Every year, thousands upon thousands of zombies get adopted into new homes to signify the beginning of Zombie Gras, and every year, they are left discarded on the streets, broken and alone, once the festivities end. 

Zombies are not a decoration you can put on your front lawn willy-nilly, only to be shelved for next year. They are undead beings that need love and attention, just like any other undead being like you and me. They're a life companion, and deserve to be treated as such. 

We at "Playing with Matches" have partnered with "People for the Ethical Treatment of Zombies", or "PETZ" for short, to bring you a short PSA about Zombie care, to dispel some misconceptions about these wonderful companions, and to tell you that Zombies are not pets. 

We at "Playing with Matches" realize that PETZ's name and message might be a little confusing, but we are tired of trying to make them aware of that. Their rallies are a confusing mess. 

The first common misconception about zombies is that they're mindless beasts. They are quite clever and intelligent beings! They just have trouble modulating their thoughts into speech, mostly due to maggots eating their tongues and all. Zombies excel at non-verbal communication, be it via writing, painting, and some even morse code in some cases. 

Which was the odd case of Zombie Chuck. A trained Zombie owner would've realized that zombie Chuck was trying to communicate distress via morse code. Three short door knocks, followed by three long door ones, and again followed by three short ones — morse code for S.O.S, a distress call, which stands for "Shit! Oh, shit!" 

"Stop doing that!" yelled Chuck, who was on the other side of the doors waiting for Marraine D to catch up to him. 

But Zombie Chuck didn't listen. He continued to call out in distress by smashing the door over and over again. 

"This is a mahogany door," commented Chuck. "Very expensive, and very sturdy. You're wasting your time, and by extension, my time. So if you could just please!" 

But Zombie Chuck wasn't in a mood to please. He wanted out, and fast. 

"You're gonna dent it if you keep at it, you bumbling buffoon! And I ain't gonna lose my deposit over you!" 

This only worked to make him go faster and harder. 

"By the snow-white beard of George Romero," whispered Chuck. His patience was running thin. There was a beast inside his home, damaging his precious mahogany door, and probably getting all sorts of icky stuff on his carpet. Just thinking about it made his anxiety trigger. Not having any control of what was once his body was too much to bear. "Listen to me, you sorry excuse of a body. I am you, and I command me to stop right this instant, or I swear to me, I'll chuck myself through the window!" 

It didn't help that, between smashes, Zombie Chuck would continually yell the name "Trevor" like a mantra, making his diaphragm vibrate at a low frequency that made it a hotspot for the many cockroaches crawling inside him to get freaky. 

"What? Who's Trevor?" asked Chuck. "Is it Trevor, our editor? Or Trevor, my downstairs neighbor? Or is it Trevor, the barista at that coffee shop I went to once where they somehow spelled my name as Chek? Out with it!" 

"Trevor!" yelled Zombie Chuck yet again. 

"You know what? Fuck me, fuck me right out!" 

At that moment, something flew past Chuck that impacted him deeply as nothing had done in a long time. 

It wasn't the sudden realization that he was releasing his frustrations about himself to the avatar of his desires in the form of a mumbling body that cared not for what other people think, thus creating an ideal ProtoChuck that was freer than he ever was. What flew through him was a dictionary. It impacted the door and fell with a thud. 

"Use that to find another word to yell, you prick!" yelled Librarian Jenkins, Chuck's neighbor. "Expand your vocabulary! Just because you're a hoity-toity critic person doesn't mean you can go yelling like a madman in the middle of the night. That's why nobody fucking likes you!" 

That hurt Chuck more than he cared to admit. He didn't deserve that. He was the perfect neighbor, after all. Sure, he didn't go to any neighbor's assembly, or tried to meet his neighbors at all, and sometimes he was too scared to brave the world and just placed his trash bags by his door until they somehow went away. He didn't bother anyone! His life has been perfectly crafted to be as quiet and insignificant to others as possible. 

Maybe that's why nobody noticed he died in the first place. 

"Trevor!" yelled Zombie Chuck again. 

"Knowledge is wasted on the dumb," yelled Librarian Jenkins before closing the door with gusto. 

"Just shut the fuck up, you useless piece of flesh-eating meat!" 

Chuck was inadvertently reinforcing one of the most prevalent myths about zombies: that they eat human flesh. Zombies like the same types of food you and me like! Unless you're a Squid Overlord who likes the taste of human meat, in which case, a zombie might not be the best fit for you. Get a Ghoul instead! 

Human meat, incidentally, tastes like sweet pork, which is the traditional food of Zombie Gras. It is also incredibly offensive, since we already established zombies don't eat humans. 

