Hello, my friends.

I apologize for my absence these long six months. The silly truth of it is that, somewhere along the way, I lost my password to this blog! I know! It IS silly!

No matter; now we shall return to your regularly scheduled zombie-blogging. Much has happened since last Christmas, so if you’re interested in reading about voodoo sorcerers, fine wines, and the odd undead horde, watch this space.

Yours,

- Vincent

Good evening.

As I explained earlier, I am trying to [ahem] get to know a certain person or persons. Anybody with a brain in their heads (or in their bellies, if you shuffle on my side of the mortal coil) will tell you that the best way to make new acquaintances is to employ that most timeless of catalysts for polite conversation and good times: a good meal. I’m hoping that, by hosting a dinner party of flavorsome dishes and favorable company, I might make a better second impression on the still nameless object of my affection.

It can’t fail, really. When you host the party, you call the shots. The venue, the schedule, and the menu are all up to you, keeping the proverbial ball in your court and allowing you to make any sort of impression you golly well please. I have no doubt that I can revive my chances with nothing more than a carefully planned variety of victuals.

Now, as you should know by now, I’m not the kind of zombie who makes a meal of his guests. Even if I choose to invite some of my lifeless brethren to the event, I won’t be serving up slices of postal workers or roasted city officials.* Nor, however, can I subject myself, or any other zombie, to “human food”. Instead, let me give you a brief beginner’s course in abiotic gastronomy.

The science of abiotic gastronomy is barely a science at all. Just as I’m sure prehistoric humans once learned what was and wasn’t edible through a long and probably tragic process of gustatory trial and error, zombies have discovered a peculiar but limited selection of alternatives to human flesh. The rules behind this curious mélange are as loose as some women you probably know, and I am by no means possessed of a complete list of acceptable eats for the undead. My menu, however, serves as a good cross-section of what the average conscientious zombie may eat.

For our first course, I will be preparing owl eyes sauteed in a basil and ox-butter glaze. Human guests will be treated to pan-seared scallops with Riesling and normal-butter drizzle.

The second course will be soup, specifically spoiled deer heart in a broth made from the soil of a freshly exhumed grave. Living diners will have a French onion soup with imported Gruyere cheese.

Salad takes up the third course, and I’ll be serving a pickled electric eel slaw with milkweed and rust powder. Humans will receive my twist on a Caesar salad, which is practically the same with the notable addition of Kalamata olives and a garlic-thyme aioli.

Ah, the main course! Whale tongue is particularly hard to get one’s hands on, but I’ve been fortunate to find a (probably illicit) provider of minke whale tongue, which I will be grilling over a eucalyptus-wood fire and marinating in powdered glass and the tears of a penitent arsonist. I haven’t determined an entrée for the un-undead guests, but both dishes will be served with a side of sliced potatoes. Mine will be doused in formaldehyde.

Finally the desert will consist of a hemlock-mulberry sorbet garnished with yak hair and a sprig of mistletoe (Christmas is coming soon, after all!), along with candied horse hooves, while those of the mortal persuasion will receive slices of raspberry cheesecake.

I’m sure you’ll agree that a five-course meal with dazzling dishes such as this cannot help but overwhelm a young lady with joy and admiration! I suppose we shall see soon how my plan unfolds, but for now I shall try and distract myself with the preparatinos and, of course, the invitations. I’m pretty sure I should leave ol’ Zeke out of the loop on this one. He’s never been one for dinner parties.

Wish me luck!

- Vincent

* Upon reflection, whenever I do think about eating people, my mind seems to gravitate towards state employees. Perhaps I should see someone about this.

Hello, my friends.

I do hope you can help me out with a little trifle I’ve been dealing with for a while now. I’ve been alive upwards of a century, but I’ve never had to deal with something quite so exquisite, nor so terrible, nor so confounding all at once. I daresay you mortal folk might be better acquainted with such matters, and so I put to you this intriguing state of affairs:

I, Vincent Ossington, have met the woman of my dreams.

Just imagine: you’re a peculiarly tall, pale-green, snappily-dressed corpse walking about town. You are crossing a street, taking care not to lose any of your appendages to oncoming traffic (which seems to lack the same sort of consideration towards zombies as it does towards living pedestrians) when your eyes fall upon the most beautiful woman you’ve seen this side of the grave - or the other side, for that matter.

