irst Zombie”
By James J. Stubbs
For Dave
“The First Zombie” ©
James J. Stubbs.
Copyright James J. Stubbs 2014
This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to characters, events or organizations are purely coincidental.
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Dave doesn’t remember dying. And furthermore, he didn’t even realise he was dead. So before we find out anything more about Dave we must fully appreciate that he is dead. Dead in the truest sense of the word. No longer living. But in addition to this we must realise that Dave had no idea that he was dead, why he was dead, when or even how he died. Dave had no idea even how long he had been wandering the world as dead. He told himself he was just busy. Always busy. Distracted is more what he was. Not dead but distracted. Distracted too much by the rigours of life that he had not participated in the events of living and had subsequently not noticed his own death. There is a difference; Dave remembers thinking, between living and just existing. He knew he was not alive. But he had no idea that he was dead. He thought he was simply conned by life into merely existing.
People do that though. Don’t they? They exist. They get up, they go to work, they work then they go home and go to bed because work was so hard and they have no more energy left to do anything else. Anything else like living. They, most people and especially ones with dependants, make only enough money to purchase essentials. So they don’t live, they just exist. He convinced himself over the years that this was how, dare us to use the term “life”, was supposed to be. He lived alone like a lot of people who have no time to go out and meet anyone because work is so hard and they spend so much time there. He thought he had friends. But then he realised that he just had affiliates, colleagues and they were never his friends.
No, those words do not suffice for what Dave had in the absence of friends. To be friends, they should have seen one another outside of work but never did, so “friend” will not do. Maybe he had existors. Fellow sufferers. One of those terms will have to do. To condemn them to be affiliates implies, and in turn Dave might have inferred, that he did not like them. He liked them very much. But they were not his friends because they all suffered the same fate to exist and work and never live. The dead have no friends. Not that Dave knew it yet. He only realised it when he finally realised that he was dead. He tried to list his friends’ interests but couldn’t. Unless working could be counted as an interest. But considering the fact that their work was utterly uninteresting, it cannot.
So what did Dave do? Is that the right tense to use? The past tense. Just because he is dead, and has been passed for some time, and only now finally realises it, it doesn’t mean that he isn’t still doing it. So might the present tense be the correct tense to use? So what does Dave do? Nothing. That is what he would say. In fact he would still say it, if he had not found out that he was irreversibly dead. Nothing isn’t the right word though. He does something. But it seems, even to him in his own mindless and dead state, like utterly mindless and dead work. Maybe it suited him. Maybe the mindless and dead work he did had been so suited to the dead that he had failed to notice his own passing.
Maybe that question is out of order. Not “out of order” in the sense that is does not function. It functions perfectly well as a sentence and as a question. And not “out of order” in the sense that it might cause anyone offence. But perhaps it is out of order in the sense that it is not the best question to ask first. Maybe it should follow, “how did Dave realise he was dead?” That one should come first. That’s the answer we need to know before we can appreciate the story for what it is. So how did Dave realise he was dead? It wasn’t easy. Anyone reading this that has ever had to come to terms with something will know that such important things are difficult to get over and hard to make peace with. Some examples to get you thinking. Being Gay. Having a dear loved one leave us. The death of a pet you adore so much. Something like that. Pick your own. So maybe he realised he was dead a long time before he could bring himself to say “I am dead” and be ok with it. To make peace with Death and with his own death.
But that wasn’t the question. It doesn’t answer how he realised at last that he was dead but it does help us to realise that Dave might have been dead a while before even facing the question himself. Maybe he was in denial. Maybe a little anyway. So it will be hard to answer with absolute certainty how Dave realised he was dead, because as denial is, he may have known it in some deep dark place in his mind before he was able to make peace with it.
So we need to change the wording of the question. “How did Dave realise he was dead?” no longer appreciates the journey he must have gone through to first ask the question of himself. He must have travelled a while; in the shoes he stole from Denial, upon the dead stumps that used to be his feet. Even though the thought must have provoked him, slapped him and fought with him. Dave must have made war with Death before any kind of peace may have been sought. But Dave’s war with Death is not the story. It is the end point in which we are interested and not the horrible journey, hard as it must have been, that he went upon to reach it. So how did Dave make peace with Death? A death he might already have known.
Dave looked in the mirror one day, or was it night? He can’t remember. But he didn’t recognise the face he saw. He tried to smile at the stranger in the mirror but couldn’t. He tried to look him in the eyes but he couldn’t do that either. It was not the face of Dave but the face of Death. He looked at the face, that couldn’t possibly have been his own, in the mirror for as long as his stomach would allow him to do so. He never looked in the mirror. He didn’t have time because he was always at work. And he didn’t like that kind of guy anyway. He disliked people obsessed with their outward appearance. He thought beauty must be on the inside. But that was just something else that people say and probably had no meaning to it. While he looked deeply into the blank eyes that danced about the reflective surface of the mirror, he tried to look within and find out if his beauty must have been inside. Then he realised he didn’t even know himself. Dave didn’t recognise the face in the mirror. Dave didn’t recognise the voice in his head.
Once upon a time, in a life that he could no longer remember, and one that no longer belonged him, that voice had been his friend. An echo of his very own. And now, like his face, it was just another stranger. He tried to ask the voice he no longer recognised if he was beautiful on the inside but the voice replied only that the “inside was empty”. Death wore Dave’s face. And the voice of Death filled his mind’s ear.
This, the voice that used to be his friend, the voice since killed and exhumed by Death, assured him, did not mean only that he was hungry. It meant that he was empty. That he was void. That everything he used to be, not that he could remember it that well, had ebbed out of him and had died. Dave couldn’t remember who he was. He couldn’t remember how he was or what he was. There was nothing inside of him and he was dead. Not that he either knew it yet or could come to terms with it.
But this isn’t how Dave realised that he was dead. Neither is it how he signed his peace with Death. That part was just for context. All it did was make him wonder and it did make him scared but it didn’t make him realise that he was dead. It just made him hate his life, the life he still clung to in death, even more than he did before. Of course, at this point, no
t having discovered that his life was irreversibly over.
He hadn’t slept much that night. Or did he sleep at day time? He couldn’t remember. The sun came down and the sun came up. Direction became lost and he would forget against which shoulder the sun might rise and against which it might fall. Day blended into night, as it does and as it should, but for Dave in such a way that the sun rise might be the sun set. The bread might rise when the dough was set, or did the dough set once the bread rose? He couldn’t remember the order of either. But the point is that he had not slept, in the time of so called and assumed to be rest period, between work and more work. In fact he hadn’t slept much for many nights. Or days. Since he couldn’t at that time remember which, he decided to call them “rest periods” though noted the irony in that they lacked rest. Looking at what used to be his own pale, lifeless and vacant eyes in the reflection of his dirt clouded mirror made him afraid. It made him deny. And he didn’t want to look at them for long.
Was he dreaming? The thought couldn’t be kept at bay for long and the question needed to be asked. His former