This misconception comes about thanks to the aforementioned Ghouls, who are zombie-like demons who do eat flesh, and are truly mindless. People mix them all the time, and the stereotype is almost set in stone thanks to George Romero's portrayal of Zombies in "Night Of the Living Death" as mindless hordes of bumbling beasts. He did to zombies what "Jaws" did to sharks. 

Zombies, unlike Ghouls, are reanimated corpses who are brought to life to serve a purpose. Some zombies are brought to life thanks to magic to serve as slaves, and those are known as "Voodoo" Zombies. Others are created via a pathogen or virus, and they more often than not are created to spread said pathogen to other people -- those are the "Virus Zombies." Others are created to enact vengeance on those who wronged them, which are called "Revenant Zombies."

It is imperative for you, as a zombie owner, to know the origins of your zombie and try to accommodate their needs of Slavery/Infection/Bloody Vengeance. Which is not what Chuck was doing. In fact, Chuck couldn't care less about what Zombie Chuck wanted. If you see an owner abusing his Zombie, please call the PETZ hotline at 605-475-6962 and we will send a crew right away. 

At that moment, a tripod of a person shuffled her way up the stairs, finally reaching her destination. 

"You know, Monsieur Sorry," said Marraine D, panting between heavy breaths, "it is rude to leave an old madame like me alone in this dingy old building." 

"I'm sorry," said Chuck, deflating from his red balloon form to a blue pancake. 

"And I'm Marraine D," said the woman with a toothy smile. "Now, what do we have here?"

The old woman shuffled to the door with a tap-tap of the cane on the hard floor until she faced the door. 

"There is a door in the way," said Marraine D.

"They do tend to do that," said Chuck. "That's why I like them." 

The crone tried to turn the knob, only to meet with resistance. 

"It's closed," said the woman. 

"They're meant to do that," replied Chuck. "You seem to be struggling with the concept of doors."

"I happen to know a great deal about doors, Monsieur Sorry," said the old woman. "But why is it closed? You should open it for me like a gentleman." 

Chuck floated passive-aggressively in front of Marraine D to wave the arms he didn't have, but she didn't take Sarcasm 101 in college, so it was lost on her. "I can't open anything without arms, ma'am."

The woman swung her cane at Chuck in defiance. "You're a ghost, mon cher. You can possess items, like a doorknob."

"I'm sorry, but that won't work."

"Why, Monsieur Sorry?"

"Because I have fifteen locks on that door," said Chuck, "and I can't open them from this side."

"You do know you can go through walls, oui?" asked the woman. 

Chuck, for all his brains, was a forgetful idiot. During one of his strongest periods of isolation, he ran out of food, simply because he forgot to buy any. He spent three hours gathering up the courage to walk to the nearest Burger King to order a Whopper or whatever disgusting regurgitated cardboard mixture item they pretended to pass as food. He ordered the food and went home as soon as possible. It was only when he returned home when he realized he forgot to take the food home with him. 

"Er...right, I can do that now," said Chuck with an embarrassed blush. 

"You seem to be struggling with the concept of ghosts," said Marraine D with a cheeky smile. 

Chuck, to spare his embarrassment, simply floated through the door and into the apartment. 

If you ever want to experience how it feels when a ghost goes through something, you can try this little experiment at home: grab a bucket and fill it with water. Slowly dip your face into the water, and feel how the surface tension caresses your face while you slowly submerge. That's how it feels. Just be careful not to breathe any water while you're in there, lest you become a ghost for real. 

The inside of Chuck's apartment was just as he left it — messy, filled with discarded wrappers, and smelling of BO and regret. Even Zombie Chuck, for all his efforts, couldn't get past the first lock he accidentally opened. And for a good reason, since Chuck had installed every lock he could fit in there, from simple chain puzzles to a biometric lock. It was as much to keep him in as to keep everyone else out. 

"Well, fuck me," whispered Chuck. "Here goes nothing." 

He decided to try and pick the first lock first, which was a simple sliding chain mechanism. All he had to do was to move the thing to the right, and it would be unlocked. Easy peasy. 

Now, imagine being an inanimate object with no power of locomotion to speak of. Now try to move. It is an impossible concept to grasp in practice, mostly because we are normally blessed with the ability to move around and yell at people over the internet over movie theories, which were two of Chuck's favorite things to do, and neither was possible while possessing a lock. 

In fact, Chuck was thrust into such a state of helplessness that he got into a depressive state. Fortunately enough, he also gave the lock depression by showing it how inconsequential and uninteresting existence it had. Such is the power of a ghost. The lock committed immediate suicide by exploding into million pieces. 

Chuck immediately jettisoned out of the lock and into the hallway, bagpiping and disco-balling his way into a panic attack. 

"I'm sorry, I can't. I couldn't do it. I'm sorry," said the ghost as it paced back and forth. "I'm sorry."