You immediately assume she’s French, on account of her beret and the fact that she’s speaking French. Good God! You know French, too! You have, as they say, an icebreaker. Armed with nothing but your necrotic good looks, a widely-spoken Romantic language, and just a little bit of courage, you cross the street, stop in front of this goddess among humankind, and say, “Bonjour!”

Okay, let’s try something else: imagine you’re an astonishingly beautiful woman from France. You arrive in a strange country, and out of nowhere, you are greeted emphatically by a walking cadaver.

In retrospect, her reaction should have been easier to predict. Zombies have a much smaller presence in Europe than they do here in the States, leaving most Old-Worlders without a sense of familiarity with the undead. I’ve never gotten along with Europeans particularly well - some European zombies even regard me with apprehension and dread. In the case of this young woman, my mere greeting was enough to launch her out of sight so rapidly that I was worried our planet’s orbit might destabilize.

This was a tough blow for me, for even though our acquaintance was limited to one French greeting and one unguarded scream of horror, I was already hopelessly in love with this woman.

I know what you’re thinking. “Vincent, why are you so dead-gone on this stranger you’ve never even spoken to?” or even “Vincent, couldn’t you find some nice undead girl to make up your better half?” or even “Vincey, how can you be in love if you’re not alive in any traditional sense?” I won’t answer any of these for two reasons: firstly, because you should all know by now that matters of the heart are guided by blind and irrational forces, and secondly, because you called me Vincey.

My mind is set on finding this woman, and showing her that I need no heartbeat to give her my heart. In fact, as a zombie I’m better disposed than anyone to literally perform such a deed. Rumor has it that she lives somewhere in town, so I shall make it my mission to find her and show her that I am no less worthy of her affection - yes, more worthy, even - than any man with vital signs.

This is where you come in. It goes without saying that I have some work to do. What, though, can I do to turn her towards me, to defeat whatever predispositions she has towards the undead? What would it take for you, o mortal men (or women, more suitably), to accept the advances of a long-departed suitor? I’m a touch out of my league, so to speak, and I would be most grateful for any advice or master plans you can conjure up.

Until then, I will find you, my love. Wherever you are. Whatever your name is.

tumblrbot asked: WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST HUMAN MEMORY?

Excellent question. I’m afraid my memory prior to my zombification isn’t all that clear, but I do have one very vivid recollection.

It was very late at night, sometime during my early childhood, where I met a very tall gypsy man with a very tall dog, who told (the man, not the dog) me my entire future in a few concise words.

I don’t remember what he said, exactly, but it certainly had nothing to do with zombiehood. He was a terrible fortune teller.

History provides us with tales of all sorts of remarkable feats of ingenuity by men and women with the intent to escape. We have Napoleon’s flight from Elba, building his own small army on his prison island and escaping for the mainland. Then we have the Earl of Nithsdale disappearing from the Tower of London by disguising himself as his own wife. In the case of myself and my small cadre of fellow captive zombies, however, our chosen means of absconding from our confinement was to tie Mr. Toglinson’s disembodied arm to a thread and then letting it skitter across the concrete floor towards the truck on the far side of the warehouse.

This, of course, sounds very strange out of context. While I recommend you read the previous two entries detailing the story leading up to this point, I can summarize it in a few short words: I was captured by a motley trio of zombie hunters and placed in a fearsome cage along with several other hapless zombies. One of these zombies, a certain Horace Toglinson, was unfortunate enough to lose his arm somewhere in the undertaking – the very same arm that, at this point in the story, was now creeping towards our four-wheeled freedom.

Unfortunately, as I’m sure those of you who have had the opportunity to use their own dismembered appendages as remote-control devices are aware, it is very difficult to steer an arm in the right direction once it is out of reach. In the case of Mr. Toglinson, his first two attempts failed to maintain a straight trajectory, his arm veering first into the wall and then out the door, at which point I would reel it back in to try again. As the arm came within reach, I grasped it and carefully adjusted its heading, taking into account its tendency to deviate to the right and the overall curvature of the floor.

Struggling not to let myself reflect on what an amazingly absurd situation this was, I let the arm rest on the floor and gave a signal to Horace. He nodded and, biting his lower lip hard anxiously, he resumed the painfully slow journey from cage to truck. Finger by finger, the hand dragged its burdensome arm behind it and advanced inchmeal towards the truck. The other zombies huddled around me, eyes wide with apprehension, as their only hope closed the distance between themselves and their ticket out of captivity.

