches had been allowed trials.
Not that that helped them.
Behind me, the mob howled.
I tried to hobble faster. Big mistake as my leg then snapped completely in two and i fell face forward
into the dirt.
I let out a frustrated gurgle. The sound of my wrath muted by the soil filling my mouth.
“Oh dear, so you perhaps require assistance?” a polite, well bred voice asked from somewhere about
me.
I twisted my neck. An attractive woman, of middling years but well preserved, was standing above me,
sun parasol held daintily in her white gloved hand. Her yellow dress was out of date - bit skirt and
cinched in waist, but beautifully immaculate. It was indeed a peculiar sight to see in the middle of this
forest.
She held out her hand and, without really thinking about it, I reached up and grasped it. She pulled
and hauled me upright with surprising strength and then grabbed me when my legs buckled under me.
“This way.” she said, firmly supporting me, “my house is just over there.”
She half dragged, half carried me to a nearby clearing where a white house stood dead centre,
the grounds around it filled with roses. It was bizarre. The place looked like it should be in a prosperous
city centre somewhere, not stuck in the middle of a basically abandoned forest. Like her dress, it was
immaculately clean. As was the inside, once we had made it through the door, except for the mud and
leaves i dragged with me.
She sat me at the kitchen table.
“Ma’am.” I began hesitatingly and somewhat guilty as she bustled around me, “I must inform you that
i will only bring trouble to your door. A mob chases me even now.” I looked down. “Although seeing as
how you have bound me to this chair, I must admit that sense of guilt is fading.” I struggled against the
heavy leather bands. It was futile, even had I been at full strength and without a broken leg, I doubt I
could have broken free. “I assume you mean to feed me to the mob?” I asked, now without a bitter
tone creeping into my voice.
She immediately gestured no. “Oh of course not, I most certainly wouldn’t give you to those cretins.”
“Ohh.” I said uncertainly.
“Although I must give you my thanks for leading them here. You really were most excellent bait.”
“Excellent enough to release perhaps?”
“Sadly no, i do most thoroughly despise your kind after all.” she said with a brilliant smile.
“Even though you are one of us?” I asked.
She shrugged elegantly. “I suppose it takes one to know one?”
I nodded. “I wonder how freaked out the humans would be if they knew how well we could appear
to be one of them.”
She grinned savagely, and not without a hint of madness. “Oh, it would be the most glorious witchhunt -
murder on every corner, madness and slaughter let loose.” she shrugged again.
“I assume you’ve heard of La Croix?”
I scowled. “The bastard who got us into this mess. Yeah, i know of him. A bit of a non-sequitur though.”
“I was his wife.” she said simply. “While i was alive.”
I frowned, “So he cast you aside when you resurrected? Then why write that cross species romance
novel.”
“You got the gist of it, but the sequence is wrong. The events in his book are somewhat based in
reality although it was the woman who was an undead and the man who was the fragile living human.
He cast me aside for his ghoul, then i died and then i resurrected.”
“I take it that it wasn’t an amicable divorce.”
She snorted. “What divorce? He wanted to throw me out, I objected and then i woke up six feet under.”
“So your driving resurrection force is your need for vengeance upon your unfaithful husband?” I theorised.
All undead have driving forces - the reason we have clawed our way from the dark beyond, be it an
unfaithful lover, an injustice, the desire to protect a loved one or even a debt owed. Each one is different
and unique to the undead, which is why we’re usually such loners. Everyone’s raison d’etre is completely
different, making cooperation difficult. It also means the undead are basically harmless, we just don’t
see the point in expending energy on you unless you’re the one our resurrection centres around.
Although, if the reason you crawled up out of the grave is for vengeance, I do not envy the object of your
rage. The undead can be nastily inventive after all that time in the dark.
“Oh that, his body’s already cooling in the basement.” she said airily. “No, after crawling up and out, after
wandering round town noting that all everyone could talk about was my stupid husband and his stupid
book. Those humans stupid, fervent eyes worshiping him as a god that gave them permission to vent
their every pathetic, perverted fantasy on those who could not protect themselves. Well, the rage was
just took me over.” she laughed merrily then suddenly stopped.
