Our waitress disappeared, but before our conversation could resume a young woman approached our table, filled with apprehension. Thomas turned to face her with his worm-encrusted face, and her mouth fell open. The color left her cheeks. She backpedaled into a table before she found her voice, then finally screamed a piercing, horrified wail. Thomas smiled and waved. Stumbling in blind horror, the woman dashed to the parking lot.

"I suppose you get that a lot?" I asked.

"Not really," Thomas sighed. "That was my ex-wife." He slid out of his chair and up onto his feet, peering anxiously over a row of hedges. Moments later the woman's car squealed by, tires flinging away curls of white smoke. "MAYBE NEXT TIME YOU'LL LEAVE THE MONKEY PAW IN THE BOX, BITCH!" Thomas screamed. "That used to be my car," he pointed out, turning to me with his sunken eyes flashing. "But notice she took the hose out of the exhaust pipe."

"This card has been rejected," our waitress said in a cold voice, sneaking up on us from behind. "Computer says you're deceased."

The rear lot behind Blizzard.
"No DOY, Angela Lansbury," snapped my undead friend. "Since when did Visa get Deep Blue working for them!?"

I passed her a twenty and ushered Thomas away before the scene got any worse. Only half an hour before, I had seen a shriveled up corpse animated through some dark magic I couldn't begin to comprehend. But now, now I saw R.J. Thomas (deceased) for what he really was: a man, trying desperately to belong in a world that wouldn't have him.

We walked back toward his office in silence. Finally, after the tension ebbed, Thomas spoke frankly. "You don't know what it's like. There you are, minding your own business, shuffling through a graveyard after the smell of fresh brains. Suddenly, you've got some kid out there with a baseball bat trying to smack your skull off like slow-pitch softball."

I nodded.

"I mean, just because we're dead, doesn't mean we're not human! Except for the liches, that is. What I mean to say is, if you prick us, do we not bleed? I say that metaphorically, of course. Because I don't bleed. Although, if you were to cut a gash in my arm and give it a good shake, all sorts of clotted blood and lumps of congealed tissue would fall out. So in that respect, you and I are a lot alike."

"I have a vision."
We stopped on the sidewalk, and he turned to face me, waving his arms passionately. Clumps of his hair fell away in the wind. "That's why I love my work at Blizzard," he continued. "They really give me a chance to express myself. Through art! You know, to really say what I want to say."

"And what DO you want to say?" I asked. "What are your hopes? Your dreams? What message do you want to get across?"

Thomas leaned back and stared at the afternoon sun, his left eyeball sulking slowly back into his skull until it disappeared entirely. "I just want ... I want to see the world covered in a creeping cloud of festering undeath, a demonic plague sucking the life out of all who walk the earth and turning them into shambling masses of indescribable pain and unending torment."

He paused, then turned to me. "...is that so wrong?" •