I stood up and glanced at the zombie hunters whose lair we were so desperately trying to escape. Wheedley and Smern played a peculiarly violent game of backgammon on an upturned fruit crate, and Grumbrose paced irascibly across the far side of the room, never facing us but never looking completely away. For all we knew, he was watching us out of the corner of his eye. Not that any human being, upon seeing a group of captive cadavers making significant progress towards escaping their bonds and wreaking any or all sorts of vengeance befitting the undead modus operandi, would idly watch, I thought.

My attention was turned back to our jailbreak-in-progress when the faint sound of flesh against steel met my ears. The roving arm was at the foot of the truck, with a solitary finger reaching up towards the tow cable. Horace grunted as he tried to twist his wrist upward or prop his arm up against the bumper, but to no avail. I watched as the rotten limb faltered for a moment while Horace considered his options. The arm acted up again, flapping back and forth like a very living fish on a very hot skillet, eventually lurching higher into the air than it could have done by simply reaching. Finally, in one final burst of effort, the hand landed on the heavy steel hook and pulled it to the floor with a sharp, metallic sound.

We all braced ourselves for the sound of the zombie hunters shouting and rising from their seats, but it never came. Wheedley was too busy reprimanding Smern for something not worth guessing at, and Grumbrose had stopped mid-pace to bury his face in his hands, as if he had had a very long day and wanted nothing more than to fall over and lose consciousness. This turned out to be an extremely good guess, as an instant later that is exactly what he did. Once a towering figure full of malign purpose, he now inexplicably lay in a heap on the floor.

As his two companions rushed to see what had befallen their ringleader, I whispered sharply to Horace, “Come on, bring it in!”

And so he did. Within seconds, the arm was safely back in our cage, and the zombies were hastily twisting the cable around every bar of the cage and fixing the hook to the far corner. Meanwhile, Wheedley and Smern brought the lifeless (perhaps a poor choice of words, given the varying stages of lifelessness of persons mentioned herein) body of Grumbrose to the vehicle and heaved him into the back. Wheedley scrambled into the driver’s seat, with Smern placidly taking the passenger’s seat, and stepped on the accelerator.

The cage lurched as the truck sped off. I had anticipated the bars to be ripped from their place and an opening to appear, but instead the entire cage came hurtling after the truck, zombies in tow. I clung to the bars to avoid being shredded apart by the racing pavement below. The occupants of the car seemed completely oblivious to our being right behind them, which was a good thing up to the point of the realization that until they realized they had unwittingly brought us along, they wouldn’t stop. If you were trapped in a steel cage being dragged by a speeding motor vehicle at ungodly speeds, you would want them to stop, too.

Suddenly, Grumbrose bolted upright. Whatever had overtaken him had dissipated quickly, and now the fully alert zombie hunter was glaring distractedly at the very improbably predicament we were in. I looked him in the eye, and he looked back, with all the burning intent of somebody whose chief pleasure in life was glaring back at people. Without hesitation, and evidently without much forethought, he flung himself from the trailer bed of the truck and towards the cage. This seemed at the time, and still seems today, like an unequivocally bad idea, but by some miracle he managed to land squarely on the exposed face of the cage. He snarled at me, and I’m sure that if the wind weren’t racing past us I would’ve perceived some unseemly undead derogation within his muttering.

The good news for us was that the driver was still unaware of the turmoil behind him. As far as he knew, making the next sharp left turn would be your average sharp left turn, and would have no adverse side effects, such as flinging the tethered cage off the road and into the ravine below, wrapping the cable tightly around an unsuspecting oak and bringing the truck to a sudden and crushing stop whilst hurling Grumbrose to his death into the dark pit below.

In fact, he would be right; that’s not what happened at all. Before we could be tossed over the edge of the ravine, which ought really to be termed a river on account of its having water in it, the cage simply couldn’t bear the burden of a handful of zombies, a very angry man and fifty-five miles per hour of rending speed. The bars collapsed and let Grumbrose skid over the edge like a hockey puck and the other zombies and me scatter across the pavement like undead hockey pucks. As the car hurtled around the bend and into the distance, I picked myself up and brushed the dust off of my suit. I was free.

However, I was now a very long ways from home. In addition, Grumbrose would no doubt be clambering out of the river soon, and the other zombie hunters might realize their mistake at any moment. These facts, combined with the sudden awareness that I hadn’t had a good run in quite a while, were all the motivation I needed to give a quick wave to my fellow undead escape artists and bolt down the road towards a distant neighborhood where a petrified gardener, a stack of novellas, and an unfinished bottle of Chianti were waiting for me.

