On the Study of Zombies

Umm hello? Yes, hello? Can everyone hear me? Testing one two… oh you can hear me. Good. Ah-hem. Good evening. My name is Professor Milton Henson, and today I will be giving a presentation on what we at the “Erroneous Institute for the Extraordinarily Innovative and Obfuscated” or “EIEIO” as we like to call ourselves have been working on.
Ah-hem. In recent years there has been a minor threat plaguing humanity. This threat, though small, could if our figures are correct, expand exponentially into a major problem. This threat is of course, as I’m sure you well know, the rise in population of the American Free Range Wandering Zombie or AFRWZ.
The American Free Range Wandering Zombie is unique in that, unlike other species of zombies such as Gibson’s Casual Lurker and the Suburban Drunk, the American Free Range Wandering Zombie is not prone to spend all of its natural death in one habitat. Rather, the AFRWZ will, as its name implies, wander about into the wilderness or into populated areas. This tendency to travel is a reason to be concerned in and of itself, as the general population cannot tell the difference between a American Free Range Wandering Zombie and a half-starved hobo. Concerned citizens would come to what appears to be a shuffling old man and unfortunately get bitten, resulting in loss of limb, or in some cases, death.
According to our research, ex… excuse me, could we go to the next slide? Yes, thank you. According to our research, the American Free Range Wandering Zombie has a very unusual origin. Simply, it does not follow three normal methods of zombification.
The first method, as portrayed by these pictures… yes gruesome aren’t they. Notice the small bits of flesh hanging of the corners of their feet. It shows that they haven’t been properly bound to their skin, and are wearing out as they massacre the populace. Anyway, this is of topic, where was I? Oh yes. The first method of zombification is “Frankinstonian Revival”, where any number of corpses are taken, stitched together, and brought back to life via a large amount of electricity. This procedure is most often used by a scientist of the mad persuasion. It can, however, be replicated by anyone with mild sewing talent, some knowledge of biology, and one hundred fifty seven thousand volts of electricity. This method is useful in that, if you have the time to wait for your zombie hoard, it can produce a large amount of fairly durable zombies known as “Frankys”. If trained correctly, a “Franky” can be useful for any number of tasks around the home, garden, and repressive community.
The second way of producing a zombie is the rather simplistic method of voodoo ritual. This method produces what is called as a “Cuttmen’s Raiser”, a zombie taken fresh from the tomb. This method is very easy to do and as such, no one can remember how to do it. But we have documentation that it was done, and so… there you go.
The third and by far most common way to create a zombie is by treating the intended zombification subject to large amount of repetitive menial tasks. After so much time the subject begins to rot and smell faintly of beaver musk. Then, on a full bathroom break, the subject will lose all capacity for thought and become a zombie, wandering around without pants. This method has been debated a length with our fellow department “Rock Psychology” as a method of becoming a golem, but at the current time it remains in the field of “Undead Documentation.”
The creation of the American Free Range Wandering Zombie, however, appears to be entirely natural. In our tests, we have discovered that it is not an outside life force moving the American Free Range Wandering Zombie’s body, but a chemical in their brain. After death, some brains react to the ceasing of body function and release a virulent chemical. As far as we’ve discovered, this chemical, without the help of a blood stream, travels across the body and forces it to continue to survive. It moves the muscles, mends wounds; basically, it does anything one needs to do to in order to obtain its prime objective, meat. It can be likened a tiny alien taking control of your body and using it to do stuff, like fix its space craft or abduct cattle. While this chemical is running rampant, the body needs no sustenance, despite the AFRWZs rambunctious efforts to procure meat. There have been some rather distressing examples of the American Free Range Wandering Zombie brought in that apparently hadn’t eaten in quite some time. One such example had wandered into a back country road and had been hit by a car, losing its lower half. The zombie laid on the edge of the road for weeks before we were called, unable to move from its position. It soon became literally nothing more than skin and bones. Here’s a picture. Hmmm can we please have someone help the poor gentleman in the front, I believe he’s feeling poorly. And have someone bring a mop.
Yes, hmm. As you can see from this picture the entire bottom half of the body has been torn off and all of the organs have fallen out. If you look here and here you can see that the muscles leading to the arms have been severed, rendering them useless. However, dismissing the skull fracture, the head is in perfectly fine shape. The brain is completely undamaged. This and other evidence has brought us here at EIEIO to the conclusion that unless the brain is injured by an external force, an AFRWZ will continue existing. Even with no form of body control, and no possible way to obtain food, an American Free Range Wandering Zombie will remain animate.
This leads us to the question, if the zombie needs nothing to survive, why then does it seek food? What is the purpose, exactly, of this chemical? Without becoming an American Free Range Wandering Zombie ourselves and writing down our experiences, which I assure you none of us are trying to do; there can be no definite way to know. However, my esteemed college Dr. James Gustier has hypothesized on this idea. With his ideas we have come to the conclusion at this point that the chemical is a last ditch effort of the body to “save itself and continue on life as normal when life is no longer an option”. It is an evolution of the survival instinct. Rather, the next step in our bodies fight to preserve ourselves.
This begs the question: why is it now, in the past ten years, that this form of zombie has come into existence? The long answer is very confusing, so I didn’t bother reading it. However, I had someone summarize it for me and they said that it said, in short, “We don’t know, maybe there’s something in the water.” I find this conclusive, and we will move on.
The hugely disturbing fact is that the American Free Range Wandering Zombie form of zombieism is spreading. The AFRWZ has a poison in its spittle that after being bitten causes a person too slowly, and we believe painfully, die. Can I get the next slide please? Thank you. After death the person bitten by the American Free Range Wandering Zombie will return to this world as an American Free Range Wandering Zombie, therefore spreading the contagion. Despite efforts to halt the spread, there are enough naturally occurring first stage AFRWZs that such efforts have so far been proven futile.
Until the cause behind this zombification is known, it is crucial that how to deal with an outbreak of American Free Range Wandering Zombies is taught to the public. To help with this, we here at EIEIO have created a lovely flowchart about how to correctly deal with American Free Range Wandering Zombies.
Step one, it you see a American Free Range Wandering Zombie, contact your nearest police or zombie hunting establishment.
If you cannot do so, then you will need to deal with it yourself.
If you are alone, just say no. Walk away and find a friend or business associate with which you can slay the zombie together.
Always aim for the head, a hit to any other area of the body may slow it down, but will not stop it. You must get to the brain. Once damaged, the zombie should return to the form of a crumpled corpse.
Under no condition should you put your hand or any other body part near the zombie’s mouth. As I have said, the zombie is poisonous and tends to bite.
The most important thing to remember is to not panic. It spreads confusion and will likely attract other American Free Range wait what? Excuse me for a moment. … what?... … now!... yes of course… but… … yes yes yes. Ah-hem. I have a small announcement to make. It seems some of the zombies we have here at the institute for testing have escaped, and are now lurching rampant across the campus. If you would please line up in an orderly fashion and OH GODS THERES ONE NOW!
*the rest of Professor Milton’s lecture “On the Study of Modern Zombies” seems to have been destroyed in the resulting chaos, and is lost to society. No one from the lecture was ever seen again, except one girl, found curled up in a janitor’s closet muttering the nursery rhyme “Old McDonald” to herself over and over again. She is currently a patient at St. Bethels Home for the Mildly Insane and is unavailable for questioning. 

