Diary of a Gay Teenage Zombie Read online

  Eventually he got sick of it and showed us his new mobile phone. I pretended to be impressed. "I knew you'd like it, tiny" he said and trudged off. Scott always calls me tiny because, according to popular rumour, his dick hangs down to between his knees. There is anecdotal evidence to support this, but I've yet to obtain photographic evidence.

  8 January 2014

  For this year's English book report, Mr McLeash has forbidden 'Fifty Shades of Grey'. He said that it is not suitable reading material for anyone of our age group, anyone of his age group, or anyone of any group. I just hope that he never finds my stash of porn.

  After school, CC took me out for a milkshake. We went to the new ice cream store not far from school, I had a blueberry shake and she had banana and kiwi. One of these days, I really want to tell her what I am - the whole zombie thing. I tried to think about raising the subject today, but it didn't seem to be the type of thing that people should discuss over frothy dairy beverages.

  9 January 2014

  Complete disaster at school today. I overslept tonight after having stayed up late last night to watch 'Alien'. Mom knocked on my door three times, but I still managed to sleep through the first two. At last my emergency last-minute-warning alarm clock woke me up. I yanked my clothes on and almost tripped over my pants legs. Charged down the stairs, rushed right out the door, barely having enough time to give my make-up a second coat. I ran down the street, slathering foundation on and smearing it all over the neck of my coat.

  That was when it started to rain.

  By the time I got to school, I was running at full speed to get out of the rainwater. My makeup was running from my face in thin streams, revealing the dull grey shade underneath. The halls were completely deserted, and I realised that first class was already in session. I rushed into the bathroom, tugged open my shirt and began to reapply my make-up.

  Halfway through, Scott walked in. He stood there and stared at me for what must have been a whole minute, me with my shirt open and me standing there gently applying a second layer of skin-coloured foundation to my pale flesh.

  Finally, he said "What the hell are you doing, tiny?"

  I stuttered for a moment. "Skin medicine?" I tried. It was a wild guess. It was a stupid thing to say. But I was desperate, I couldn't think of anything to say. I mentally kicked myself. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It was the first thing that had sprang to mind. I couldn't believe how stupid it sounded, how utterly unbelievable, how idiotic.

  "Oh" said Scott, "Okay, cool. ''Scuse me, I've got to take a dump." Then he walked right past me to the stalls.

  Sometimes, I can't believe my luck.

  10 January 2014

  I was speaking with CC today and she told me that she doesn't think I pay enough attention to what goes on in the world. I told her that this was wrong and that I have my finger on the pulse of current affairs. To prove this, I bought a bunch of newspapers on the way home and I intend to read them all over the weekend.

  The front page of The Herald says "Thousands more RBS staff face axe in £1b cuts plan", which I guess means that more people are losing their jobs. My dad says that is the best thing that can happen to bankers.

  The front page of The Guardian says "Thousands due bedroom tax refunds after blunder by DWP". That's a good thing, I guess. My mom was so worried about having to pay a bedroom tax that she tried to brick up the entire walk-in cupboard in case the tax man decided that we might squeeze a bed in there.

  Uncle Frank would have a fit if he seen the headlines on The Times, "Rise in Muslim birth-rate as families 'feel British'". Despite all of those stories, though, The Daily Star's headline is "Big Brother babe's kinky sex romp with Simon Cowell's girl".

  11 January 2014

  Forty-one years ago, they changed being gay from being a mental illness into just a normal part of who you are. My dad wasn't even born then.

  12 January 2014

  During an especially exciting round of Call of Duty this afternoon, I hammered the control pad with my thumb a little too hard and accidently broke it. My thumb, that is, not the controller. It kind of snapped off and rolled across the floor. I had to dig it out from under my bed with an old tennis racket and superglue it back in place.

  This is also why I do not play sports.

  13 January 2014

  The skin on my thumb seems to have healed up alright. You can barely tell that the entire digit had flown from my hand in a spectacular swan dive yesterday afternoon. I snarfed almost a full pack of Tesco value minced beef (straight from the packet, too) and it seems to have done the trick.