Let’s see, where was I? Ah, yes…

—-

The coffin jumped a little as the truck skipped over a rough patch in the road, sending a jolt through the less unlively prisoners of the fine mahogany prison. I couldn’t help but question the wisdom of using such an extravagant casket (it was lined with silk, for heaven’s sake) for the purpose of ferrying captive zombies to whatever unspeakable lair it might be headed to, though the more important question of how one might escape from said casket sat foremost in my mind. I couldn’t be certain if the coffin was nailed shut, closed with a built-in clasp, or being sat upon by many or all of our surly captors. Whatever the case, escape was made impossible for now by the lid’s refusal to budge.

After a long while, I could feel the truck pull onto a smoother path, most likely a paved driveway, and after coasting past a particularly redolent hydrangea bush, come to a complete stop. Silence prevailed for a brief instant, until a brain-related sentiment escaped from the mouth of one of my less forward-thinking fellow captives. Outside, the occasional faint sound – a seatbelt being undone, a door being slammed, a gleeful “we got ‘em”-style whoop – permeated the thick shell of our casket, until with a jerk our prison was hoisted out of the truck and dropped unceremoniously on the hard concrete floor. I winced as the impact knocked the arm off of a zombie to my left with an unsettling plop.

“What’ll we do with ‘em ‘til the boss gets here?” queried one of the living humans outside.

“Put ‘em in the cage,” came the grim reply, placing a malevolent emphasis on the term “the cage”, as if this cage was a particularly bad sort of cage and that merely mentioning the cage should send a shiver down every undead spine in earshot.

As it turned out, however, the cage was simply your run-of-the-mill steel cage (albeit a very big one), which, beyond the suitable level of alarm it might cause simply by virtue of imprisoning zombies, was highly unextraordinary. When the lid of the coffin finally opened, we were in this very cage, now capable of examining our surroundings from our restricted spot. We were in a dilapidated warehouse, or perhaps an abandoned factory, with most of the floor-space cleared of any machinery or debris. The truck sat silently by an opening in the corrugated steel walls, silhouetted against the glaring white sunlight outside.

The most interesting feature of the place, however, was the unlikely trio of men huddled around a campfire pitched conspicuously in the center of the warehouse. They murmured in hushed tones so as to prevent us from hearing their conversation; so quiet were they that I could only discern their names, ages, places of residence, and favorite colors.

“It wasn’t a big catch today,” whined a small, spindly man by the name of Wheedley, fastidiously retying his distressing yellow bow tie, “but it’ll pay the bills.”

“It’s enough,” said Grumpyre, a stocky brute of a man who was apparently the leader of the crew.

“I get the cut for the well-dressed one, though. I caught it. That one’s got to pull in a little extra.”

“But I helped,” mumbled the third zombie hunter, Smern, an average-height, average-weight, entirely dull gray individual with no observable characteristics besides his absolute blandness. “I threw the net.”

“No, you didn’t! We didn’t use a net! You don’t remember what happened at all, do you, Smern?”

“No…”

“Everyone gets an equal share,” growled Grumpyre. “That’s the deal. That’s how it’s always been.”

“Fine,” sneered Wheedley, “but at least let me have his tuxedo.”

As their tedious bickering continued, I turned to my fellow captives. One of the zombies, a certain Horace Toglinson, looked forlornly at his disembodied arm as it crawled slowly across the floor. Another zombie, the one who smelled of liquor, was peering through the bars looking or a way out.

“See anything?” I inquired.

“There seems t’be a towin’ cable on the rear o’ that truck,” he replied thoughtfully. “If we could hook it up to the cage and get the engine runnin’, we might be able t’pull the truck out o’ here.”

“I see. How are we going to reach the truck?”

I looked back at the disarmed zombie. He had picked up his squirming arm and pointed it in another direction. The arm proceeded to crawl clumsily on its new course, finger by finger, eventually feebly grabbing onto my shoe. In an instant, I had an idea.

“Horace, would you mind if we borrowed your hand for a moment?”

—-

Oh, bother, there’s somebody at the door. I suppose I’ll leave off for now, come back soon and I’ll relate the conclusion of this unfortunate tale.

Good evening,
- Vincent

Good evening, my friends.

So, I recently found myself in a coffin for the second time in my career. Of course, my first encounter with such a contraption was significantly more agreeable, on account of being completely unconscious (read: deceased) for much of the undergoing. This second time, however, was not unlike, I would imagine, the shared experience of many crated fruits en route to market; a key similarity being the close-at-hand presence of several other corpses in the fairly small compartment, with the noteworthy difference being that said corpses were, as it were, alive and well.