Marraine D tapped her cane down three times to get Chuck's attention. When that didn't work, she simply cleared her throat. When that didn't work either, she farted to disrupt Chuck's air. That's right, we are not above making fart jokes. Pick us up, Netflix. 

"Sweet bunions of Orson Welles, what's that smell?"

"A beignet and a Pepscoke," said the woman. "Now, listen up. Life is too short to be sorry. Try, do, not do, fail, or succeed. Do things through, and you will never be sorry, and if you're ever sorry, be sorry you didn't even try. Now, let Marraine D try, oui?"

The woman stood in front of the door, examining every little nook and cranny. She took her cane and tapped the door lightly once. 

By sheer coincidence, both the door and the cane were made of the same mahogany tree harvested in Belize, and imported to the city of New Orleans in the late 1960s. The door and the cane, both realizing they came from the same being, separated in a strange land, realized that they were much better as one, and that they could never be whole again. 

They decided right there and then to create a suicide pact in hopes they could become whole in their next life. In that instant, Zombie Chuck smashed the door in a way that coincided with said suicide pact, and both the cane and the door were destroyed by the impact, as they both decided they wouldn't hold their earthly form any longer. However, due to Marraine D's luck, instead of getting blow to pieces, the cane fused back together due to the sheer force of impact. Like its owner, the cane was inmortal. It was a modern-day Romeo and Juliet kind of thing.

Zombie Chuck couldn't control his momentum and came barreling forward, tripping over the same dictionary Librarian Jenkins had thrown, making him trip and tumble towards the stairs in the most painful way he could've done. 

The velvet noose around his neck got tangled up in the banister as he rolled forward, hanging himself for the second time that day. Three vertebrae were broken from the impact alone as a sickening crunch punctuated every squirm the zombie made to get away. 

Chuck's pain was unbearable in every sense of the word, even the part of the word that contains the word "bear" which is a pretty terrifying animal. 

For the second time that day, he could feel his throat shut down. Also, he could feel having a throat. All he could do was scream and disco-ball all around the hall, panicking every cat in the building. It was a cat-astrophe. 

"Calm down!" yelled Marraine D, but she might've shouted at a wall instead. 

Chuck was all over the place, moving left and right, from room to room. He even went through one Penny Charmian's apartment, a sweet Welsh woman who, after Chuck infused her with his unbridled panic, decided to jump out of the window with a refrigerator strapped to her back, making that the first and last flight of New Orleans' weirdest superhero, "Freezer Woman." 

It wasn't until a door opened and a Mayo Clinic Medical Journal was thrown at Chuck just as he was floating by that he stopped in his tracks. 

"Shut your trap, you oversized fart!" yelled Librarian Jenkins before slamming his door shut. We don't know why he could see Chuck, or hear him. Our running theory is that he ate a lot of carrots, and thus had an exceptional vision. 

Chuck stopped in shock, bag-piping quickly while changing colors in quick succession. If you are a hyper-sensitive Photo-Morfs reading this and can see the images conjured by this tale, then this is the moment we tell you to avert your eyes, as there is a high chance of seizures. Same with any race that can see the colors of words. 

Marraine D slowly approached Chuck, not shielding her eyes from the light because her Alzheimer wasn't acting up, and she remembered she was blind. "Stop. You're making a fool of yourself, Monsieur Sorry."

Chuck was too preoccupied with the searing hot pain coursing through his body to even begin to answer. 

"I can't, I can't," he kept repeating, giving short, shallow breaths. "I'm choking!"

"You're getting Human Pains!" yelled the old woman. "It happens when a spirit thinks they feel their body. It is perfectly normal. But that's it, merely an illusion. You can't actually feel anything."

"It feels real to me, and I'm allergic to getting choked!" yelled Chuck. 

"Everything is in your mind, mon cher."

"Well, pardon my French, but hon-hon-titty-baguette. Everything is in our minds all the time. We are but meat puppets controlled by a brain."

"Forgiven," said the old crone dismissively with a wave of her cane. "But in this case, it is literally in your mind. Your soul is feeling what your body is feeling. It happens all the time with Ghost/Zombie relationships. But you're not feeling actual pain. Why, I met a nice ghost whose zombified body was used by a warlock as a pincushion for years, and the ghost went on to go about his ways."

"Have you ever experienced this?" asked Chuck. 

"No."

"Then please don't pretend to know what I'm feeling or not!" yelled Chuck, growing there sized in hot, red anger. Once he realized what he had done, he shrunk down to the size of a golf ball. "I'm sorry."

"And I'm Marraine D," said the woman with a flourish. "Well, if you say you're feeling what you're feeling, let's taste this, oui? Stay right there." 

The old crone approached the hanging body, still flailing and choking and whatnot, and pressed her cane into his shoulder. "Feel that?" 

