“Mom, where are you?”

“Home, sweetie.”

“Lock the doors and windows. I'm coming right over.”

“What's going on?”

“It's all over social media. People are jumping out of caskets, kicking their way out of refrigerated drawers and in a few cases people have found a way to claw their way out of recent graves.”

“Stop. Social media? C'mon sweetheart. It must be some sort of deep fake or movie advertisement.”

“Just do it, Mom. Please. Don't open the door for anyone but me.”

“You're worrying me, honey. Hold on, someone's ringing the bell."

“Mom, don't!”

“Hey! Just a...! Ohwhuuuuuugh”

“Mom!!”

it takes over a year to decompose myself. my gorgeous decay is interrupted and, when pulled out from the ground by a fleshy hand, i arise groaning. i climb six feet towards the heavens, leaving sparse footprints and claw marks on my dirt path upwards. when i return to green grass and breathing people, i am handed a bouquet. is this an apology? are you guilty? is it gratitude? a thank you? the rose thorns do not puncture the skin on my palms. i do not bleed anymore. the red petals fall through my bony fingers. he loves me not.

Eve's slumber is fractured at the precise moment of dawn. Her mind rouses first, memory fragments sifting to the surface of consciousness. Sensation descends along disused limbs. She forces her eyelids open, facing a void of pitch. Here, wherever here is, there is only a heavy weight, cocooning her. Keeping her from the world. She pushes, but the weight is confining. Fingers claw at the black. She reaches up, up, and her hand is free.

When Eve erupts from the earth, mud sticking to naked skin, scarlet rips across the sky. And like the sun, she is finally, gloriously awake.

It woke so quietly, I didn't hear it stir. But, slowly I am cloaked in gloom. My heart is heavy, my limbs are wooden, my mind is porridge. It feeds on me - stealing my warmth, my joy, my sight, my sense of smell. Until I am just a shell, a husk of a memory. It robs the colour from the world, the kindness from stranger's eyes, the flavour from food. Insatiable. Now everything is grey. Numb. Hazy. Still it feeds. I am completely hollowed out. And yet - pain is there on the edge. Gingerly, I reach for it.

New England Journal of Medicine

A 54-year-old mortuary assistant, brought to the Emergency Department by EMS, presented as an agitated man in otherwise good health but with a corpse adhering to his entire ventral surface. Over several hours, the patient grew weaker. The corpse was observed undergoing revitalization, in an apparent metabolic exchange between their two bodies. The adherence between them was a non-stratified interfibrillar fusion extending from both the patient's and the corpse's epidermis, through to their dermis, subcutaneous tissue, fascia, and finally ending in vascular anastomosis. They were separated surgically under general anesthesia. The patient did not survive.

Sometimes, Robbie perched on trees just so that he could poop on people's heads.

It wasn't his fault. He felt lacking whenever he didn't.

Robbie felt violated when instead of a person, he pooped on a zombie.

Zombies didn't care. It just went on biting people and being moronic.

Robbie always wondered how the living folks who were spry, fast, and intelligent could be conquered so fast by these shambling heaps of rotten imbeciles.

Robbie flapped his wings, taking off and looked over the apocalyptic landscape but he couldn't spot a single human anywhere in the vicinity.

Robbie squawked, annoyed.

He didn't understand. The meat was rancid again. This was the third cow of the day, the third that released an overpowering stench when opened. On the first, he thought it had some unknown infection and continued butchering until the smell forced him to stop. The second cow stinking of rotting flesh concerned him and now the third...

He paused at the fleshy slapping sound behind him. Initially, he saw only the dangling intestines as the first cow rose. As it lumbered toward him, he realized daylight was visible through the hole in its head left by the rifle bullet.

"Arieaaaaa!!!"

"What?"

"I miss pizza."

"I know hon, we all miss things."

"Why can't I just go back and live as a human."

"I'm alive, look at me."

"Yes you're, alive but not living. We can't live."

"Ugh."

Calls friend on phone

"Hey Nat, what's up? I have an idea."

"Uh oh."

"Wanna sneak out?"

"What!?!"

"Shh be quiet, I miss being human don't you?"

"I mean yeah, but we can't live."

"Why can't we try, what could ever happen?"

"I don't know but I don't wanna find out."

"Well just explore, how bout that? I'll invite Norm."

"Ah well-ok."

Seventeen-year-old Abraham Sooth ended his life by hanging, found by the housekeeper in the service house, two miles adjacent to the main estate.

As of yet it is unknown what drove the young man to suicide.

As of yet, it is unknown that a soul is stained and marked for judgement. Their crime, the sin of murder upon an unrealized life, a string severed too soon and by pain so cruel and excessive.

It bordered on the barbarity of Hell itself.

HFUISHZZA OHDUHIUWGE JIOQHWUI GAMBEVIR

DHUIWOQUEPB HDHOWOKDJOWW HDUOWVERVIZZ

And so decrees ustice given form as thee breathes life.

Eyes black.

Dear Eliza,

It has been a week since the accident. For all my talk of being a genius, I seem to have pricked myself with a needle. Ridiculous way to die, I know. Can anyone say that they've felt this, that they've felt their life come to a close in an instant? Every antidote is just a small dose of poison, a variation of it. What do you think happens when you miscalculate it, even by a little? The very thing that was meant to save us all could become our undoing.

I'm going to turn green soon.

- John