There can be nothing in this now ruined world more terrifyingly imaginable than scanning a room whilst you are tied up and gagged, seeing your three children and your wife being held, vainly struggling, in the clutches of the undead, and being completely powerless in preventing the pure evil about to be visited upon them.

Nothing.

I struggled ineffectually against the bonds holding me fast to the chair that night. My muffled cries for mercy, my pleading eyes brimmed with tears, my twistings, turnings, fit-like thrustings were met with cold, dead stares. Each corner of the room held a part of my life, each part straining, willing me to rise from my bonds and to make the horror disappear. Frantic arms clawing outwards reaching for me. Unbelieving, almost alien, screams assault my ears from every direction. Small, wild eyes holding mine, straining, questioning, imploring. Then suddenly.....

                                                                            Snap...!

              Snap...!

                                    Snap...!

Pieces of my heart, shards of my very soul...With each accompanying short, sharp, exclamatory noise a different part of me died as I witnessed my children's eyes turn skywards, their frail, innocent bodies collapse lifelessly to the floor....and then the ragged-clothed vultures descended.

Crunching...slurping...chewing...tearing...lapping...gulping...distorted animalistic moans of pleasure.....all of these abhorrent sounds were drowned out by the solitary blood-curdling scream which erupted from my wife. Empty, devoid of any fight, resigned to my fate, I slowly swayed my head round to look at her through stinging raw eyes. The screams abruptly stopped. Held in the talon-like grip of a decaying bald monster she seemed to wordlessly crumble inwards before me as he delicately leant inwards, clamped his yellowed rotting teeth to the side of her neck and....

...I couldn't bear to watch her end. Struck with utter disbelief and shame I closed my eyes and listened to the painful, gurgling death-rattle of my first and only love. I sat there a shadow of a former man whimpering, powerless to act as my lost family were dragged from the room. The bald one returned a short time later with a female of sorts, her torn, stained, floral print dress flapping open in parts leaving very little to the imagination. Both slowly circled their broken prey occasionally pawing at my face to garner some sort of reaction. I dully stared back at them, praying almost that they would be as quick with me as they had been with my family.

I was wrong....