  I really don't understand how this all works. Let's put down in ink everything I've figured out so far.

  1-I don't have a heartbeat. Therefore, I don't normally have any blood in my body, except when I eat.

  2-I can eat most things, but anything I swallow tastes like nothing at all except for meat. That's the only thing I can actually eat with any level of enjoyment, and the closer it is to raw then the better it seems to taste. In addition, the better I feel afterwards. Over-processed meat is not much better than a salad for me, I've found.

  3-If I don't eat enough meat, I start to get 'hungry'. That's bad. At that point, I start to be unable to think of anything else. After about six hours, all I can think of is satisfying it. And at that point, it doesn't matter where it comes from, either. Ask the neighbour whose cat almost 'vanished' last August.

  4-Additional risks of going without meat include lethargy and fragility. Basically, I start to feel 'dead'. I find it very difficult to think, moving takes more effort and I have less control over myself. I also break more easily, like yesterday. My skin becomes even more pronouncedly deathly.

  5-Good things from chowing down on meat include that I retain my sense of self, and that I can more easily pass for being, well, me. I can, although gradually, fix up any injury I seem to suffer this way, although I'm not sure what the limits of this might be. I also seem to distil some blood from the meat, perhaps through osmosis or some science-like word like that, because I can sometimes blush or bruise, and in particularly good moments, get wood.

  6-The last bit of point five is pretty much the most important thing of this entire list. And I’m not sure how to feel about that.

  14 January 2014

  One girl in our Maths class has had her hair puffed up into a makeshift beehive type of style, by pinning the back of it into a bun so that it forces the top of her hair to arch up like it's the back of a scared cat. She must have seen it on 'The Only Way Is Essex' or something, because it's not a hairstyle that any normal person would willingly get. CC thinks that it's a means to display to her natural predators that she is bigger than she actually is, in order to scare them away. I disagree, I think she's hiding a hideous Siamese twin that's growing out of the top of her head.

  15 January 2014

  Had an excellent day in philosophy class today. Mr Swanson started off by telling us that free will is an illusion, just like love. He then explained that human nature tends towards chaos and disharmony, just like when his wife left him last week. Then he told us that time moves in great cycles of repeating patterns, just like when his wife cheated on him the last four times. Finally he told us that the world was only an illusion of his mind, so the only things he was truly aware of was himself and his own suffering. Then he burst into tears and dismissed the class. I feel like I really learned a lot. I've never been so in touch with my philosophical mind.

  16 January 2014

  Shocking events at school today! Mr Swanson tried to jump out of one of the windows in the art room. And that's right up on the fourth floor, so it would definitely have been fatal! CC was in a nearby art room at the time, she told me that he was stinking of whisky and was smoking a joint at the time too, so he was obviously blitzed out of his skull! In front of the first years, too! The police had to be called out to talk him down. Then he shouted at them to keep back 'or else', so the police called in the armed units, who had guns! It was really exc
iting. If we lived in America, they'd have shot him right there for wasting everyone's time and being a pest.

  In other news, the jury is still out on Scott's wang. If we continue to have no further information, I will consider employing a spy.

  17 January 2014

  The school seems much quieter after yesterday's excitement. Nobody is talking about Mr Swanson. Rumour has it that he was laid off. Another rumour is it that the police shot him and are covering up the whole thing. I will rent out a couple of books on philosophers from the library in his honour.

  Had a very weird evening. After dinner, dad asked if I wanted to go out for a drive. We got in the car and he drove out of town, and for about an hour he drove into the countryside until we came to a hill. He parked the car on a dirt track, got out and started walking up the hill. I trudged after him. When we got to the top, he sat on a rock and looked up into the sky.

  "What do you see up there, Jay?" he asked me.

  I looked up, the sky was full of stars. And a moon. It looked totally lame. I was bored and it was cold, so I wanted to just say something dramatic and intelligent so that we could go home. "The future?" I said.

