Zombies! Part 1

When our roommate Daniel died, neither of us were surprised. He’d been struggling with addiction for as long as we knew him. We all have, I guess, but Daniel was just worse at managing it. In any case, it sort of fell to us to plan the funeral. His family would probably show, but they figured we loved him way more than they did, so we’re suddenly responsible. They probably blamed us for the drugs, too. Adrian and I make for good martyrs.

I got home from work late, a few days after Daniel had passed. Adrian rushed down the stairs of our flat.

“Dude” he said. “Daniel came back”.

“Come on, that’s not funny” I replied. “Quit being a dick.”

“No, really! He fucking came back dude. He’s locked in the basement!”

“Adrian, quit huffing markers, man. They’re gonna make you impotent or some shit.”

“I haven’t been huffing markers! And even if I had, they’re way cheaper than real drugs, so lay off the marker-huffing.”

I slapped my head. “Jesus, it’s too late for this. How is Daniel locked in the basement? We left him at the funeral parlor. We saw him there. The viewing is tomorrow. There’s no way he could---”

A deep moan issued from the basement.

“Adrian, what the fuck was that?”

“I told you dude, Daniel came back! He’s a zombie or some shit.”

“A zombie?”

“Yeah, like you know…eats brains and stuff.”

“I know what a zombie is, Adrian. So wait…like, George Romero zombies or 28 Days Later zombies, cause the ones in 28 Days Later aren’t---”

“Aren’t really zombies. Dude, I know. You bring it up all the time. You’re the only person who could cock block me talking about what makes a zombie a zombie. You remember that party last week? That brunette? Fuck you, man.”

“I said I was sorry about that.”

“Whatever, don’t worry about it. We got way bigger problems now.”

The pounding at the door grew louder.

“How did he even get back here?” I asked. “Aren’t zombies supposed to be really stupid?”

“Hell if I know. He was standing on the porch drooling everywhere when I got home. I hit him with a shovel then threw him down the basement.”

“Shit, that’s your standard procedure for visitors. No wonder he’s pissed.”

Adrian turned around nervously. The wood door was starting to splinter.

“Well, we better re-kill him quick” I said. “His family will probably blame us triple if their supposedly-dead son shows up at his own viewing and starts chewing his way through second cousins.”

“Okay, I’ll get the rifle.” Adrian began to make his way up the stairs.

“Wait, dude.” I grabbed Adrian’s arm. “It’s open casket. We can’t have a viewing if half his head is blown away.”

“I didn’t think of that. Why didn’t he want to be cremated? Everybody should be cremated. If you’re cremated, you can’t come back as a fucking zombie.”

“Okay, calm down. We’ll figure something out. We have to. Why don’t we just call the police?”

“No way! We can’t bring cops over here!”

“Why not?”

“I dunno, man. I just don’t like cops.”

“Okay, we have to kill our former roommate, stuff him in a casket, and keep him from eating mourners, all by tomorrow morning. Can you think of a scenario where we would need police intervention more?”

“There could be two zombies.”

“Adrian, fuck you.”

“I’m just sayin’.”

We heard the door give way. A slobbering, moaning Daniel burst into the foyer. Well, not Daniel exactly. More a shell of Daniel, one bent on devouring us. His head was caked in blood from where Adrian had hit him.

“Shit, shit, shit. What do we do?”

“Hit him again? I’ll get the shovel.” Adrian started back up the stairs.

“Dude, the shovel is outside.”

“Oh, for the love of---fuck this, I’m shooting him.”

“I suddenly feel okay with that plan.”

Zombie Daniel was extremely uncoordinated, though this could be attributed more to Daniel himself than the zombie-ism. We rushed up the stairs.

novel idea, maybe.

When I was about to graduate high school, I asked my father why I always felt alone. No matter how close I was to people, I might as well have been thousands of miles away.

"It's our family's curse" he said. "We are forever alone. We can interact with the world, but we can never really fit into it".

The concept of a family curse sort of came out of left field, so I asked why, why we were doomed to be alone?

"We're not so much doomed as we have a responsibility" my dad explained. "Our ancestors made a covenant, a pact to accept great responsibility. We maintain the balance in the world. For every person who fits perfectly into their surroundings, there are people who do not, who observe the world as if looking through a window or at a painting. The man you see in the subway who is always alone, the silent people in your school or office. They are all of the same lineage as us. We are watchers, keepers."

