Zombie is pacing his counselor’s tiny office. She is looking
through his journal. She pays him almost no mind even though he is clearly
frustrated. “So that was my first counseling session.” She read out loud from
his journal. “At first I wasn’t sure how to go about it, being a zombie and all
that. But pretty quickly I realized that my counselor was right. I don’t know
much about what kind of person I was before I died, but once I started writing I
couldn’t stop, and what I was writing was opinionated and insistent. I had
strong feelings about my new life, the world I found myself in and my
experiences in it, which ranged from amazing and enlightening to frustrating
and infuriating.” She finished the entry and closed his journal. Finally
looking up to watch him pace. “So, this is your tenth session. By all accounts
you’re doing very well.” She complimented him.
His pacing slowed but did not stop. “If you say so.” He grumbled.
She put his notebook down and picked up her notepad. “Something
on your mind?” she asked.
He flopped into the couch with a heavy sigh. “Breathers.”
She scribbled a note. “What have I said about that world?”
Her reminder came offhandedly, the way a parent chastises with an obvious question.
He rolled his eyes and stifled the urge to start pacing
again. “Racism is a tool of oppression and while you can and must resist the
powers that oppress you, never underestimate the poisonous ease their mindset
has in corrupting your view of the world.”
She looks up from her pad. “That sounds more like something
the Zombie Rights Activist Rigor Mortis would say.”
He met her gaze. “It’s not ‘like’ something he would say, it’s
something he did say.”
She wrote a note. “And how much of Mr. Mortis’ work have you
read?” She asked.
He shrugged. “Enough to know that the Z.R.A isn’t exactly
the be all and end all of justice for my kind.” He watched her carefully.
She stopped writing. “What’s been bothering you about the
living?” She asked. Setting her notepad down on her desk.
He tapped his temple three times. “They’re obsessed with
brains.”
She pulled her feet up on the recliner and covered them with
a blanket. “How so?” she asked.
He leaned forward on the couch. “Every licensed restaurant
that serves Zombies serves mainly cow brains. The really high class joins that
serve human brains, follow the law and serve certified death row inmates, and those
places are expensive, so a majority of the population sticks to cow, which I am
more than fine with.”
“Have you ever tried human brain?” She asked with nothing
more than curiosity in her voice.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Once.”
“And?” She asked encouragingly.
He sat back in the couch and looked up at the ceiling. “My roommate
is a dishwasher over at the Cranium Café. He was given some left overs one
night and we tried it. Neither of us was terribly impressed. I found the flavor
and texture to be too…rich.” He sat upright again. “Look, not a single zombie I’ve
ever met obsesses over brains. We eat when we’re hungry and I’m just as lazy as
everyone else who actually has a pulse so I go to Brainagain’s and I eat, Big
deal right? But at least twice a day at work I hear ‘Hey man I ain’t a
corpseaphobe but you keep looking at my skull like that and I’ma get pissed off’.
Like dude! You face is on your skill and I have to make eye contact with you to
do my job you idiot!” He angrily flopped back into the couch, once again
staring at the ceiling in frustration. His eyes searching the tiles for some
sort of sense. “Just because I’m a zombie doesn’t mean I have an uncontrollable
desire to eat every brain I see”
She leaned over and grabbed her pad and scribbled a quick
note. “So you’re being mistreated by your customer base?” She asked while
writing.
He shook his head. “Not all of them, just the ones who ‘aren’t
corpseaphobic’”
She set her pad down in her lap. “You can report them. That
kind of harassment is against the law.”
Zombie snorted a sarcastic laugh. “So is refusing service
based on your pulse or lack thereof but guess how many places I’ll never be
allowed to shop in.” shoved his hands in the pockets of his hoodie.
She twirled her pen for a moment and then clipped it to her
pad. “You seem to be developing a very strong sense of right and wrong.” She
pointed out.
He shook his head without looking up from the couch. “Maybe,
it feels more like I’m developing a finely tuned understanding of ignorance and
the sheer ineffectiveness a single person has over the course of history.”
“How so?” She asked.
“Regardless of how stupid some people are, I know there are
stupid zombies as well, and with the basic understanding of math that I have I
can pretty much tell you that if we don’t already, zombies will soon outnumber
living humans.” He sat up and looked at
his counselor. “Look the LAST thing I want is for any of the human apocalyptic
wet dreams to actually happen, but like I said, humans aren't the only ones who
are stupid.” He clarified.
She grabbed her pen and scribbled another note. “Is this a
casual worry or…”
He shook his head. “Like I said, every zombie I ever met is
just as lazy and laid back as almost every human. But someone’s putting up the
resistance signs, someone is writing the literature encouraging us to give the
humans what they desperately say they want.”
“And is that what you believe? That humans actually want to
face a zombie apocalypse?” She asked.
He shook his head. “Hell no, I’m a zombie and I don’t want a
zombie apocalypse, no human actually wants one either.”
“Why do you think they are obsessed with the fantasy then?”
She asked.
“They lack a proper concept of scale.” He started. “Human
beings have made it a long, LONG way in history on nothing more than fear and
ingenuity. They allow the most close minded, fearful and richest among them to
lead the rest, most of whom are willfully ignorant bastards that carry around the
biggest guns a human can carry and yet still they run in terror at even the
mention of equality. This cycle repeats every generation without fail and we
have never, not once, learned from it.” He finished, his shoulders slumped.
“You said ‘we’ just then, why?” She asked,
“Because I came from them, I used to be them, just because I
don’t have a pulse, and cannot remember being one of them does not entirely
sever me from the consequences of their decisions as a species.” He clarified.
“What history lesson would apply to this situation in your
opinion?” She asked.
He waved his hand almost dismissively. “Pick and era. Women’s
rights, Civil rights, the ADA, same sex marriage, This country has a long,
terrible history of holding itself together by targeting a minority and keeping
them as marginalized as possible for as long as possible. And those groups didn’t
have sixty years of fiction stacked up against them.”
She nodded. “The media has never been kind to the undead.”
He got up and started pacing again “I had hoped after ‘the
gays’ became ‘people’, that we might have an easier time of it. But for some
reason the LGBTQ population got right in line with the rest of the masses and
joined in their hatred for the next new minority. Why humans celebrate getting
to the top by kicking the people below them is beyond me.”
She tapped her pen on her pad a few times considering her
next question. “Is it really that simple?” She asked.
He shook his head. “Of course not, there’s no part of this
that’s simple. But even after ten years it doesn’t feel like humanity is
willing to see this situation as anything other than an apocalypse, which to be
fair is vast different than the Gay marriage era, because no matter how hard
the Tea Party tried to spread the rumors, people refused to believe that gay
men were going to march around the globe in a thoughtless mass chanting “coooooooooooks!”
and eating straight men from the waist down.” He said down smiling at his
horrible joke.
She suppressed a smile herself. “That would have set them
back in their quest for equal rights.” She added.
He stopped smiling. “I am being serious though, it doesn’t
seem to matter what kind of person I want to be, just what kind of monster
Hollywood fantasizes I am.”
She pulled her feet out from under her blanket and sat
forward in her chair. “Everyone struggles with who they want to be versus who
they are perceived to be.”
He shook his head. “I don’t like it.” He shoved his hands
back into his hoodie pockets.
She nodded “Welcome to humanity.” She replied, standing up.
He stood as well and moved toward the door, stopping with his hand on the handle. “So if a vegetarian is someone who eats only vegetables then why are so many people proud of being humanitarians?” He asked.
