the voyages of the melancholic undead

a seagull’s call rings over the water.

there, down by the lake

slowly walks a zombie.

they lean over the railing,

and gaze at water’s surface,

trying to decide whether the water’s distortion

makes their grotesque face easier or harder to look at.

a duck’s quack echoes.

strange.

there is a low stone wall on the edge of the lake.

a couple hundred feet away, a young couple is sitting together, chatting.

that’s nice.

the zombie decides to get up on the wall.

the zombie stands on the wall for a moment,

on its edge, facing the lake.

the zombie is late on their rent payments.

they let themself fall face down into the lake.

the young couple does not see this occur,

but another passerby, a middle-aged man, does.

this man was the zombie’s father, in another life,

although neither of them know this.

the first thing the man thinks, is

“i didn’t know zombies sank…”

the first sense to return is smell.

freshly baked bread.

the second is sound.

“schönen tag noch!”

the third is sight.

the zombie is in a small bakery.

they are holding a paper bag.

the zombie nods as a form of goodbye and leaves,

ringing the bell on the door as they exit.

the zombie cannot say anything,

because when the zombie was resurrected,

their vocal cords could not be fixed.

same with the tear ducts, much of the face, one lung, and a couple fingers.

they walk out from the center of the beautiful, quaint little town,

but they are only looking at the cobblestones.

the townspeople are staring at the zombie from across the street.

the zombie never passes closely by someone else.

strange.

the zombie has no idea what’s going on:

how they got here, how they learned german,

why they were buying bread, or any of it.

but who the fuck cares?

it’s all the same.

the zombie’s name is jason.

jason doesn’t remember their original name.

maybe it was the same, maybe not.

either way, jason is walking home with their bread.

finally, jason starts to make it out into the woods.

jason trips on a log partly obscured in fallen leaves.

the bag flies from their hand.

jason stands up,

brushes the dirt off their knees and hands,

and sees that all the bread has fallen out,

becoming totally dirty in the process.

jason stares for a second,

and then they slowly lie down their back,

and stares up at the trees and the sky,

completely silent to the outside world,

but screaming at themself internally.

if a depressed zombie screams in the forest,

but no one can hear it,

did they make a sound?

jason glances to their right and sees a pocketknife,

old and covered in the leaves on the side of the dirt path.

jason sits up and reaches for the pocketknife.

they hit the button on it, and see that,

despite the weathered appearance of the exterior,

it still gleams underneath.

jason idly wishes the same could be said for them.

on impulse, they begin cutting away at their left arm,

slicing a bit above the elbow.

zombie flesh is fairly soft,

and soon jason is staring at their forearm on the ground.

there is no pain.

physical pain at least.

strange.

jason starts and throws the knife into the woods,

but then thinks, and gets up to find it among the trees.

jason leaves their bread on the ground and just walks home.

a cute little cottage nestled among trees,

with a broken front window, no door,

and some nice messages spray painted on the front:

“Wiedergänger!”: zombie.

“Hau ab!”: get lost.

nice messages.

jason has lived for 20 years.

jason has lived for 3 years.

they know these things to be true.

and yet, jason can’t recall exactly how long they were dead for,

in between.

maybe they should’ve taken the arm with them.

why was jason even trying to buy bread?

they don’t need food for sustenance.

because of this fact, jason lies down,

below a hole in the ceiling:

a free sunlight, an optimist would say,

and jason lies there a couple weeks,

thinking.

thinking about everything and nothing.

jason can’t sleep.

jason is always awake, thinking.

nothing stops jason from thinking.

jason and their brain are tied together for life.

and death.

finally, jason gets up,

looks down at their left arm,

and sees that it has already started to grow back.

that scientist who resurrected jason was really something,

but why did he have to make them immortal?

today, jason thinks they’ll try hanging themself again,

for fun.

they already knew it didn’t work.

last time, as jason was hanging there, they scared a kid from the town,

taking a walk in the woods.

somehow, jason doesn’t really care about that,

and yet is filled with the deepest regret at the same time.

strange.

jason searches all over their house.

no rope.

jason sighs.

with nothing else to do, jason walks back into town.

however, jason realizes that it is the middle of the night,

and the stores are closed.

jason picks up a newspaper from the stand,

sits down on a bench, and reads it for a few hours.

they read a section about the terrible eruptions in hawaii.

there was a picture of the lava flowing across the landscape,

and another of the kilauea lava lake.

and now that unceasing mind of jason’s clicks.

wait.

wait a second.

a month later, jason is in hawaii.

they are wearing a beautiful rainbow lei,

around their ugly neck.

the smell of sulfur is overpowering.

jason doesn’t care.

it’s nice.

it distracts them.

the landscape around them is purely charred, dark rock,

only interrupted by even darker, even more charred rock.

the bottom of the kilauea caldera.

jason is finally here.

as jason walks on the jagged rock, it cuts their feet.

who the hell cares.

as jason walks, they think about their mother.

jason found their mother dead by suicide.

there was no note.

there was no meaning.

jason reasons that death had just as much meaning,

as every other fucking death over the years.

somehow, the people jason knew always ended up killing themselves.

their mother: sleeping pills. no meaning.

their sister: jumping in front of a train. no meaning.

the person they loved: hanging. no meaning.

their best friend: car exhaust. no meaning.

jason was the one who was alive.

and jason hated being alive the most out of any of them.

strange.

ironic, one might say.

and now, jason is a zombie.

jason finally reaches the edge of the central lava lake.

heat billows up,

heat that would burn jason’s face if they were human.

jason begins to walk around the lake.

around and around.

no real reason.

the exact same quantity of reason, however,

as all of life’s spiraling races.

loop de loops that give some momentary excitement or fear,

but always go right back to the starting point.

nothing.

13.7 billion years ago, give or take, was the big bang,

as scientists understand it.

there was nothing before that.

no really, nothing. literally nothing.

there was no time, no space.

no atoms, no galaxies, no stars, no planets,

no civilizations, no cities, no traffic jams,

no middle aged people stuck in office jobs,

no lung cancer, no oppression,

no homeless people freezing to death

on a snowy night

in an opulent city.

no love that goes wrong.

no hatred, no grief, no longing, no pain.

no dreary exhaustion of millions of people waking up every hour of every day.

no hands that loosely held an open bottle of pills,

spilling them onto the floor,

hands that jason had known so well,

hands that jason saw in flashes for the rest of their two lives,

hands that jason saw while falling from the top of their apartment block,

after jumping off of the roof,

at the age of 20.

jason didn’t see the ground coming.

they saw their mother’s hands as they were,

when they saw them

attached to cold arms,

attached to a lifeless body,

when their mother was regretfully dead at 42,

and jason was regretfully alive at 14.

jason saw those hands strangling them to death.

it’s hard even now for jason to remember,

what kept them through those subsequent 6 years.

let’s try this again.

round 2.

jason jumps.

for the first time in years, for jason, there is darkness.

for a moment and for an eternity,

all is still and all is quiet.

this time, the first thing to come back is the sound.

seagulls.

god fucking dammit…

jason has no idea how long its been.

if its been hours or days or years or millennia.

either way, jason is alive.

or, well, you know what i mean.

jason’s eyes are twitching.

jason opens them.

a beautiful blue sky.

jason’s mind is in utter turmoil.

roiling with aggressive waves,

despite the calm ocean waters they can hear nearby.

suddenly, jason, the zombie, realizes something.

they are crying.

strange.