zombies are fun

in night of the living dead the zombies kind of shuffled slowly along, determined to annihilate and chew on the corpses they could create out of screaming young american victims. in evil dead, the zombies shrieked and screamed “dead by dawn!” which was really slippy, and made us howl with laughter.

zombies in movies are quiet, unobservant, dull, and seem more intent on your arm and the flesh beneath the skin, than they are on the chainsaw you’re wielding. they remind me of my family. i’m a vegetarian, and when i visit them at meal times, i notice the way they consume their meaty dishes. they don’t so much eat, as ravish the prey, sawing it to pieces with a mixture of glee and satisfaction in their otherwise deadpan eyes.

and the kids across the road, when they’re sent out on saturdays by their mother, who wants to clean the room where they keep the sega console machine, have this way of shuffling in the light, blinking as if it was the first time they’d ever seen a world outside of intricately organised pixels. they groan too, little moans of dissatisfaction, and you think at any time they’re going to say, in that grating monotone, “braaaaaaains...”

if i were a zombie, i’d like to be a chinese zombie, because they hop.