College Zombie Classes

Zombie photo by Grant Neubeld

The smell of new, glossy magazines wafted through the air and brown boxes of blank tax return forms littered the corner. My fingers closed around an envelope crammed into the tiny post office box. I pried it out. Then I pried out another until the wad loosened enough to pull out the bulk of the mail. Around the corner, I heard the tap of skin against glass.

"You have to touch the screen," a woman said.

"I know that," another woman answered in a deadpan voice.

"Well, touch it."

"I am touching it. Nothing is happening."

"Did you touch it?"

Slap, slap, slap. "I'm touching it. Nothing is happening."

The little door of my postal box squeaked closed and the key turned. Holding two weeks worth of junk mail to my chest, I shuffled around the corner. A woman with long, straight black hair punched the screen of the automatic package postage machine. She turned toward me, eyes blank, skin pale, hair nearly black except for a few gray ones glowing in the florescent lighting.

She jabbed the glass again. “Nothing,” came her monotone moan.

My eyes widened. The only reason for the screen not to register her touch was because she was a zombie. I clutched my mail and ran from the post office, sliding into my car and locking the doors.

I told my friend, Paul, about spotting the zombie at the post office and he said she probably worked at the community college. “You remember taking zombie classes, right?”

“No,” I said. “They didn’t offer zombie classes at my college.”

He chuckled. “Sure they did. You may not have realized it. They have zombie teachers.”

“Um humm,” I scoffed.

He went on, unperturbed. “The zombie teacher gets up in front of the class and casts a zombie spell, making all the students become zombies. The only thing that saves them is the bell at the end of the hour.”

I raised an eyebrow. “The bell?”

“Sure, the bell.” He nodded. “When the bell rings, or if there is no bell, then when the door opens and students start to file in for the next class, the zombie students wake up and stumble out of the room.”

“Wait,” I said as a shiver rippled through me. “I had a history teacher that may have been a zombie.” He didn't stand in the front of the class, though. He sat in the back of the room and played a tape recorded lecture. Probably because as a zombie, he couldn't speak.

“Well when the students wake up, they don’t remember anything that went on during the hour. It’s as if they were asleep.” His eyes fixed on mine. “But they weren’t asleep, they had been zombies for that hour.”

Goosebumps prickled up my arms. I thought of the first essay test. After attending every class, and reading the history book written by the zombie teacher, it was as if I could remember nothing. My essay test remained blank. When I handed in the paper with just my name on it, I went down to the administration building and dropped the class. Eventually I took it again from a lively, energetic instructor and passed with flying colors. All this time, I thought something was lacking in me during that first history class. But could it be there was no memory of his lectures because of the zombie induced slumber? If I hadn’t dropped the class after the first test, would I have become a zombie permanently? And is there record of the zombie class on my college transcripts?