Who would I be here, in this hellish Halloween-world where every day is black or grey, where happiness has to be scraped away in venomous bits from under the mossy bottoms of pointed rocks? Would I be able to mingle with ghosts, goblins, feral beasts, demons? So many possibilities. In this world, anything can hypothetically happen. There are no limits other than the ones I impose…

How would I describe myself in one word? Or two, or three. Or however many the hell I want.

Empty, I would say. Because I feel numb inside, like nobody loves me and I sure as hell love nobody back.

Bored. Because this life thing just drags on, and I wish I could have nothing to do with it.

Angry. Because I am the way I am and I hate it and I could definitely change it, but I just… haven't.

Then I can't forget to mention being powerless. Incompetent. Stupid.

But arrogant all the same; as if I know that I truly am all of those horrible, useless things, and so I should be consigned to feeling miserable for every speck of my dreadfully dreary days, and every second when I'm not, it's because something in me is narcissistically, wrongly believing that it could ever be anything but. That's the feeling that bogs me down most of all. Insufferable, suffocating arrogance.

Without even the self esteem and confidence that are supposed to come along.

And yet, sometimes a light does shine in on my mood. Sometimes, things do look up and I feel—almost happy.

At least, I think that's what that feeling is. I guess that's it. It feels queasy, because I'm not used to it, but that jittery, fluttery funny little jolt—I could definitely get used to it.

So maybe numb wouldn't be the best word choice, anyway. Not technically, not at all, when there are all these feeling-words that I'm so readily able to pull from the air and cloak myself in. Sadness and numbness are easily confused, but I know, in theory, that they're really worlds apart.

I think I would be a zombie. The walking dead. Out of place and not supposed to be even existing, by all means, but unable to get out of the way all the same.

Given the gift of life, the one thing that is purported to be sacred among all else, but unable to use it correctly, or even appreciate it.

Tired, listless, and still never getting anything actually done.

Even a zombie's sandpaper flesh and greenish pallor, its galumphing gait and glazy glare and repugnant aura, they all suit me down to a tee.

Alone and unwanted, confused and miserable above all, and better suited to being in the ground.

I would definitely be a zombie.

What would my name be, then? I couldn't use my real name, my given name, for the character. Because yes, it'd be representing me on that paper—the living dead girl meandering, tortured, through those pages—but a person of ink cannot be the same as a person of blood and shouldn't be thought of as such.

Besides, it'd be not a mortobiography, then, not a story of my death, because in a perverse way, with the facade of a dead character who bears its living author's name, one would have to assume that they are not one and the same. And all that'd be left would be a mere, convoluted fantasy, a twisted, twisting lie.

And this is my truth, just with details changed to protect the innocent. Or possibly just the insane.

But making myself a zombie would switch the focus of the story. It would still be a mortobiography—just one living in the moment, rather than the ones leading up to it or following it. A zombie wouldn't be definitively dead, but still wrapped up in the process.

The procedure of death and zombification would be like a woman in labor, I imagine. Death is also meant to be quick and hoped to be easy, but if it doesn't turn out that way, that doesn't mean that you can deny that it's still going on.

Yes. I like that simile.

This is not a story of my death, then, but a story of my dying.

What a difference a few simple letters and a different perspective can make.

But wait? What if the dying never ends? A zombie doesn't necessarily need to be relinquished from its life again in the end. A zombie can go on forever with no definite stopping point.

Maybe I can find a loophole, though. Maybe there could be a prophecy, or a fate. A destiny. Some clause or something, assuring me that I would die in the future, some day—the day would just never be today.

That might work. Labor has to end when the woman loses, either the extra weight in her stomach or, gruesomely, her life, and by that token, that principle, zombification would end when a zombie lost… its death. But since zombies aren't real in this world there's no telling how long their dying throes would linger. Nobody, quite simply, when it comes down to it, has any way of knowing. But we can speculate, and we can pretend.

Clever thoughts and clever words will always make a clever premise workable in the end, I suppose.

I'm a zombie in the midst of dying, only the midst is more like a mist and I won't be able to see clearly through to the other side for a long, long time.

So back to the name, then. What could it be? Something simple. Something girlish. Something that could sound alternatively elegant or innocent, antiquated or fresh. Something flexible, whose meaning could change with the situation. Not too drawn out and long, but not harsh and abrasive either. Soft—even sweet. Something that would roll off the lips and wedge itself comfortable into the memory. Something too ordinary to stand out, but also something whose very ordinariness would be the thing to make it special.

And then all of a sudden it comes to me.

My new name will be Emily.

So now it seems like I can start. I have the idea. I have the main character. I have the setting.

The rest will come easily. I trust it to fall into place. Other characters will make themselves known when they're ready to. Beginning and ending will be easy to plunk down and even easier to change later. Of course there will be no shortage of problems, of conflicts and controversies and little niggling questions, to keep it from being a waste of time.

And the words themselves, I don't need to worry. The words are in my brain and in my hands and in my soul. The words are in my control. They have been the whole time.

Maybe they've been waiting for this.

Maybe I have been, too.

Well then, the time for waiting is finally over.