Undead Anonymous

putrefaction refers to the breaking down and liquefaction of tissues by bacteria in the human body.  unembalmed zombies will eventually dissolve, collapsing and sinking in upon themselves, gradually seeping out on to the ground.

trust me.  it’s not a pretty sight.

the digestive organs and lungs disintegrate first, with the brain following close behind.  the bacteria that exist in the mouth chew through the palate.  as most zombies know, the brain is soft and easy to eat, so it liquefies quickly and bubbles out the ears and mouth.

for unembalmed zombies, internal organs are still intact and can be identified until about six weeks after reanimation.  after that, the internal organs turn to chicken soup.

de-evolution
   brains bubble out nose
   organs turn to chicken soup
   former self dissolves

this week’s question comes from jim, who writes:

i am newly undead, but unfortunately i was a floater and am concerned about possible occurrences of sloughage.  can you provide advice on how i can either avoid such a thing or perhaps suggest a workaround for the mess?

just to clarify for those not up to speed on the terminology, a floater is a corpse that’s been in the water for an extended period of time.  and sloughage occurs when liquid from the deteriorating cells of a corpse gets in between layers of skin and loosens them.  sometimes, the skin of an entire hand will come off.  as the process continues, giant sheets of skin can peel away from the body.

this is also often referred to as skin slip.

jim doesn’t mention how long he was in the water, but that shouldn’t have any bearing on the possibility or the severity of sloughage.  the main factor with skin slip has to do with how long you were dead and whether or not you were embalmed prior to reanimation.  formaldehyde will help to slow down the process of decomposition, keeping those pesky leaking cells in check.  of course, if autolysis, or self-digestion, is well under way prior to reanimation, it’s only a matter of time before your fingertips start to look like they’re sheathed in rubber.

my advice is that if you notice any loose flaps of skin, don’t pick at them.  that will only make the problem worse.  and don’t bite your fingernails.  that’s just asking for trouble.

when you’re a member of the living dead, there’s not a whole lot to be thankful for.  bloat and sloughage and hydrogen sulphide farts aside, the stigma of being a zombie in a world ruled by the living makes the torment of being a high school nerd seem like a birthday party.

i don’t have any rights.  i can’t talk a walk without being pelted with expired food products.  my friends have abandoned me.  my mother’s disgusted by me.  my father wants to sell me to a research facility.  and i live in constant fear of indiscriminate dismemberment.

if you’ve never had your arms ripped out of their sockets by a gang of drunk fraternity pledges who then slapped you in the face with your own hands, then you probably wouldn’t understand.

helen always tells us to look on the bright side of things.  to accentuate the positive.  to remember that although we’ve all lost more than our share, we need to keep our chins up.

sometimes i wonder how many hits of acid helen did while she was alive.

i suppose helen’s right.  it doesn’t do me any good to think about everything i’ve lost.  helen says that we need to let go of our past before we can embrace our future.  i’m still working on that.  right now the past is all i have and the future looks about as promising as the new fall lineup on cbs.

Andy’s taking the day off to soak in some Pine-Sol, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to mention that, on my website at www.sgbrowne.com, I’ll be blogging about writing, the process of writing, the ego of writing, the business of writing, and the fact that, quite often, I don’t necessarily know what I’m talking about.

I’ll also be posting these blogs to my profiles on LiveJournal and MySpace, in case you’re interested in reading the posts or some of my archives there.

And beginning sometime next month, I’m going to begin an on-going blog about Breathers – from concept to publication.  A little self-indulgent?  Maybe.  But technically, all writing is self-indulgent.

I’ll start with the creative process I went through with Breathers, along with how at several points I had no idea how to finish it, then move on to the process of looking for an agent, which included 15 months and 82 rejections.  Finally, I’ll finish up with the business of the book deal, the editing process, and realizing that the book cover you get isn’t the one you always imagined.

In the immortal words of The King, thank you for listening.

helen, the group moderator at the local chapter of undead anonymous, suggests that each of us find some creative way to deal with our feelings of hopelessness, an artistic therapy to cope with the challenges of being one of the undead.  the idea is to create something beautiful that transcends our less-than-glamorous existence.

when i was among the living, i used to pen an occasional haiku.  nothing ground breaking.  i never submitted to any poetry journals or read my stuff aloud at an open mic down at mr. toot’s in capitola.  i just did it for me.  i never even let rachel read my haikus.  i wasn’t ashamed.  it was just personal.  something to give the right side of my brain some exercise.

i don’t know if it matters anymore, considering that my brain is gradually liquefying, but old habits don’t die even when you do.

shattered life dangles
a severed voice screams in grief
i’m rotting inside

this week’s question comes from a breather in california who asks:

do zombies itch?

yes, most definitely.  zombies do itch.  not only do we have to deal with the discomfort of suppurating wounds and ingrown stitches, but there’s the whole hygiene issue to consider.  no amount of head and shoulders is going to improve the condition of a gradually decaying scalp.  and zombie’s foot is so common among the not so recently reanimated that tinactin has become the number one selling product for breathers who have a member of the undead living with them.

