Zombies Are People Too in S.G. Browne's Breather's: A Zombies Lament

Being a zombie isn't all that it's cracked up to be.
If you've never had to spend what would have been your afterlife sitting in your parents' basement drinking bottles of their expensive wine collection out of boredom hoping there's a M*A*S*H marathon playing on the Hallmark channel and praying your parents don't sell you to medical cadaver research for finding out how much all that wine you drank is worth, then you just wouldn't understand.
These are not your daddy's flesh eating zombies. These aren’t even the running zombies that have garnered attention lately. Zombies are people too, in fact they despise the Zed word. Corpses were people but once they opened their eyes again, they were people once more. The misunderstood returners in SG Browne's Breathers are people as real as you and I, except they've died and are attempting to literally return to some semblance of life. Of course if you've never been threatened with a gas can and a pack of matches by drunken asshole frat boys looking for a jolly on a Saturday night then you just wouldn't understand.
Being undead is not All You Can Eat human buffets and staggering about. They attend a group called  Undead Anonymous trying to cope with their day-to-day struggles remembering how to live in a world where they are no longer welcome. Group therapy is great for the living but it doesn't offer one of the undead any solace, especially when they're treated worse than stray wild animals. Of course if you've never been denied your old social security number or locked in a dog kennel because your heart doesn't beat anymore you just wouldn’t understand.
Andy Warner is one of the poor lost souls. After falling asleep at the wheel claims his life, he awakens just before his funeral as if nothing happened wondering why his left arm won't work and why people are mooning him, throwing rotten fruit and making obscene comments like “Go back to the grave, you fuckin freak”. Worse yet, the mortician has sewn poor Andy's mouth shut making communication even more difficult.
His friends are a beautiful suicide named Rita, who will wear less clothing to show more stitches on a good day depending on her mood; Jerry who loves regaling everyone his story about how a half dozen bong hits, a fifth of Jack Daniels, no seatbelt and a utility pole took the life of him and his 1974 Dodge charger and then promptly ask if you want to touch his exposed brain; and Ray who has an impressive collection of old Playboys and a to-die-for jerky he makes himself called Ray's Resplendent Rapture.
When Ray's Resplendent Rapture turns out to be something other than venison, the afterlife gets even more complicated for Andy. Like any obstacle though, drastic times call for drastic measures. Of course if you've never woken up passed out on the kitchen floor with your parents dismembered in small bags in the freezer you you just wouldn't understand.
Breathers was an awesome story, for once zombies aren't just rotting shambling masses but people you feel sympathy for anytime someone hurls a latte at them. For once the zombies are not the antagonists but the victims and the trials they face trying to live again are almost worse the second time around thanks to us Breathers. There is one man who understands the trials, author Scott G Browne. Our staff journalist caught up him to share some recipes and insights into the undead with us. Read on after the break and this word from our sponsor:

Beer and Breathers with S.G. Browne!`

Single Bullet Theory: Would you call them 'zombies' even though all they really want is to return to some semblance of a former life?

S. G Browne: Zombie means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. A corpse revived by witchcraft. A flesh-eating monster. An automaton. And one definition of a zombie is: “The body of a dead person given the semblance of life.” But for the sake of argument, a zombie is widely considered to be a reanimated corpse. So yes, I would call them zombies. They’re reanimated corpses, just not the ones Hollywood has crammed down our throats for the past forty years.

SBT:  Is calling the returners "zombies" something us Breathers did being stereotypical racists/xenophobes afraid of anything outside of the "norm"?

S.G.: Exactly. Whenever I tell people that zombies are people, too, some of them respond that zombies “were” people, too. That’s such a Breather thing to say. You wouldn’t feel that way if you were the zombie, now would you?"

 SBT: No I suppose I wouldn't especially if all I wanted was to see my family again. In my case it would be par for course to spend my postmortem existence reliving adolescence as a misunderstood animal...

Why is that Breathers (not just the Frat boys) seem to have this adolescent fear of the returners so much so that they feel the need to like to treat them like someone wearing a fur coat and eating a cheeseburger at a PETA rally?

S.G.: Well, the novel is making social commentary on racism and discrimination, so the zombies are taking the place of groups that have been subjected to acts of fear and hate throughout history, especially in this country. So to me it makes sense that Breathers would react this way to a “lesser” class of humans.

SBT: That makes sense considering these aren't "zombies", though methinks anyone who met Ray might dispute that. I suppose there are exceptions to every rule... even in this case. But unlike say 'Jack' and Marla in Fight Club you actually feel sorry for Rita and Andy. Or should we save that pity for the next narrow-minded breather that hurls his Triple Steak burrito from Taco Bell at one of us? 

S.G.: No pity for narrow-minded Breathers. Especially those who eat at Taco Bell.

SBT: You seem to 'understand' these returners quite well, is there something we can learn from you to better understand ourselves in revenant form?

S.G: I don’t know if I’m exactly a Lorax for zombies, but I did write the story from the perspective of a reanimated corpse to see if I could make him and his friends empathetic creatures. I liked the idea of casting the zombies as the heroes and the humans as the monsters. When you write something from the point-of-view of “the other,” it allows you to discover some things about human nature, and perhaps about yourself, that you might not have otherwise explored.

SBT: Are you prepared for z-day supposing they're not friendly like your book?

