The Unusual Case of the Zombie and Magus

To explain:

In this world, “unnatural” is either despised or romanticized. Consider this further; there is usually no such thing as a “mild interest” in the occult or someone who just “dabbles” in a supernatural hobby. If you think on it, you’ll find that every person in your life who believes in or even practices these things is, by all intents and purposes, a nut about the topic. Perhaps that’s a little harsh but, simply put, human beings have a complicated relationship with obscurities. One often finds themselves in a paradox of yearning to “correct” the “irregularity” before their mind’s eye and at the same time avert themselves from the truth in order to protect their personal interpretations less they be forced to correlate all the contents of their minds and be faced with, as one great author would say, insanity.

That just might be what allows creatures like me to exist in this world.

Nevertheless, it can't be denied that human beings are truly fickle. Even with years upon years of interaction with them, I can’t even pretend to fathom the contents of their headspace in the slightest. However, there’s a key difference between that ability to fathom and the ability to understand the theorem of human behaviorism. That gap between “truly empathizing with” and “receiving information and reacting appropriately” is the code by which I have lived and survived by for the past nine years.

I’m hoping, however, that you don’t take me as some kind of automaton who cannot “understand emotions.” To the contrary, questions about the psyche that would have been near alien to me years before now make perfect sense, and the answers to them come to me naturally.

For example, what is it that makes a human happy? Some would say good health. Others might consider love, in all of it’s many splendorous forms. The bulk of society - including me - safely cite wealth, an answer not unsubstantiated considering the the rampant proliferation of materialism. Then, what makes a human sad? What causes them despair? To fear? That would be, above all things, death.

Such is my bad luck. That the very thing humans fear most they would turn into a cultural icon that I just so happened to embody: the zombie.

Let’s not start off with a bad taste in our mouths. I am, undeniably, an undead. A ghoul, monster, walker, reanimated corpse, put it in whatever way suits your taste. My heart no longer beats, I do not independently produce any new cellular tissue, and direct sunlight is a bit of a hindrance. However, I would contest that despite all these things I actually look quite alive. No matter what angle you observe me from, I really do appear to be nothing more or less than your average human.

Two legs, two arms, a rising and falling chest. A somewhat thin but lean and solid frame. 206 bones total, minus the individual components that were un-fused at birth. Hair, too - a mop of brown hair that is somewhat of an effort on my part to keep tidy, but nothing to fuss over. A sense of fashion that generally keeps up with the times. Every other part of me I can dress up, change or modify in one way or another - except for my eyes. Dazzling, aquamarine pools of vibrance... is what I’d like to say, but they’re just modified contacts that I wear over a pair of disturbingly storm grey lookers.

My eyes underneath the thin film of silicone hydrogel seemed to have retained their look at the time of their owner’s death. Suffice to say, I become somewhat disjointed when I happen to catch myself in mirrors without the lenses. People would cross the street in droves to avoid me without my contacts, that's for sure.

When all's said and done, I'm really not much to talk about. Though I wouldn’t venture to describe myself as the most picturesque image of a young man at 19 years, I would say I rate at an average of 7.9/10 based on appearance alone (this is based on direct feedback from others - some anonymous, some direct). I have a few of my own stubborn quirks, experiencing no change nor improvement no matter how I may try to erase them.

Well, details are details.

Superficially, but convincingly, I am human. True it is that my skin can be considered a little paler than most, my movements and mannerisms a bit more reserved, my cheek and collarbones more pronounced compared to other people’s. However, this also is something I am certainly in debt to human society for - the concept of outliers, people with “quirks.” Stuff like that.

Almost as if to add insult to injury, most popular fictional interpretations of zombies make it incredibly easy to dispel the claim that I am one myself (though nobody’s ever challenged me on that front). “Zombies” are apparently ghoulish friends with swamp-green skin, little to no hair, crooked yellow chips for teeth and an insatiable penchant for brains. Other interpretations don’t venture very far from this caricature.

These are a strange take on humor for me. Brains are not really more or less appetizing than the rest of the body. I digress.

On the night of December 30th, nine years ago, I died. Don’t ask me what it was like, because I barely remember any of it. My memories of the day I ceased living as a human being are a series of incoherent snapshots of which I cannot make heads nor tails of to this day:

A cold wind that felt like knives against my skin.

A noise so loud that I can feel it inside of my head, turning my eardrums inside out.

A blindingly white light.

An impact of such unholy strength and velocity that it consequently feels like nothing at all; a force that turns my entire body numb in a split second.

Every kick drum in the world suddenly played in unison inside my head, a subsonic gong so powerful I can barely comprehend it.

My mind is shattered.

A brief sensation of flight.

And from there, I fall, fall, and fall into absolutely nothing. Everything from there is a blank.

My consciousness resurfaced next in a sea of crimson red. The sky was still a blanket of pitch black darkness above me, but for some reason, I could make out the outlines, shapes, and essences of every object around me. Hunched over, something firm yet undeniably fleshy was held in my right hand only a few inches away from my open mouth.