I should apologize for my somewhat careless use of terms such as life and death in reference to the undead, for which the terms are categorically unfitting, though I should hope this error would be ignored in light of the circumstances: namely, my being stuck in a coffin.

“Well, I well weren’t expecting to spend the mornin’ in here,” remarked one of my hapless fellow captives. His distinct Irish-American accent placed him in New York sometime before the Great Depression, and the distinct smell of bourbon permeating the casket hinted that he, like so many zombies, was in the liquor business. I really can’t say why so many of my undead brethren pick up this particular trade – either because they find some oddly fulfilling irony in the production of “spirits”, or perhaps their decomposing nature lends them a natural affinity for fermenting things.

In any case, he was right; the morning was certainly not shaping up as I had expected. I had sent out an invitation for a book club I was hoping to start, in hopes of promoting awareness of undead literature (I could recommend a few superb novellas by contemporary zombie authors, though for now I should really adhere to the matter at hand) and had anticipated the arrival of my associates sometime around sunrise. It is good manners among zombiekind to leave appointments as inexact as possible, given the many plights that face a zombie – hostile strangers, missing limbs, etc. – on the road. In any case, as the sun rose timorously over the horizon, and as the minutes fled the town of Eidolon never to return, I soon sensed that the absence of any arrivals was not due to typical unforeseen delays. Something was the matter.

So, I told Pembrose to keep an eye on the house and I ventured outdoors. There was no sign of my customary canine foe (I’m sure I’ve mentioned Bumper in the past, haven’t I?) anywhere, so I opened the front gate and stepped briskly down the street towards the town. As quiet neighborhoods gave way to busy storefronts and speeding automobiles, I searched for some sign of a zombie’s presence. I don’t know what I expected to find, but I knew I had to do something.

As I past by a familiar bakery, I heard a voice shout out from within the storefront. I turned around to find Bunsen, the owner of the bakery, running out the front door with an air of caution.

“Mr. Ossington,” he stammered, straightening his spectacles as he glanced across the street, “you really shouldn’t be out here right now.”

“Why is that? What’s the matter?”

“Some bad-looking folks came through looking for you,” he replied. “I would head back to your home and lie low for a while. I’ve never seen anything like these guys.”

I didn’t know how to respond to this, but before I could conjure any reply he had returned to his bakery, locking the door to keep out whatever evils he had seen before. I thought carefully about his advice, not knowing whether it would be safer to remain home or to try and determine who exactly had been looking for me – for all I knew, the “bad-looking folks” were just my friends in various states of decay. Either way, if somebody unpleasant was on my trail, the first place they’d visit was my home.

So, I continued on my way. Street by street, I made my way through the town, keeping my senses open for some indication of either the undead or the unwelcome. My rapid pace and some unambitious city planners took my trek out of the town and into the uncultivated countryside in only a few short minutes. I didn’t find anything worth mentioning; the sound of the wind, the town behind me, an oncoming automobile, a lone cicada blown far from its customary southern haunts, and a team of five or six armed men jumping from the oncoming automobile and swinging blunt objects towards my head.

This last occurrence, naturally, prompted me to consider returning to the safety of the town. Or, alternatively, I could have retreated to the confines of my home and taken refuge in the hidden recesses of the old place. I could only consider these options for a brief moment, however, as I was soon introduced to the blunt end of a rifle and subsequently the gravel road. I did not fall unconscious, as zombies have trouble closing their eyes for any long period of time, but I was incapacitated enough to be helpless when several pairs of living arms bound my hands and tossed me into what I later identified to be an occupied coffin.

So, this is how I found myself in this unfortunate circumstance. For now, my writing hand tires, and I must stir for a breath of fresh air, but I will return to this tale soon. Until then, stay alert: you never know when a team of zombie hunters will drive by and snatch you.

Unless, of course, you’re not a zombie. Then you’re in the clear.

- Vincent

A few days ago, I hosted a dinner party at my estate. It was nothing too spectacular, just a gathering of my dearest friends (both living and dead) joining me for some of the best cakes and confections immortal hands can make. All things considered, the banquet went over splendidly; the mushroom parfait was a big hit with the zombies in attendance, and only the most minimal conflict with the living guests befell our assemblage throughout the whole evening. As the night came to a close, and all the happy visitors made their way to the front door and said their good-byes, I heard a single cough spring from one of the partygoers’ mouths. It was a hollow, deep cough, barely loud enough to be noticed, but it was a cough nonetheless.