S.G.: There was this meme going around on Facebook where you were supposed to look at your list of friends on your profile page and the first five friends would be the ones you would have with you in the event of a zombie apocalypse. For some reason, people were happy to have me on that list, until I reminded them that I write stories about zombie rights. But if the zombie apocalypse were to actually happen and they were more like the Romero zombies, my guess is I’d be in trouble. However, I do have a Camelbak, a pair of comfortable running shoes, a bunch of Cliff bars, and my 27” Louisville Slugger from when I was five-years old. So I’m not completely unprepared.

SBT: I'd be flattered but then again I wouldn't want to be placed in a John Connor-apocalyptic-future-war-leader role myself. Maybe they figured you were the Zombie Whisperer?

S.G.: Let’s just say I’m not planning on testing out any abilities to communicate with the living dead. Whispering in a zombie’s ear is a good way to get your face bitten off.

SBT:  In Breathers, the main character Andy is quite the sommelier,  are you a wine connoisseur yourself?

S.G.: I’m more of a beer connoisseur, so I had to do some research on different types of wine that Andy might consume as he’s drinking his way through his parents’ wine collection. I wanted to make it fun and not have him drinking bottle after bottle of Two Buck Chuck.

SBT: We know what kind of wine goes well with Breather but how about beer? You should come up with a Breather cookbook complete with beer pairings, that would be awesome. 

S.G.: I think it depends on the type of Breather you’re serving. Caucasian Breather varies, though it pairs up well with something light, like a Stella or even a Beck’s. For Mexican Breather you could go with either a Corona or a Negro Modela. And Asian Breather goes best with a Tsingtao or Sapporo, depending on whether you’re eating Chinese or Japanese.

SBT: What kind of beer do you like? Light? Dark? I've recently discovered I really like Kirin Ichiban.

S.G.: I’m a fan of stouts, ambers, and pale ales. Specifically I love Boddingtons, Belhaven, and Guinness, which is like a meal in a glass.

SBT: Do you have any good breather recipes you can share? I've got a wonderful recipe for Loco Moco you've got to try...

 (For my recipe I highly recommend toasting the rice and not doing it in a rice cooker and chopping crimini mushrooms into the gravy  (substitute 1 lb ground Breather for grass-fed beef or buffalo if you're lacking)

S.G. I don’t think I could possibly top a recipe for Loco Moco, but as far as I’m concerned you can never go wrong with chicken fried Breather and mashed potatoes smothered with country gravy.
 
SBT: Is it necrophilia if you're both dead? or would that classify it as sex? 

S.G.: I’ve had this discussion before and the consensus is “no.” In order for it to be necrophilia, one of you has to be alive. So yes, it would simply be zombie sex.

SBT: Your short story 'Zombie Gigolo' earned you the Gummy Haggis prize in the Gross out Contest in the 2008 World Horror Convention, which was hilariously disgusting, did Breathers evolve from this story?

S.G.: Actually it’s the other way around. I’d sold Breathers to Random House just a couple of months before the 2008 World Horror Convention and I was trying to come up with an idea for the Gross-Out Contest, which I’d never entered before. So I decided to take some of the more visceral aspects from Breathers, specifically how the human body decomposes, ratchet those aspects up a few notches, and add some maggot-infested sex. However, Breathers did evolve from another story I wrote in 2001 called “A Zombie’s Lament.” Both that story and “Zombie Gigolo” will be available in a short-story collection I’ll be releasing as an eBook sometime later this year. Yes, that’s a shameless plug.

SBT: Interesting I wasn't aware I had my chronology backwards. Oh that's ratcheted up alright, definitely satisfied any morbid curiosity I might have ever wondered about zombie reproduction... maybe aside from that scene in Dead Alive with the dead priest and the dead nurse... did you ever see that one?

S.G.: Yes, I did see Dead Alive. Probably one of the most disgustingly amusing movies I’ve ever seen. Though Slither gets my nod for favorite disgusting comedy. And it’s even a little bit zombie.

SBT: Do you have a favorite zombie movie?

S.G.: Going with your classic zombie film, and not one where the zombie-ness is frequently debated (Evil Dead, Slither), I’d have to go with the original Night of the Living Dead. Though I admit I loved the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake.

SBT: What can you tell me about your book Fated?

S.G. Fated is a dark comedy and social satire told from the POV of Fate that pokes fun at religion, the consumer culture, and the bad choices humans make. It’s also a bit reminiscent of Greek mythology, but instead of gods like Zeus, Hera, Apollo, and Aphrodite, the characters in Fated are immortal personifications of abstract concepts like Death, Karma, Destiny, Lady Luck, Sloth, Gluttony, and the rest of the Deadly Sins. And instead of living on Mount Olympus, they live in Manhattan.

SBT: Fated sounds awesome. Donald Trump wouldn't happen to be the embodiment of the concept of Greed by chance would he? Always had a sneaking suspicion about that man... and his 'hair'.

S.G.: No. The Donald was not the inspiration for Greed, who actually only appears by name in the novel. Sloth and Gluttony are the two Deadly Sins who get most of the face time. They hang out with Fate a lot.

SBT:  Thank you again "Dr." Browne... we'll talk again soon about over beers about Fated! Cheers!

Check out Scott Browne's website: http://sgbrowne.com/