The One-Sided Triangle - A Short Story by Rye McGowen

The One-Sided Triangle

Sarah was nothing more than your average protagonist. She thought that her brown hair made her different. She thought she was plain, yet knew everyone around her thought she was beautiful. And of course, she was not like other girls.

Her life was, in no way, a piece of cake. She had to manage her parent’s divorce, stay on top of cheerleading, save her town from a zombie invasion, and, of course, deal with the dreaded love triangle.

The Zombie war had been raging for about three years. No one really knew what it was caused by, other than theories that it’d been caused by lab issues or helicopter-released spores. Morale was low, and so supplied. Sarah’s town had mostly been unbothered until recently. Electives were replaced by training in the event of an attack. Obviously, Sarah was the best shooter and had accidentally shot her way into the hearts of two boys.

Love interest A is Sarah’s childhood best friend, Adrian: moody, brooding, bad boy with a dark childhood. Love interest B was the unusually cute water-boy for the football team named Dean, who gave her some of his ammo one day when the school was on a zombie-shooting field trip.

“Hey, Sarah, watch me gut this zombie,” Adrian would say, but he’d always make sure that Dean was watching.

He told himself it was because he wanted to show dominance. To show off not only to Sarah, but to heed as a warning to Dean not to try to take his girl. At least, of course, that’s the lie he made to himself, and while being a great liar, he was also quite gullible. So, he bought his own deception.

Dean would try to squeeze in extra time with Sarah during football practice. For a school caught in the crossfire of zombie warfare, there was an overwhelming amount of football games. Sure, Dean was attempting to flirt with Sarah, but it only strengthened the friendship between the two of them.

Dean couldn’t help but watch Adrian run drills across the field. He told himself he was strategizing, evaluating the enemy. He really wanted Sarah was all and needed to eliminate Adrian from the picture. Even if his broodiness was somewhat attractive.

Well, the time came, and time went, as time always does, and the “rivalry” only grew more and more tense. Sarah couldn’t deal with the pining, or the constant pressure of them asking her to choose one of them when deep down they were just her two best friends. And her dad had been revealed to be the creator and releaser of the zombie spore, so the pressure was on her, as the main character, to kill him herself. So she told the boys she chose neither.

The boys took it hard, to say the least. But once they regained their dignity, they realized neither of them wanted Sarah in the first place.

Well, other than to officiate their wedding, which she, in fact, did. A beautiful, zombie-free wedding.