“Of course, I can't forgive the undead either.” she told me earnestly, “all that work, all that effort, all that
support I gave him. Money, clothes, connections. I threw away everything about myself in order to be the
perfect devoted wife for him and then he cast me aside for a walking corpse! Can you believe it?”
“Your husband sounds like a right pervert to me and i think you’re better off without him.” I told her
honestly.
She sighed. “You’re right of course. Except he was the centre of my universe both alive and dead and
now that he’s finally gone, I'm at a loss as what to do with myself.” she brightened. “But then you came
along and it gave me a wonderful idea. I’d had it before but I didn't really have the correct circumstances
to carry it out. Now I can!” she clapped her hands together with delight.
“I’m not going to like this at all am i?” I asked bluntly.
She smiled again. “I’ve filled the house with gunpowder. Once the mob gets close enough, I'll set it off and
blow everyone away. Even if the initial blast doesn’t get them, the resulting debris from the explosion
should shred them to pieces.” she paused. “Of course, we’ll probably die too but you can’t have everything.
I think it’ll be a fun way to go out! What do you think?” she cocked her head, looking at me with expectant
eyes.
I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh, long and loud like i would never stop.
She pouted. “Well, it’s not like you have anything to hang about for. Look how much you've decayed -
you’ve obviously lost your centre too.”
I took a few deep breaths, managing to choke out, “That obvious huh?”
“Takes one to know one.” she grinned.
I looked around the immaculate kitchen. The sun was streaming through the windows, the smell of roses
wafting through an open one and I could hear, shockingly close, the angry raised voices of people who
were only too happy to mutilate someone who could not defend themselves for a crime that had only
happened in the pages of a fictional book.
I closed me eyes. I opened them. I made my choice.
“Fine. Let's be monsters.”
****
The mob was at the walls of the house, pounding on the door, smashing the windows, trampling the
roses outside.
The jilted wife and I listened to them invade the house, smashing to pieces the world she had spent so
much of her life creating.
We clinked glasses. “I never knew whisky was really quite so disgusting.” she said cheerfully. “But he
never let me try it - not feminine enough apparently.”
“Wanker.” I said agreeably,
“Oh most definitely.” she inhaled deep on the set of cigars we’d found in her husband’s study, where we’d
currently barricaded ourselves in.
The mob thundered up the stairs.
She blew out. “Ready?” she asked, gripping my hand just a little bit tightly.
I nodded. “Time to go.”
She lent down and put the lit end of the cigar on the trail of gunpowder led to the door. It burst to life with
a flare of light and sped towards the top and the barricade of powder filled barrels.
She half dragged, half carried me to a nearby clearing where a white house stood dead centre,
the grounds around it filled with roses. It was bizarre. The place looked like it should be in a prosperous
city centre somewhere, not stuck in the middle of a basically abandoned forest. Like her dress, it was
immaculately clean. As was the inside, once we had made it through the door, except for the mud and
leaves i dragged with me.
She sat me at the kitchen table.
“Ma’am.” I began hesitatingly and somewhat guilty as she bustled around me, “I must inform you that
i will only bring trouble to your door. A mob chases me even now.” I looked down. “Although seeing as
how you have bound me to this chair, I must admit that sense of guilt is fading.” I struggled against the
heavy leather bands. It was futile, even had I been at full strength and without a broken leg, I doubt I
could have broken free. “I assume you mean to feed me to the mob?” I asked, now without a bitter
tone creeping into my voice.
She immediately gestured no. “Oh of course not, I most certainly wouldn’t give you to those cretins.”
“Ohh.” I said uncertainly.
“Although I must give you my thanks for leading them here. You really were most excellent bait.”
“Excellent enough to release perhaps?”
“Sadly no, i do most thoroughly despise your kind after all.” she said with a brilliant smile.
“Even though you are one of us?” I asked.
She shrugged elegantly. “I suppose it takes one to know one?”
I nodded. “I wonder how freaked out the humans would be if they knew how well we could appear
to be one of them.”
She grinned savagely, and not without a hint of madness. “Oh, it would be the most glorious witchhunt -
murder on every corner, madness and slaughter let loose.” she shrugged again.
“I assume you’ve heard of La Croix?”
I scowled. “The bastard who got us into this mess. Yeah, i know of him. A bit of a non-sequitur though.”
