I set the gun down on the sink counter and washed my face. After spending a few moments fruitlessly trying to pick coagulated blood from my matted hair, I gave up in disgust. Even though the room gave off the impression that no human had ever set foot in it before, I figured that I had best search it, just to be thorough. I didn’t want to miss even the smallest clue that might lend me a wisp of insight into where I was or what was going on. Besides, I’d played enough Resident Evil to know that, during a zombie outbreak, protagonists were supposed to pilfer any supplies they could find. I rifled through the drawers below the counter. The first drawer produced a bottle containing two aspirin, an empty tube of toothpaste, and a pen cap. I pocketed the aspirin. The second drawer appeared empty, but careful examination led to what I considered an exciting discovery. In the back corner lay a small, brown band—a hair tie.
Shutting the drawers, I quickly gathered up my fetid hair and bound it into a ponytail. Feeling moderately refreshed, I retrieved the gun from the counter and turned to the door on my right—the door that led out into the rest of the apartment, if where I found myself was indeed an apartment.
Excerpt from Daydreams of Seppuku
In the late 1990s, law enforcement officials estimated that there were as many as five serial killers active in the New Orleans area.
None were ever caught.
Chapter 1
July 12, 1999
2:06 p.m.
BEHIND THE BOARDED UP WINDOWS at 1622 Wellsworth, the semi-conscious figure twisted her bound limbs futilely. She tried to cry out, but only small, muffled sounds could escape from behind the wadded-up, grease-stained rag that was stuffed deep into her mouth. The television across from her blared; it could have easily drowned out much louder noises than those of which this girl was currently capable.
Ursula, a nineteen-year-old street urchin, was bleached white-blonde and adorned with piercings, tattoos, and tread-marks, to which she had recently acquired new, more grim scarifications to add to her motley ensemble. A long, jagged cut ran across her left brow, giving her the appearance of a freshly mauled boxer. It had bled down into her eye while she was unconscious, and the eye was now crusted shut. Welts and scratches littered her wrists near the ligatures that bound them. The tendon behind her left knee had been cleanly severed.
She ached all over.
How had she gotten here? What had happened to her? Ursula knew that she had been partying in the Quarter, but after that, there were only random blurry images in place of any solid memory.
The young woman continued to writhe, twisting and contorting her torso and half-numb, effectively vestigial, limbs in a feeble attempt to see her surroundings. She was lying on a stained cot facing a smudged, once-white wall. The light of the television flickered across her back, casting grotesque shadows, like ghostly finger puppets, across the wall in front of her.
In the distance, she could hear someone opening the front door, his keys jingling.
Her one functional eye grew wide with fear, and she began to struggle frantically, but with no effect.
The footsteps were inside now, approaching. From behind her, the doorknob, whining, turned, and the door swung open into the room.
Excerpt from Death: the Travelogues
Prologue
THE NICE THING ABOUT DEATH is that it makes all of your problems inconsequential. However, this is primarily because, typically, death means the end of consciousness, and all of the needling little inconveniences that come along with it—obligations, embarrassments, worries over trivial matters…
I seem to have been part of some tiny cosmic glitch—a miniscule hole in the fabric of existence, or maybe a just a hiccup, one random number out of place in the gigantic computer program of life.
I died, but my consciousness failed to turn off. This was rather unpleasant until I figured out that I didn’t need my physical body. Being a consciousness trapped in a rotting husk of meat is rather disconcerting. The living are so accustomed to the organic transports that carry them around that they often cannot separate their concepts of self from their own bodies. I was guilty of similar ignorance. It did not occur to me that my body and I were no longer tethered together. I languished in my own putrid, wrecked remains for well over a week before I figured out that I could just get out and walk.
I imagine that you are wondering then, do I have no physical form? Well, yes, and no. Bodies are merely vehicles for transporting people’s consciousnesses around. So, I occasionally hitch a ride.
“Possession” is an ugly word; it is laden with negative associations. There is no malice inherent in what I do; I’m just catching a lift. Sometimes I sit in the back seat and enjoy the scenery. Sometimes I drive.
To brazenly mix metaphors, imagine that you ate the same meal every day of your life. Maybe it is a good meal, or maybe it is an unpalatable one. Regardless, it is always the same one. If you suddenly had a chance to try every conceivable dish currently prepared on the planet, wouldn’t you jump at the chance? Well, I would.
A single life is myopic; only since death, with a smorgasbord of bodies available to inhabit, have I begun to form a vague conception of human existence.
Bodies are so… limiting. Being confined to one body, imprisoned in a single ambulatory shell, is so depressingly narrow an existence that it makes me feel claustrophobic to even contemplate it. I can’t fathom how I ever was able to stand it. No wonder I was unhappy; no wonder, essentially, at least deep down, all living people are.
I want it to be clear that I am not a ghost or a spirit. If my spirit did survive death, I’m sure it’s contentedly floating around a forest somewhere, suffusing with nature. Whatever it is doing, if it exists, has nothing to do with me. I was once a person, but now I am merely a consciousness, or simply an entity. What I was in life doesn’t matter; I was the sum of my limited experiences. But, still, my aim is not to be unsettling, and the living tend to find comfort in familiarity, so I suppose I should make an attempt to have you “get to know me.” I’ll start from the beginning.
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1: Keeping Mother
Chapter 2: Survivors of the Apocalypse
Chapter 3: Perfect Storm
Chapter 4: Nothing Left to Lose
Chapter 5: Unburdened
Chapter 6: Mother’s Milk
Chapter 7: The Winds of Change
Chapter 8: Another One Bites
Chapter 9: Letting Mother Go
Chapter 10: So It Goes
Chapter 11: Meeting Adjourned
Chapter 12: Things Could Be Worse
About the Author
Excerpt from Flesh Eaters
Excerpt from Daydreams of Seppuku
Excerpt from Death: the Travelogues
Chapter 1
Making the Best of the Zombie Apocalypse Page 9