“Good morning, Class,” said Dr. Zangara. “We have a special guest: Mr. Narcisse Leblanc. If you’re sitting up front and are easily frightened, I suggest you move to the rear of the auditorium.”
“Frightened by what?” asked an ex-Marine.
“The unexplainable. Things that go bump in the night. Things that unnerve by their very presence.”
Several students moved.
“OK. If we’re all settled, let’s meet our guest.” Tuning to an aide he said, “Tell them to bring him in.”
A side door opened. Four armed security guards wheeled in a large steel chair that held a man in tattered clothing. His arms, legs, and chest were chained to the chair.
Sounds of surprise and fright filled the room.
The guards placed the chair near Zangara’s lectern. Wrapping more chains around the chair, they ran the links through thick iron hooks protruding from the floor.
After testing the chains, two guards left. The remaining two stood several paces behind the chair.
“What you see before you is an authentic, Haitian zombie. One of the living dead,” Zangara said.
Some students scrambled toward the exit.
“There’s nothing to fear,” Zangara called out. “He’s securely chained to a five-hundred pound chair. Our School of Engineering assured me he can’t possibly escape.”
“How’d he get here?” someone called out.
“I captured him in Haiti, and brought him here to conduct experiments.”
“His eyes give me the creeps,” a woman said. “Why are they so huge? And why do they bulge out so far?”
“We’re not sure. It may have something to do with tonight’s full moon.”
“Does he talk?” asked a blonde.
“So far, he hasn’t uttered a single word.”
“Do you think he’ll ever speak?”
“Good question. Theoretically, he can speak because his voice box has not decayed. However, my guess is that he’ll probably never talk. I believe it’s because a war’s raging in his psyche. The war of an Undecidable.”
“What’s an Undecidable?” someone asked.
“A name coined for those who can’t decide over something vitally important to their existence, or nonexistence. We believe that at some point in the zombification process, our friend fell into deep introspection. Such things can result in a peculiar coma or catatonic state, a state that is separate from the kind that is induced during zombification. This was discussed in Ronald Jordan’s landmark paper, ‘The Dichotomy of Introspection Occurring in Victims with High Intelligence Quotients During Haitian Zombification.’”
“Could you repeat that title more slowly, Dr. Zangara?”
Zangara wrote it on the board.
“According to Jordan, psychological conflict sometimes becomes so severe that the mind forgets it has a body. And vice versa. When that happens, the two entities begin to act independently. My theory is this: although he’s already a zombie, if our guest somehow manages to resolve the existential issue that haunts him, he will speak.”
“What do you suppose he’d say,” asked a thin man.
“It’s anybody’s guess. In this case, brain scans show some atrophy in the area that controls linguistic ability. Consequently, if he did speak, he’d probably babble like a baby.”
“How sweet,” said a smiling woman. “I love babies.”
Laughter filled the room. When it died out, a nose-pierced student asked, “Do you have any idea what he can’t decide?”
“Here’s my gut feeling: I suspect it’s whether he’s dead or alive. And this indecision has become his worst existential nightmare. It probably rages through his psyche during the hours he seems to be awake.” “
Is he awake now?”
“Let’s find out.” Zangara took a stethoscope from his case and pressed it against the top of the zombie’s bald head. “Yes. He’s awake.”
“How can you tell, Dr. Zangara?”
“I’ve noticed a peculiar buzzing noise in his cranium. Like everything else about Mr. Leblanc, it’s extremely mysterious. We can’t account for its origin, how it’s sustained, or why it randomly starts and stops. However, when this buzzing occurs, he often moves his fingers, and sometimes lifts his arms for a few seconds.”
Noticing many confused expressions, he said, “I know the presence of this zombie challenges your philosophical paradigms and sense of reality. He certainly has challenged mine.”
“Does he ever sleep?”
“That’s difficult to answer. At times, he goes into a state that can be loosely defined as sleep. The buzzing in his cranium stops, and his brain—or what’s left of it—generates minute brainwaves that mimic sleep. Frankly, he should be asleep permanently, because he’s dead. He has no heart beat. No pulse. And yet, sometimes he moves his fingers and arms. This zombie has turned all our notions of death upside down. Our Philosophy Department has been doing back-flips over this, not to mention our Physics Department—especially our Quantum Physics experts.”
