ZOMBIE’S LAMENT: By Sean Michael Smith
Monday, April 26th, 2010People erroneously believe that because we lack fully functioning motor skills that we lack cognitive ability as well. This simply isn’t true. While the thought faculties of some reanimated people are greater than others, we all have the inherent ability to assess our surroundings and evaluate our circumstances. Would you not expect a wild animal be instinctively aware of danger? Of course you would. Therefore it’s undeniably sensible that a human being – living or not – would possess at least the same degree of instinctive reasoning.
This misconception on the part of the living troubles me a great deal. I grant you there’s no doubt the media is largely to blame. Movies in particular make us all appear to be shambling idiots who trip over our own rotting flesh. Fiction writers approach the subject with a bit more sensitivity, but often their interpretation of the reanimated is closer to the condition of Vampirism.
To be clear on one point, the reanimated are not the same as the undead. The undead are beings brought back to life by the disease of Vampirism. The reanimated have no particular disease; except possibly for the bacteria that’s part of our natural decomposition process. However, that’s just a side note really.
A far more troubling issue is peoples’ misconstrued conceptions about our thought processes. To paraphrase, we exist therefore we think. Even the most intellectually challenged among the reanimated are fully aware of their actions as they crack open your skull and chew on your brains. The rationalization is no different from you biting into a hamburger. Perhaps you have the luxury of having your food a generation removed from the primary source; nonetheless you are aware that you’re eating a creature that was once alive. However, since we already are former living beings, it’s a logical step in the food chain that we have to consume those that are still alive.
The next time you see one of the reanimated feasting on someone you may or may not know, please think twice before blowing his or her head off with your shotgun. Just because we’re no longer of living flesh doesn’t mean that we don’t have the same thoughts, feelings and need to survive that you do.
Oh, and please, no more “braiiins” jokes.
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©2010 Sean Michael Smith
Sean Michael Smith is an advocate Zombie rights activist mostly because he couldn’t fire a shotgun if his life depended on it. His work his been published by Necrotic Tissue, Microhorror, Tales from the Moonlit Path, Thrillers, Killers ‘n’ Chillers and Dark Fire Fiction. This is another of his appearances in Flashes In The Dark and one of many more to come. You can read more of his dark musings at http://smswrites.blogspot.com/
