Sequel: Boy, Alive ›
Status: It's gone, it's done (knowingly quoting Lord of the Rings to inform you this story is finished)
An Undead Boy
One.
The light from the hallway spills into my room and onto my cold face when the door creaks open. My mum peers through the slither of space and I look over with unblinking eyes at her. Even now, after over three months since the accident, she is too afraid to meet my gaze. I know that she is staring at the headboard an inch above my face when she addresses me.
"School in half an hour. Get up and get ready or you'll be late."
Her words are short, sharp and to the point. I sigh, an ancient sound that goes on and on in the distilled air. The air I no longer need to exist. Mum has vanished from the door and I can hear her light footsteps fly down the stairs. There is a faint sound of jingling keys and a scuffle as she hurriedly slips on her shoes before she leaves the house, snapping the front door shut behind her. Daily routine. There will be no breakfast welcoming me at the kitchen table or goodbye kiss as I skulk out the house. My mother has almost completely disowned me but her love for me runs too deep to force me out. I still look like me, even if I'm not the Charlie she use to know.
I was fifteen when I died. The memory is hazy but who would want to remember the time their life was extinguished in five minutes flat? I guess nobody has the chance to properly evaluate their own death except me. I stepped out onto the road, looked to my left and a red blur came flying towards me. I was told they tried everything to save me, those words used so often, but the car was going too fast and I was too frail. I was in an ambulance on the way to hospital when I opened my eyes. The paramedics were astounded; they checked my pulse and felt for a heartbeat but there was nothing. I should be dead but I'm not.
They told me I had to stay at the hospital for a little while, a matter of a few days. Days turned to weeks, weeks into months, as they carried out a series of tests on my undead body. They called me a miracle; I walked, talked, acted just like I did when I was alive - truly alive, not this weak imitation of a functioning person - and finding nothing wrong with me except the obvious fact that blood no longer pumped through my body and my lungs no longer depended on oxygen, I was free to return home.
My mother was less than cheerful to have her teenage son back in her life. When a doctor called her into his office and gravely informed her that I was alive but without a heartbeat, she thought it was his idea of a sick joke. She shouted a lot of things; that she was suing the hospital, that they were taking advantage of the loss of her child, I could hear it all from the small room I was waiting in next to the office. When the doctor managed to persuade her to see me, she staggered up to me and pressed her hand into my chest. When she couldn't feel the recognisable thud of a heart, she collapsed on the floor sobbing.
During all the time I was at the hospital, she never knew what the circumstances surrounding me were. I don't blame the doctors, I was a unique case and they didn't know how to deal with a dead person coming back to life but I can't stand knowing that my mother went through so much grief. She thought she needed to arrange a funeral, she was angry that the hospital wouldn't release my body and were carrying out all these tests on her son. That was the only part she knew until she saw me again after three months. I suppose there was never an easy way of saying what needed to be said.
Since that day in the small room, she hasn't touched me. We barely remain in the same room together; a minute is our longest running time and that was when she was making a sandwich and didn't hear me come into the kitchen. I don't think I like being alone because it gives me too much free time to think. I think about what my life could be like if I were still really alive. My mother wouldn't be terrified of me, for one. Trust me to come back as a zombie.
Sliding stiffly out of bed, I lumber over to the bathroom. The shock of seeing my reflection still hits me hard after all these months. My face lacks colour; I am a deathly shade of pale. My face is closer to blue than to grey but it's only noticeable if I'm looked at longer than a heartbeat, which currently stands to be beaten. I guess no nourishment has altered my body in a way I wasn't prepared for. I'm not skin and bone but I'm near enough to it; my cheeks are definitely sunken and there's a certain dark shadow under my eyes that could never be achieved in life. At least I don't have to worry about a Halloween costume this year, I can go as myself: Zombie Charlie.
I laugh mechanically at this. It's an awkward noise, void of a real happiness but a definite improvement on any previous attempts at humour. There have been none until this. Death still remains a subject that comedy cannot touch, which is annoying because it's all I have right now.
I shut my eyes in front of the mirror for the morning ritual, taking a superfluous deep breath. I'm pleased to know that I can still smell the soap on the side of the sink; it's a flowery sort of smell but I enjoy it all the same in the realisation that it's still there.
"Hello, Charlie." I say, relief flooding through me when I hear that I don't sound like an actual zombie from the films. Talking to myself with my eyes shut makes me almost believe that I'm still the former me. If I saw my face in front of me during this daily occurrence, I'd probably have a break down.
I suck in another dry mouthful of oxygen. "You are you. You can think and experience and feel. Don't believe anyone else."
Opening my eyes shatters the illusion but I feel marginally better for the day ahead. The first day of school since my accident. The local Council visited my house on the Monday I returned home from hospital. There was an elderly woman and a younger man, maybe in his mid thirties, but they refused my mother's offer of a cup of tea or even a seat and abruptly told me that I was required to continue school until I was of the leaving age. I find this ridiculous because I've stopped aging but they insisted that I should remain in full time education until my year group left school.
My best friends, Mark and James, haven't contacted me since word got out about my condition but I know they found out from their parents. I heard my mother on the phone in the living room back in the early days, still trying to quash the rumours. I think she was in denial. Something tells me that Mark and James won't want to know me anymore, whether it is because of their parents telling them to stay away from me or by their own free will, thinking that I'm a freak.
Glancing back in the mirror again, I go through the normal motions of getting ready for school. I wash my face, brush my teeth, comb my hair. I will not go into public looking like how they expect me to. I guess I should be grateful that my eyes are exactly the same shade of blue I had before I died, not that clouded over, milky white you come to expect from the living dead.
