Amanda’s Army of Decay
Amanda became an outcast. With her father constantly working in the lab, she was left alone in their spacious but creepy mansion on the outskirts of town. Since the death of her brother and her mother’s tragic suicide, Amanda was consumed with grief and guilt over their strained relationships. She felt plagued by unresolved conflicts and was obsessed with contacting their spirits again.
Her desperate longing to fill the profound emptiness left by their loss drove Amanda to pursue dangerous occult magic. She was willing to go to dark extremes in the hope of reconnecting with her deceased family members once more. She tried every spell and incantation she could remember but nothing seemed to work. Her sister wanted nothing to do with the bizarre rituals and haunting chanting echoing from her room each night.
With too much isolation and time, Amanda began exploring the mansion’s extensive libraries, discovering ancient dusty tomes on communicating with spirits and necromancy. She spent her nights hunched over the gruesome texts, learning their secrets of death magic and resurrection.
When not reading, Amanda roamed the rambling graveyard near the mansion, leaving gifts and chanting arcane incantations, desperately trying to contact her deceased mother. Obsessed with the occult, Amanda wanted to master the magic to defeat mortality itself.
Tucked away deep in the mansion’s vast library, Amanda stumbled upon an ancient book simply titled “Arts Obscura.” Bound in cracked leather with iron clasps, the book emitted a faint but unsettling aura.. Scouring through the pages, Amanda uncovered two frightening rituals. One described resurrecting the dead as unnatural plant creatures who would serve the spellcaster. The other detailed summoning cursed insects that would drive victims insane with terror and pain.
In her grieving state, Amanda believed the ritual sacrifice would open a doorway to speak with her deceased mother and brother again. She thought spilling innocent blood could harness dark mystical energies and allow her to contact their spirits.
By committing the ultimate sacrifice, Amanda hoped to demonstrate her devotion and gain the power to breach the divide between the living and dead, if only briefly. In her warped mind, the sinister ritual was the only way to see her lost loved ones again.
When the night of the crimson full moon arrived, Amanda seized the opportunity these alignments provided. She targeted a shy, lonely teenager named Lucy who had just moved to town and struggled to make friends at school. Lucy was excited that Amanda reached out to her as she was eager to have someone to spend time with. Amanda brought Lucy along on questionable adventures like exploring abandoned buildings and sneaking into neighbors’ yards. Lucy knew it was wrong but couldn’t resist the thrill and risk.
Secretly, Amanda saw the innocent, trusting Lucy as the perfect subject for her zombie ritual. Lucy had no other friends or family who would come looking for her. She naively agreed to join Amanda for her special ceremony, not realizing the danger she was in.
Amanda lured Lucy to the fog-filled cemetery along with Raven, who romanticized vampirism and hoped for eternal life, and Willow, a withdrawn, unusual girl who loved snakes. As they held hands around a bloody pentagram, Amanda withdrew a ceremonial dagger and slit Lucy’s throat!
Amanda hauled Lucy’s corpse through the rows of crumbling mausoleums blanketed in nightshade vines. Inside one was an altar prepared for the profane ritual. The girls followed Amanda’s instructions precisely – painting arcane symbols with blood, burning pungent herbs, chanting ominously.
Soon grasping hands burst from the dirt floor as the long dead arose, transformed into plant abominations – writhing vines for limbs, peeling bark flesh, gnarled wooden claws. Amanda commanded her new undead army, seeing them as puppets, not people.
Under the blood moon’s glow, the plant zombies shambled into town to capture more souls for Amanda’s hideous rituals. They broke through barricades, seizing victims with vines coated in deadly nightshade. None could escape as the zombies dragged them to the crypt beneath the mansion where Amanda bled them dry.
But insect swarms were part of Amanda’s plan too. She performed the intricate summoning rites in the mansion’s cavernous basement. From the vortex emerged endless buzzing, skittering legions ready to overwhelm the town on her command.
The sheriff called Old Man Jenkins, the elderly town exterminator. Jenkins had leathery, wrinkled skin, white hair and wore faded blue overall covered in chemical stains from years of hard work. But his tanks of potent pesticides, trusty sprayer gun, and protective gear was no match for Amanda’s unnatural infestations. The last of his sanity slipped away…and he took on a dazed, paranoid look. The poisons Jenkins released indiscriminately soon flowed as freely as the town’s blood.
Watching safely from inside, Amanda happily commanded the zombies and insects destroying the town. But internally she felt only profound loneliness. She hoped the magic would return her family, but it had only brought more desolation.