Let me start by saying that death hasn't *improved* my dancing skills by any means. I always used to say I danced like an upright epileptic, mid-seizure. I still do. But by the loose definition of "dancing" as throwing one's body about to music? Yeah, I can do that pretty well for someone who hasn't had a pulse since 2004. I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this, so bear with me. It's just...we had a "party" the other night, and it was kind of a mood, you know? Something you'd wanna capture. It made me want to write, and I haven't done that since...shit...since before I died. I mean, the good kind of writing. The kind you do for fun, not just because someone told you to. (On that fucking note, don't go to college for the thing you love. I was an English major, and it killed any desire I had to write. At least I have time on my side to find that passion again. Not so much for the rest of you.) *** So when I say "we" had a party, who do I mean? The dead. Mostly like me. There are outliers, but we'll get to those. If I had to label myself, I'd say "vampire" is the closest one you're going to get. I'm partial to it anyway. Always wanted to be a vampire. God, I was a stupid kid. Read Stoker, then Rice, then anything else I could get. It was a fun daydream, but impossible. Until I fucking died. And it's nothing like the books say. It's far shittier. But, hey, I guess it gives you "freedom," if that's what you're looking for. I miss my family. I don't know. Enough maudlin shit. Back to the party, right? I guess it's related to that, though -- the loneliness. I think we all gather because of it. Because we miss connection. Because we miss life. We don't send out invitations or anything like that. There's a loose network of us that keep in touch, and word spreads. It's always somewhere abandoned; usually condemned. I think the squatters can feel us coming, cause most of them are gone by the night of. Every once in a while, you'll find a straggler -- somebody so far gone that they look deader than us. But the blood's still good, and I haven't found a virus I could catch yet. Party snacks, amirite? I have no idea how the parties start. Never started one, but been to plenty. I'm guessing maybe it starts with somebody finding an empty place to bed down for the day, and seeing the potential. Then they start to find the gear. We're talking the jankiest setups you've ever seen. Any speakers are game, as long as they work. It's not about quality. It's about volume and bass. You'll see. Anyway, sometimes these places still have working electric, which is great. And when they don't, somebody scares up a generator. It's just *so easy* to get things when you're dead. Anybody gets in your way, you kill them. It doesn't happen as often as you'd think, though. Like I said, I think the humans can sense us. For what it's worth, we don't *look* different. Yeah, we're not ruddy-cheeked with health, but we're not pale ghosts either. We don't even have fangs. But most of them stay away anyway. On some level, they *know*. Back to the flow, though. The gear gets got, right? Then what? Then word starts to spread. A date. A time. After sunset, of course. Usually well into true dark. And here's the funny thing...the "official" attendees -- the ones who heard from someone who knew someone -- show up more or less on time. But they're just the beginning. All night, more of us are gonna trickle in. And if you ask them how they heard about the party, they'll just say they knew. Or they had a *feeling*. I've got no proof here, but I think that there's a point -- a tipping point -- where enough of us gathered together exerts its own pull to gather in the ones on the outskirts. No idea what that means, if it even means anything. Maybe it's just the nature of our disease. Or maybe it's the portent of an ominous future battle royale, Highlander style. I don't fucking know. It's not exactly mandatory, though. You'll feel the pull when it's happening, alright, but you can choose to stay away. At least, after the first couple of years. It always gets the new ones. But I like it. I go more often than not. I'd try to explain why I go, but...maybe it's just easier to paint it for you, as best I can. So imagine yourself... You're walking through a cracked, deserted parking lot. Weeds poking up all over. Dark as hell, cause the lights are more decorative than functional. You can already feel the bass through the soles of your feet, which is saying something given how much kind-of-dying juiced your senses. And you feel it before you hear the music. It tells you this is the right place. So you go on, passing through the doorway to what used to be...a lobby maybe? It still has the big, built-in reception desk rising from the floor. (True story, at one of these parties some joker put a body behind a desk like that, propped in a chair. Had a little cardboard sign hanging on him that said "Security." Stuff kept getting added through the night. Almost looked like a little shrine. Then, next thing you know, the body's gone. Never did find out if somebody walked out with it, or it walked out on its own. Just another Saturday night.) Past the desk, through a doorway, and into a big, open space. You can see the places where walls *used* to be, and some of the supports are still standing. Debris everywhere. Maybe it was a conference room, surrounded by halls. Now it's a big, wrecked ballroom. There are speakers fucking *everywhere* on the perimeter. Literal surround sound. None of them match, but they all work. Most are pointed towards the center of the room, but some are laying flat -- blasting the vibration of their noise into the ground. And then there are the dead. If it's "early," there might only be a handful. But come after midnight, and it gets packed. Shoulder-to-shoulder, almost. There's no room for dancing, but it happens anyway. Not everybody, though. And not all at once. There are usually pockets of frantic, thrashing motion surrounded by figures so still that they could be in a whole different dimension. But all of them feel the beat. The songs are picked for that. It can be anything; we've had Zepplin, Hendrix, and Rush fade into Dropkick Murphys, Childish Gambino, and White Stripes. And, of course, there's the stereotypical stuff -- Rob Zombie, Nine Inch Nails, Tool, et al. The kind of shit you'd imagine us playing. (Every now and again, some smartass will pick Oingo Boingo's "Dead Man's Party," thinking