It was optimistic to set out a dozen chairs.  It was unlikely that even one person would attend, let alone enough to fill the small space in the church basement.  But Jennifer was determined to be positive.  She knew not to get her hopes up, that this was likely to be an impossible undertaking, and she had already resigned herself to the probability of its failure.  Still, there was always a chance she could succeed, a wonderful possibility she reminded herself of as she taped the sign to the door:

New Beginnings:

Support Group for the Living-Impaired

Feeling alone? You don’t have to be!

There are thousands of living-impaired people just like you in your community to provide support and advice in this new stage of your existence.

Join us on Thursday at 8pm in the basement of First Presbyterian Church

Glancing once more around the room, reassuring herself that everything was ready, she sat down in one of the metal fold out chairs to wait.

Jennifer had gotten comfortable with her regression, decided to bask in it even.  Where before she felt ashamed of her condition when men recoiled in horror and mothers shielded their children’s eyes, she now found it amusing that they should be so disgusted with the natural bodily processes.  She was decomposing.  It was nothing unusual.  Everyone who was so shocked and disgusted by her appearance would look like her soon enough, it was only a matter of time.  Everything dies and everything rots.  Even if it doesn’t stay dead, it still rots.

Perhaps that was why they were so distressed by her.  They were not terrified of the black, coagulated blood that would drip from her orifices (even though she tried to keep them stuffed with cotton, leaks still sometimes happened).  They were not recoiling from the putrescent stench.  No, they were simply scared of their own inevitable decay.

She laughed at the thought.  No, it was nothing so profoundly philosophical as that.  Their horror was purely visceral.  It had taken her a long time to overcome that same reaction herself.  There were weeks where she would vomit every time she looked in the mirror or scream when she brushed her hair and a bit of scalp came away with the hair in the brush.

But given enough time, a person can get used to anything.  Even being undead.

That was why she had started the support group, so she could share her self-acceptance with others.  She had been a social worker when she was alive, before the accident, and it seemed natural that she should continue to help others in her new state of existence.

It would be a source of emotional support for coping with the sudden change from dead to undead and society’s too often intolerant reaction.  She had heard stories about families disintegrating – parents rejecting children, children rejecting parents.  She had even heard one tragic case of a wife who dropped her husband off at a fire station after he had changed, trying to abandon him.  When they tried to make her take him back, she kept insisting, “I promised until death do us part.  I never promised anything about un-death.”

Of course, that was a common misconception that the undead required some sort of caretaker.  They were perfectly capable of being self-sufficient.  That was the other aspect she hoped the support group would provide – practical tips for living after death.  For example, there are a number of ways to repel flies and maggots.  Mothballs are efficient, but highly toxic and carcinogenic.  While that may not be a deterrent to someone already beyond the concerns of mortality, it could be problematic to other members of the household.  Vinegar, mint oil, eucalyptus and bay leaves are more holistic remedies that will keep the pests away and help with the rotting smell.

It was twenty minutes passed eight and still no one had come.  Jennifer had thought about taking the book out of her bag, but she kept her eyes focused on the door.  She wanted to be ready to welcome anyone who happened to wander by and make them feel accepted, not to seem dismissive of them by reading.  Instead she shifted her weight to make sure none of the lumps of blood settled too much in her extremities, adjusted the small wads of cotton in her ears to make sure nothing was seeping out, and engaged in the many other small tasks that had come to occupy her time since she became “living-impaired”.

She was engaged in the rather intimate task of checking her underarms for maggots or other stray pests when she saw someone in the hallway out of the corner of eye.  Quickly readjusting her clothes and rising out of her chair, she looked again and saw a shy young man peeking around the door.

“Come in!” she shouted.  “Welcome to New Beginnings!”  He seemed startled to have been spotted and stood in the doorway, not quite sure whether to come or go.

“Um, is this the support group for zombies?” he mumbled to the floor.