This was a problem.

You see, you mortal men and women have something we zombies, quite frankly, envy: a functional immune system. If you catch a cold, your body has the tools necessary to ward off slow death at the hands of whatever horrible pathogens are busy laying claim to your interior. You might suffer a few days of discomfort and trifling symptoms such as fever, fatigue, and of course a bit of a cough, but soon enough you’re back on your feet.

The undead do not have this luxury. If a zombie becomes infected with a strain of influenza or some such contagion, he can only hope that by the time the teeming blight within him tires of dead flesh it will leave without doing too much damage. Death is of very little concern to the dead, of course, but we still decay, and nothing speeds up the process quite like a new life form throwing its own little dinner party somewhere in your no-longer-vital organs. So, any prudent zombie is well advised to avoid whatever plague comes their way as if it were, well, the plague.

This fact in mind, that little cough by one of my guests frightened the unliving daylights out of me. I hastily ushered the remaining visitors out the door with erratic, sweeping gestures, and closed the door to prevent any further microbes from being introduces to my home. In an instant, I recovered a bounty of cleaning supplies from the nearest closet – I keep many such stashes at hand – and thoroughly disinfected every flat and not-flat surface in the entryway. Getting to my feet, I considered what rooms my guests had been in during the evening and tried to remember who coughed.

Next, I began to clean up the dining room. Despite the comparatively well-bred sort of people I had invited to my dinner party, the place was a mess. The whole tabletop had become a sea of porcelain dishes, cups, saucers, and the occasional glass. As I ferried each piece of dinnerware to the kitchen, I recalled which guest had used which plate. There was, of course, the beautiful Sophia Longley, a decidedly living young woman from Eastern Europe – her exact heritage escapes me at the moment – who used two dishes, one bowl, and one glass. I knew at once that the cough couldn’t have been hers. The cough was a masculine one, no doubt committed by one of the male guests.

Then there was Ezekiel Thorpe, whom you no doubt remember from his winery in Connecticut. As I carefully picked up his one dish, two bowls, one cup and saucer, and five glasses, I tried to recall the timbre of his voice. He could have been the perpetrator, he had the right gravelly tone for this cough… but after five glasses of vinegar and one cup of stronger stuff, I doubt a cough from him could be any quieter than the sound of cannon-fire. No, it was not old Zeke. Nor could it have been Bertram Bourne – three plates, two bowls, one cup and saucer – proprietor of the First Eidolon Bank. He had made every possible effort to try everything offered at the table, even some of the delicacies prepared specifically for the undead, and so had left early to nurse an ailing stomach.

The table settings had all been brought to the kitchen, scrubbed, polished, and put away. I proceeded to dust the cabinetry, since I was in a cleaning sort of mood, all the while going over each of the guests in my mind. It couldn’t be Ezekiel, or Mr. Bourne, or Miss Longley, or anybody else who had sat at that table.

Oh, my, I had forgotten about Ormond. Poor old Ormond, he had a tendency to sort of fade into the background of any such party. This was partly due to his enduringly doleful demeanor, or the fact that he always bore the acrid scent of his smoking pipe. It also had a lot to do with his being a ghost.

I stopped dusting as I came to the obvious solution. Ormond the ghost was the mysterious cougher. Smoking a pipe, a hollow voice, it all fit. It also meant that he hadn’t touched a thing, and that there wasn’t a germ in sight. I slumped into a chair and chuckled to myself. All that bother for nothing, though I suppose it served as an excuse to tidy up the house. I threw the feather duster on the table and, with a long breath, said to myself, “I need a housemaid.”

Good evening,
- Vincent

This week has been unnaturally busy. Even now I am swamped with all manner of chores and responsibilities, and as a regrettable result this post will have to be brief. Who would have known that retired undeath could be so - pardon the pun - restless?

I am happy to say, though, that I took the liberty of having my portrait painted by a local artist. You’d be surprised how difficult it is to find somebody willing to immortalize your likeness on the canvas when you are already effectively immortal. Luckily, this painter was undeterred by the prevailing social stigma of zombiekind and agreed to the task.

That’s all for now - I am a slave of duty, and duty calls, and so on. Let’s meet again next week when we have a little more time to talk. In the meantime, may I recommend you get your own portrait painted? Any distinguished gentleman or lady ought to have one.

Good evening,
- Vincent