in addition, zombies can itch from psoriasis, hemorrhoids, and jock itch to formaldehyde allergies, anal leakage, and sloughage.  and i’m not even going to mention the discomfort of a maggot infestation.

if you’ve never had a fresh crop of maggots crawling around beneath the surface of your skin, then you probably wouldn’t understand

the social options for zombies are pretty limited.  for starters, we’re not allowed in restaurants, shopping malls, movie theaters, bars, grocery stores, or any other place where we might disturb the living.  we’re not even allowed in cemeteries, at least not during the day.  and with an 11pm curfew, that doesn’t leave us with a lot of time to mingle.

of course, you don’t really want to be out wandering around alone after sunset, not unless you’re willing to risk getting dismembered by fraternity pledges or dragged around by rednecks while tied to the bumper of a sports utility vehicle or duct-taped to a utility pole by teenagers with a firecracker shoved up your ass.

i always did play it a bit more cautious, even in life, so i spend most of my time in the wine cellar watching cable television and drinking my father’s wine collection.  other than the twice weekly undead anonymous meetings, i don’t get out much.  and as one of the living dead, my options for romance are pretty limited.  i haven’t been to any of the zombie sing;es’ mixers, but i hear they’re a regular maggot-fest.

when they brought me home from the spca, mom and dad set me up in the wine cellar with a mattress and a case of glade air freshener.  mom prefers the neutralizer fragrance because it works directly toward the source of the odor.  personally, i’m partial to lilac spring, though tropical mist has a nice, fruity scent.

other than being allowed to take an occasional pine-sol bath, i don’t get invited into the house very often.  this probably has something to do with the fact that the last time i sat down with my parents for dinner, one of the stitches on my face popped and a piece of rotting tissue fell into my mother’s homemade gazpacho.

for the most part, mom and mad have been great – though my mom still lets out an occasional scream and runs away when i try to give her a hug.  and dad keeps dropping not-so-subtle hints about the stench of my rotting flesh and wondering aloud if i wouldn’t be happier in a zombie shelter. 

so i spend most of my time sitting in the wine cellar on my mattress, drinking wine and watching cable on the 32-inch television my parents had installed.  it could have been worse.  i could have ended up imprisoned in a zombie zoo or exploited on a reality television show.  i’ve heard “zombie nanny” is the worst, though apparently “zombie survivor” runs a close second.

sometimes i feel guilty about what i’ve put my parents through, but it’s not like i reanimated on purpose. still, i appreciate what they’ve done for me.  they could have left me at the spca.  i guess that just proves that you never stop being a parent, even after your son comes back from the dead.

all stray zombies are taken to the spca and held for three days, seven days with identification.  most fresh zombies who haven’t been embalmed tend to spoil within 72 hours, so they have to move those who are formaldehyde-challenged out pretty quick before a rectal cavity bursts.  trust me, you don’t want to be around when that happens.

my stay at the spca wasn’t all that bad.  they put me in my own cage in the zombie kennel, complete with a bowl of water and a rawhide bone to chew on.  they even gave me my own litter box, which isn’t all that easy to use, if you want to know the truth. 

if you’ve never tried squatting naked over a litter box with one useless ankle and one useless arm while other animated rotting corpses in adjacent cages stare at you, then you probably wouldn’t understand.

fortunately, my parents claimed me after two days.  the stigma of claiming your undead son and bringing him home to live with you can wreak havoc on your social status, so i can’t exactly blame mom and dad for not rushing out to get me, but one more day and i would have been a crash test dummy.

not all of the dead who reanimate have relatives or friends who can take them in.  most don’t.  and without a host guardian, zombies eventually get turned over to the county for salvage and redistribution or used for medical research, like impact testing.

the spca is working to implement a companion zombie program and solicit more zombie foster volunteers, but those ideas haven’t exactly caught on yet.

when asked about their first memory, most breathers recall breast feeding, riding a tricycle, being afraid of the dark, getting dressed for bed, discovering their bellybutton, playing with bugs, their first day of school, their first stuffed animal, or their first christmas.

no one remembers their birth. getting evicted from the womb and squeezed out through the vaginal canal. your skin covered in amniotic fluid and placental blood. emerging into a noisy world with strange smells and blinding lights. someone with a white mask and gloves grabbing your soft, malleable head with a pair of forceps.

no wonder newborn babies cry.

my new existence, my zombie birth, began with the realization that my external body cavities were packed with autopsy gel.

not exactly one of the top ten moments of my life.

except this isn’t life anymore.  and it’s not death, either.  it’s not even in between.  it’s more like a bad spin-off from a successful sitcom that the network refuses to cancel.

not every corpse that’s prepped for burial gets plugged up with cotton soaked in autopsy gel like me, but my mortician was a stickler for details.  a real by-the-book kind of guy.  even dressed me in a skin-tight plastic body suit to control the leakage of any body fluids.  i had a hell of a time getting out of that damn thing.