“I’m not getting this,” a student said. “Is he a zombie, or isn’t he?”
“He’s definitely a bona fide zombie. The Haitian government authenticated him. Dr. Domage of the Haitian Zombie Institute provided a notarized death certificate. I also have copies of intelligence records from the Haitian National Police. They contain sworn affidavits from three people who witnessed his zombification. So, he’s truly a zombie in the classical sense.”
While Zangara responded to more questions, a psychology student wondered if the pop-eyed zombie would respond to a highly irritating stimulus. The moment Zangara turned his back to write something on the board, the student borrowed a mirror from the woman next to him. Moving it so it’d catch sunlight, he bounced a ray off the zombie’s eyes.
The zombie growled. The sound was so unnerving, the offending student and several others fled.
The two guards behind the zombie drew their pistols and called for backup.
“This is incredible!” Zangara yelled. “He must have resolved his existential problem!” Rushing to the zombie, he said, “Narcisse, can you repeat what you just did?”
The zombie growled louder.
Grabbing his cell phone, Zangara dialed the university’s panic number. “This is Dr. Zangara. I’m in the auditorium. Tell Dr. Becker from the Physics Department to come here immediately. Something remarkable’s happened. Tell the same thing to Dr. Long from Philosophy. Hurry!”
“Class dismissed!” he shouted. “Guard, I need your help. Use this video camera to record everything that happens. Keep it centered on the zombie. Use the zoom button to include me whenever I talk to him.”
Approaching the zombie, Zangara said, “Narcisse, Can you hear me?”
“Yessss.”
“Listen to me carefully. Are you alive, or are you dead?”
“Aliiive,” it moaned.
“How do you know for sure?”
“I…hunger.”
“Does anybody have anything to eat?” Zangara yelled.
“I have a granola bar,” someone said.
Zangara removed the wrapper and rubbed the bar against the zombie’s lips.
“Narcisse, this is food. Open your mouth as wide as you can.”
The zombie’s mouth strained. Zangara moved closer so he could push the snack through its mottled lips.
Then came a horrible scream.
Additional security guards arrived just as Zangara yanked his fingerless hand from the zombie’s decayed teeth. “The bastard bit me!” he yelled, then collapsed into a pool of his own blood.
The guards emptied their pistols into the zombie. Unfazed, it roared while straining to break free.
A SWAT team dashed in and fired so many rounds, Narcisse’s torso was transformed into chunks of carcass barely hanging from strands of gray, calcified muscle.
At the urgent request of the university, a priest exorcised Narcisse Leblanc’s remains. Immediately afterward, they were cremated. Nobody knows what happened to the ashes.
Although paramedics were able to extract Zangara’s fingers from the zombie’s putrid mouth, attempts to rejoin them to his right hand were unsuccessful. Surgeons were dumbfounded when Zangara’s hand continuously rejected its own fingers.
Zangara’s recovery was far slower than anticipated. His psyche was so deeply shattered, he barely responded to psychotherapy.
Nurses reported that Zangara mumbled in his sleep, repeating the same words endlessly: “Chain saw…chain saw…chain saw…”
* * * *
One day Zangara wandered from the hospital and disappeared.
Reports began to trickle from the Haitian jungle that a madman was on the loose. Voodoo priests, who zombified the country’s poorest wretches and turned them into personal slaves, offered $100,000 American dollars for the madman’s capture.
When that didn’t work, they bribed high-ranking politicians to send seek-and-destroy troops to the jungle.
“We cannot continue to suffer the systematic destruction by a madman of our most profitable assets, zombie slaves. How can our zombies work without fingers? Someone is prowling the jungle with a chain saw and cutting them off. Not one zombie in all of Haiti has fingers. It takes time and effort to make new zombies. Every time we create one and send him into the fields to work—poof! Off goes his fingers. Save us from the unnerving presence of this madman!"
End
“Frightened by what?” asked an ex-Marine.
“The unexplainable. Things that go bump in the night. Things that unnerve by their very presence.”
Several students moved.
“OK. If we’re all settled, let’s meet our guest.” Tuning to an aide he said, “Tell them to bring him in.”
