The Greatest Zombie Story Ever Told
I think a good way to start a novel is “It was a dark and stormy night…” which is quickly followed by “… and for once, there were no stupid zombies roaming the earth!”
But then I would keep typing furiously because I don’t want people to think that this is yet another dumb book about zombies.
What I really want to know is why dead people roam the earth in search of other humans to feast on?
I’m thinking that if people were to really come back from the dead, they’d head straight for a burger drive thru or maybe just pick through dumpsters behind some of the classier restaurants.
But no, they end up being a bunch of foot-dragging, zoned-out dead people — not really unlike most of the people I encounter in my daily life already.
Of course, I’m not saying there shouldn’t be any stories about zombies. But I don’t think the zombie-lovers really thought this thing through.
For example, zombies are dead people that come back to life, right?
But these dead people are buried in coffins six feet under the ground. So if I were to write a story about a zombie it would start with some dead guy in a coffin six feet under the ground who comes back to life.
Unless of course the person was cremated, then it would be like ashes coming back to life.
As far as I know, ashes don’t eat people.
They might get up some noses and cause some terrible sneezing fits, but that’s about it. I guess that’s why people like to write stories about dead people coming back to life and not about people snorting the ash remains of dead people — unless you’re Keith Richards.
Anyway, if I were to write a zombie story, it would be one about the comical, slapstick antics of a zombie trying to get out of a coffin buried six feet under ground.
This story would be so hilarious and instantly popular, that a movie would be made out of it:
Camera One pans in on top of gravesite in creepy cemetery. Camera Two is focused on a cutaway view of the coffin buried deep underground.
Day 1: Zombie (we’ll call him Chet) awakens to find that he is now a zombie. Chet is probably hungry and has to look for human brains. What a dilemma! Stuck in this box and no human brains anywhere. He starts to scratch at the inside of the coffin.
Day 2: Having been an avid smoker all of his life, Chet pulls out a lighter from the inside pocket of his suit coat jacket and is working the crossword puzzle book that someone thought it would be cute to stuff in his coffin (maybe because they had a thought he would become a zombie and would probably get bored in his coffin?) Unfortunately, there are no cigarettes in the coffin… a cruel joke at Chet’s expense.
Day 3: Chet is furiously scratching at the inside of the coffin and we see pieces of coffin liner all around him. Chet’s fingers are bleeding and he licks them. He gets a sour look on his face.
Day 4: Chet has now eaten all of the fingers of his right hand, half of the fingers on his left hand, and is making progress on his right foot and upper left shoulder. Yep, you guessed it… tastes like chicken.
Day 5: Chet is now half-eaten and is no closer to escaping. In a fit of despondency, he cracks open his head and dips into his brain. But the joke is on him when he realizes that his brain tastes like — you guessed it — chicken.
Camera One pans over the dark cemetery then stops once more at the grave of a guy named Chet. The grave isn’t disturbed and doesn’t look any different than when the movie started.
“It was a dark and stormy night…” Now there’s a book that even a zombie could write… if he wasn’t buried six feet underground.