Sideshow

The sign above my head had been disproved by Google and Guinness long ago. The title of “World’s Fattest Man” does not come lightly, and I unfortunately did not weigh in at enough to claim it. Still, a fluctuating half ton of muscle and blubber is no small thing to accomplish on the human frame, so to catch a glimpse of me shirtless and heaving for breath in my cubicle brings in enough gawkers to verify my subsistence in the freak show tent.

My niche at the freak show is twofold technically; I am both the world’s fattest and tallest man inside this tent. People don’t often see me in all my 7’5” glory as I prefer while the subject of their stares to sit and play with my many roll of fat like so much uncooked dough. This is not that I cannot stand. I am mobile despite my size. The fat crept slowly upon me, hundreds of pounds slowly added to my bulk over many years to try to make the sign above my head less of a lie as the greatest balls of blubber over the globe were documented in record books, published for the world to see. I’ve kept my ability to stand and lift things, though it’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything past my ponderous stomach, and I help with moving the circus when it’s time to go and pitching the tent when it’s time to once again make a spectacle of ourselves for profit.

At first I didn’t think much of you; you were my equal and opposite as World’s Tallest and Thinnest lady, your skeletal body drooping and barely able to hold all 7’3” of you upright. You were my neighbor in the freak show, our acts parted by a wall of gaudily painted plywood. But one night business was slow, and there was only one patron in our tent, a child separated from his parents and wandering around alone in our tent. He had stopped in front of your fragment and was staring intensely. Curious to what would cause his fascination; I waddled over to the divider and leaned in to peer through a sizable hole in the wall. And there you were, wearing a black leotard that accentuated every contour of your frame, dancing. Outside of this moment I had never seen you move so swiftly, gracefully. Your normal quiet hunched self was gone, replaced by someone confident in their movement, flowing arms and legs showing no sign of the sharp angles and points I had associated with you. With a final rotation and flourish, you stopped, bowed to your audience, and collapsed back into the heap of skin and bones I had known you as. The boy, seeing the entertainment was done, moved on to other things. But I couldn’t let that be the last I saw of your graceful self, the last I saw of you made of water instead of sticks. I spoke, and I don’t think I could have stopped myself, and you twisted in your chair at the intruder of your performance. I was frightened; it had been a long time since I had felt this way. I turned away to waddle back to my chair and pretend I hadn’t seen, my butt slapping against the thin wall between us, and its rattle as I panted my way back to my chair, reminding us both that I was once standing there, watching something only meant for a child’s eyes.

