The First Zombie

by James J. Stubbs

friend, the voice within his head that he no longer knew, assured him that it was no dream. No nightmare to speak of. The dead don’t dream. Dave didn’t know that yet. But the dead have no aspirations, no hopes for a future that they now fail to own. So there would be no need at all for the dead to dream. Because in dreams the living find new life, new direction and new purpose. Only in dreaming can dreams be chased. The dead don’t dream. They don’t need to.

  But enough about that. Dave thought. He could sense his war ending. Ending with him on the wrong side and not just of the lawn. He tried to remember when he had last dreamt. When he could remember waking from an enviable dream where he would enjoy his assumed life, an assumed but unavoidably false life, and force himself to re-enter the dull monotony of everyday lack of life. Of existence. He wished he could dream again but dream forever. Assume a life he no longer had and create himself anew so that he might live rather than just exist. But alas, as we know now, the dead don’t dream. Dave was dead. And had been for some time. But he didn’t make his peace with Death that particular morning, or perhaps evening, as he peered through the reflective glass at his own reflective and non existent eyes. And with no peace reached he could not say “I am dead”. So he still did not realise, or should we say that he could not face, that he was dead that day.

  He put on the shoes, and for the last time too, that he stole from Denial and he walked to work. Was it routine? Was it monotony? No, neither of these things could explain why he couldn’t remember getting changed. Or brushing his teeth. Or getting a shower. Had he found the time for the luxury of one? Had he washed the night before in a daze after his long shift? Was it because he was always working on what he liked to think of as his auto pilot? The auto pilot, something he had designed and built for himself so that he didn’t have to concentrate so hard on his dull and lifeless existence, made things easy. It made things sufferable. Sufferable suffering. Yes. That must have been it. Dave thought as he staggered down the street on his way to work. It must have been the auto pilot, a far too well designed and efficient system, which prevented him from remembering any other details from his morning routine. Dull and expressionless as it no doubt was. All he could remember was his own vacant eyes. And the only thought that kept playing on his decayed mind was that he must re-acquaint himself with his old friend. The voice inside that he no longer recognised. A dear friend once that he now missed.

  Focusing on anything else was impossible. He just realised that too. He tried so hard to think as he walked a few paces, stopped, and then staggered a few more. Down the grey and rainy footpath on the way to his work. The dead can’t think. Or so it would seem. But he still wasn’t ready to think of himself as dead. Would “living impaired” be a better phrase? He always thought of himself as “living impaired” even though he still didn’t know that he was actually dead.

  Imagine a favourite sport. Imagine football, for those who like it. Imagine sitting every day at school, at work, on the sideline of your favourite pitch. Imagine watching people you respect playing your favourite sport. You probably like watching football. Imagine watching your heroes, people you love and maybe even worship, play your favourite sport. How does that make you feel? Elated? Happy? Excited and apprehensive at the same time? You like that sport. It doesn’t have to bee football. Maybe it’s rugby. No. It isn’t rugby. It’s climbing. Imagine you love climbing and you love to watch your favourite athlete display the passion and commitment that you would expect someone playing such a dangerous game to possess. Imagine their strained muscles and bloodied chalk-covered fingers as they scream their way to the next ledge or good finger hold. How does that make you feel? The same as if you like to watch football. Like you want to do it too. Like you want to take hold of that pig skin ball and kick it towards the goal as hard as you can. Like you want to celebrate that first goal with all of your adoring fans and players that you love and worship. Like you want to grab that chalk bag and rub it all round your brittle fingers and fly up that rock face all the way to the top. Like you want to take part in the scrum and chase the odd shaped ball while the other players try to kill you.

  Dave always felt, or should it be that he always feels, since the dead that live still partake in the present perhaps we should embellish the living dead with the tense of the present, that he is or was a spectator in his own life. The tense might have been right. But there might be another mistake in that sentence. The dead that live might do so in the present but we cannot accidentally expect that they feel. We’ll have to get to that later. Imagine watching, in life, your favourite sport. Maybe we should make it boxing to involve more in the metaphor. Imagine watching in envy because you can, for things that you cannot control, never take part and feel the glory of it. The elation of landing that square cross to your opponents jaw. The passion of the six in the morning jog to keep disciplined. That you can never feel alive. You may only watch it as others live while you are denied of life. Life denied in a life of denial.

  Dave thought he was just a spectator in his own life. In the haze of his dead mind that memory was all that protruded that dark morning, or evening he could still not tell, as he trudged onwards towards his place of work. He was always too busy to see his family before they died and he were too busy after they died to feel sadness or guilt over it. He was too busy to see his friends so he lost them all. He always heard about what they used to do. He would always see their pictures on their websites but he wasn’t in any of them. He felt, by reading what his friends said about their pictures, that he could have been there. That he might have been there. That he should have been there. The picture might make a false memory in his dead mind, so that if he thought so hard and concentrated so much, and lied to himself so contently, that he might convince himself that he was there. Somewhere in the background. Taking part in their games, taking part in their sport, and not just being a spectator. But they were all just lies. He was not alive. Not a partaker, just a spectator. This is how he realised he wasn’t alive. But it wasn’t how he made peace with Death.

  Dave was still in denial. Even in his shoes. He told himself that everyone had to work long hours and not see their friends, not have any friends, never meet any new ones and never meet any girls. He told himself that this was just how people had to live in the hard times of the present. He comforted himself by his bank balance and watched it grow just a little each month. He lived alone in a small flat. He had no need for a television but owned one anyway. He had no need for games but he owned them too. Never did he find the time to play them or find the time to watch anything. He was tired of being a spectator anyway so why would television help him at all? He spent very little, no need after all and no time either. He ate at work, slept there too at times, and he liked the cold. Not that he could just tolerate it. Not that he just didn’t mind it. He just liked it. How most people like holiday sun and lay naked in worship of it. He liked the cold. Maybe he felt it less because he was deceased, but again, he didn’t know that yet. And to refute that argument, he can’t remember not liking the cold. Only liking it. His dead mind wasn’t very good at recollections, but he could at least remember the comfort of the barren cold. So he never turned the heating on and that is how he watched his bank balance grow.

  He lived too close to work, in fact he might as well have moved in entirely, to bother with owning a car. So he never had to buy fuel. Why do people eat out in restaurants alone? He would always ask himself that. He would see in the windows of the nicest places, as he staggered home after his long shift, a lone man or woman eating and presumably enjoying their own company no mater what anyone else might think. He disliked them without ever knowing them. If he had to eat alone. He would eat utterly alone. So he never spent any money in restaurants.

  So Dave comforted himself. With that little counter on his mobile app that climbed a little each pay day. And he consoled his false life, his lack of life, in dreams of retirement. Dreams of retirement in the youth of his life. The life he still thought he had. Thi
s kept him in denial. Did he steal those shoes? Or had he enough money to buy them from Denial? He could ignore his life impulses and soothe them into waiting and being patient. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt an impulsiveness to do something. A glimmer of life. A desire to live and not just watch others live. Those feelings, like he, had died. But this still doesn’t answer how Dave realised he was dead. It’s just part of the rich tapestry.

  Let’s go back to that very first question. What does Dave do? That question seems less so out of order than it did at the start. With Dave on his way to work, having terrified himself at the sight of his own glazed eyes, and the fact he neither recognised his own face in the mirror, nor the only friendly voice within his own head, the question of “what does Dave do” seems much less out of place than it did before.

  Dave works nights. Oh yes, he remembers now, he sleeps in the day. Night work suits the dead. They look less obviously out of place at the witching hour. That might explain how he has managed to get away with wandering