Diary of a Zombie

By Pier Maria Colombo

Tom was living a normal life. He had a girlfriend that would soon move in with him, a group of loyal friends that played boardgames with him, and a good job that he didn't hate and paid well. Nothing lasts forever, though, especially good things. One day, he died changing a light bulb. And then, he got up again.

What will he do, being the world's first zombie? How will he keep himself hidden? And how will he manage the fact that he can see dead people?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seagull Editions
• Release date: May 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223565956

Book preview

Already dead

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Ah, fuck. I opened my eyes, staring up at the ceiling. I could see the lamp in the naked fixture still swinging a little. I had fallen, hadn’t I? I was feeling better than I had expected. I tried to sit up, and managed it without any trouble at all. I wasn’t even feeling sore from lying on the ground for however long I had been there.

The stepladder sitting under the hanging light was upright, the lamp cover sitting on my coffee table. The old light bulb was... Where was it? I couldn’t remember where I had put it.

I felt something wet on my ears and raised my left hand to touch it. I brought it before my eyes. Dried blood. There was a little blood coming from my ear. I was probably concussed, I realized. There was a distant memory of reading somewhere that some concussions caused bleeding from the ears. Should I see a doctor? I pondered. I was feeling, well, nothing in fact. There was no pain.

How long had I been out? I checked the clock on the wall. It was eight thirty-five in the evening. It was a Saturday, if I recalled correctly. Yes, I was doing chores around the house, like every Saturday, and changing the living room’s ceiling light had been one of them. It was evening when I got to it, wasn’t it? So I hadn’t been out for long. And the fixture had definitely been swinging when I had opened my eyes.

I tried to stand up, slowly. As I looked down, I saw a little more blood. The light bulb, it had been in my right hand when I had fallen, and was now broken, crushed under my palm. There were pieces of glass sticking from my flesh, with blood around them, some wet and some already dried. Strange how I wasn’t really feeling it.

After a quick look around, I confirmed that there were no other damages. Before screwing the lamp cover in place, I wanted to remove the glass from my hands and put something on it to prevent infection. Every time I picked a piece of glass off of my palm, I felt a gentle tug, but not the searing pain I expected. Weird. Probably shock.

I shuffled towards the bathroom. A would this deep probably had to be cleaned, right? The water felt warm. There were still some tiny bits and pieces of glass there, so I carefully washed them all away. There was no more bleeding, thankfully. Probably the wound had sealed itself or something. If I recalled correctly, there was some gauze and some disinfectant behind the bathroom mirror. As I raised my head, and my hand to open it, I froze.

My face looked strange, somehow off. I looked paler than I remembered. Sure, I was an office worker, who preferred to stay in and play board games with my friends, but had I always been this... pasty? And the muscles looked tight, strained even. I tried to relax my face but the image on the mirror didn’t change, really.

For a moment, my mind drifted away. I recalled a memory of when I was younger, playing with my neighborhood’s kids. I had injured my knee and there had been blood. My mother had helped bandage it up, but I remembered looking at my face in my parents’ bathroom mirror, and I had been white as a sheet. I had probably scared my mother half to death when I had entered the room, blood on my hands and feet, and looking that white.

How long ago had that been? Decades, probably. I was seven or eight, it had been before we moved and I stopped hanging out with the kids from our neighborhood. Thank God for video games, because I would have been such a lonely kind without them.

I opened the little cupboard and took out some antiseptic. As I looked back at my hand, I was surprised by the complete lack of bleeding. The difference was stark. When I was young, I had been covered in blood. Now, there was no red in the sink. None at all. If the wound was closed, was there any reason to apply antiseptic? I put some on anyway. It didn’t sting. I wrapped it in bandage, then returned to the living room.

There were still a couple of things to do. I put the lamp cover on slowly and carefully, then belatedly turned the light on as a test. Yes, the bulb was functioning. The stepladder belonged in the hallway closet, so put it away. Then, I swept away the old bulb’s shards that were still on the ground.

As I stumbled back in the living room, I sat down on the sofa, staring at the blank television screen. What was I supposed to do today? I hadn’t scheduled anything with my friends. And my girlfriend was out of town, visiting her cousins. There was a TV series I was watching, but I didn’t really want to watch TV on that moment. A video game, maybe? I had enough downloaded in my computer upstairs to make my younger self yelp in glee.

I shuffled up the stairs towards my room. The light from the streetlights filtered through the windows, creating a cozy atmosphere. It was the perfect evening to play something cute and lighthearted. I sat in my chair, turned the machine on, then stared at the desktop.

It was almost nine thirty, a full hour after my little accident, but my hand was still just a little numb, not in pain at all. How long did shock last? I looked it up online. In a couple of pages I opened, there were large disclaimers saying that if I had suffered through a shock, I was supposed to visit a doctor.

I patted myself. I wasn’t feeling anything strange. And I really didn’t want to go to the doctor, I didn’t get all that many free days and was loathe of wasting my free time.

What was I going to do with my free time, anyway? I really didn’t feel like doing anything at that moment. If my girlfriend was here, we’d see a movie or play something together. If I was with my friends, we’d play some board games. When I was alone, I usually played one of my all-time favorite games, or chilled in front of the television, scrolling through my phone with the TV providing background noise.

My bed looked more inviting than anything on my PC at that moment, though. I shut the machine down, then changed into my pajamas slowly. After I brushed my teeth, I realized I hadn’t cleaned the dried blood on my ears, and did that, too. Then, I went to bed.

I lied down, staring up at the ceiling. I didn’t feel like doing anything, but at the same time, I wasn’t really sleepy.

Some minutes passed, sleep still eluding me. My phone’s screen would make it even harder to sleep, so I didn’t reach for it. Maybe it was still