ZOMBIES

Everywhere you look, you see zombies. They are behind phone screens, staring into pixels. Two-dimensional pictures of cats and women in lingerie give them instant gratification. Sacks of flesh, complete with skin, membrane, and even hearts, think of nothing except the infinite DOOMSCROLL. 

Zombification: Step 1. 

0 hours of usage. 

Download the app that everyone’s talking about. Instant access to the most intimate parts of people’s lives. “This app will change the way you perceive the world.” Now, instead of having to live, you can view the entire world on phone screen. How magical is that? Libbie is vacationing in the Maldives. Tony just won a chess tournament. And Sam has liked three MLB posts. How is Libbie? You should reach out. You met Libbie in your freshman year of college, a small crush that eventually developed into something you both thought was love. It wasn’t, but it was close enough that you both thought it was legit. A decade later, you married and had two kids. A picture perfect life held together by thin pieces of yarn that frayed over time, thinning and thinning until the illusion of unity fell apart. 

Step 2. 

2.5 hours of usage 

Develop your feed. Like what you want! There are millions of videos on this app. Learn to cook! Find your next favorite movie! Like cats? Here are three hundred million cat videos. Because you don’t have the finances to take care of a cat, so you live vicariously through @catherinecatgirl’s calico. 

Cousin Greg has posted pictures of Grandmother Pauline, that trip to China you all took ten years ago. Across the world, yet at your fingertips. Strange ambiguities like this keep you on the app longer. You grew up with Cousin Greg in a little neighborhood on Long Island. The two of you would play together since you and your mother lived close by. Your mother, when she was alive, was three years older than Aunt Judie. Your mother, now dead, literally worked herself to death. She raised you by herself since your father left before your birth. Mother worked three jobs when you were a child, doing everything she could to get food on the table and the electricity bill paid. With every waking moment spent taking care of you, she didn’t have time to take care of herself. She tried making you fresh food, sacrificing her own health to the frozen meals she ate to conserve energy. When the gray hairs and heart attack came at fifty-five, you should not have been surprised. 

Libbie is still in the Maldives. You haven’t talked to her in three years. Is she remarried? Boyfriend? Tony was eliminated from his tournament. Sam’s next game is Thursday, but you won’t be able to attend. Cousin Greg messages you. “Remember this?” It’s the same picture he posted yesterday. 

Step 3. 

6 hours of usage. 

Interact! Libbie Sikes is now Libbie Andrews. Message her. Ask how her life is. It seems so put-together. Three story house in a nice suburban neighborhood. Two kids, loving husband.

Does she remember you? Or were you just one person in the horde of thousands that Libbie knew? You should also reply to Cousin Greg’s message, he longs for your response. “Hello?” Turns out Katie’s here too. 

Cousin Thomas. 

Uncle Grady. 

Aunt Judie. 

Dad. 

The WORLD. The big, scary world. 

WHAT WILL YOU DO??????????

Step 4. 

13 hours of usage 

Ignore the world around you. You have a virtual world so infinite and vast, so why should you pay attention to the physical world that imprisons you? In the space you have concocted for yourself – a tiny bedroom, unmade sheets, pictures of Libbie scattered across the desk – you stare, zombified, at your screen. 

Grandmother? 

Grandmother Pauline has requested to follow you! You click on her profile, and yes, it’s your grandmother, whose death five years ago caused you to go into a depression, close in on yourself, confine yourself to this one-room apartment, lose your fiancé, the kids, and any sense of human self you had left. 

She messages you. 

Grandmother: Hi!

You: Grandmother? 

Grandmother: Of course! Who else would it be, you silly goose? 

When you don’t respond for a minute, Grandmother Pauline keeps typing.

Grandmother: You know, you were always my FAVORITE grandson. You were always so kind, so LOVING. Your words of affection always left an indelible mark upon me, and I have never forgotten them. 

You swipe away from the app. 

Algorithms know everything. 

Your room is decades old. Rumor has it that the old owner died of boredom in this bed. Coffee stains and pizza crumbs line the bed frame. Cousin Greg: “Sorry, I guess you’re not seeing these.” When you were little, Grandmother Pauline would babysit you and Cousin Greg after school. She took you to McDonald’s, and you’d always get the Happy Meal. Greg would steal your toys. 

