AM I DEAD YET? is a work by Kek-W. Kek-W is a UK-based writer of comic-books, graphic novels, films, TV and fiction. His recent work includes the acclaimed DARK JUDGES: FALL OF DEADWORLD Dark Horror series featuring JUDGE DEATH, and the Historical Science Fantasy series THE ORDER.
Well, am I? Because I really don't think I can tell any more.
Yes, I've checked my pulse and my chest seems to be rising and falling at a fairly regular rate. But what if it's a trick? – we've all watched Westworld, all read Philip K Dick – how can I really be sure? Am I alive – am I real? Empirical proof would surely require some form of scientific intervention – telemetry, perhaps; a device that reads my vital signs – something solid and reliable, engineered by Thorn EMI or Siemens, and stamped with a crisp-looking Virgin Care logo. But the locum at my GP surgery tells me via a terse SMS-text this would require CCG funding and, unfortunately, there's no money – budgets are tight. It turns out that what I have is actually quite common and isn't life-threatening. Maybe one of the new generation SRI anti-depressants might help? Or a course in Mindfulness? Something that might allow me to adjust to 'life' in a limbozone, to this unsettling sense of necro-uncertainty.
So I'm stuck here at Passport Control, at the cemetery-border of late-era neo-zombieliberalism and early-onset neo-necroliberalism – lost, trapped between two states in a sterile transit-zone, a Ballardian Space – uncertain which lane to get into, LIVING or DEAD. The Border Agency are eyeing me suspiciously; upending my rucksack, x-raying it, searching it for irregularities and clues, something they can charge me for. Business or Pleasure? Anything to declare? Well, yes – possibly: pessimism, exhaustion and a 2-litre bottle of 70%-proof Despair.
But it turns out my passport is the wrong colour. It should be black. Deadbrexit means Deadbrexit.
The border between Life and the Afterlife now appears to be porous.
We all used to know where we stood. There was never any doubt: the demarcation line between Life and Death was indelibly drawn with a thick, black, water-proof marker-pen. The criteria used to uniquely define Life are complex and often controversial, but they usually include basic characteristics such as Reproduction and Respiration. When you finally stopped moving and breathing then you were most likely done. Death was something you looked forward to, like a good night's sleep or a bus pass. Now, under zombiecapitalism, Conspicuous Consumption and Ceaseless Production have been indefinitely extended along the x-axis, out towards infinity. “People are living longer,” explains the new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and his logic seems so reasonable, so even-handed, so much like something you might read in the Observer, that only an idiot or a cranky, red-veined contrarian could possibly disagree, “so you all need to work a bit longer to pay for it.” Even the Dead, it seems, are now expected to pull their weight – to do their bit – it's the British Way, you see. Good, we're all in agreement, then. There's no rest for the wicked.
The End has been indefinitely postponed, it is no longer in sight – there's no relief, no respite – Death is no longer an excuse for shirking. Another SMS-text explains that an ATOS assessment has declared my corpse fit for work, so off you go – you're back in the game; it's like you've never been away! Death has been deregulated, a government spokesperson tells us, the EU regs dumped, the red tape cut. Everything is up for grabs now, everything that once constituted a sense of You-ness: your name, your life, your memories, your organs, your medical data, your on-line identity, your Amazon purchases (“Deadfolk like you also once purchased...”). Funeral services for the Social Media Dead! Post-mortem profile scrubbing! Instagram obituaries, a digital burial!
The Dead don't need pensions, holidays or training; have no legal requirement for maternity leave, protective headgear or steel-toed boots. The Dead don't need lunch; they never take a sickie. And so we keep going, keep shuffling forward in ragged hi-viz vests and torn, company-branded, blue polo-shirts, one rotten, maggot-gnawed foot in front of the other, loose shoe soles flapping on the treadmill as we power the Grand Imperial Carousel. Round and round it goes: one step, two steps, three... But the organ-grinder is a cheap, tin-plated automaton shipped over from Singapore, his monkey a tiny, hollow-boned skeleton dressed in a faded bellhop uniform looted from a provincial museum. The song he plays is a cheesy 49p ring-tone, an old S Club 7 cover-version. Save your peanuts; the Dead don't fucking need them.
Was it not enough that we not only had to pay for our own coffin, but also supply the raw materials, make it ourself and then carry it – like Christ and his cross (though at least his father was a skilled carpenter; had served an actual apprenticeship) or Sisyphus and his bloody boulder – drag it an inch at a time up the hill to the boneyard and present it in person to the Ferryman along with all the relevant paperwork in triplicate? No, it was clearly not. Post-zombiecapitalism demands that our coffin should then become a stage on which our corpses – our dead futureselves – should cavort and offer up their wares – a lifetime’s worth of material surplus – for someone else to auction on eBay.
We all serve Thanatos now. We have to – he's donating dark money to Tory Party funds.
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