I was aware of what I was doing at that point, and didn’t stop. A string of complicated thoughts followed next.

Whatever it is I’m eating, I continue eating, almost impulsively. I had to eat. I don’t remember if it was hunger driving me, because I couldn’t even grasp the concept of hunger - just that I needed to keep at it. And as I continue to eat, I think that it’s unlike anything I’ve ever tasted before - but what does it mean, to eat something? To put in your mouth and.. chew.

And then?

Oh, I use those firm things to mash it up and then force it down my throat and...

I can swallow it.

...What does it mean to “swallow”?

I eat more, then remember that it involves the use of my throat muscles, my tongue, and some saliva to properly eat food.

It’s flavor is, well, salty... no, bitter. On second thought, it’s actually quite sweet. On two occasions, I forget how to breathe. I eat more, and then remember how.

I keep eating and eating, ravenously and in amounts so voluminous that I don’t even remember where it all went. And as I ate, I remembered more and more. Every instinctive question that popped into my head, I answered with another bite. Some time passes, and I don’t know how much, before I arrive at my penultimate question - that is, what am I eating?

A human being.

And what’s a human being?

A very, very fragile existence.

I ate even the bones of the bodily remains that lied before of me, tearing and breaking apart every last difficult portion with my hands and with my teeth, not even sparing the blood-splattered soil that surrounded the corpse. I ate, leaving absolutely nothing in my wake save for a scuffled mess of ground where someone could have kicked up some dirt.

When I decided enough was enough, the wind was warmer and the sky above me lightened. I was no longer hungry, and so with no clear direction nor incentive, I walked aimlessly. Whenever I came across a terrain too steep to walk, I climbed. Where I met water, I swam. To this day, I don’t remember if the human I ate was simply a corpse or a victim that I had really attacked, and at that point, my total apathy prevented me from giving any further thought to it. Somewhere along the line, I must have collapsed, meeting my physical limits without even knowing it.

This where Taelyn Saito comes in. A girl at 11 years old, my senior by a single year, happening upon a bloodied and ragged child, lifeless in her backyard. A shock for her, I’m sure, and for her mother as well, which was all the family young Taelyn had left. I imposed on the both of them for a time.

After thoroughly devouring an entire adult human body and traversing what could have been three or three hundred miles for several or perhaps several dozen days, the loss of strength in my body reduced me to a near vegetative state. Conscious, but unresponsive.

Taelyn Saito and her mother nursed me back to health in her brother’s room, unused since it’s very construction since the intended occupant had apparently died prematurely at birth.

When I was asleep, the world was still, as well as silent.

When I was awake, I did very little but sit up in bed and stare. I stared around the room, at Taelyn, at her mother, at the world outside my window, a mute boy with a million thoughts running through my head at once.

If I tried to walk - and believe me, I tired - my knees would buckle and lose feeling, and I'd collapse dozens of timesf. My eyes didn’t have an inkling of life in them, which I believe unnerved Taelyn. Her mother, however, was very considerate of me. I ate the food she prepared for me, but only the meats in her meals sustained me. I was somehow aware of this - after all, everything else that passed my lips and my throat felt like nothing more than pieces and clumps of flavorless paste on my tongue.

I absorbed. I absorbed the kind words that Taelyn’s mother passed on me, the tidbits of conversation that Taelyn herself offered me every now and then, which grew friendlier and friendlier by the day. I absorbed the unfamiliar feeling of warmth, comfort, and kindness. I absorbed the light of day, the dark of night, the melancholy of sunset and the brilliance of dawn. And, of course, I was absorbing whatever protein my body could process from the meat in those easily digestible soups that Taelyn's mother made for me, elixirs that invigorated my body little by little.

One day, I spoke.

The next day, I walked.

And a few days later, after various complicated affairs took place, I was classified as an official ward of the state, and inducted into a nearby foster home. I was diagnosed with retrograde amnesia due to severe head trauma, and neither my fingerprints nor my DNA revealed evidence for any relatives, living or dead. Adoption proved impossible for a period of time - perhaps it was because of the exceedingly odd circumstances of my discovery.

To this day, one detail appears hazy in my mind’s eye. Any child who is processed by the government would obviously be subjected to a mandatory health inspection, which would have revealed that I no longer had a pulse and that my body heat was practically nonexistent. Whenever I heard it mentioned, it was always waived off like an unnecessary detail. The one who usually handled this business was Taelyn's mother, who was the head nurse of the local clinic.

Speaking of whom, it had become impossible for me to continue to live with the Saito family while officially being a child of a foster home. Taelyn and her mother went to great lengths in order to see that I was comfortable living in a new environment, however, and Taelyn herself visited me almost daily. Before I knew it, I was adopted by another family and taken away to a city. I say that, but it really was only a single bus trip away. With that, we were able to keep seeing each other.