With one last, wishful look at my face, I get changed and head downstairs, grabbing my old school bag from the floor. I decided too much change might over do it - a new bag might just make everyone go crazy.
"School in half an hour. Get up and get ready or you'll be late."
Her words are short, sharp and to the point. I sigh, an ancient sound that goes on and on in the distilled air. The air I no longer need to exist. Mum has vanished from the door and I can hear her light footsteps fly down the stairs. There is a faint sound of jingling keys and a scuffle as she hurriedly slips on her shoes before she leaves the house, snapping the front door shut behind her. Daily routine. There will be no breakfast welcoming me at the kitchen table or goodbye kiss as I skulk out the house. My mother has almost completely disowned me but her love for me runs too deep to force me out. I still look like me, even if I'm not the Charlie she use to know.
I was fifteen when I died. The memory is hazy but who would want to remember the time their life was extinguished in five minutes flat? I guess nobody has the chance to properly evaluate their own death except me. I stepped out onto the road, looked to my left and a red blur came flying towards me. I was told they tried everything to save me, those words used so often, but the car was going too fast and I was too frail. I was in an ambulance on the way to hospital when I opened my eyes. The paramedics were astounded; they checked my pulse and felt for a heartbeat but there was nothing. I should be dead but I'm not.
They told me I had to stay at the hospital for a little while, a matter of a few days. Days turned to weeks, weeks into months, as they carried out a series of tests on my undead body. They called me a miracle; I walked, talked, acted just like I did when I was alive - truly alive, not this weak imitation of a functioning person - and finding nothing wrong with me except the obvious fact that blood no longer pumped through my body and my lungs no longer depended on oxygen, I was free to return home.
My mother was less than cheerful to have her teenage son back in her life. When a doctor called her into his office and gravely informed her that I was alive but without a heartbeat, she thought it was his idea of a sick joke. She shouted a lot of things; that she was suing the hospital, that they were taking advantage of the loss of her child, I could hear it all from the small room I was waiting in next to the office. When the doctor managed to persuade her to see me, she staggered up to me and pressed her hand into my chest. When she couldn't feel the recognisable thud of a heart, she collapsed on the floor sobbing.
During all the time I was at the hospital, she never knew what the circumstances surrounding me were. I don't blame the doctors, I was a unique case and they didn't know how to deal with a dead person coming back to life but I can't stand knowing that my mother went through so much grief. She thought she needed to arrange a funeral, she was angry that the hospital wouldn't release my body and were carrying out all these tests on her son. That was the only part she knew until she saw me again after three months. I suppose there was never an easy way of saying what needed to be said.
Since that day in the small room, she hasn't touched me. We barely remain in the same room together; a minute is our longest running time and that was when she was making a sandwich and didn't hear me come into the kitchen. I don't think I like being alone because it gives me too much free time to think. I think about what my life could be like if I were still really alive. My mother wouldn't be terrified of me, for one. Trust me to come back as a zombie.
Sliding stiffly out of bed, I lumber over to the bathroom. The shock of seeing my reflection still hits me hard after all these months. My face lacks colour; I am a deathly shade of pale. My face is closer to blue than to grey but it's only noticeable if I'm looked at longer than a heartbeat, which currently stands to be beaten. I guess no nourishment has altered my body in a way I wasn't prepared for. I'm not skin and bone but I'm near enough to it; my cheeks are definitely sunken and there's a certain dark shadow under my eyes that could never be achieved in life. At least I don't have to worry about a Halloween costume this year, I can go as myself: Zombie Charlie.
I laugh mechanically at this. It's an awkward noise, void of a real happiness but a definite improvement on any previous attempts at humour. There have been none until this. Death still remains a subject that comedy cannot touch, which is annoying because it's all I have right now.
I shut my eyes in front of the mirror for the morning ritual, taking a superfluous deep breath. I'm pleased to know that I can still smell the soap on the side of the sink; it's a flowery sort of smell but I enjoy it all the same in the realisation that it's still there.
"Hello, Charlie." I say, relief flooding through me when I hear that I don't sound like an actual zombie from the films. Talking to myself with my eyes shut makes me almost believe that I'm still the former me. If I saw my face in front of me during this daily occurrence, I'd probably have a break down.
I suck in another dry mouthful of oxygen. "You are you. You can think and experience and feel. Don't believe anyone else."
Opening my eyes shatters the illusion but I feel marginally better for the day ahead. The first day of school since my accident. The local Council visited my house on the Monday I returned home from hospital. There was an elderly woman and a younger man, maybe in his mid thirties, but they refused my mother's offer of a cup of tea or even a seat and abruptly told me that I was required to continue school until I was of the leaving age. I find this ridiculous because I've stopped aging but they insisted that I should remain in full time education until my year group left school.
My best friends, Mark and James, haven't contacted me since word got out about my condition but I know they found out from their parents. I heard my mother on the phone in the living room back in the early days, still trying to quash the rumours. I think she was in denial. Something tells me that Mark and James won't want to know me anymore, whether it is because of their parents telling them to stay away from me or by their own free will, thinking that I'm a freak.
Glancing back in the mirror again, I go through the normal motions of getting ready for school. I wash my face, brush my teeth, comb my hair. I will not go into public looking like how they expect me to. I guess I should be grateful that my eyes are exactly the same shade of blue I had before I died, not that clouded over, milky white you come to expect from the living dead.
With one last, wishful look at my face, I get changed and head downstairs, grabbing my old school bag from the floor. I decided too much change might over do it - a new bag might just make everyone go crazy.