Breathers (10 page)

I roll my eyes and wonder how many of Ted's patients commit suicide.

I consider giving him the stock answer, the always bland and perfunctory
Fine
or
Normal.
Which it was. Dad worked. Mom kept the house clean and cooked meals. Andy went to school and played sports and got into the bare minimum of trouble. Nothing spectacular. Nothing catastrophic. Nothing horrible. But instead of sticking to the script, I write:

I was abused.

“Really?” says Ted.

No, not really. But why not?

“Were you abused sexually or emotionally?” he asks.

Both.

Ted scribbles something down, then starts tapping his pen again.

The air freshener releases another hiss of lilac. Personally, I would have chosen lavender. Or maybe gardenia.

“How is it living with your parents now?” he asks.

Wonderful.

“Wonderful?” he says, his brow furrowing.

It's hard to keep a straight face, but this is the most fun I've had in a while with a Breather.

“There are no feelings of resentment or animosity?”

None
, I write.

“Fascinating,” says Ted, scribbling down more useless notes.

… forty-two … forty-three … forty-four …

“How do you and your parents spend your time together?” he asks.

We play Parcheesi.

“Parcheesi?” he says, as though he's never heard the word before. “You and your parents play Parcheesi?”

And Twister.

he first Friday night of every month is a social event of sorts for the group. A rotating field trip.

Jerry calls it the World Death Tour.

We all meet at a local graveyard to pay our respects to a relative or a friend of the group and to remind ourselves that although we're no longer alive, neither are we dead. It's supposed to make us appreciate the opportunity we have to do something with our new existence, to realize how special we are. For me, it just reinforces the idea that I have no social life. Or is it social death? Or social undeath? Whatever. It makes me feel about as special as mayonnaise.

Tonight we're meeting at Oakwood Memorial Cemetery, which is located right across the street from Dominican Hospital. That must be a comforting thought. I wonder if they put the terminally ill patients and the elderly in the south wing with a window overlooking the cemetery so they can get used to the view.

A few days removed from the new moon, the cemetery sits in near complete darkness, save for the ambient light from the hospital parking lot. Zombies don't see all that well to begin with, which makes wandering around a graveyard at night a
bit of an adventure. Even if you died with twenty-twenty vision, your eyesight begins to deteriorate almost immediately upon reanimation. The longer you're among the undead, the worse your vision gets. It's not uncommon to see zombies who've been around for a while wearing glasses.

Up ahead, Tom trips and falls into a tombstone with a grunt.

Maybe it's just me, but a bunch of reanimated corpses wandering around a graveyard after ten o'clock on a Friday night isn't exactly the best way to break the zombie stereotype.

While some West African and Caribbean cultures believe that zombies are created by voodoo spells or by the transmission of a virus, the most widely held opinion is that zombies are flesh-eating monsters—a stereotype perpetuated by Hollywood and horror writers that doesn't help us in our ever-losing battle to change our public image. Then again, it's kind of hard to hire a good publicist when you don't have a budget to rival Twentieth Century Fox or Random House. And when most publicists probably believe you want to eat their brains.

If you ask me, the media is as much to blame as anyone for the proliferation of anti-zombie sentiments. With twenty-four-hour news available up and down the channel guide and a public that demands the sensational and fear-inducing over the humble and uplifting, zombies get more bad publicity than the president and Congress and O. J. Simpson put together.

Anytime a zombie does something wrong, even if he was provoked into attacking, it makes national news and is played to death, saturating the air waves with opinions and eye witness accounts and calls for our wholesale destruction. But instead of covering stories that show the undead holding meetings or toy drives or bake sales, the media focuses on a minority of our population and spreads fear with their misleading reports. After all, just because some Asians don't know how to drive
doesn't mean they're all bad drivers. Okay. Bad example. But you get my point. Breathers are going to believe what they want to believe, regardless of the facts.

And, although our olfactory nerves are still functioning, contrary to popular belief, we are not able to smell Breathers from several miles away.

One of the few characteristics the media got right about zombies is that we are insensitive to physical pain. However, we can still get our feelings hurt.

“Here we are,” says Tom, once we reach the burial plot for his sister, who was mauled to death by a pit bull. I guess it runs in the family.

We all gather around in a circle.

“This is Donna,” says Tom. “Donna, this is everyone.”

A murmuring of “Hi, Donna” from everyone and a “What up?” from Jerry. I just wave.

“How old was your sister when she died?” asks Naomi as she lights up a cigarette.

“She was only fourteen,” says Tom, the torn, exposed flesh beneath his left eye a black, consuming birthmark in the flicker of Naomi's lighter. “She's actually the reason I became a dog trainer. Thought I could help prevent the same thing from happening to someone else.”

“Whoops,” says Carl.

Jerry snickers and Rita giggles, her laugh infectious. I can't help but smile.

Tonight, Rita is wearing an ankle-length black skirt with a black wool cardigan and a white turtleneck that's just a shade lighter than her skin. In the darkness, she almost appears to be naked beneath her cardigan.

