Turns out, when a dead person speaks again from an account long since thought...well..dead, it stirs up quite a bit of a reaction. First to see it was my old best friend, a girl I gave the nickname of Clops to. She always wore these big eyeglasses which I thought was neat, was the kind of style I was totally into. Some people thought it was uncool and bullied her for it, if my memory serves me right. I click on her profile, curious how she aged since I last saw her...approximately fifteen years ago, this would make her… (oh man 15 years of doing nothing makes maths hard) 34 years old.

I tap my fingers on the rim of the laptop, waiting for the now seemingly ancient machine to chug along and load the page, I watch Colin slowly edge his way back towards his water bowl and I couldn’t help but draw a similarity between him and the laptop, eventually it loads and my jaw hit the floor. This once slightly geeky looking girl had grown into a right beaut, her background picture was of her standing in an office room, holding a plaque with her name of it, and then something caught my attention the plaque read: ‘Mayoress Chloe Manfield’ and then something even more surprising steals my eye.

“graa! Shgrus a cychruups?!” I fell backwards, clipping the back of my head on my desk leg and with a truly disgusting noise my neck gives up the ghost. Yes that’s right, the shock of learning my best friend was a cyclops caused me to loose my head. Annoyingly my head pops off and ends up face down in the rug. “Mmph” I can still feel my body and I try to remember where I ended up in the rug to coordinate my body in finding it again. I can hear the sound of someone running along the hallway, Guy must have heard me fall. The door slams open

“Sylvie! Oh god!” I’m suddenly lifted from the ground in what would be a nauseous experience if my mouth had anything connected in order to throw up. I can see and feel my body crawling around the floor, trying to find my head.

“Mmmrruuh, puh mr bahck” I growl, Guy’s hands squishing my cheeks. He cautiously hands my head to my body, and I stick my noggin back between my shoulders where it should be. I sigh, which comes out more like another groan, and lay down on my bed. My best friend? A Cyclops? And mayor?! Being a...monster really must be normal now then. Guy clears his throat.

“I’ve called a specialist to come take a look at you. I don’t know if you’ve seen but people like you are...more normal now. There was an accident on live TV where a musician stood up on stage, in front of hundreds of thousands of people and declared himself to be a Satyr, before ripping off his trousers to show his goat legs” I can only imagine the thought process of the crowds then. ‘Is this dude deluded, woah mate don’t do that I don’t want to see your...oh…’ I giggled, and then coughed hard. I really wish I had a working voice box. Guy continues after I finish my coughing spree. “From that point on, lots of different celebs and important figures revealed themselves to be creatures of legend, and then normal people started doing it too. Before long it had turned out that a good 7 or 8% of the population turned out to be creatures of legend. Monster people if you will, although some people still don’t like that term” I nod at him, choosing not to speak again.

“I contacted a woman I know, an expert on monsters and their needs and welfare, she’ll be here in half an hour” I nod, maybe I can get some answers about my anatomy and whether or not...I crave human flesh or anything like that. I don’t want to eat people, I like people! I shudder, sincerely hoping that’s not the case. “Right, I’ll leave you to it” He closes the door just as the laptop pings, its Clops!

Chloe Manfield: Is this some sort of sick joke?

I don’t blame her for taking it like that.

Sylvie Wade: No, its a long story. Wait a sec

I rise to my feet and step over to the shelves, trying to find my old webcam. I find it lying in a cardboard box with a bunch of tech that I guess must be ancient now. I spy a Pokewalker in there so I grab that too, returning to the laptop I see a few more people have seen the post. I plug the webcam in and it flashes into life. I take a photo with it, smiling with my hand making the peace sign, the preview pops up. I appear to have kept most of my teeth, a few still missing that I assume was knocked off in the accident. My glowing green eyes looking even stranger in the image, I almost look possessed. I sent the image to Chloe.

Sylvie: So I suppose we’re both monster girls now huh?

Chloe: My god, you’re a zombie? How did it happen?

Sylvie: It was the creep next door, do you remember him from when you slept over. With the overgrown lawn and the strange noises? He somehow revived me, wanted to keep me as like a Zombie Slave maid or something, I still have the costume he dressed my body in.

Chloe: I’m sending the police to him now.

Sylvie: Might need an ambulance and a firetruck too, I kicked over a candle and set light to his basement accidentally. Guy has a specialist coming to check me out apparently.

