The moment I saw him in his shiny red jacket with his zombie back up dancers, I knew that man was trouble. Michael Jackson was his name. He shared it with an older white man with a skeletal face. I had yet to discover the connection between these two.
The man had come upon the zombies in a cemetery after taking in a particularly horrific werewolf movie with his then girlfriend. Man and zombies joined together in a long difficult dance number during the instrumental. After this gruesome display, the two young lovers escaped to an abandoned house to seek meager solace in each others’ arms. But the cruel zombies pursued them still, smashing through the boarded windows with shattering accuracy.
They escaped without a scrape, physically anyway, but I have suspicions about this man and his claim that he’s truly human.
Day to day I seem to have a grasp on what’s fiction and fact, but some things just bother you and the lines get greyer and greyer and greyer and greyer. And these zombies, it seems, would continue to haunt me, be the great thorn in my side for many years to come. I knew a few things about these zombies: I knew they were persistent, I knew they were flesh hungry, and I knew they liked to come through windows.
I was twelve years old when I first became aware of these facts and this man. Twelve years old and trying desperately to wrap my head around Michael Jackson and his gruesome back up dancers.
My parents, that night wondered why I had yet to turn out the light. I told them all I had seen that day, imparting the mystery of the two Michael Jacksons and the horror of his dance ensemble. It turns out, as they then informed me, these men were one and the same. He had contracted the skin condition vitiligo, leading to unnatural white patches on the skin. I was also assured that zombies were not real. I believed this for the most part, but how could they not be real when I still felt their eyes crawling over my skin as they waited to slam their dead limbs against my window?
I discussed this at length with my good friend, Phil Collins. Phil was one of the good guys, always keen to make amends and remind us all of man’s great commonality. A real good guy. And night after night I would loose precious sleep pondering this question unable to dislodge it from the cogs of my mind.
This man, Michael Jackson continued to follow me. He consorted with Carol Burnett as a young boy. I find it harder and harder to believe that he really a bad egg after all. But it was hard to trust the man after seeing him with the horrors that lurked outside my window.
There were many more mysteries that would surround this man, Michael Jackson – Was he white? Was he black? Did he sexually abuse the child of a family friend? Where was his nose? But the greatest mystery of all, still haunts me. When I stand near open windows, when I hear his name, when I hear the deep tone of a narrator’s voice. Michael Jackson is gone. I know that, and I have know it for a long time. But the question remains that I ponder to this day…where are all the zombies now?
Nihilistic Porcupine 