  My dad slapped his knee and said "Yes, that's what I always thought. That's exactly what I always thought, Jay. When I was your age, I thought that the future was written out for us, ready for us to simply reach out and grasp it. But it isn't like that at all, is it? Not really."

  "No, sure" I said. I wished he'd hurry up. I tried to think of what one of those philosophers would have said. I couldn't think of anything, so I just said that line from Terminator 2. "The future isn't set, y'know. There's no fate except what we make."

  Dad sighed. "I guess that's right. We don't really plan our lives, son. I mean, we can try to, but it doesn't always turn out like we had hoped. I didn't ever expect to find your mother. And you were, well, you were a complete surprise."

  I don't know what he meant by that.

  "I guess what I'm saying," dad said, "is that life doesn't turn out quite like you ever expect it to. And not always for the better."

  I thought, man, he has NO idea. He's never been bitten by a zombie. Hey, maybe I'm secretly the vanguard of a zombie outbreak apocalypse or something? That'd be kinda cool.

  Anyway, dad sighed a bit more and looked kinda mopey. Maybe he's having a mid-life crisis. I hope so, people who do that tend to buy sports cars and I'd love one of those.

  18 January 2014

  I went to the library today to get some books on philosophers. I know it's really outdated to do that, I could just google for them, but I kinda like the feeling of properly turning pages. So I got a few books out.

  On the way back home, I ran into Mr Swanson! He was slouched against a wall of an off-licence. His suit was all crumpled and he smelled like he hadn't showered in forever. He was holding half a bottle of scotch. He looked really sad, so I told him not to feel down because reality is just an illusion, like he taught us. He told me to piss off and tried to throw the bottle at me.

  I'm not sure I care for philosophy anymore.

  19 January 2014

  I got home today to find that mom had cleaned out my whole room. Everything has been tidied up and the entire place smells of perfume. She said that it stank of meat. I’ve checked and she hasn’t found my stash, thankfully. I really wish that she would respect my privacy more. She’s my mom, not a maid. Plus, I can’t find all my stuff now. It’s like living under some kind of despotic regime.

  20 January 2014

  The neighbours had a massive argument this evening. It was so loud that I could hear it right through the wall. From what I could overhear, Mrs Price thinks that Mr Price isn't the father of her unborn baby. Mr Price thinks that Mrs Price is a whore and wants a DNA test. Mrs Price thinks that they should go on Jeremy Kyle to get one, but Mr Price won't go on it because his sister was on it last spring to get a lie detector test to prove that her ex-boyfriend was still on drugs.

  I tried to call CC to talk to her about it, but she was catching up on watching 'True Detectives'.

  21 January 2014

  This year, our drama class is performing scenes from 'Rent'. I was hoping for 'Les Miserables', because my mom has that on DVD. Don't know anything about 'Rent'. I asked CC about it, she said it's about people dealing with HIV, so I might try out for it. Scott says that it's a gay play, but he says that about every musical. I can't help but think that I'm qualified for this, I mean I was 'infected' with something as well.

  22 January 2014

  Today in English class, Mr Richards caught me drawing in the back of my notebook and told me to stop. This really annoyed me, it's such an intrusion on my artistic, creative spirit. It's not as if he was saying anything particularly interesting anyway, and I had the good manners to sit in the back of the class so that I was out of everyone's way while I'm drawing.

  Following this, I've examined a lot of my art. I'm starting to think that since I was bitten, the quality of my sketches has diminished. I'm actually terrified of this. I asked my mom about this, showing her some of my work from a year ago and asked her "Do you think my artistic capacity has been impacted somehow?" She smiled to me and said "Oh Jay, don't be ridiculous. Those are lovely spiders you've drawn."

  I fear that I will never be appreciated for my art. It’s very important that artists are appreciated for their art – look at what happened to Hitler! Nobody appreciated him, and he went mental.

