Free Breathers by S. G. Browne Page A

worked. Mom kept the house clean and cooked meals. Andy went to school and played sports and got into the bare minimum of trouble. Nothing spectacular. Nothing catastrophic. Nothing horrible. But instead of sticking to the script, I write:
    I was abused.
    “Really?” says Ted.
    No, not really. But why not?
    “Were you abused sexually or emotionally?” he asks.
    Both.
    Ted scribbles something down, then starts tapping his pen again.
    The air freshener releases another hiss of lilac. Personally, I would have chosen lavender. Or maybe gardenia.
    “How is it living with your parents now?” he asks.
    Wonderful.
    “Wonderful?” he says, his brow furrowing.
    It's hard to keep a straight face, but this is the most fun I've had in a while with a Breather.
    “There are no feelings of resentment or animosity?”
    None
, I write.
    “Fascinating,” says Ted, scribbling down more useless notes.
    … forty-two … forty-three … forty-four …
    “How do you and your parents spend your time together?” he asks.
    We play Parcheesi.
    “Parcheesi?” he says, as though he's never heard the word before. “You and your parents play Parcheesi?”
    And Twister.

he first Friday night of every month is a social event of sorts for the group. A rotating field trip.
    Jerry calls it the World Death Tour.
    We all meet at a local graveyard to pay our respects to a relative or a friend of the group and to remind ourselves that although we're no longer alive, neither are we dead. It's supposed to make us appreciate the opportunity we have to do something with our new existence, to realize how special we are. For me, it just reinforces the idea that I have no social life. Or is it social death? Or social undeath? Whatever. It makes me feel about as special as mayonnaise.
    Tonight we're meeting at Oakwood Memorial Cemetery, which is located right across the street from Dominican Hospital. That must be a comforting thought. I wonder if they put the terminally ill patients and the elderly in the south wing with a window overlooking the cemetery so they can get used to the view.
    A few days removed from the new moon, the cemetery sits in near complete darkness, save for the ambient light from the hospital parking lot. Zombies don't see all that well to begin with, which makes wandering around a graveyard at night abit of an adventure. Even if you died with twenty-twenty vision, your eyesight begins to deteriorate almost immediately upon reanimation. The longer you're among the undead, the worse your vision gets. It's not uncommon to see zombies who've been around for a while wearing glasses.
    Up ahead, Tom trips and falls into a tombstone with a grunt.
    Maybe it's just me, but a bunch of reanimated corpses wandering around a graveyard after ten o'clock on a Friday night isn't exactly the best way to break the zombie stereotype.
    While some West African and Caribbean cultures believe that zombies are created by voodoo spells or by the transmission of a virus, the most widely held opinion is that zombies are flesh-eating monsters—a stereotype perpetuated by Hollywood and horror writers that doesn't help us in our ever-losing battle to change our public image. Then again, it's kind of hard to hire a good publicist when you don't have a budget to rival Twentieth Century Fox or Random House. And when most publicists probably believe you want to eat their brains.
    If you ask me, the media is as much to blame as anyone for the proliferation of anti-zombie sentiments. With twenty-four-hour news available up and down the channel guide and a public that demands the sensational and fear-inducing over the humble and uplifting, zombies get more bad publicity than the president and Congress and O. J. Simpson put together.
    Anytime a zombie does something wrong, even if he was provoked into attacking, it makes national news and is played to death, saturating the air waves with opinions and eye witness accounts and calls for our wholesale destruction. But