I knew what I was long before I truly understood what it meant. I was sustained for a while on minor animal meats, knowing that it was enough to keep me alive but far from actually assuaging my hunger. I needed the same food that I ate when my consciousness first resurfaced; human flesh. The moment I was reintroduced to and accepted into society, the very sustenance I craved existed all around me, lived under the same roof as me, a few steps away and sometimes just within reach. Yet, whenever the thought of eating my adopted family - or anyone else, for that matter - came to mind, Taelyn Saito's face appeared in front of my eyes like an intrusive overhead display.

She was human too.

Eating a live human being would basically be the same thing as eating her, and I couldn’t accept that. I don’t know why. It was an unsettling, debilitating feeling. A bird with wings would fly, an ant with mandibles would scavenge, and any creature with a given, hard-wired directive would accomplish their goals by any means possible. Such as a zombie, who would naturally give in to their instincts and indiscriminately eat human beings.

But I restrained myself.

I was the termite who lived away from wood, the bee who refused to pollinate, the turtle who abandoned its shell; the anti-thesis to my very being.

I, a bona fide zombie, who could not nor would not ever eat a human being.

A live human being, that is.

A few years later, I was 15 years old and a shut-in. Half the time, I was too weak to leave the bed, and when I was able to walk, the mere breeze caused me to stumble. It was at that point in time that I began hearing rumors of a popular “suicide spot” that existed just outside the border of town, situated on an abandoned railroad track that led off a cliff: Echo Ridge. An area that was a dead end in more ways that one - it was a spot for the star-crossed lovers, the widows and the widowers, the criminals with nowhere left to go, those who had nothing left to live for.

If they had any inkling of regret as they made their decision, their screams would echo across the forest where the tracks led off towards, hence the name. Existing outside of authority knowledge, it went unnoticed by police and therefore was not roped off from the public.

I decided that in order to gain back my former strength, I would have to eat human flesh, regardless of how it was provided. For a few weeks, I left the house on the pretense of visiting friends and preyed on suicide victims. It was my only chance at returning my strength while not breaking my promise.

One body, regardless of how big or how small, sustained me for months at a time.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, there was never a lack of victims to claim. Echo Ridge had, by then, garnered a bitter popularity among people from other towns and communities. Thus, it saw use. I cannot say whether or not I am happy about that turn of events, but I did see plentiful benefits from this situation. As far as I could tell, no one minded that the bodies kept disappearing either.

Eating non-human meats would have continued to benefit my growth too, and they certainly did so for a long time, but only in small increments and to much dissatisfaction. In the first place, it seemed absurd that a dead thing like me could continue to develop my body and grow older, but even I have yet to fully understand the rules of my zombie nature. It seems the one directive of life has not changed even when I have become something that is no longer human - I must eat in order to live. Rather than intaking nutrients as a natural human process, I imagine that my act of "eating" is more a show of force in making the sustenance act as biofuel. They turn into a sort of vitality that ebbs and flows throughout my body. Regular exercise seems to speed up the process of this "vitality" turning into usable energy and producing growth. If I wanted to know more, I'd have to get somebody to cut me up and look inside - not something I'm eager to do nowadays.

Nevertheless, though I hate to admit it, human flesh does me the greatest good. Granting me the most "vitality," the strength and power that eating people returns to me is even capable of things like healing small wounds, a feat normally impossible since my body has no white blood cells capable of repairing the damage. In places where I'd usually have to suture, that vitality will enact some kind of change which will temporarily grant me the means to repair my body.

Well, thanks to that discovery and all the other discoveries it led to, I managed to win some small part of my life back. Specifically, the part where I became physically healthy enough to live as a normal person. By that point, I could even make trips to Taelyn's home on my own - but I was never the ace of a sports team nor the number one leader on any record boards.

No, achieving those positions would be all too easy, and would attract too much attention to myself as a result. The thing about living undercover is that you generally don’t want that outcome. I'm sure you've been told this, but the human brain allows for the utilization of only 10% of the human body’s abilities, a limiter set in place and enforced by sensations of pain, doubt, and the subconscious. As a zombie, using 100% of my body’s capabilities became something I had to restrain consciously, lest I accidentally break a glass with just two fingers or sprain both ankles running laps in gym.

Well, despite all the quirks, my late childhood and early teenage years were nothing to scoff at. One could say, despite being abnormal in all my own ways, that I lived a truly fulfilling life in those years.

Time has passed.

Years later, I’m now living independently with a job on the side and attending a nearby community college, "Equestria University," with one of my peers.

It goes without saying that peer is, of course, Taelyn Saito. She grew up alongside me and become quite a responsible young female.

I've made a few forgettable acquaintances over the years, but of all the strongest social bonds I could remember forming, she was and still is the most pertinent, right next to her mother. I wouldn't go as far as to say she saved my life, but I will say that I've decided to stick around her. At least for the time being.

Above all, she remains the sole reason as to why I swore off eating live human beings for the rest of my life. She is a human being, and one of the few that I have sworn to protect, even if it... well—

Even if it "kills" me.