that they're *so* original. Joke's on them, though. That song is always a banger.) But whatever it is, it needs a nice, strong beat. Like a human heart. The faster the better. See, when you're alive, you don't notice your own heartbeat. Not unless you're excited. Or afraid. But when you die...when it stops beating... In the first days, it's all you can notice. That, and your breathing. Think about it too much -- or not enough -- and you won't breathe right at all. Maybe you'll breathe too fast. Maybe you'll go days without doing it. It's a mindfuck. But you *are* dead, after all. You don't *need* it. However...humans are creatures of habit, and we were all human, once. Put a human through a crisis that changes pretty much every thing they knew, and they'll cling to whatever they can of normalcy. Besides, if someone notices you aren't breathing, you pretty much have to kill them. So there's that. You can't *make* your heart beat, though. I mean, you could, if you dug through your chest to find it, then gave it a nice squeeze. But that won't do anything except ruin your clothes. The point is, you start to miss it. Then you start to forget what it even felt like, to have a pulse. But in that room, full of the dead, with the music so loud and the bass blasting the speakers to oblivion, you feel it. The ground has a pulse. The air has a pulse. And so do you. You can feel it in your whole body. And you understand everything in the room all at once. You understand the wild urge of the ones in motion to dance. To do *something* that proves they still exist. To release an energy that has no target. You understand the ones who stand like statues, savoring the feeling of life that the beat gives them. It's a pale reflection of what they had, but we all take what we can get. God, just thinking about that feeling. Everything in and around you pulsing -- sometimes even faster than it did when you *were* alive. And that's another thing. You see, you've got an instinct now that wasn't there before. The only other way you can feel that pulse. When you have your mouth pressed against their skin, your teeth biting down through the soft meat. When you breach the carotid, the femoral, or the brachial and its children. That first warm gush. You were a dry, dead husk until then. You just didn't know it. It's a perfect moment. It makes *all* of this worth it. Almost. But the pulse never lasts long. It slows, and stops, and there's nothing to be done about it. Nothing will get between you and the blood. The music, though? It can go on all night. That beat can speed up, faster than any human heart, driving you into a frenzy. And when you feel it pulsing through your lips, on your tongue, it's a welcome echo of that perfect joining. No slowing. No stopping. It's enough to make a girl hungry. (On that note, I'd like to apologize to all the teachers I called bullshit on, when they said vampires were always a metaphor for sex. Granted, maybe it's just me. But when I feel someone's heartbeat against my mouth...I can almost remember those living moments. The ones where I was *so ready* I could feel my heartbeat in my lips. The ones where I wanted to kiss, and lick, and suck, and *devour.* Then I start to wonder how much I've *really* changed. And, yes, we can still fuck. But everything is a shadow next to the blood.) So, yeah. Life, with a side of death. All of what we lost. And some of what we are. The party always breaks up like it started -- guests drifting away in singles and doubles, making sure to give themselves time to get home before daylight. It gets sparse, the music shuts off, and the sky starts to brighten. But that doesn't mean the place is empty. Not yet. Remember those "outliers" I mentioned? If any are there, they'll stay through the day. They can't come out in the open -- not most of them. And it'll be hours before some of them realize the party has ended. Depends on how much they have left upstairs. See, sometimes...most times...a bite or two isn't enough. I got bled, then fed, and now I'm here. But if they just drain and drop you, you might not stay dead. I think maybe it's like a virus. I got it from the source -- a direct infusion of infected blood -- so I'm full-blown now. But the ones that just get drained don't get enough. Sometimes, not enough to make them get up again at all. They're the lucky ones. The ones that *do* get back up, we call "Deaders". Fresh ones look like exactly what they are -- a walking corpse. They still have the wound that killed them, but if they layer up in enough clothes, they can pass for a while. You ever see someone on the street bundled up in the summertime? Maybe they shuffle down the street? Maybe they shuffle past you? And maybe the breeze in their wake smells like a hot dumpster? Could always be a Deader. Once they're up, the clock is running. They have everything, at first; speech, memories, full faculties. Then, over the space of weeks to months, they start to degrade. Rot sets in. Things fall off. The brain turns to liquid. Before the end, they look pretty much like what you'd think of as the traditional zombie. Then, they eventually drop somewhere. Dead for a second time. At least, I hope so. Think about it, though. You find a corpse in an abandoned building, who's going to assume it wandered there on its own. But it might have. Or someone's body is found in their home, badly decomposed? Wonder how long they tried to pretend it was business as usual. You'd think they would have known. You can't go home again. I never liked to talk about Deaders much, anyway. Pardon the expression, but it feels like someone is walking over my grave when I do. There but for the grace of...whatever, right? It's fine. I just need to go out for a while. A nice stiff drink will set me right. *** Looking over what I've written, it's come out better than I expected. I always used to hate everything I wrote. This, not so much. I captured *something* here, alright. Some part of those crowded rooms and basements; that assembly of gathered dead. And it kept my interest. Cause it's boredom that's the real enemy. Starts to make the sun look inviting. If I was alive, I'd be 42 now. My grandparents lived into their eighties. I figure I'm owed about 40 more years before I can feel justified in throwing in the towel. And at this point, fuck it. I'll take those years just out of spite. But I wouldn't begrudge some fun now and then. If I find it here, I might be back. <3