This is the first time I've seen Rita since our Sunday stroll and good-bye kiss at the SPCA and I'm feeling a little awkward. I'm not sure how to act or what to grunt. That and there's the guilt factor. Being in a cemetery reminds me of Rachel. Not exactly the way I want to be reminded of my wife, but there you have it. But when Rita glances my way and smiles, the guilt just sort of dissolves.

Once we've finished paying our respects to Tom's sister, we follow Helen to her mother's grave. Tom stumbles again and falls into another headstone, tearing the stitches in his right shoulder and knocking his arm loose. Jerry and Rita can't stop laughing and have to fight to stifle their giggles through the moment of silence Helen asks we observe for her mother, who died of a heart attack while sitting on the toilet at Macy's.

After we finish up with Helen's mother, we spend the next forty-five minutes visiting the recently deceased, not to pay our respects, but to make sure they're still dead.

It stands to reason that there are undead who reanimate after they're buried or entombed, so one of our purposes on the World Death Tour is to find those newly laid to rest and listen for any indications that they might not be resting so peacefully. Telltale signs include pounding, screaming, crying, and hysterical laughter.

It's not always easy to hear them, considering we're dealing with six-foot barriers of earth and twelve-inch layers of marble and concrete, not to mention a hardwood casket. But
we undead are on the same spiritual wavelength, which allows us to hear what the living choose to ignore.

Breathers typically aren't as attuned to the undead, so they don't hear their cries for help. Even if they could, it's doubtful they'd do anything. It costs a lot of money to disinter a corpse. Not to mention the social embarrassment and the stigma of bringing the undead back into your life.

Tonight we don't find any buried or entombed undead, which isn't surprising. On average, only one out of every two hundred corpses reanimates each year. With more than forty-three hundred annual deaths in Santa Cruz County, that comes to around two dozen zombies per year. And most of those reanimate before funeral services are completed. On rare occasions, someone actually reanimates during their funeral.

Which is what happened with Jerry.

A friend of his videotaped the whole thing and sold it to
America's Funniest Zombie Videos.
Jerry taped the episode and brought a copy of the video to one of the meetings so everyone could watch.

It was a typical funeral. The father standing up at the podium, speaking with conviction through his choked emotion. The sound of people crying. The casket, surrounded by photographs, closed and draped in flowers. Then one of the arrangements slides off the casket as the lid slowly opens and you hear people gasping and screaming as chairs are turned over and horrified faces blur past the camera and the father stumbles back from the podium and shouts, “Dear God!” Then Jerry sits up in his coffin, pulls the eyecaps and cotton out from beneath his eyelids, and glances around the room, his eyes blinking.

The camera moves in closer, a full frame shot of Jerry with
his cheeks raw and red and his head wrapped in gauze as his father wails off camera. Jerry blinks and shakes his head, looks once more around the room and down at his casket, then turns and stares straight into the lens and says, “Dude, is that my video camera?”

Since the service was closed casket, the mortician opted not to sew Jerry's mouth shut. I should have been so lucky. My mortician was a stickler for details. A real by-the-book kind of guy. Packed my external body cavities with cotton soaked in autopsy gel and dressed me in a skin-tight plastic body suit under my clothes to control the leakage of any body fluids. I had a hell of a time getting out of that damn thing.

“Okay,” says Helen, once we've all gathered behind the main mausoleum. “I want everyone to sp end the next ten minutes on your own. Empty your minds of all negative thoughts, all preconceived notions of who you are, and connect with the universe. Let your minds drift. Don't force it. Allow yourselves to feel the moment and just be.”

Sometimes I wonder how much acid Helen's mother took while she was pregnant with her.

Everyone wanders off in different directions while Helen remains at the mausoleum, watching all of us like a yard duty volunteer at lunch recess. Within moments, everyone is consumed by the darkness, though I can spot the embers of Naomi's cigarette floating off to my right.

I try to follow Helen's advice, focusing on nothing, attempting to clear my mind. It doesn't work. All I can think about is Rita and Rachel. Rachel and Rita. One who shared ten years of my life, the other who shared ten minutes with me in an Animal Control van. One who smelled of lavender soap and White Linen, the other who smells faintly of decomposing flesh. One who is dead and cold, the other who is undead and hot.

Not exactly the type of relationship dilemma I thought I'd ever be having.

While part of me acknowledges the commitment I shared with Rachel and the grief that still overwhelms me at times, another part realizes that we've been separated by something more than just death. We've been separated by culture. By class. By the difference that exists between the living and the undead. Even if Rachel had survived, we wouldn't have been able to remain a couple. The issues with raising our daughter aside, Breathers don't tend to reconcile with their undead spouses. At least this way, it's easier. This way, no one's feelings have to get hurt. This way, there's no choice that has to be made.

Except I realize, that's not entirely true. I do have to make a choice. My wife is dead and buried beneath six feet of dirt while Rita is right here, undead and not breathing. One of me. And as one of the undead, my options for romance are pretty limited. I haven't been to any of the zombie singles’ mixers, but I hear they're a regular maggot-fest.