A side door opened. Four armed security guards wheeled in a large steel chair that held a man in tattered clothing. His arms, legs, and chest were chained to the chair.
Sounds of surprise and fright filled the room.
The guards placed the chair near Zangara’s lectern. Wrapping more chains around the chair, they ran the links through thick iron hooks protruding from the floor.
After testing the chains, two guards left. The remaining two stood several paces behind the chair.
“What you see before you is an authentic, Haitian zombie. One of the living dead,” Zangara said.
Some students scrambled toward the exit.
“There’s nothing to fear,” Zangara called out. “He’s securely chained to a five-hundred pound chair. Our School of Engineering assured me he can’t possibly escape.”
“How’d he get here?” someone called out.
“I captured him in Haiti, and brought him here to conduct experiments.”
“His eyes give me the creeps,” a woman said. “Why are they so huge? And why do they bulge out so far?”
“We’re not sure. It may have something to do with tonight’s full moon.”
“Does he talk?” asked a blonde.
“So far, he hasn’t uttered a single word.”
“Do you think he’ll ever speak?”
“Good question. Theoretically, he can speak because his voice box has not decayed. However, my guess is that he’ll probably never talk. I believe it’s because a war’s raging in his psyche. The war of an Undecidable.”
“What’s an Undecidable?” someone asked.
“A name coined for those who can’t decide over something vitally important to their existence, or nonexistence. We believe that at some point in the zombification process, our friend fell into deep introspection. Such things can result in a peculiar coma or catatonic state, a state that is separate from the kind that is induced during zombification. This was discussed in Ronald Jordan’s landmark paper, ‘The Dichotomy of Introspection Occurring in Victims with High Intelligence Quotients During Haitian Zombification.’”
“Could you repeat that title more slowly, Dr. Zangara?”
Zangara wrote it on the board.
“According to Jordan, psychological conflict sometimes becomes so severe that the mind forgets it has a body. And vice versa. When that happens, the two entities begin to act independently. My theory is this: although he’s already a zombie, if our guest somehow manages to resolve the existential issue that haunts him, he will speak.”
“What do you suppose he’d say,” asked a thin man.
“It’s anybody’s guess. In this case, brain scans show some atrophy in the area that controls linguistic ability. Consequently, if he did speak, he’d probably babble like a baby.”
“How sweet,” said a smiling woman. “I love babies.”
Laughter filled the room. When it died out, a nose-pierced student asked, “Do you have any idea what he can’t decide?”
“Here’s my gut feeling: I suspect it’s whether he’s dead or alive. And this indecision has become his worst existential nightmare. It probably rages through his psyche during the hours he seems to be awake.” “
Is he awake now?”
“Let’s find out.” Zangara took a stethoscope from his case and pressed it against the top of the zombie’s bald head. “Yes. He’s awake.”
“How can you tell, Dr. Zangara?”
“I’ve noticed a peculiar buzzing noise in his cranium. Like everything else about Mr. Leblanc, it’s extremely mysterious. We can’t account for its origin, how it’s sustained, or why it randomly starts and stops. However, when this buzzing occurs, he often moves his fingers, and sometimes lifts his arms for a few seconds.”
Noticing many confused expressions, he said, “I know the presence of this zombie challenges your philosophical paradigms and sense of reality. He certainly has challenged mine.”
“Does he ever sleep?”
“That’s difficult to answer. At times, he goes into a state that can be loosely defined as sleep. The buzzing in his cranium stops, and his brain—or what’s left of it—generates minute brainwaves that mimic sleep. Frankly, he should be asleep permanently, because he’s dead. He has no heart beat. No pulse. And yet, sometimes he moves his fingers and arms. This zombie has turned all our notions of death upside down. Our Philosophy Department has been doing back-flips over this, not to mention our Physics Department—especially our Quantum Physics experts.”
“I’m not getting this,” a student said. “Is he a zombie, or isn’t he?”
“He’s definitely a bona fide zombie. The Haitian government authenticated him. Dr. Domage of the Haitian Zombie Institute provided a notarized death certificate. I also have copies of intelligence records from the Haitian National Police. They contain sworn affidavits from three people who witnessed his zombification. So, he’s truly a zombie in the classical sense.”
