Ich weiss jetzt, was das Monstrum nicht wissen
an excerpt

Chapter 1: In which we are introduced to the main character, who's fairly good-looking despite being a bit moldy around the edges

Maxwell looked into the window of the Madam Lucy's Dancing Balloroom, using his black garbed hands to try to block the outside light. It was dark inside, as to be expected at two in the morning. But that didn't much daunt him. Places he wanted to get into usually were dark since they were generally off limits to him and his kind. Which he honestly didn't find all that fair, but what could you do? He was a zombie, and that would never change. It had to be something he needed to live with (metaphorically speaking), and society's rules also needed to be followed. But he loved to have a little bit of danger in his existence. There was no point just being a good citzen, or less-than-citizen, if nothing good ever came out of it. At least if he was slightly bad, he usually had a lot of fun.

So the zombie who wasn't all that bad-looking, as he wasn't too descimated, having lived in a desert region most of his undead life, worked on picking a lock now that he was sure no one was in the ballroom and there weren't any cameras around either. Hearing a satisfying click as the pins bowed deferentially to his lock-picking gear, he grinned and walked right in. He took a pause in the foyer though, whistling a bit. He was making sure there were no dogs there, as dogs really liked to try chewing him up. Since he was meat and bones and that was pretty much it. The reason he wasn't smelly like some zombies was that he had been reanimated soon after dying, which meant his body hadn't yet started to decompose before it stopped doing anything really.

The science of why he was a zombie (and that of the other monsters started in the 1700s) had been tried to be explained and rexplained thousands of times over. However, it was still as impossible to put it into simple terms for anyone but scientists to understand. The basic facts were that Max's body was 'frozen' in time. He could not age, and could not get sick. Injuries that only caused blood loss would not really cause so much trouble, since his blood was thickly congealed, though that did (in theory) make him more suspectible to heart attacks. Luckily his blood pressure was phenominally low, about 60/20, so that kept him safe from most strokes or ischemic incidents. He needed a diet of about 500 calories a day to stay at tip top shape, but it was impossible for him to starve. Of course, getting hungry would occasionally cause him to start craving human flesh, which was the main reason zombies were killed a few centuries ago without any reprecussion for the killers. It was because zombies loose most of their senses, and the hardest hit is taste, so that those old zombies merely assumed they couldn't eat regular food and would therefore become people-eating-machines, despite their original intentions. Henceforth, his other bodily functions were mostly in working order, but at a much slower pace (lack of oxygen would take a couple of days or weeks to make much of an impact on zombies, for example). All of the twisted science meant that there were very few ways to kill Maxwell and his kind, such as decapitation, other complete severing of spinal cord around the cervical vertabrae, and complete destruction of the body, such as by fire, acid, or a plane propeller.

But dogs, dogs were something that drove him mad. They could chew and tear to their hearts content, since he didn't smell like a real person, just something else to play with. They'd grab onto a limb and he'd have to beat and scream until they let go. That's the main reason he wore all black, with the exception of his head. But there were unsightly bite marks all over his body, and despite himself, he felt embarassed of them.

But thankfully no dogs showed up, and he walked past the registration desk and over to one of the ballrooms. He turned on the lights, blinking a bit at the initial brightness. Maxwell then walked over to the music area and turned on the stereo, picking a plesant waltz to listen to.

As the music sounded from the modern speakers, yet was probably nowhere as beuatiful as when it was played by orchestra when it was created, Maxwell flowed well, holding up his arms as if he had a partner to dance with, and proceeded to dance in step. His movements were slightly more akward than a normal person, as his reflexes and grace were less than when he had been alive. He'd been practicing these steps for a while now, though this dance school was too prestigious to allow someone like him in it officially, they had several windows that allowed him to spy on the instructors and students.

He thought about how he had become a zombie, which he usually did when he felt limited by his zombie body. of course, at times he was thankful for his extra abilities, he would usually remewniss about his human life. It was an odd form of self-hatred he had, combined with his narcisim when it came to his face. In the 1800s he'd been the eldest son of a group of immigrants. His mother was English and his father was German, whose combined upbringing had given him his unique accent, but of course being in America so long caused it to be very light. He was 28 when he'd been helping on their farm, and had an accident when one of the neighbors' horses jumped the fences, and tried to run him down.

The poor creature had apparantly been rabid without anyone noticing, and it was the normal kind. Instead it was lycanthope hydrophobia, which was only brought on by werewolves who had regular rabies, but their odd immune system allowed the virus to mutate slightly, creating a much more aggresive sick animal in anything they bit. Of course, though a werwolf could normally destroy anything it put its jaws on, being rabid weakened the jaw muscles and coordination, so it was easy to spread the changed disease (a major reason that werewolves had to have rabies vaccines once a year their entire life). But regardless of how it had happened, the end result was that poor Maxwell had been killed by trying to dive out of the way and falling, bashing the back of his head into a rock, hard enough to knock himself unconscious while he was bleeding. He'd gone into shock soon enough, and the loss of blood was what killed him in the end. Fortunately for his parents he didn't stay dead, as he had landed near a meteor that was only barely covered by topsoil. The reasons such space radioatin caused similar effects was still unknwon, but they had been documented before and ever since as well, so Maxwell was not a rare individual (as there were many other ways zombies were created, such as chemical experimentation, DNA mutations, voodoo magic, and even more unknowns that just seemed to work sometimes). Not to mention the slew of other types of undead and living dead creatures.

So as of that day Maxwell had died and been brought back as a zombie. He'd gona home and his parents were so thankful he wasn't gone forever that they didn't mind that he was a zombie. His siblings either, as he had always been the one to help take care fo them, and give them small leeway here and there since he wasn't actually a parent. Of course, his parents eventually died and his siblings got married to less understanding folks. Maxwell didn't mind too much, but he had said goodbye and moved to west Texas, an arid region that still had enough happenings to keep it interesting. He'd been a cowhand for a couple of years, but the rancher dogs drove him crazy. Afterwards he'd merely worked in a blacksmith forge, but the way his muscles couldn't improve a lot kept him a mere apprenmtice. He was stronger than the average person, but he could not improve upon himself.

After that stint, he moved up to New York around the 1960s, deciding that big cities like this were much more diverting. Especially for having fun when he was bored, as he only required about 4 hours of sleep a night, and too much sleep made him incredibly sluggish for weeks on end.

Maxwell continued to dance as he tried to clear out his mind, but there was always something going on in there, and it grabbed on harder the more he tried to empty his head. There was his shopping list, to which he added sodas. There was also the meeting his fellow apartment dwellers were supposed to go to in the morning. Non-humans like himself were usually required to live only in certain places, unless a regular human tried to take you in. But for those such as Maxwell, it was hard to get a grandaughter or grandson of his siblings to take in this man they'd never met. Then there was also that DVD he lent one of his apartment mates and she had yet to give it back. He did not enjoy the idea of having to go talk to her to ask for it back.

Maxwell was a loner type of person. He didn't like to talk to many other people. But this person he'd lent his DVD to, Rachel, was a very sociable creature. She drove him up the wall with her outrageous declarations that they were friends so they should go out and get some coffee. Because she suggested it everytime she saw him. And considering the elevator was broken and there was only one staircase, they did see each other quite often. Maxwell wasn't sure why she was so overly friendly, but was definitely determined to not be her friend. Of course, that would only make having to get back his movie that much more difficult. Curse the woman for being sharp-eyed that she'd seen the DVD in a plastic bag just after he'd bought it during shopping. He would have rather lived/unlived without ever watching it in his life (in fact, he still hadn't seen it) than let Rachel get another claw into him.