Half Eaten

The other day my boyfriend came to a conclusion with a fair amount of glee. “You empathize with zombies!” This, of course amused him to no end. I guess I have to agree with him to a certain point. But I didn’t really start empathizing with zombies until I started watching The Walking Dead. It was frightening and gory, but also unsettling. I would get totally psyched out after the show almost every single Sunday. All of a sudden running into a zombie became a real possibility. Someone is walking by my house … Who is that? What if it’s a zombie!?

Silly, I know.

One scene from the first episode stuck with me for the rest of the show. In this scene the main protagonist is running through a park when he trips an falls over something. An emaciated, putrid arm rises up and a bony hand grabs him by the ankle. We hear the blood curdling AAARRGHHH. Camera pans to the face. It is a woman with stingy blond hair, still wearing her pretty summer dress with small blue flowers. The dress is dirty, ripped, and faded. It is obvious that she has been a zombie for a long time. Part of her face is missing. Her hair is matted with dry blood. Still, you can tell that she was beautiful once. Her body is severed below the waist. She has no hips, no legs. She has been dragging herself across the grassy knoll on her elbows and forearms looking for something, anything, to sink her teeth into. The guy jumps up, shocked and horrified. This is the first zombie that he encounters face to face. After he gets over his initial shock  of what is staring him in the face, he gains his composure and draws the gun. The half eaten zombie is flailing her arms at him, bearing her teeth. AAARRGHHHH! He takes an aim at her head, then lowers his gun, takes a step back, bends down towards her face and says “Maam, I am sorry this happened to you.” Then he shoots her in the head and walks away.

“Maam, sorry this happened to you” … Sorry this happened to you … Who was she? What was her story? Did they eat her entire family right before her eyes? Where was she going the day they attacked her? Why did they eat only half of her body leaving her to wake up in hell? Maybe they got distracted by someone else? Zombies do have short attention spans.

It bothers me that they didn’t even have the decency to consume her entire body and put her out of her misery permanently. I guess there is no honor among zombies. There is no honor among people either. How many times did we leave someone half eaten because we got distracted by something or someone else?

I am half eaten …