Click the pic for the original challenge. Written for Ermilia’s Picture It & Write.
The phone rang, once, twice, three times…
I glanced casually over at the caller ID before the fourth, but I knew what it would read, and I knew I couldn’t answer. Work – of course- and my head turned hypnotized back to the picture in the magazine.
It wasn’t so much that the shadowy corpse depicted there could have been a real-life zombie amid the post-apocalyptic frenzy of today’s entertainment culture that intrigued me. The horror of someone’s death, the creepy circumstances that had naturally embalmed them so – none of that mattered any more than the phone call going to voice mail on my nightstand. What struck me about this necroptic image was the androgynous cloak of meaninglessness a photographer’s lens had cast upon it.
Ha, Call me Caitlyn, I mused.
If only there was a way I could explain to the world what it means to be me, how much easier my life would have been to simply be this poor creature, this hapless victim of freeze-frame forensics, lacking in genitalia more obviously than lacking in life. In a way, I knew I was staring at myself, and for once – for all the mirrors had failed to show me – I knew…
Well, I just knew I couldn’t go to work.
© 2015 Anne Schilde
Sometimes reading the news is enough to change our entire state of being and mood. I find myself picking at the meaning in your story. I think I’m overthinking it. I’m just so excited to read your words again. 🙂 Thanks for chiming in this week Anne. I hope you come back again next week!
Ermisenda
I admit the recent media focus on Caitlyn Jenner has had me feeling a bit fricted… <– may I coin that here? I am as supportive of transgendered men and women – you may remember the journey of my friend Kelly – as anyone, but every time I see any one group of people drawn particular attention, I immediately feel for the unfairness to all those who fit into groups that will never be accepted or who simply don't fit in at all. At the risk of another Annietorial, I'll stop there, but that was more or less the bubble that burst when I saw the picture. I'm glad you were excited by the words that leaked out.
Good to read your work again Anne. I think zombies are by definition simple creatures easy to understand. The lack of ease of understanding is one of the prices of being human.
Silly zombies. Perhaps it is an easy-way-out mentality that causes us to embrace them so. I should probably be avoiding mention of them for fear I dream them again. They are a rather unpleasant sort in their very simple kind of way.