Zaphod's Memoirs

Last night, I fussed with a monologue for youtube, the 30th Zaphod Zombie script, and a few other projects and still wound up with absolutely nothing to post either here or on youtube.  As it is, I had to post an old monologue video about an automatic soap dispenser just keep with the Monday-Wednesday schedule.  Don't get me wrong, it's a good monologue, but the video quality is very, very poor.  It was encoded back when youtube wasn't capable of HQ video and download speed was everything.  On the other hand, it is a monologue: the most important part of the video is the speech, so who gives a rat's ass what the video looks like?

I came down with a cold and was sick the latter half of last week.  I stayed home and did a whole lot of nothing.  You'd think with all that time on my hands, I'd be able to wring out a Zaphod comic or two ... but no.  What I did end up doing--and it took me a good three days of doing nothing to come up with this--was begin writing a book.  Not just any book, however, Zaphod Zombie's memoirs.  Something of an autobiography of his unlife.  It's tentatively titled "On the Outside Looking In: Living Impaired Among the Unimpaired Living".  I've been working on it for a few days now (I'm into chapter 4) and I feel really good about the progress and the content.

Since I managed to come up with nothing else in preparation for today, I'll leave you the opening scene of Zaphod's memoirs.  It's right after the break.  Enjoy.

---

Click "Read More" for the beginning of Zaphod's book!

    "Hi.  My name is Zaphod.  And I'm a zombie."
    These were the words that were supposed to change my life.  They were supposed to be some kind of admission of guilt.  Here is my problem, now help me get past it.
    "Well, technically I'm living impaired.  Or undead."
    The group--a gaggle of unimpaired "lifers"--stared back at me.  Call me crazy, but I think they were a little shocked.
    "Okay, see, it's not that the term 'zombie' is bad or anything," I attempted to explain, perhaps a futile effort.  "Obviously, it's not like 'nigger'--"
    A large, muscular black man--I believe his name was Lawrence--shot me an offended glare.
    "But, I mean, it does carry with it some unfortunate, negative connotations."  I looked at Lawrence.  "If someone walks around crying nigger, you just get offended.  If someone walks around crying zombie, I get offended, too.  But mass panic also ensues and I usually end up getting shot at.  Have you ever been shot at before?  It's not fun.  Especially when you actually get it.  I've got the scars if you want to see them.  And they never heal.  They're kind of just stitched up really tightly so that things don't start spilling out."
    The gaggle of unimpaired lifers stared a little bit harder at me.  Someone gulped, a sound that resonated unpleasantly within the the cold, brick walls of the Greenville Community Center.
    "Y-you're really a zombie?" a lady named Marsha said in an all-too familiar wavering voice.
    Narrow-minded meat-sacks, the living.
    "Living impaired," I said again.  "I just told you, the z-word is kind of offensive."
    Another middle-aged lady--a homely woman name Linda who was in the group to cope with the loss of her husband--shifted uncomfortably in her seat.  "Um ..." she seemed unreasonably confused and unsure of what to do or say.  She shifted again, mumbled something that was incoherent, started to get up and then sat back down to shift some more in her seat.
    The living can be so intolerant.
    Linda finally decided what she wanted to do.
    She screamed.
    It was piercing, warbling scream, straight from the classic Universal horror flicks.  Somewhere, a dog barked.  Then, Linda shot to her feet, knocking the folding chair she sat in backward to clatter against the wall and then ran out the door.
    Unfortunately, the door Linda tried to run out of was half of a double-door that led out to the rest of the community center.  This particular half was the one that is generally always locked.  In fact, there was a sign on the other side of the door that directed people to use the other door.
    Linda ran and smashed into the locked door and then fell to the ground, unconscious.
    No one in the group moved.
    Finally, I cleared my throat.  " ... well, that's awkward."