“Yes, but we don’t use that word here,” she said with a stern frown.  “Zombie is such a demeaning stereotype.  A bunch of homicidal maniacs running around trying to eat people’s brains – that doesn’t happen in real life, just in bad horror movies.  We prefer the term ‘living-impaired’.”

“Uh, okay then.” He continued to stand in the doorway, eyes focused on the floor and his hands thrust deep into his pockets.  Jennifer could seek a small bald patch around the temple where a chunk of his shaggy black hair had been torn out by a rough comb, a sure sign he was still adjusting to the fragility of a non-living body.

“I can help you with that,” she said gently, pointing to the spot.  One of his hands moved reflexively to his head.  “Hair keeps growing but the skin is very breakable; it tears away easily when you brush too hard.  Try gently using a wide-toothed comb, something that won’t tug the hair.  That way, the scalp won’t get pulled away.”

He looked up, meeting her eyes for the first time.  He was young, no more than fifteen or sixteen, which made Jennifer especially sad.  He must have already been struggling with the challenges of being alive, only to now be confronted with the new difficulties of being dead.  She saw he was sizing her up, trying to decide whether he could trust her.

“So how long have you been living-impaired?” She sat back down, trying to seem calm and nonchalant, hoping it would relax him and convince him to open up to her.

“About a week and a half,” he said taking a step forward. “I guess what I don’t understand, I mean, why am I…” he looked back the floor, struggling to finish the sentence.

“You want to know why you’re decomposing.”  He nodded silently.  She sighed sadly, “I really don’t know.  I’ve been living-impaired for several months now.  It used to be that when you were dead, you were dead.  The biological matter in the body broke down.  The cells ruptured, skin broke apart, insides spilled out…nasty stuff really.  But that didn’t happen right away.

“After my accident, when I found out I was not alive anymore, I thought that I would just stay the way I was forever.  It wasn’t ideal, but I could accept it.  Then things started to fall apart, slowly at first.  I got a paper cut and this thick black ooze came out and wouldn’t stop.  My scalp tore when I brushed my hair, like yours.”

“What did you do?”  He sat down in one of the metal chairs across from her, near the door so he was free to run, but close enough for her to know that he was actually listening.  Feeling that she was reaching him, her un-beating heart surged with a joy she hadn’t known since the accident.  And in that moment she began to feel like herself again, like a caring and capable woman who found true happiness in helping others.

“I went to the doctor.  I mean that’s what people do when something is wrong with them.  But the doctors said there wasn’t anything wrong with me.  I was not alive and not alive things decompose.”

“So that’s it? I’m just going to keep rotting until there’s nothing left? What happens then?” His voice cracked with panic.

“No, not at all!  I mean, I’m still here, aren’t I?” She reached out to pat his knee but he shifted away from her hand.  “The way things used to be, my body would have completely fallen apart ages ago.  But now it’s slow, more gradual.  That makes it easier to manage.  It’s an adjustment, but eventually you learn how to manage.”

“Like the hair thing?”

“Like the hair thing,” she said with a laugh.  “It’s kind of like going through puberty.  You’re body is changing; it’s all new and frightening.  But over time you learn to accept and even love the way you are.  I used to be so hurt when people on the street pointed at me.  It made me feel disgusting and ugly.  Now, I think it’s kind of funny.  I am what I am now, there’s nothing I can do to change it. And if it doesn’t bother me then I don’t see why it should bother them.”

They sat in silence for a little while.  Jennifer could see he was struggling, not just to accept his situation but also to trust her.  He had the natural resistance of a teenager to confide in an adult, based on the fear of rejection and the adolescent conviction that no one over the age of twenty-five could possibly understand what he was going through.  So she sat with him, hoping that the longer they were together the more willing he would be to share his private thoughts and fears with her.  After ten minutes of quiet, she ventured to speak again.

“If you don’t mind me asking, how did you come to be living-impaired?”

“Why do you want to know?” He crossed his arms over his chest and slouched down in his chair.

“Well, you’re very young and had your whole life ahead of you.  I imagine that a sudden change like this would be very traumatic and thought maybe you would want to talk about it.”