"Ouch!" cried Chuck into his nonexistent shoulder. "My clavicle!" 

"And how about this?" said Marraine D as she smashed his face with the cane. 

"My nose!" he yelled. 

"And what about this?" 

"Why do I taste strawberry?" asks Chuck. 

"Nothing, nothing," said the old crone as she took out her cane from Zombie Chuck's mouth. "Interesting. Very, very interesting." 

"See? I told you so!" said the ghost. "I don't know what's happening, or why is happening, or how is happening, I just want to go back and living my quiet life!" 

Marraine D waved her cane around in thought, pacing back and forth above the still hanging corpse. "Well, Monsieur Sorry, I just have one more tests to perform." 

And with that, she jammed her cane between the banister and the rope, making Zombie Chuck fall all the way back to the last floor.

Chuck immediately started to writhe in pain like a fish out of water, only sadder, and somehow moister. He felt as his vertebrae compacted and stretched out like an accordion, making him stretch out like an accordion himself, thus making a duet of screams and pain. 

And yet, Zombie Chuck had enough strength in him to call out "Trevor" over and over again. 

"It is what I feared," said the old crone. "Monsieur, you're not dead, per see. You're cursed!" 

Well, that was a relief for Chuck, if only for a second. Hard to feel relief when your spine feels like a broken Jenga tower. Still, it didn't mean anything to him. "Waddayamean I'm cursed? I'm pretty much dead! How cursed can I be?"

"Well, Monsieur Sorry. What can I say? A ghost can't feel its body. It appears that your soul is still tethered to your body, somehow. And there are only two things that can do that. Either you're in an Ayahuasca-fuelled out-of-body experience..." 

"Which I ain't, because I was peer-pressured as a kid do dare say no to drugs," interrupted Chuck.

"...or, you got cursed. Someone cast a curse on you so that your body and soul are separated. In which case, we will need to undo the curse, and you can go back into your body! That would also explain why your memory is gone. Some curses do take away your memory. Again, that also could be ayahuasca." 

And that was everything Chuck wanted to hear. Progress, finally. He unclenched the sphincter he didn't know he had. The old woman turned out to be a pretty good Mentor after all! Everything was going his way. Naturally, shit was about to hit the fan. 

According to the Hero's Journey, the next step after "Meeting the Mentor" is "Crossing the Threshold." Which means, he would have to leave the comfort of his life and go into the thick of it.

"But," said the crone, and like any human beach, there is always an unpleasant but that ruins the mood, "these types of curses are extremely powerful, Monsieur Sorry." 

"So? Can't you un-curse me?" 

"I am a medium, Monsieur Sorry, not a witch," said the medium, who was way more of a small than anything, "and even if I was, these types of curses are super strong. You would need a huge amount of magic power to even attempt to break it, oui?" 

Chuck, of course, began to panic. "B-b-but we can get a witch to undo the curse, right? Smokey told me there were a lot of witches in this town, right?" 

Marraine D licked the pommel of her cane while deep in thought. It is to note that it was the same pommel Zombie Chuck had in their mouth a few minutes earlier. That's how humans get pandemics. "Oui...and non. You see, the magic required to undo such a curse is so massive that you would need a magic amplifier to do so. Lucky for us, today is not only Zombie Gras, but also Walpurgisnatch, the most magical day of the year. Unlucky for us, that also means that our hopes of breaking the curse will vanish as soon as dawn breaks, and magic gets weakened." 

Chuck felt a strange lump in his throat, but we are sure that was just his vertebrae popping back into place. That, and worry, "which means?" 

"Which means," said the crone, "we have until sunrise to break the curse, or you will, unfortunately, get stuck like that." 

A rush of cold air washed over Chuck, which was weird, since he hadn't felt any ripe of cold or warmth up to that moment. It felt like he had peed his pants and was running down the streets to dry them. 

It was then when he heard his voice yell "Trevor" for the umpteen time. But this time, it didn't come from inside the building. It came from outside the building. 

Somehow, while they were monologuing, Zombie Chuck managed to stand up and walk out of the building. Something to keep in mind if you're going to adopt a zombie: they have thumbs, and they can work a doorknob pretty easily. Just tape a few oven mitts over their hands and you will be fine. 

These are only a few tips about Zombies you have to keep in mind before adopting this curious, loving, and creative beast. With love and care, they will last you for a lifetime, and even more! Adopt a zombie today!

"How much time we have until sunrise?" asked Chuck in a surprisingly mellow way. 

"I'll say about 6 hours?" said the old crone.

Chuck took a deep breath, inflating three times his normal size, and with poise and composure, he began to disco-ball again. It was time to cross the threshold.

6 HOURS UNTIL SUNRISE.