"But you met mom, you had a family, several kids. Are you really alone?"


"We must continue the bloodline. I may love your mother, but only from a distance. We can never truly understand each other's existence on a similar level. It is a case of the cosmic versus the terrestrial, we just exist in different spheres. Once again, this maintains balance. You might feel extraordinarily close to someone, but when you wake up next to them in the morning, you may as well be on the island of Calypso. Son, you are very, very far from home."

It's all a matter of...

I have developed a new system of ethics. Well, it may not be entirely new, but it's from a different perspective at least. Most ethics deal with either a person's intentions when they perform an action or the outcome of said action.

My ethics are different.

I want to base the concepts of 'right' and 'wrong' on how you feel about the decision you made. Just shot up an orphanage and feel pretty darn good about it? Well, congratulations on doing the right thing. Helped an old lady across the street, but feel bad because you weren't really sincere about it? Shame on you. I hope you've learned your lesson about assisting the elderly.
Ethics are open to countless interpretations as it is, but I think this system simplifies things. We can all agree that feeling good about our decisions is the highest priority and therefore the most important criterion when it comes to classifying something as 'good' or 'bad'. Too hedonistic, you say? That's funny, cause I sure feel good about doing the right thing.

The Procrastinator

I froze time just before the meteor hit. I’m not sure how I managed it, I just remember screaming real loud. Maybe it needed to happen. It’s still hanging here, halfway through the top story of my house. Suspended. It’s cooled off, probably because molecular activity ceased when time stopped. I’m not sure what to do with it. I tried poking it with a broom, but it’s held fast in mid-air. Not that I necessarily want it to continue its descent into my living room. I should at least move the dinette set first.

Since I’m the only conscious human on earth, I’ve since stopped wearing clothes. The weather is always nice. I tried to dislodge the meteor with a bulldozer, and that didn’t work, but have you ever driven a bulldozer naked? I highly recommend it. In any case, I need to get rid of this thing. Or at least, I feel I do. You know those times when you worry, but your concern feels completely contrived? I’m not even sure if this thing still has acceleration. If it does, we’ll know for only about half a second. If I knock it out of its trajectory, I think we’ll be okay. I think we’ll be okay if I don’t do anything at all, too.

When I’m not trying to budge the meteor, I look at my wife. She’s still in bed, frozen in sleep. Perfect, gentle. This is the only way I ever imagine her. I think I’m more in love with the concept of her than the actual woman, anyway. She looks like a lovely painting, one I can walk into. The art museums and galleries won’t let you stroke the cheek of Aphrodite. You can’t feel her halfway through a breath, the warm air still gathered around her mouth. This is my motivation for doing nothing. Everything is so much more bearable and linear, more real when it is standing still.

Other people were frozen in much more incriminating circumstances. Like the peeping tom down the street, bunched up in his trench coat. I’m tempted to move him outside the house of the gun enthusiast across from us. Not that I haven’t already engaged in my own forms of terrorism. I spent a week (I estimate) expertly inserting chapters from the Kama Sutra into where Revelations should be in all the bibles at our local church. It’s a much happier ending.

I even figured out how to work a printing press and made my boss new business cards that say things like “our impending corporate merger makes me touch myself”. I hope 700 cards is enough for at least most of our downtown locations. Supply and demand, you know. In any case, I’m making the world a better place while I try and keep it from being destroyed. Or maybe I just destroy things more subtly than the meteor. I painted a face on it yesterday. We get along, mostly.

The problem is, I keep getting distracted. I’ve been considering locating every squatting dog in the city to the dining room of that fancy restaurant that always takes our parking. That’s another full week, not that I can tell. I am entirely too productive when there is no passage of time.

I bounced a tennis ball off the meteor today. I wore my baseball glove. It’s the first time we played catch.

When this first happened, I felt an urgent need to get rid of the thing and unfreeze time as fast as possible. Now I feel a sort of solidarity with it. Even if I find a way to keep it from destroying Earth, I’d like to keep it. It might make a nice centerpiece in our living room. A 45-ton coffee table.

I pretend like I’m going to set things straight in a timely manner. I plan to call my mom more often. I’ll try and be a better husband, for real. I picked up some necklaces for my wife, for when I can talk to her again. But it’s not going to be anytime soon. Tonight, I’m sitting on the meteor and watching the perpetual sunrise.