While Zangara responded to more questions, a psychology student wondered if the pop-eyed zombie would respond to a highly irritating stimulus. The moment Zangara turned his back to write something on the board, the student borrowed a mirror from the woman next to him. Moving it so it’d catch sunlight, he bounced a ray off the zombie’s eyes.
The zombie growled. The sound was so unnerving, the offending student and several others fled.
The two guards behind the zombie drew their pistols and called for backup.
“This is incredible!” Zangara yelled. “He must have resolved his existential problem!” Rushing to the zombie, he said, “Narcisse, can you repeat what you just did?”
The zombie growled louder.
Grabbing his cell phone, Zangara dialed the university’s panic number. “This is Dr. Zangara. I’m in the auditorium. Tell Dr. Becker from the Physics Department to come here immediately. Something remarkable’s happened. Tell the same thing to Dr. Long from Philosophy. Hurry!”
“Class dismissed!” he shouted. “Guard, I need your help. Use this video camera to record everything that happens. Keep it centered on the zombie. Use the zoom button to include me whenever I talk to him.”
Approaching the zombie, Zangara said, “Narcisse, Can you hear me?”
“Yessss.”
“Listen to me carefully. Are you alive, or are you dead?”
“Aliiive,” it moaned.
“How do you know for sure?”
“I…hunger.”
“Does anybody have anything to eat?” Zangara yelled.
“I have a granola bar,” someone said.
Zangara removed the wrapper and rubbed the bar against the zombie’s lips.
“Narcisse, this is food. Open your mouth as wide as you can.”
The zombie’s mouth strained. Zangara moved closer so he could push the snack through its mottled lips.
Then came a horrible scream.
Additional security guards arrived just as Zangara yanked his fingerless hand from the zombie’s decayed teeth. “The bastard bit me!” he yelled, then collapsed into a pool of his own blood.
The guards emptied their pistols into the zombie. Unfazed, it roared while straining to break free.
A SWAT team dashed in and fired so many rounds, Narcisse’s torso was transformed into chunks of carcass barely hanging from strands of gray, calcified muscle.
At the urgent request of the university, a priest exorcised Narcisse Leblanc’s remains. Immediately afterward, they were cremated. Nobody knows what happened to the ashes.
Although paramedics were able to extract Zangara’s fingers from the zombie’s putrid mouth, attempts to rejoin them to his right hand were unsuccessful. Surgeons were dumbfounded when Zangara’s hand continuously rejected its own fingers.
Zangara’s recovery was far slower than anticipated. His psyche was so deeply shattered, he barely responded to psychotherapy.
Nurses reported that Zangara mumbled in his sleep, repeating the same words endlessly: “Chain saw…chain saw…chain saw…”
* * * *
One day Zangara wandered from the hospital and disappeared.
Reports began to trickle from the Haitian jungle that a madman was on the loose. Voodoo priests, who zombified the country’s poorest wretches and turned them into personal slaves, offered $100,000 American dollars for the madman’s capture.
When that didn’t work, they bribed high-ranking politicians to send seek-and-destroy troops to the jungle.
“We cannot continue to suffer the systematic destruction by a madman of our most profitable assets, zombie slaves. How can our zombies work without fingers? Someone is prowling the jungle with a chain saw and cutting them off. Not one zombie in all of Haiti has fingers. It takes time and effort to make new zombies. Every time we create one and send him into the fields to work—poof! Off goes his fingers. Save us from the unnerving presence of this madman!"
End
Rejected by THE UNDEAD 2, The Three-lobed Burning Eye, Shroud, Shimmer, and Flashes in the dark
Michael A. Kechula is a retired tech writer. His fiction has won first place in 10 contests and placed in 7 others. He’s also won Editor’s Choice awards 4 times. His stories have been published by 121 magazines and 34 anthologies in Australia, Canada, England, India, Scotland, and US. He’s authored two books of flash and micro-fiction stories: “A Full Deck of Zombies--61 Speculative Fiction Tales” and “The Area 51 Option and 70 More Speculative Fiction Tales.” eBook versions available at www.BooksForABuck.com and www.fictionwise.com Paperback available at www.amazon.com. .
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