Copterwaffle

I absolutely made sure that line was included. No joke.

Hey! I just wanted to thank you, when Warm Bodies was still a short story on the internet I used an abridged version as a reading at my wedding :) Thanks for writing it!

If you haven't found him already, you might be interesting in reading Rob Rummel-Hudson's blog and book.

His daughter is a nonverbal 13 year old and possbily only slightly developmentally delayed; she also struggles with using her assistive therapy but has made a great deal of progress. Rob is very responsive to people who email him or comment on his facebook page, and it's very possible he would put his daughter in touch with your daughter online.

There's not much to tell! We just had a good friend read the original short story, with some bits cut out for time, as our sole reading. It was a pretty casual wedding.

I am a zombie, and it's not so bad. I'm learning to live with it. I'm sorry I can't properly introduce myself, but I don't have a name anymore. Hardly any of us do. We forget them, like anniversaries and PIN numbers. I think mine might have started with a "T", but I'm not sure. It's funny, because back when I was alive, I was always forgetting other people's names. I am finding that irony abounds in the zombie life, an ever-present punch line. But it's hard to smile when your lips have rotted off.

Before I became a zombie, I think I was a businessman or young professional of some kind. I think I worked in one of those stifling office jobs in a highrise somewhere. The clothes clinging to the remains of my body are high-quality business-casual. Fine gabardine slacks, silvery silk shirt, red Armani power tie. I would probably look pretty sharp if my intestines weren't dragging at my feet. Ha.

There are a few hundred of us living in a wide plain of dust outside some large city. We don't need shelter or warmth, obviously. We stand around in the dust, and time passes. I think we've been here for a long time. Despite my dragging entrails, I am in decay's early stages, but there are a few elderly ones here who are little more than skeletons with clinging bits of muscle. Somehow, it still extends and contracts, and they keep moving. I have never seen any of us "die" of old age. Maybe we live forever, I don't know. I don't think much about the future anymore. That's something that's very different from before. When I was alive, the future was all I thought about. Obsessed about. Death has relaxed me.

But it makes me sad that we've forgotten our names. Out of everything, this seems to me the most tragic. I don't miss my own, but I mourn for everyone else's, because I want to love them, but I don't know who they are.

I start walking in a circle for no reason. I plant one foot in the dirt and pivot on it, around and around, kicking up clouds of dust. Before, when I was alive, I could never have done this. I remember stress. I remember bills and deadlines, Asset Retention Reports. I remember being so occupied, so always, everywhere, all the time occupied. Now I'm just standing in a wide-open field of dust, walking in a circle. The world has been distilled. Being dead is easy.

After a few days of this, I stop walking, and I stand still, swaying back and forth and groaning a little. I don't know why I groan. I'm not in pain, and I'm not sad. I think it's just air being squeezed in and out of my lungs. When my lungs decompose, it will probably stop. And now, while swaying and groaning, I notice a dead woman standing a few feet away from me, facing the distant mountains. She doesn't sway or groan, her head just lolls from side to side. I like that about her, that she doesn't sway or groan. I walk over and stand beside her. I wheeze some kind of greeting, and she responds with a lurch of her shoulder.

I like her. I reach out and touch her hair. She has not been dead very long. Her skin is grey and her eyes slightly sunken, but she has no exposed bones or organs. Her death outfit is a black skirt and a snug white button-up. I suspect she used to be a waitress.

Pinned to her chest is a silver nametag.

I can read her name. She has a name.

Her name is Emily.

I point to her chest. Slowly, with great effort, I say, "Em..ily." The word rolls off what's left of my tongue like honey. What a good name. I feel warm saying it.

Emily's cloudy eyes widen at the sound, and she smiles. I also smile, and then maybe I'm a little nervous because my femur snaps and I fall backwards into the dust. Emily just laughs, and it's a choked, raw, lovely sound. She reaches down and helps me to my feet.

Emily and I have fallen in love.

I'm not sure how this happens. I remember what love was like before, and this is different. This is simpler. Before, there were complex emotional and biological factors at work. We had long checklists and elaborate tests to be passed. We looked at hairstyles and careers and breast sizes. And sex was there, in everything, confusing everyone, like hunger. It created longing, it created ambition, competition, it drove people to leave their houses and invent automobiles, space craft, and atom bombs when they could instead just sit on the couch until they died. Animal cravings. Subconscious urges. Sex made the world go ‘round.

This is all gone now. Sex, once a force as universal as gravity, is now irrelevant. Ambition and longing have left the equation. My penis fell off two weeks ago.

So the equation is deleted, the blackboard erased, and things are different now. Our actions have no ulterior motives. We shuffle around in the dust and occasionally have lumbering, grunted exchanges with our peers. No one argues. There are no fights, ever.

And Emily is not a complicated process. I just see her, and walk over to her, and for no reason, really, I decide I want to be with her for a long time. So now we shuffle around in the dust together instead of alone. For whatever reason, we enjoy each other's company. When we have to go into town to eat people, we do it at separate times, because it's unpleasant, and we don't want to share that. But we share everything else, and it's nice.

We decide to walk to the mountains. It takes us three days, but now we are standing on a cliff looking up at a fat white moon. At our backs, the night sky is red from distant cities burning, but we don't care about that. I clumsily grab Emily's hand, and we stare at the moon.

There's no real reason for any of this, but like I said, the world has been distilled. Love has been distilled. Everything is easy now. Yesterday my leg broke off, and I don't even mind.

It’s not usually a case of not knowing how to get a bank account that prevents people from doing so. Fees for bounced checks, overdrafts, ATMS, or late penalties can be devastating for people living paycheck to paycheck. Many low income areas are not served by a sufficient number of physical bank locations. People who work odd hours may not be able to wait for a day off when banks are open to cash a check. Many can’t afford to keep a minimum balance if their local bank requires it.

Ditto the drivers license. If you can’t afford a car, why would you need to learn to drive?