I should start with this. I’m Michael and I died about a year and a half ago. I was walking back to work after my lunch break when a moving company dropped a piano on me. The company thought it was a good idea to use a crane to move the piano from the fifth floor of an apartment complex. Thought it only happened in cartoons? Yeah, me too.
I should also mention that I didn’t have life insurance. My company, T.S. Auto Insurance, offers it only after 10 years of service, and I had only been there for eight. If you can’t afford to die, you’re turned into a zombie. So, two days later, I was back to work at the 9-to-5 grind.
It hasn’t been easy being a zombie. The first eight or nine months went well. It wasn’t until the decomposition started that I got worried. The first time I realized this was happening was a few weeks back. I was at home having my morning cup of joe before work when I felt that two of my teeth were missing.
Sure enough, lying at the bottom of the mug was my left central incisor and my right canine. So, I did what any rational zombie would do. I grabbed the super glue and glued them back in, marked the calendar for my nine-and half-year mark and went to work.
Just a little advice for you, super glue is not a good way to hold a decaying corpse together. I found that out later that morning when I went to the break room at work for a doughnut. I bit into the doughnut and felt a slight pop. Stuck to the frosting like oversized white sprinkles were the teeth I glued in. Of course, Kyle was in the break room as well. So, I had my first trip to HR. The good news is I got the last five doughnuts to myself.
The problems really started after that. Just in the last month alone, I have been in the HR office four times. Janice found a pinky in the break room, Stacy claims the copier was jammed with my flesh, Henry found a couple of fingernails in the bathroom sink and Tony dislikes the “haunting moan” I make occasionally.
I admit, bits of me fall off here or there, and I moan sometimes. But hey, I punch the timecard, file insurance claims, start new policies and make celebrities feel like their material wealth is protected, just like the rest of them. In six months, I will be out of here and resting in peace anyway.
Story by Austin Elmer
Illustration by Maxen Stone
Design by Emma Boobar