The Undead Plague

Below is the prologue from Zombies by the Numbers: The Writer's Cut.  It takes place roughly a year before the first of the reports of zombies began to surface.  The main character, who later takes the name James Pool but never actually reveals his own, is incarcerated in an asylum for the criminally insane after being convicted of being the Raincoat Killer, one of the most successful serial killers in the history of the United States.

I apologize for any spacing issues or things along those lines.  There's only so much that you can do convert a file from a Word document to something readable on a blog.

Enjoy!
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So you want to know what it’s like to be crazy.

No, no, don’t try to deny it, it’s true.  After all, dear reader, why would you be wasting your eyeballs’ finite energy absorbing the words on this page if you weren’t seeking some sort of answer?  And if you’re looking for an answer, doesn’t it stand to reason that you must have a question to attach that answer to?  Following that particular train of logic (assuming that it hasn’t derailed a few stations back), there can only be a few questions that you are looking for answers for when you come to me.

I suppose that the most common question I get is, “Why did you do it?”  It’s a simple one, one so short that even your typical cop can understand it (hiya Mr. Police Officer Guys, I’m your biggest fan!).  Unfortunately my usual even shorter answer of “Why not?” doesn’t tend to go over so well with the donut dunkers.  They get all pissy, and the blood rushes to their faces and they scream and spit and snort that they want the truth.  Guess what, chief, I just gave it to you.  I do the things I do because they amuse me.  They take away my boredom and fill me with anti-boredom.

The question that the shrinks tend to vomit up at me is, “What occurred in your life to make you this way?”  They try to delve into my childhood in an effort to find an abusive father, or a trip to the zoo where a kangaroo bent me over a rock waterfall and nailed me up ze buttholz.  You want to find someone that gets really angry when you laugh at them, go find yourself a psychologist.  I can’t help but find them amusing.  They try to shove my squirming brain into some category that a dead German who wanted to sex up dear old mum came up with, all the while holding notepads firmly in their grips so that they won’t miss the opportunity to record their amazing brilliance for posterity.  My particular type of nuttiness (scientifically speaking) seems to elude their best attempts at categorization, however.

Personally, I think that’s kind of cool.

It makes me unique.  A lone wolf.  A rebel without a cause.  The Lone Ranger without Tonto.  A burrito without a colon.

Do me a favor, catch that analogy if it goes springing past you.  I seem to have let it get away from me.

Cops and shrinks, two peas in a pod constructed of stupidity and misunderstanding.  They try to understand what exactly it is that’s sitting across from them and chained to a rather uncomfortable chair, bless their hearts they really do try, but they just don’t get it.  They just don’t get me.

I am.  That’s all there is to it.  I am.  As far as I can tell, nothing made me this way, I just am this way.

I’m a storm brewing over the dusty emptiness of the desert.  I’m the seas crashing into the rocks.  I’m simply a part of nature that can’t quite bring itself to be civilized, or hell, even to give a shit about being civilized.  I’m the dog that bit you when you were eight that makes you terrified to go near a miniature poodle.

Remember that time when you were in the kitchen and you burned your hand while you were making spaghetti, something that you had done a hundred times before, but somehow this time, this time that’s no different from any other, you managed to burn a layer or two of precious skin off?  I was the heat.  More than that, I was the coin God flipped when he was deciding whether or not to teach you a lesson since you REALLY LOOKED LIKE YOU NEEDED A LESSON AND DON’T YOU EVER DO WHAT YOU DID AGAIN AND I DON’T HAVE TO TELL YOU WHAT YOU DID BECAUSE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID.

I am a random act of violence in the night, the terrified shriek that echoes off the alleyways, the drip drip drip of blood on the pavement.  I am simply a part of this universe with no rhyme or reason or definition.  I simply am.

Why yes, I am a little off my rocker, thank you for noticing.

So back to your question that you may or may not have even known that you had.  What’s it like to be crazy?

It’s not bad.

There’s cake.

In all seriousness, or in as much seriousness as I can actually wrap my thoughts around, I imagine that it’s quite a bit like how it feels for you to be normal.  Well, not you, but other people.  Because you’re not really all that normal, are you?

Oh, come on, you can be honest with me.  You and I are going to be the closest of chums, after all.  Tell Uncle Screwloose all about how you don’t really feel like your life’s thread fits all that perfectly into the world’s tapestry.