“I was his wife.” she said simply. “While i was alive.”
I frowned, “So he cast you aside when you resurrected? Then why write that cross species romance
novel.”
“You got the gist of it, but the sequence is wrong. The events in his book are somewhat based in
reality although it was the woman who was an undead and the man who was the fragile living human.
He cast me aside for his ghoul, then i died and then i resurrected.”
“I take it that it wasn’t an amicable divorce.”
She snorted. “What divorce? He wanted to throw me out, I objected and then i woke up six feet under.”
“So your driving resurrection force is your need for vengeance upon your unfaithful husband?” I theorised.
All undead have driving forces - the reason we have clawed our way from the dark beyond, be it an
unfaithful lover, an injustice, the desire to protect a loved one or even a debt owed. Each one is different
and unique to the undead, which is why we’re usually such loners. Everyone’s raison d’etre is completely
different, making cooperation difficult. It also means the undead are basically harmless, we just don’t
see the point in expending energy on you unless you’re the one our resurrection centres around.
Although, if the reason you crawled up out of the grave is for vengeance, I do not envy the object of your
rage. The undead can be nastily inventive after all that time in the dark.
“Oh that, his body’s already cooling in the basement.” she said airily. “No, after crawling up and out, after
wandering round town noting that all everyone could talk about was my stupid husband and his stupid
book. Those humans stupid, fervent eyes worshiping him as a god that gave them permission to vent
their every pathetic, perverted fantasy on those who could not protect themselves. Well, the rage was
just took me over.” she laughed merrily then suddenly stopped.
“Of course, I can't forgive the undead either.” she told me earnestly, “all that work, all that effort, all that
support I gave him. Money, clothes, connections. I threw away everything about myself in order to be the
perfect devoted wife for him and then he cast me aside for a walking corpse! Can you believe it?”
“Your husband sounds like a right pervert to me and i think you’re better off without him.” I told her
honestly.
She sighed. “You’re right of course. Except he was the centre of my universe both alive and dead and
now that he’s finally gone, I'm at a loss as what to do with myself.” she brightened. “But then you came
along and it gave me a wonderful idea. I’d had it before but I didn't really have the correct circumstances
to carry it out. Now I can!” she clapped her hands together with delight.
“I’m not going to like this at all am i?” I asked bluntly.
She smiled again. “I’ve filled the house with gunpowder. Once the mob gets close enough, I'll set it off and
blow everyone away. Even if the initial blast doesn’t get them, the resulting debris from the explosion
should shred them to pieces.” she paused. “Of course, we’ll probably die too but you can’t have everything.
I think it’ll be a fun way to go out! What do you think?” she cocked her head, looking at me with expectant
eyes.
I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh, long and loud like i would never stop.
She pouted. “Well, it’s not like you have anything to hang about for. Look how much you've decayed -
you’ve obviously lost your centre too.”
I took a few deep breaths, managing to choke out, “That obvious huh?”
“Takes one to know one.” she grinned.
I looked around the immaculate kitchen. The sun was streaming through the windows, the smell of roses
wafting through an open one and I could hear, shockingly close, the angry raised voices of people who
were only too happy to mutilate someone who could not defend themselves for a crime that had only
happened in the pages of a fictional book.
I closed me eyes. I opened them. I made my choice.
“Fine. Let's be monsters.”
****
The mob was at the walls of the house, pounding on the door, smashing the windows, trampling the
roses outside.
The jilted wife and I listened to them invade the house, smashing to pieces the world she had spent so
much of her life creating.
We clinked glasses. “I never knew whisky was really quite so disgusting.” she said cheerfully. “But he
never let me try it - not feminine enough apparently.”
“Wanker.” I said agreeably,
“Oh most definitely.” she inhaled deep on the set of cigars we’d found in her husband’s study, where we’d
currently barricaded ourselves in.
The mob thundered up the stairs.
She blew out. “Ready?” she asked, gripping my hand just a little bit tightly.
I nodded. “Time to go.”
She lent down and put the lit end of the cigar on the trail of gunpowder led to the door. It burst to life with
a flare of light and sped towards the top and the barricade of powder filled barrels.
Five, four, three, two,on-
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