  23 January 2014

  I showed CC some of my more recent artwork and asked for her honest feedback. She took a long look at it, peering at it from all different angles and distances. Finally, she gave a sad sigh. "Your work is indicative of a great sense of tension deep inside you" she said. "Do you see the rigid lines? It's all so tense, terribly and agonisingly so."

  I think she was making it up, if I'm honest.

  Still, I asked her what she could suggest. "Well, it could be caused by too much pent-up sexual energy without any outlet" she said. I told her that I could have told her that. She said that she will bring over some meditation incense after school today.

  24 January 2014

  The incense did not work. I was half expecting my parents to freak out the moment that they smelled any of it, but amazingly they did not, which was actually rather cool of them. Me and CC lit up two sticks and sat cross-legged on the floor of my room with our eyes closed trying to feel calm. It didn't work, eventually we put on some music to help. CC suggested some 4-hour tracks from a website which apparently filtered whale song through a variety of crystals, but I eventually argued her down to listening to Cradle of Filth instead. When she left, the room was still hazy with incense smoke.

  I woke up about 2pm that night feeling very, very sick. My eyes felt as if they were dry rocks sitting in the sockets of my head, and it hurt to blink. My throat felt parched and brittle like sandpaper. I pulled myself out of bed and stumbled into the hallway. For a moment I thought I was sick. Then I remembered that this wasn't possible, and quickly made my way into the kitchen to get something to eat. As I was pulling a packet of beef burgers from the freezer, I realised that if I wasn't careful then I would wake up my family - and if mom or dad walked in on me like this, the results would be awful. In the very best of cases, they'd have thought I was on drugs or something. At worst, I'd have lost control and tried to snack down on them. That sounds terrible, but it's something that I know is a possibility, as much as I hate to admit it.

  I hurried into the garage instead, planning to grab a coat and hurry out of the house (wearing only an old Motorhead t-shirt and boxers at the time, I realise that I was probably underestimating acceptable January night-travelling attire) when I caught the scent of something. One of dad's mousetraps had caught a small brown field mouse. And, best of all, it was still warm.

  Nothing quite like wolfing down a dead mouse at 2am in the morning wearing just your boxer shorts to realise that your life is going nowhere fast.

  25 January 2014

  I've
just realised that the audition for the play is on Monday! I've barely done any practice, let alone actually listened to any of the songs. I flicked through a few online and have downloaded a copy of "One Song Glory" which I think I can perform pretty nicely. Mom asked me to keep the volume down. I told her that with my artwork suffering as much as it is due to stress, acting may be my only creative outlet. Mom told me that I needed to get over the fact that my life isn't an episode of Grange Hill. I wish she'd stop talking about her ancient old dinosaur TV shows.

  26 January 2014

  Ever since I ate that mouse a few days ago, I've felt a bit wrong. I suppose that should go without saying. A year ago, I'd have been disgusted at the very idea of sitting there, ripping bits of sinew from some dead thing with my teeth, getting smears of its blood on my face. A year ago, that would have turned my stomach. Now, thinking back on it, I just feel hungry again.

  Let's lay this down so that I can look at it from a distance.

  I've watched a LOT of zombie movies over the last few months. When I watch them, I usually leave feeling a little bit worse for it. A little bit personally hurt, as if the movies serve to remind me that I'm meant to be something horrible. But putting that all aside, there are three different kind of 'zombies' I've seen in movies.

  1-The magic ones. Voodoo, although that's less common in modern films. Sometimes this is a lot like that line from 'Dawn of the Dead', where the guy says that the dead are rising up because Hell is full. Either way, some kind of supernatural, magic or divine reason. I'm not sure that this applies to me. I've never met a voodoo witch doctor or a gypsie to curse me, and I don't think Hell is full because my great uncle Jacob died in October and hasn't come back yet.

  2-Chemical or toxic waste. The 'Return of the Living Dead' kind of a thing. Also unlikely, I don't remember swimming through any weird glowing goo when I was on summer holiday, and although it did rain I don't think it was acid. One line did stick out with this film though, the idea that zombies eat brains because it takes away the pain of feeling their bodies dying. I wonder how much that applies to me.