After talking about zombie families and children, I realized that to my readers, my own origins remain a mystery. It’s not surprising really, because it’s not something I like to talk about or even think about if I can avoid it. Even so, I will pull back the veil and reveal the tragic details of my death. I’d like to remind you that we are dead, and therefore don’t age by the conventional definition. I did not grow up from a little zombie tyke. I was alive for twenty years before I died.

Late senior year of high school, I met a girl on the internet. Hold your groans about the failures of internet dating, because I don’t want to hear them. It doesn’t work for everyone, but it worked fine for me then.

To continue, I met this girl. We were introduced to each other through friends and only really talked on occasion, when one of us was extremely bored and had no one else to talk to. I suspect that’s how the majority of internet relationships, at least the ones that end up working out fairly well, develop. In time (I can’t recall how or when it happened), talking to her went from an occasional thing to a daily occurrence that I looked forward to greatly.

When you’re young like we were, meeting in person is a dreamy fantasy, distant and out of reach. A part-time job flipping burgers is hardly enough income to make it a reality. Instead, you have to settle with spending as much time as possible at a keyboard, letting text convey your thoughts and feelings. And so we did, almost daily. We shared everything we had to share, minds and souls entwined, if not bodies. A year and a half of savings finally paved the way, and a long, anticipation-filled car ride finally brought us together.

I imagine this is where you’re expecting the girl to turn out to be a zombie, and that she had hidden it from me for all this time. That she was a hideous, rotting corpse awaiting her prey where we had agreed to meet. Perhaps even outrage at being duped and dragged into the life of a zombie.

Not even close. She was everything I expected and more, and the weekend we spent together could not have been more perfect. We capped the last night off with a walk along the beach in the glow of carnival lights. We whispered sweetly how we wanted it to go on forever.