Step 5. 

24 hours of usage. 

Give in. If you feel your brain rotting, then the algorithm’s working. Side effects may include longing for your ex-wife and thinking that your grandmother is alive and messaging you from the ether. 

Ding! A message from Libbie: 

“Hey, I’ve noticed that you’ve been liking old photos of me. I know it’s been hard on you, but please try to restrain yourself. People can see what you [are] like.” Ignore.

You message Cousin Greg: “Hi” 

Step 6. 

37 hours of usage 

Watch a video of a bald man desperately trying to get a plunger off his head (three million likes), followed by a video of destruction in the Middle East (one hundred thousand likes), complete with mutilated bodies and crumbled buildings, back-to-back. A ragged, desperate Middle Eastern woman appears on screen, begging you to donate anything you can, no amount is too small, please. 

There’s a desperation in her eyes deeper than anything you have seen before. You swipeclick away. 

Step 7. 

Day 7 – 52 hours of usage 

Delete the app. Libbie, Tony, and Sam have blocked you. 

Cousin Greg keeps messaging you, but it’s always the same picture. Sometimes, you think it’s changed. Grandmother’s blouse is a different shade of white. Sometimes her eyes are closed. And sometimes, you think that they are somehow alive, staring right at you, looking at your insides, unblinking and blue. 

“Sorry, this user has blocked you. You can no longer send or receive messages from them because they have chosen to now ice you out of their lives because of your toxic, selfish behavior that you refuse to acknowledge, and so it has now bottled up inside you to the point where it eats you alive, slowly, like a parasite hell-bent on destroying your life.”

Intrigued by the idea of parasitism, you Google pictures of tapeworms eating away at someone’s insides and wonder if those people got the help they needed or if they just suffered in silence. It makes you have to shit. 

In your grand voyage to the bathroom, you notice things. As you kick off your blankets, you see that your yellow toenails grew into frail razor blades at the end of your feet. More than once, they scratched Libbie during sex, and you apologized, yet you still had severe anxiety afterwards. Your legs, normally hairless, now have random patches of hair dotted along your knees. Your three-day-old pair of underwear is stretched thin. Your skin is very pale. 

The hallway floor needs vacuuming. Dust bunnies have made the wood their second home. The wood and dust are probably in love from being together so long, you think. Hehehe, you laugh as you think about a tiny piece of dust kissing a wooden floor and getting married and having dust/wood hybrid offspring. You are dehydrated and need water. 

The bathroom door is old with chipped wood along its frame. It takes you two tries to open it because the wood gets stuck on the floor, and you forget that it's a push door, not a pull. You sit on the crusty toilet seat and note the shit stains in the bowl. Clean it later, you note, but probably won’t do since that takes too much mental energy. Shitting feels nice, you like the feeling of poop leaving your body, literal weight coming out of you. I have just created something, you think as you examine your lumpy artwork in the toilet. Smiling, you flush. 

Step 8. 

66 hours of usage 

Wait! Don’t delete the app. They just introduced this new AI feature: 

“Introducing our new AI generator! Place yourself into any place you can imagine!”

Underneath, there's a paid option to create AI-generated videos. Examples include a video of a dog catching a frisbee, a child waving into the camera, and a man and woman kissing each other. 

You buy the paid option. The generator asks you questions. 

AI: Hi! What kind of video can I make for you today? 

You: I want a video of me and my wife kissing at a wedding venue. 

AI: That sounds so romantic, your wife is going to love it! Can you give me a picture of you and your wife? 

You select an average-looking photo of you and a picture of Libbie she posted of herself in the Maldives. Libbie has shoulder-length hair the color of sandpaper. Her eyes are a shade of brown between brick and wood that allures you. There’s a mole on the side of her neck, and whenever you kissed it while lying in bed, she would kiss you back, more intensely. You called it her “On Button.” 

AI: On it! 

The AI loads for a minute, and then a video of you and Libbie at a wedding appears. You are wearing a tux, and Libbie wears a wedding dress eerily similar to the one she actually wore. You both lean in, your lips lock together, and you both look undeniably happy. A smile across Libbie's lips that looks like she’s letting you in on the utmost important secret of her life, a smile on yours because you revel in that secret. The crowd roars in happiness, and in bed, you feel a longing like no other mixed with a horrid, disturbed feeling you can’t escape. Without anywhere to go, anything to do, you start breathing heavily and jerk off. 

