WHAT ALIVE TASTES LIKE

A ghost and a zombie were staring at each other. 

It was hard to tell which one of them was more dead. The zombie had a greenish skin that matched perfectly her pink destroyed clothes. Some said she had once been this famous singer that no one ever remembers. Nobody listened to her songs anymore. She was really dead and yet, she could talk and walk. Sitting on one of the tombstones in the graveyard, anyone would have thought she was a real person in disguised. An old one, with hair falling from her round skull and not enough teeth in her mouth. But a person nonetheless. 

The ghost was laying directly at her feet, spread out on a freshly dug grave. Maybe it was his own. Maybe not. The last thing he remembered was being buried six feet under the surface in a wooden coffin. His nails had been scraping the dirt out of his eyes and he had screamed and screamed for someone to save him. No one had come. He had died buried alive at the age of twenty-two. Or maybe ten or two. At this point, all he knew was that his skin had never been so smooth. 

“I’m hungry,” the zombie grunted. 

The ghost slowly raised his head to look at her. She was horrific, scary, and ugly, and yet he smiled. For the first time in a long time, he was not alone. If a dead person counted as a company. 

“Do you still eat?” the ghost asked. 

The wind blew on the graveyard making everything fly. The dead leaves were the first ones to dance in the gray sky. Some alone, some by couple or families, they all started to turn, jump, and twirl around them. The graves waited for them to find their rhythm before they started to sing. Only the dead could hear what they said but it was beautiful. 

“Sometimes, even though I don’t like to,” the zombie answered. 

The ghost raised a brow before he took a seat on the closest tombstone, right in front of the zombie. 

“Have you seen my teeth?” she added.

“I would sell my soul to forget them,” the ghost grinned. 

It wasn’t his first time seeing the zombie, they had spoken a few times before. They both wanted to know what had pushed them to stay on earth in different ways. The zombie thought she had deserved it because her life had been so full of good intentions. But because the ghost couldn’t remember his own life, he believed that maybe his sins were the reason death had refused him. 

“You don’t have a soul,” the zombie noticed. 

The clouds were moving fast above their heads as if time had decided to go even faster. Maybe they would die again. Maybe not. The ghost didn’t know what he would have liked better. An endless life didn’t have to be a happy one. Most of the time, to live forever meant to love and to lose, to laugh and to cry, and to see everyone you knew die. No matter how hard you tried, death always wins the fight. 

“Maybe not,” the ghost agreed. “But I’m pretty sure that if I had one, I wouldn’t be here talking to you.”

“Why not?”

The ghost took an apple fallen from the tree that slowly grew above their head and tossed it to the zombie who dodged it.

“If we both had a soul, I’d be dead and you would have teeth,” he explained.

What he wanted to say was that if they both had a soul, they would be dead. Really dead. They would have found a place either in Hell or Heaven. Yet, they were sitting in the middle of a graveyard, talking to each other as old friends would. 

“Maybe,” the zombie sighed.

“Are you still hungry?”

The ghost didn’t know if the zombie really was a zombie. Maybe she was just an old woman not quite ready to die. Or she wasn’t real at all and he was talking to himself. The ghost didn’t know if he really was a ghost either. But it seems to be the most realistic possibility. He had died. He had felt his last breath leave his lungs. But he had not come back as a zombie, he looked better, smelled better, and he didn’t need to eat or sleep anymore. 

“I could eat an entire family if one would sacrifice itself,” the zombie answered. 

“Please, don’t eat people in front of me,” the ghost pleaded. 

The smile on the zombie’s lips was not reassuring. 

“I could still try to eat you?” she offered. 

The ghost got to his feet but the zombie was already holding on to his arm. She was strong, way stronger than him. She had still enough life inside her to play human. Before the ghost could do or say anything, she had bitten his hand. Blood flooded between her lips before crashing on the grass beneath them but the ghost did not hurt. Maybe he could not feel anything at all. Maybe this body —what was left of it— had never been his. 

“Warn me the next time you try to eat me,” the ghost growled when the zombie took a step back. 

“You don’t test good,” she noticed.

“I’m dead.”

“Well, dead don’t taste good.”

They exchange a glance before sitting back down on their tombstones. The ghost’s hand had a tooth stuck in its middle but none of them noticed. Someone was coming. A young boy with big blue eyes and blond hair falling on his forehead. If the ghost had been alive, he would have found him cute but the ghost was dead.

“What do you think alive taste like?” the zombie asked. 

“Better?”

The zombie was already running, fresh blood dripping down her chin. The boy didn’t see her coming. He did not see her at all. When she tried to catch him, the zombie went right through the boy as if none of them existed. 

“Maybe dead people can’t taste alive people?” the ghost tried. 

The zombie snarled back at him.

“You could still eat mud, I’m pretty sure it’s not alive,” he added. 

The ghost saw the zombie hurrying back to her tombstone, passing once more through the boy. She wasn’t pleased, that much was obvious. But the ghost couldn’t tell exactly how she felt because of the burned half of her face. 

“I’ll never know what alive tastes like,” the zombie cried. 

“I’m gonna cook you some rocks, you’re gonna love it.”

The ghost took a rock and tossed it to the zombie who dropped it in her mouth. Teeth cracked. The ghost looked back at the boy, at the life surrounding him, and thought that maybe alive wasn’t so much better than dead. Alive meant being scared to die, and if dead was only talking to stupid zombies, the ghost could manage.

“Iurhvfdezprhgvnrdfkjazepoihzfrn,” the zombie mumbled. 

“Rocks are good for you,” the ghost answered. “Bet they taste better than me.”

The zombie grabbed a handful of mud and ate it with a large smile. 

“Yiyrtywohyfbdkjzseh?”

The ghost faked a smile before swallowing the mud. It tasted horrible and if he had anything in his stomach before, he would have vomited. 

“Delicious,” the ghost winced.

The zombie gave him some more and they both ate, their heads turned toward the dancing leaves. It was easy to get used to eating mud, maybe one day it would even taste good. Better than dead anyway. 

The boy later came back to the graves of Jane Watel and her son, and all he saw were colored leaves gently flying around the tombstones.