"Diary of a Zombie: Letters to the Mortal World" by David Sayers (Novelette)

Genre:  Horror

Type of Short Story:  Novelette

Summary: Morpheus is a prince in the zombie world, and he seeks to communicate to the mortals. So much misinformation has been distributed via movies and popular culture, and he wants to create some understanding between the worlds. 

He seeks only to create understanding and to lessen the fear of your conversion. Things are not nearly as bad as you believe, and there are advantages to the undead world. Through this series of letters, Morpheus tries to explain to you where they are in the domination of your world while he also tries to humanize his race to you.

Take a step into his world as he walks you through his life and yours. A short fun read of a little over 11,000 words that will be hard to put down.

Excerpt:

Welcome. Glad to see you join me this evening. My name is Morpheus, and I thought it was important for me to correct some misconceptions that most people tend to believe. For the record, I am what many of you refer to as a zombie, or one of the undead. This statement is not meant to shock or upset you, because in a lot of ways, we are the same, just in different states of being. In fact, you might say that we need each other. Of course, not all of you appreciate the main reason why we need you, but then again, cows probably don’t appreciate why you need them either. We have also accepted how you use us as a form of entertainment and to keep your children in line. We have accepted that as well.

In many ways, my present state puts me at an advantage. Exhaustion is not something that we need to worry about. Personally, I reached my present state in a foxhole in France in July of 1915. It had been an exhausting day of battle, and although I was on watch that night, my eyelids were feeling heavy. Despite warnings against it, I needed a smoke badly. Hiding the cherry from the cigarette, I felt the soothing of the smoke curl into my lungs right before it felt as though I had been hit in the head with a spike. After a brief intense feeling of pain, I suddenly felt invincible. After a quick tap on the shoulder, I was led out of the foxhole by a well dressed Frenchman. The situation seemed odd, but felt as though I must follow. That led me down the path where I am greeting you today.

Just like you, I have seen all of the Hollywood films about us, and I must applaud your creativity. The only problem is that most of these films are nothing more than rubbish. Yes, some of us are grotesque in our outward appearance, but the majority appears normal to you. In fact, there may be a “zombie” sitting next to you as you read this. Yes, I also know you just took a quick glance at them to make sure they were human. For those that appear human, we usually will either be seen with long hair or a hat so that we can hide the head wound that lead to our current state of existence. The truth of the matter is that rarely will you know the difference between us and a typical mortal.

Over the thousands of years that our kind has existed, we have been able to develop a sophisticated hierarchy of our own society, and we have fully integrated into the modern society in order to better meet our needs. I hope that I have not disappointed you by letting you know that we are rarely the moaning blank faced creatures who mumble as they stumble forward out of the graveyard looking for brains to digest. While it is true that brains are our primary form of nutrition, we are much more sophisticated than you may imagine. In order for you to not be distracted by our conversation, I will relegate our conversation to terms that you can understand, and I will allow you to simply refer to me as a zombie.

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