AI: Is this good enough, or are there any tweaks you want to make? 

You: Longer and more passionate.

The video extends by two minutes, now your arms are wrapped around each other, you are fully making out with Libbie this is excellent, this is amazing, so good you don’t even notice that you turned off your phone and now you are thinking about Libbie pinning you down in her wedding dress, and you are doing unspeakable acts in front of a Christian priest and that makes you even hornier, and you know that there are AI-generated deep fake pornography videos that you can make and you can’t wait to use them for your infinite pleasure, the scenarios in your mind so compelling that you want to wash yourself in them, live in your head for the rest of your life, you want to press the On Button, except maybe this time it will make her fall in love with you instead– 

You finish, and it's all over. 

Just you, your limp penis, and some white substance on your bed. You are alone. Entire body shaking, thoughts racing in your head what the fuck is wrong with you you lonely anxious creep that derives sexual pleasure from the internet because your anxiety controls you and oh no that's why she left you in the first place. A lonely, naked figure, you huddle in the corner of your bedroom and cry cold, icicle tears for an hour. Your heart races, your limbs shake. It feels like you’re drenched in cold water. You remember everything you’ve ever done wrong. Every little detail, everything you said, every mistake. 

You sat by your grandmother’s bed a day before she died. Your mother took you to see her, knowing it would be the last time. You sat by her bed, stared at her motionless figure for five minutes, and left without saying a word. You were nineteen. 

“Anything you can,” the Middle Eastern woman urged you with every ounce of strength she had. “Any act of selflessness can go a long way.” 

Twenty-three messages from Greg left on delivered.

“If you were even an ounce as selfless or motivated as you say you are,” Libbie said in her flowery sundress on the back patio of her parents’ house in the Cape, “then maybe I would be happy. You don’t give me any affection, you’re always locked in your own head. You have shut me out.” 

“What is wrong with me?” you utter through shuddering gasps. You wipe your eyes, your palms are wet, but you don’t know if it's from sweat or the tears now. 

Libbie messages you. 

“No time for preamble. Tony and Sam won’t talk to me, probably teenage angst and all that, I don’t know, and my husband just seems locked up in his own head. I think I know how you feel now, isolated in your own skin, wanting to run but with nowhere to go. Jesus, I don’t even know why I’m sending you this. I guess I just needed someone to talk to.” 

Your thumbs move independently from your mind. “I wish I could relate. To be honest, I've been feeling more free since you left.” 

Step 9. 

85 hours of usage 

Delet– 

Step 10. 

103 hours of usage 

But Cousin Greg said, “I feel like everyone has forgotten her.” 

How could you forget her? 

Del–

“I’m really sorry I cut you off so suddenly. We should FaceTime soon, if you’d like.” 

Step 10b. 

Indefinite hours of usage 

Keep scrolling. You can’t escape the DOOMSCROLL. Because everywhere you look, you see zombies. Zombies glued behind phone screens, staring dumbly into pixels that create two-dimensional realities. Zombies, brain dead, rotting away on their beds, aimlessly scrolling to avoid their three-dimensional realities. But you don’t look at yourself. You are not one of them because your scrolling isn’t aimless, your depression is different than everyone else’s because it makes the distraction justified, and your scrolling is the only way you can know that yes, Libbie had an amazing time in the Maldives, Tony is busy preparing for his next chess tournament, and Sam just joined the middle school baseball team. 

Libbie looks amazing in her wedding photo from years ago, but you didn’t attend, except you basically did through photos, retweets, and hashtags. 

Every night, just as you put your phone away, a new notification pops up from Grandmother Pauline, or Cousin Greg, or Libbie. You tap on the accounts and message, and message, and message, and message…

Aaron Chin is a graduate of Bucknell University with a major in Creative Writing and Literary Studies. His writing is influenced by works of horror, and he likes creating unsettling tales with fresh twists. When he’s not writing, he likes going on long walks, rock climbing, and reading in bed as the clock strikes midnight.