Playing With Matches

People For The Ethical Treatment of Zombies

Every year, thousands upon thousands of zombies get adopted into new homes to signify the beginning of Zombie Gras, and every year, they are left discarded on the streets, broken and alone, once the festivities end. 

Zombies are not a decoration you can put on your front lawn willy-nilly, only to be shelved for next year. They are undead beings that need love and attention, just like any other undead being like you and me. They're a life companion, and deserve to be treated as such. 

We at "Playing with Matches" have partnered with "People for the Ethical Treatment of Zombies", or "PETZ" for short, to bring you a short PSA about Zombie care, to dispel some misconceptions about these wonderful companions, and to tell you that Zombies are not pets. 

We at "Playing with Matches" realize that PETZ's name and message might be a little confusing, but we are tired of trying to make them aware of that. Their rallies are a confusing mess. 

The first common misconception about zombies is that they're mindless beasts. They are quite clever and intelligent beings! They just have trouble modulating their thoughts into speech, mostly due to maggots eating their tongues and all. Zombies excel at non-verbal communication, be it via writing, painting, and some even morse code in some cases. 

Which was the odd case of Zombie Chuck. A trained Zombie owner would've realized that zombie Chuck was trying to communicate distress via morse code. Three short door knocks, followed by three long door ones, and again followed by three short ones — morse code for S.O.S, a distress call, which stands for "Shit! Oh, shit!" 

"Stop doing that!" yelled Chuck, who was on the other side of the doors waiting for Marraine D to catch up to him. 

But Zombie Chuck didn't listen. He continued to call out in distress by smashing the door over and over again. 

"This is a mahogany door," commented Chuck. "Very expensive, and very sturdy. You're wasting your time, and by extension, my time. So if you could just please!" 

But Zombie Chuck wasn't in a mood to please. He wanted out, and fast. 

"You're gonna dent it if you keep at it, you bumbling buffoon! And I ain't gonna lose my deposit over you!" 

This only worked to make him go faster and harder. 

"By the snow-white beard of George Romero," whispered Chuck. His patience was running thin. There was a beast inside his home, damaging his precious mahogany door, and probably getting all sorts of icky stuff on his carpet. Just thinking about it made his anxiety trigger. Not having any control of what was once his body was too much to bear. "Listen to me, you sorry excuse of a body. I am you, and I command me to stop right this instant, or I swear to me, I'll chuck myself through the window!" 

It didn't help that, between smashes, Zombie Chuck would continually yell the name "Trevor" like a mantra, making his diaphragm vibrate at a low frequency that made it a hotspot for the many cockroaches crawling inside him to get freaky. 

"What? Who's Trevor?" asked Chuck. "Is it Trevor, our editor? Or Trevor, my downstairs neighbor? Or is it Trevor, the barista at that coffee shop I went to once where they somehow spelled my name as Chek? Out with it!" 

"Trevor!" yelled Zombie Chuck yet again. 

"You know what? Fuck me, fuck me right out!" 

At that moment, something flew past Chuck that impacted him deeply as nothing had done in a long time. 

It wasn't the sudden realization that he was releasing his frustrations about himself to the avatar of his desires in the form of a mumbling body that cared not for what other people think, thus creating an ideal ProtoChuck that was freer than he ever was. What flew through him was a dictionary. It impacted the door and fell with a thud.