It’s okay to feel that way, you know.  It’s perfectly natural to not understand what the hell your bio-donor parents got you into when Daddy convinced Mommy that, since it was his birthday, the universe demanded that they dispense with the condom and go rawhide for the evening.  Or if you’re one of those test tube babies that seem to be springing up more than Ryan Seacrest’s pants crotch around an all men’s prison, say hello to both your mothers and/or fathers for me before you sit back down and admit to me that, no, you’re really not all that normal at all.

This is why you and I are destined to be the absolute best of friends.  I’m you.  I’m you with the volume turned way up.  My inner music is blaring so loudly that when I sit back and pay attention to it, I can almost feel my teeth rattling in their gummy container.  The sound pushes my skin flat against my skull.  It digs its hooks into my muscles and pulls hard.

I guess being bonkers is a lot like sitting next to the speaker at a Korn concert.

You know those self-help commercials that come on television around four in the morning that preach about how they can help you become a better person and show you how to like who you are?  I take that to a whole new level, and it didn’t even cost me twenty-six easy payments of $19.95.  Admittedly I didn’t get the free set of knives that cut broccoli into the shape of the White House, but hey, what can I say.  I didn’t call in before the commercial was over and thus I don’t deserve to have those knives.  Instead I have to solace myself with the fact that I don’t just like who I am.

I enjoy being who I am.  I love who I am.  I would totally put out for who I am.

Do you have any idea what it’s like to be this free?  No, what am I thinking, of course you don’t.  After all, you’re simply sitting here reading the ramblings of a self-professed lunatic instead of, I dunno, kicking a male cheerleader in the testicles or something.  You still have all those restraints tied to you, weighing you down, and the truly sad part of it is you put those chains on yourself, big fella.

You and I are such new acquaintances that I don’t want to risk what I’m sure is going to be a beautiful friendship, but I feel that as someone that cares about you, I must point out what I see to be the truth.  You’re an asshole.  There, I said it.  Whew, boy, I can’t tell you how much better that makes me feel to get that off of my chest.

Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.  It’s not my fault that you’re an asshole.  It’s your fault.

Don’t believe me?  What kind of a person shackles his or herself (sorry, from here I can’t really tell which you are, but that’s okay, I’m an equal opportunist) to rules and regulations that he/she/it didn’t even come up with?  Society tells you what it takes to be normal; we’ve already established that you’re not normal, however, so what kind of person would think that you have to be a friend to society when you’re not really a part of it?

I’ll tell you what kind of person would do all that: an asshole.  Thus, mathematically speaking, you’re an asshole.

Oh, whoops, wait, I didn’t divide by pi in the equation.

…..

Good news!  You’re still an asshole.

Me, I’m a multitasker.  I manage to be an asshole and not be an asshole all at the exact same time.  I’m an asshole in the sense that, yes, I would indeed find it funny to pull down my pants and take a leak on the grave of your dead dog Fluffy.  I’m not an asshole in the sense that I realized early on that “society” is merely a way for “the man” to keep “me” down.  Society is racist towards my people.

Society is racist towards insane people.

I don’t want to imply that I’ve turned my back on society and all of its stupidly smiling population that seems to think that American Idol should be termed “reality”.  There wasn’t some point in my life when I came to the decision that, boy howdy, I done had it up ta here with this Society varmit, and shoot, I’m gonna jump on my horse and ride off into the sunset.  Nothing of the sort.  I just blatantly ignore it and its supposed norms.  Hey, if you want to be a sheep, that’s your business.

Just understand that it makes you an asshole.

Like, a huge asshole.

Insert joke about huge assholes and fat people here.  Maybe a little political commentary by making it about a huge asshole and Bill O’Reilly.  Oh my, what a zinger that would be.  I could even tell it to the guys at the water cooler when I go into work.

After all, it won’t offend them.  They’re all Democrats and Libertarians and other words you don’t use in polite conversations.  Or was that Republicans?  I can never keep them straight.  It’s the one whose party makes all these promises during the campaigns then decides to fuck over all the people that voted for its members while receiving a blow job from an underage male prostitute in a bus station bathroom stall.

But fear not, my stalwart companion!  As your bestest buddy I don’t want you to be doomed to a life of assholiness.  I want you to rise up from your mundane life in which you, an asshole, current reside and become so much more than you are!  I will be your guide through the Land of Asshole, show you the way through Asshole Tunnel, and hold your hand as you emerge into the complete and total freedom that I so enjoy myself.  Won’t that be great, pal?  Just you and me against the world.  Amigos.  Compatriots.  So take those hands off the throttle of your miserable asshole existence and let me take a stab at them.

I promise you won’t feel a thing.





P.S.  You’re an asshole.