How horrifying would it be if your brother became your worst nightmare? You’d fall asleep with images of his biting face in front of your eyes, his lifeless stare giving you chills, and his painful gurgles echoing in your ears. Yet, you know you did everything you could to save him from his empty life of despair. How would you rest knowing he’d be out there taking the lives of others in the same way he had tried to take yours?
It’s not every day your brother becomes a zombie. Maybe today is one of those good Monday Mayhem mornings where everything goes right in spite of knowing that whatever you did to help your brother, you couldn’t have stopped what would have happened anyway.
After all, your brother was there for you through some of the happiest times in your life. He was there those summer nights spent chatting on the porch about everything from the cost of gas to how beautiful the rain is when it trickles down a windowpane. He was there when you celebrated one of the most memorable birthdays and he gave you that baseball cap—that same baseball cap you no long possess because it reminds you too much of how it used to be and what you had lost.
And who can forget that fateful day at the game when he told you about wanting to marry his girlfriend of three years making you feel privileged, since he also asked you to become his best man.
But you noticed the changes before he even knew what was happening. The disease began drawing his life away months before his happiness disappeared. It started in the heart and grew slowly over the course of time. You couldn’t put your finger on it. He was different. His eyes began to grow icy, his skin limpid and pasty. His hair had lost its shine. Whatever it was he suffered, he didn’t look good. Most of all, his personality had changed.
What once was a strong, healthy, outgoing man became a shell of a human. Empty. Without form and void.
That’s when you noticed the snapping. You heard of this occurring to others, but you wouldn’t have believed it occurring to your own brother. Never. How could it? You’ve been through so much together. There’s no way he’d turn on you. What about the times you were there for each other? What about those moments of brilliance you thought he could repel anything, should an external force wreak havoc on his brain?
When the snapping took over it was too late. Just like the others you saw turn on their loved ones, your brother did so as well. You tried to save him. You tried to get him help. You tried to show him through example that what he was becoming was something unrecognizable. Something that if not fixed, would destroy his life forever.
Every so often, he’d snap his jowls. You didn’t know what it meant. Yet it came about because his life was deteriorating before your eyes and the disease that once took hold of his heart slowly seeped into the rest of his body making his skin cold to the touch and his soul filled with unbridled rage. All he wanted was to hurt you. All you wanted was for things to go back to a time when joy coursed through his veins.
The disease had no mercy on your brother’s soul. It ravaged it, sucking all the goodness and replacing it with a bitter spirit that shook the ground where he walked and numbed his bones.
You couldn’t bare watching anymore. One day you drove him away and released him in the wilderness. You said sorry for anything you may have ever done to have caused him pain, and left him lost to his own hate—dead.
But you hold on to hope that one day he will find his way through the wild and come home to you cured of his malady. You hold on to that very little chance his mind hadn’t completely turned to stone. And you hold on to the hope his heart sparks with life again to restore who he once was.
Not what he is now—zombie.
What would you do if one of your friends turned into a zombie? Would you try to save or kill them?
Looking to God 
Is there a cure? If I were the one who had changed, I’d want to be put down so I didn’t wander the earth terrifying the living—even if there could be a cure at some point. Who wants to live knowing they’d eaten the innocent? Not me!
This is poignant Jack, as said above, could be a metaphor for so many things.
They would have to be killed. But I would not want to do it any more than I’d want to kill one of my pets if they turned on me.
I would try to save them, of course!
Zombie or struck with depression? I love the descriptions!
Both! I’d try saving first but always have ammunition on me.
Good rule of thumb, Catherine!
Wow! This is indeed a good thought. Thanks for visiting my site and reading my zombie story and hence, I get to chance upon this too!
I wouldn’t hesitate to kill that friend actually, especially if he or she poses a threat to my friends and loved ones who are still surviving. It is protecting what I have left with me now that matters. Also, given the fact that he seems to be an empty shell… it doesn’t seem like he is my friend or family member anymore, does he? 🙂
– Ms. Auby Sparksfield
Well describe visuals. This is one of the cases that I can see becoming a zombie as a metaphor for other “illnesses”. It you remove zombie and replace with addiction, the story takes on a similar meaning (well, with the exception of the normal way to dispatch zombie wouldn’t apply).
Great way to start my Monday.
-jerryb
I can never fool you, Jerry. Metaphors is what makes life interesting!
We never seem to write what we mean. The world is a metaphor. Thank you for the great piece today.
They can’t be cured. If they know what will happen then I’d say it is up to them whether or not they should be put down, or let out to pasture on their own.
As a human isn’t it illogical to assume that being a zombie is less preferable to life?
This is the same argument that says death is bad. Sometimes the pain of living is just too much, and one should be allowed to go gently into that good night.
If it is painful being a zombie — ala Return of the Living Dead — then it would be preferable to not be one. However, Romero’s zombies — particularly Bub in Day of the Dead and Big Daddy in Land of the Dead — have shown that zombies can feel compassion. They can think and have retained at least part of their reason and intellect. They don’t seem to feel any pain, and their hunger can be controlled. Sure, they may smell a bit off, but if that is the only problem, then maybe being a zombie ain’t that bad.
Depends on the type of zombie and if there is a way to save them. You’re scenario implies that it can be cured if caught in time. So, I’d bring them in as soon as they showed signs. If it was too late then it would depend on the friend. Some of my friends would be docile as zombies, so I wouldn’t feel bad about releasing them into the wild. Others would enjoy being a zombie too much, which means it’d be best for humanity if I put them down. I tend to think zombies work a little of the raw instinct of their previous self even with the mind barely functioning.
Yeah, Charles, it`s those who`d enjoy being zombies is who we have to look out for!