I'd been wanting to write a zombie story for a few years, but I didn't really want to write about zombies, if you know what I mean. What was there left to say after World War Z? Then I was flipping through a magazine somewhere I've forgotten about while waiting for something I've forgotten about, and I saw an ad that gave me the idea for "Deja Yu Makes the Pain Go Away." It's kind of a zombies meets Mad Men, but I wrote it before I saw an episode of Mad Men, so there it is.

"Deja Yu" was originally published in the Halloween 2008 issue of Taddle Creek, one of my favourite Canadian magazines, which was guest edited by Derek McCormack, one of my favourite Canadian writers. Here's a teaser. If you like it, you can buy the full story in PDF form ($2.99) by clicking the button after the excerpt.

— Peter

DEJA YU MAKES THE PAIN GO AWAY

The Trailer

The worst thing about being dead is the pain. I felt like I was being crushed inside for months after the heart attack.

The kids tried to help ease it before Sarah, my wife — my ex-wife now, I guess — took them away with her. Samantha, my daughter, told me the pain meant my heart was broken. She said it would feel better if I came home again. Jesse, my son, said maybe being dead is like when you scrape your knee or elbow. You get a scab for a while but then the pain goes away.

Sarah wouldn’t talk to me after I died. She wouldn’t even see me. She changed the locks on the doors after she kicked me out. I tried to come back to visit the kids, but she wouldn’t let me in. I had to talk to them through the door, or on the phone. Samantha said Sarah worried I’d give them whatever it was I had. But I didn’t have anything.

My doctor said all the dead feel the pain. He said there are different theories about it. The people who think our condition is caused by all the preservatives in our food say it’s a chemical byproduct. The religious people think it’s purgatory, that we’ll be able to die for good once we’ve suffered enough. The medical experts think it’s the body’s memory hanging on to the last seconds of life. My doctor said if I think feeling my heart attack all the time is bad, I should try to imagine what burn victims feel.

I just wanted it to stop.

The Willy Loman

The second-worst thing about being dead is you have to keep working. I still had my share of the mortgage payments, even though I didn’t live in the house anymore. And now I also had to pay rent for a new apartment. I had to buy gas for the car. I didn’t have to eat anymore, but I kept the fridge and cupboards stocked with groceries in case Sarah ever let the kids come and stay with me.

All the bills meant I had to keep on with the life I had despite being dead. There were some physical changes, obviously, like not being able to sleep at night. But I went in to the office along with everyone else in the morning. I went to the food court with my co-workers for lunch and watched them order the same meals I used to order and eat. I looked at the images on the video menus, of the men in suits with hamburgers, the children with fish sticks and fries, the women with salads, but I couldn’t make myself hungry. I went to the bar after work with my co-workers and ordered drinks I didn’t drink. I did everything but play mini-golf with them.

That’s because I had my heart attack on the seventh hole of Maximum Mini Golf in the Evergreen Mall during a game with two of my co-workers, Dylan and Hakim. I was ahead for the first time ever against these two. I was leaning on my club, watching Hakim tap a putt into the Wheel of Vegas when suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I knew he was aiming for the Free Massage at House of Pleasure, but he hit the Free Gym Pass at House of Pain instead. That’s when everything froze inside me and I fell to the fake turf.

I have to give Dylan and Hakim credit — they did what they could for me. Dylan performed his best impression of the CPR he’d seen in the movies, while Hakim called 911 before taking photos of the scene with his phone. One of those photos — me with my tongue sticking out and my shirt torn open as the paramedics worked on me — went
around the office mail afterward. I forced a laugh and a shrug when I saw it on people’s computers and tried not to think about what was happening to me in that photo. But I couldn’t forget staring up at the monitor as I lay there, unable to move, unable to do anything but watch the different images it flashed: a flag waving in the wind, a set of Nike mini-golf clubs and balls, a smiling woman who promised to make me a millionaire off my accident lawsuit. When the paramedics rolled me away on the stretcher, the monitor showed a beach on a tropical island somewhere, with the caption Your Ad Could Be Here.

The paramedics did their best to save me too, but I was already gone by the time they arrived. That’s what the driver told me later in the hospital after the emergency-room doctor pronounced me officially dead. “Tough break,” the doctor said, putting away the paddles he’d been shocking me with and handing me a release form to sign.

“Are you sure?” I asked him. “Can I get a second opinion?”

He looked at the paramedics. The driver nodded and said, “Dead.” The other one was playing a game on his phone and didn’t even look up.

I signed the release — it took several attempts because I still wasn’t used to the numbness that comes with being dead. But sometimes now I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t signed it — if I wasn’t officially dead.

© Peter Darbyshire