“I guess,” he mumbled to the floor. After a moment of hesitation, he looked up at her nervously. “What happened to you?”

“I had a car accident.  I stayed behind at the office to catch up on my file notations, so it was very late when I was driving home.  It was a rural one lane highway, no street lights, with lots of turns and hills.  I had been taking it for years so I knew the way and could have driven it with my eyes closed.  But sometimes semi-trucks would use it as a shortcut when there was construction on the interstate.  And that night, one of the trucks took a corner too fast and veered into my lane.  I swerved to avoid him, but crashed into a tree.”

“And you died?”  Jennifer brushed the bangs away from her face showing a deep arched dent in the middle of her forehead.

“The airbag didn’t go off and I hit my head on the steering wheel.  The doctors said it was massive head trauma and I…stopped living…at the scene.”  She smoothed the hair back over her face to conceal the cavity.  “What about you?”

“It was pills,” he said so quietly it was barely a whisper.

“An overdose?”  But the look on his face corrected her.  “Oh. Not an overdose.”

“I was having a really hard time at school.  I wasn’t being bullied or anything.  Kids have to notice you to pick on you.  I was invisible.  Then I started hearing about all the zombies on the news.”  Jennifer stiffened at the offensive word, but did not correct him.  “Everyone was talking about how cool the zombies were, how awesome it was that there were dead people walking around.  Then Jeremy Myers, one of the seniors, fell off a balcony when he got drunk at a kegger.  He broke his neck but still showed up to school on Monday.  Everyone was talking about him, like he was the coolest kid in school even though barely anyone knew who he was before.  People would just crowd around him in the halls when he’d show him how he could turn his head all the way around.”

“You killed yourself…to be cool?”

“I wasn’t trying to kill myself! I was trying to turn myself into a zombie.”  He sighed sadly, “But I didn’t really think it through.”

“No, you didn’t! You didn’t think it through because now you’re dead.  Life and death aren’t fashion trends!”  Jennifer shouted with rage.  It had never occurred to her that there were people who would willingly give up their lives, people who would choose to rot and decay rather than face one more day of breathing. She stood up with such force she knocked over her chair and it hit the laminated floor with a resounding clang that echoed through the small room and into the hallway.

“Get out,” she said through gritted teeth, her fists clenched at her sides and shaking with fury.

“What?”

“I said, get out!” she screamed.

“But you said you’re okay now! You said you’re happy!”

“Happy? Of course I’m not happy! I’m dead.  My life is over and I have lost everything, absolutely everything.  I lost my job because social services weren’t comfortable with sending a zombie to do welfare checks on foster homes.  I lost my friends because they are all convinced that one day I’m going to turn into a real zombie and try to eat their brains.  I lost my future because no one wants to start a family with a zombie.  I was going to get married, have kids, travel around the world – all things I never got to do and will never get to do because I’m a zombie.”

“But I lost everything, too!”

“No, you didn’t.  You gave it up.  You were a petulant child tired of playing with a toy so you threw it away without any regard for the consequences.  I wasn’t tired of living, not even close. It was ripped away from me because some moron with a trucker’s license can’t figure out how to stay in his own lane.”  She wanted to cry, but there was no moisture left in her body.  She couldn’t even produce the tears she so desperately wanted to mourn for herself. Shaking her head, she sighed, “Please get out.  I can’t look at you anymore.”

The young man turned and walked slowly from the room, glancing back over his shoulder hoping she would change her mind.  She didn’t.  After he left, she ripped the sign off the wall and crumbled it in her fists.  The edges of the paper sliced her palms and a thick black ooze of congealed blood dripped thickly from her hands onto the floor.

***

 Tessa Bennett is the pseudonym of a twenty-something legal services attorney. Her work has been published in The Fifth Dimension, The Colored Lens, and The Fast Forward Festival.  She spends her free time writing speculative fiction and working her way through the complete bibliography of Kurt Vonnegut.