As I sat sweating from my rushed movement I heard your whispered thanks, and saw a flash of blue eyes beneath raggedy brown bangs move jilting away from the hole.

It became our ritual, when the freak show tent was void of witnesses I would lumber over to the hole in our wall, and you would dance, slipping elegantly from form to form. Outside of the tent we pretended nothing had happened, neither of us acknowledging the others existence outside. Over time I grew bolder, talking to you after the performance from behind our wall, and you grew less shy, eventually responding to my in more the hushed tones and slight glances. The first time I made you laugh, such a clear sound, startling coming from a mouth that normally rasps as if no water had past trough it in a decade, was the third greatest moment of my life, coming after watching you dance for the first time, and the first time we kissed.

It had been a year since you had joined the Midnight’s Circus, and several months since I started watching your silent performance. After each we would talk for as long as we could, till visitors would ruin our fun, but this time no one came. All of the other acts had retired for the evening and gone to bed or drink. But we stayed well past sunrise, talking about our interests and other people in the freak show when our past came up. I had just mentioned growing up a chubby child in lower Mississippi when I paused, giving you time to talk about your own home outside of the circus. Instead of filling the silence you leaned in, nose and mouth filling in the space between us. Your lips and tongue were tasteless, but warm and smooth inside my mouth and gone far, far too soon. In their place was your hand, slender arm gliding through the hole as if it wasn’t even there. You pushed your first deep inside my cavernous belly button and giggled, playing with my stomach as if it were Play-Doh. You trailed your hand through the forest of hair on my underbelly and slipped it between my folds of fat, making your way to my throbbing penis. I gripped my hands to my fleshy sides and pulled up with all my might, anything to let your fingers wrap themselves around my hardened shaft. Your fingers were so cold, but it barely mattered due to the amount of muggy sweat and pre-cum that had built up around cock over time. I was quick work, to my shame. Any touch after so much time unreleased that time sent my pelvis into overdrive, and as I shoot my load of sticky cum my knees buckled, bringing all 1000 pounds of me to the ground.

When I recovered your arm had disappeared back through the hole, but moans from the other side told me that you were still just on the other side of the wall. Rolling onto my stomach, I crawled across the ground to my chair, belly dragging along the grass and dirt of the floor, and used it to leverage myself up. Stumbling back to our hole, I peered through to see you lying on the ground, a slight tear in your leotard giving your bony fingers greased with my sperm access to your cunt. As I watched you pleasure yourself I felt myself stiffen again, and as if the memory of your fingers was enough I once again shot more seed onto my underbelly. My body writhed with passion, muscled bound by layers of fat jumping at the pleasure of sex for the first time in years, and I once again lost my balance, this time my pendulous stomach swinging my weight into the wall between us, causing the fragile wood to snap from its rusting nails and fall with into your section of the tent. I heard you cry out as the wall came down upon you, my weight giving it a force it never should have had, then a sickening crunch as the wall splintered beneath me, shards of pastel painted wood ripping into the skin of my torso. I couldn’t get up this time, my muscles had taken too much in one day, and the wall had broken into three parts, two pieces at an angle digging deep into the flesh of my stomach, preventing my from rolling. The last piece I lay upon, ever so slightly risen from the ground, with a pool of your blood draining out from underneath.

Center Stage

Ladies and Gentlemen!

Thank you all for your kind patronage to our show, it is my greatest hope that you will leave here titillated and flabbergasted, dazed, confused, vaguely vomitus, and delightfully surprised at the wonders that we have brought here to show you tonight. Unfortunately, it is my sad and solemn duty to inform you all that the Midnight’s Circus has almost drawn to its inevitable end. Pray, you may cheer and squawk as much as you like for an encore, but it would be best if you saved you exclamations for our final act of the evening. Before I may introduce tonight’s last spectacle, please do me the honor of allowing me to share a story with you all.

When I was a boy at the cusp of youth I had a fascination with strange and unusual creatures, it is partly this obsession that has led me to become your host for this evening of horror and depravity. My love of the strange in nature breached the murky depths of the ocean and crept through dark and dank jungle foliage, yet my favorite of the beasts did not stalk the Serengeti or slither along the ocean floor, but crept beneath floorboards and was the bane of my family’s pantry. The common rat, with its tiny claws and ever-growing teeth, fascinated me to no end. It was my constant obsession to catch and keep one of these creatures as a pet. Many a summer’s day was spent tinkering on the humid porch steps of my house, screwing and hammering pieces of wood and tarpaulin taken from my father’s scraps till my chubby fingers were calloused. To no avail I set them about the house and yard hoping to catch my heart’s desire. One day, however, the rats came to me.

