Amiff Zombie Father
We didn’t stay for the rest of the Crazy Loco Days festival.
The music and lanterns were still glowing behind us, but Sara said she wanted to show us something before we headed to Inotown.
She called it an Amiff graveyard.
Growing up near the Neon Forest, I’d watched Amiffs my whole life.
At first they’re nothing more than soft polyps on the forest floor — little luminous bulbs that pulse faintly in the undergrowth. My father used to kneel beside them and explain how RAD reshaped life in cycles.
The polyps feed quietly.
They anchor.
They grow.
Then one day, almost without warning, they detach and begin to rise.
They ascend into the sky like drifting lanterns, glowing brighter as they mature. During festivals, people celebrate them. Kids run beneath them with metal rods pretending they’re wielding magic.
But my father always reminded me — not everything is your friend.
Especially when it comes to RAD.
Not all Amiffs are gentle.
Some hunt.
When they descend, it isn’t always graceful.
Sara led us deeper into the woods around the cemetary. The air grew quieter. The glow from the fiber-optic grass dimmed as the trees thickened around us.
That’s when we saw them.
Sacks.
Hanging from the branches.
Dead Amiff husks suspended in the trees like abandoned cocoons. Beneath them lay the remnants of what they had once captured — scattered bones and skulls half-covered in moss.
Even Sara hadn’t expected this.
We moved closer.
One of the sacks shifted.
It split.
Something fell free.
What rose from the forest floor wasn’t Amiff.
It was what remained of something taken.
A parent — twisted by RAD, hollow-eyed, clutching the small form of its unmoving child. The little one hadn’t turned. It hadn’t risen again like the other corrupted remains.
The parent had.
It looked at us like we were the reason the world had broken.
And then it charged.
[Combat segment]
When it was over, the forest went still again.
The creature collapsed, its strength finally spent. With its last motion, it reached outward — not toward us, but toward the small skeletal form it could never fully grieve.
RAD warps life.
It twists instinct into fury.
Grief into violence.
Survival into monstrosity.
We stood there for a long moment.
Even the auroras above seemed dimmer.
My father used to say the Neon Forest wasn’t evil.
It was just changed.
But sometimes change leaves scars.
And sometimes mercy is the only kindness left to give.