Chloe: Ok Sylv, stay safe.

I spent the time waiting for the Monster specialist to come trying to sort through all my old stuff that hadn’t been kept out, mainly all the electronic stuff like my various handhelds. I was a little nerdy myself so I liked video games, mainly playing obscure stuff. I loved the Choro Q line of games so I had all the ones I could get my hands on, from the open world of Road Trip Adventure, to the story focused Choro Q HG 4, the final of that line of games to get PAL releases. So the first thing I did was plug in my PS2 to the TV and started playing them, I had just gotten to My City when I hear a knock at the door downstairs. I pause the game and walk out to the landing, loitering at the top of the stairs looking down at the front door. Guy comes out of the kitchen and opens it.

He gestures for the woman to come in and she does so, standing on the doormat we have placed inside, she reaches down and unclasps her heels, placing them neatly near the shoe rack. She looked like a stern woman, wearing a very grey business suit with a light blue blouse underneath. The one thing that especially stood out about her though was the set of horns that poke out between her fringe. She was definitely of Asian descent though. She turns to Guy, looking past him towards the kitchen.

“So where is she?”

“Upstairs, sorry for waking you like this Shi. But you’re the only person I know who knows this sort of thing” I quickly duck back and run along back to my room as quietly as possible, hoping they don’t hear that I was eavesdropping. I duck into my room and try to look like I’d always been there making sure to close it quietly behind me. I plopped myself down by the tortoise enclosure and began stroking his carapice. A knock sounds on the door and I let out a noise, having long since given up on trying to actually communicate using words. Guy opens the door and steps in, pulling a chair behind him. He places it in the room and signals the woman to come in. She enters and gives me a smile and sets herself down on the seat, she looked fairly regular until you saw her head, where a horn protrudes between her fringe..

“Hello Sylvie, I am Shiori Rivers, although you can call me Shi” I’d love to Shiori buuuuut… “Guy told me everything, and I can see he was certainly accurate. You are a zombie. You’re quite unique in fact, as I do not know of any other confirmed zombies that exist so far. Plenty of Centaurs, Minotaurs, Satyrs, Oni like myself and plenty of other creatures of what normal man would have called legend” Oh so she's an Oni, whatever that is.

“Now I have some questions for you, simple yes or no. So just nod or shake your head or something ok? Now lets start. Can you speak?” I shake my head

“Do you feel pain?” I bring my arm up to show her, the scar from the broken glass of the window. I didn’t feel it at all, and it appears to have pretty much already healed. I shake my head again for her.

“Are you hungry?” I nod, although I have no idea what I could and couldn’t eat. She reaches down to a bag she had brought in with her and pulls out an apple and passes it to me. “Try eating it” I take a bite of the apple and spit it out immediately, it felt vile in my mouth, almost tasteless but I instinctively knew I couldn’t eat it. Shiori nods, as if I confirmed something she expected. She then pulled out a packet of bacon rashers, and passed it to me. I pull off the wrapper and take a sniff, it smelled divine to me. I spy Guy, who had been watching us, give Shiori a worried look.

I scoff it down and it tasted as divine as it smelt, It may have not even been cooked before but I didn’t care. Even Shiori looked slightly taken aback at the voracious way in which I tore into it. Once done I laid back and rested a hand on my stomach, man that was good. First actually tasteful food I’d had in fifteen years.

“Now Sylvie, this is the most important question, when you look at Guy or me, what do you see or smell? Do you see something you’d like to sink your teeth into or do you see us as people, like yourself?” This was something I wanted to answer myself, and being given that meat had made me realise something. I stand up and move over to her, leaning in close. I can see her tense up, clenching her small fist. I sniff once or twice, the scent of perfume funneling up my nostrils. She doesn’t smell good in the same way those bacon rashers did, to confirm it I move over to Guy and do the same thing. Nope, humans don’t appear to be on my radar foodwise, they don’t seem tasty or smell any different to before.

I’m definitely a carnivore, but no man-eater. I shake my head to her and sit back down on the carpet like before. Shiori sighs as if the world’s pressure had ceased weighing on her shoulders and smiles at me once again. “It appears that you’re no harm to people as you are, however. I will suggest that you wear some kind of...and I regret that this has to be a thing.., but yes. I’ll advise that you wear a muzzle in public. Just in case”

“Mrrrgh?!” A muzzle! Like some dog?!