It was twilight when I saw it. While I created another intricate contraption for their capture a rat, gaunt and gray, snuck from the shadows and climbed atop the plastic table that was my workbench. A squeak issuing from its twitching snout commanded my attention, and while my eyes nearly jumped from my head at the sound so close, my body went rigid, disbelieving that something so fascinating could be so close at hand. The rat then leapt from the table, clicked its way across the wooden floor, and with a pause to turn it head back to me, leapt through the broken screen of the porch door. My body reacted to its disappearance, exploding from the table and bursting through the door after the wondrous rodent. The rat had stopped, ten feet away, in a patch of the dusty ground that was my back yard. With my approach it once again took off at a steady saunter through the yard and into the woods bordering the property.

I was young, and despite my encyclopedic knowledge of strange creatures I did not know when a creature was strange. I kept pace with the rat, matching its crawl with my own staggering steps through the bramble. How odd it seems upon reflection that a wild animal would put up with my presence, much less allow me to trail it without putting on a bout of speed. Yet in youth the fantastic doesn’t seem so out of place, possibilities are endless to the ignorant and open minded. That is why, when it had grown quite dark in the woods and I was well beyond the call of my parents to come inside, it did not seem so strange that the rat would double back when I had lost sight of it, little paws scratching at my leg, and lead me further into the woods. The sun was gone when I stumbled through the last briar into a small clearing. Yet in my memory there was light enough, either from the moon or some other source, to see what I had been brought to.

In the center of the clearing was a monstrous tree trunk, rotted with age, yet still standing erect. The rat I had followed there kept moving, disappearing into a large hole in the side of the tree. Curious, and now incapable of finding my way back home in the dark, I strode over to the crumbling trunk and peered inside. I was greeted by a sound, hushed at first, but growing louder as I stood staring. Creaks and squeaks, nails scraping as something beautiful moved into the brighter light of the gap.

Rats, dozens of them, of all size and coloration, mouths agape and bodies distorted as they slid as one being towards me, their tails knotted together in a Celtic swirl of never ending lines. In one day I had not only found a rat, I had found a rat king! Here was something truly fascinating, truly unique, and stranger than anything I had ever seen. I wanted it to be mine, I wanted to protect and care for it, and I wanted to know more about it. And I would, over time. I spent the night there in the tree with the rat king and its swarm, stroking and fondling it. The rat king was only too happy to oblige my praises; it nuzzled my body in response to my caresses like it had known me all my life. It spoke to me in the deep crevasses of my mind, telling me about itself and the world it existed in. A world that now, as your humble ringmaster of the Midnight’s Circus, I am now as much a part of as the rat king was.

The most interesting part about the rat king to me, and the most relevant part of this story to you my gracious audience, was that rather than sign of pestilence and disease as it is in folklore, the rat king is a warning about dangers that are to come. Anyone who stops and listens to its tittering lesson would be told of disasters and plagues, terrible things which can be easily avoided should one only pay attention. And rat kings know this because they are more than a simple bundle of rodents. In the hollow of the tree the rat king whispered to me a secret. Its mind was no longer just made up of the pieces that belonged to the rats. When a rat king is formed something immortal and intangible is added, a mind without a body of its own that can only interact with the physical world by overlaying its consciousness over something else’s, some else made of many different pieces. And it told me about how even though rat kings are most common due to their natural formation, other creature’s can become kings of their kind by having something similar happen to them. That it was possible for it to enter into the consciousness of any living thing provided enough individuals were inescapably locked together. It told me, even, that should it inhabit creatures with more powerful thought processes, its own power to as an oracle would be increased.

The next day I made my way home, it was not far. It had only been made strange by the darkness. But I returned to the rat king over and over again for much of my youth, and it told me many more secrets. Through its ability was I able to start the collection of the unusual and grotesque things which you all have marveled at tonight and through its guidance was the first of many Midnight’s Circus’ performed and celebrated. But over time the rats that made up my greatest friend grew old and died, and I was left alone.

That’s when I had a thought, strange at first, but over time it grew on me. My friend was not dead, only the physical body it was made up of. What if I was to make a new body for it, would my friend return to me? And the next thought, more powerful then the last; what if I were to make it a new body, a more powerful one, made out of more intelligent creatures?

This was the inspiration for the creation of our next and final act of the evening. Made up of the bodies of 33 adults and children, legs broken then healed and knotted around each other, my friend has returned to this physical realm and to me more powerful than ever. Brought before you all for your amusement and delight, I give you, the Twisted Oracle!