Undead city wasn’t different from a 21st century earth metropolis. Same capitalism and consumerism. Same slums, suburbs and rich neighborhoods. People were more or less the same, just… well, undead. 

At least for twenty years of my zombiness, my life was extremely similar to my life on Earth. 

It was so similar I initially thought I ended up in some kind of loop limbo or karmic afterlife, but after a while I just adjusted to the new routine. Or I should say old one.

I was still a cleaning lady, still poor and still a lonely nobody. 

And I still had an addiction, I just changed my drug of choice. Now I was turning off my brain by literally eating brains. Not human ones, but industrial synthetic brains food. Even better. You could have a story-life by eating those ones, an immersive experience about a fictional life of someone else, sometimes in our world, sometimes from others. They were for every taste and every genre, perfectly engineered to satisfy and pleasure even the pickiest zombie.

That day of the twenty year I was living in Undead City, I returned from work hating my life as usual, then self-pitying myself as usual, being in self-denial about my addiction as usual.

I took the equivalent of a metro in the Undead City, a carriage-train driven by skeleton horses on a inter-districts rail. It may sound cool, but after twenty years of taking it every morning, it lost all the initial fascination for me. Inside it was overcrowded with people returning from work, but everyone was lost in their own world of escapism. 

The undead witch at my left was looking into her portable crystal ball with tired eyes, the vampire behind me was drinking synthetic blood beer, and the two ghouls at my right were crunching synthetic guts crisps. A Dark Powder addicted mummy was begging for money from person to person with a feeble voice, people avoided her with disgust. I did the same. 

Just a normal day in Undead City. 

I was staring blankly outside the window, gazing at the towers-districts in the distance. It was the same view I saw everyday for twenty years, and I couldn’t bear it anymore. Then I made the mistake of looking down. The sight of the Dark Void, floating at the bottoms of the towers like a black, thick fog, made me drop my stomach. 

“You know not to look down, you fucking idiot.” I closed my eyes and repressed apocalyptic intrusive thoughts. I distracted myself by chewing the last synthetic brain snack I had in my pocket and, for ten heavenly minutes, my mind was totally lost on a trip where I was a rich heiress demon princess in a fantasy world. Then the effect vanished too soon, leaving me again to my miserable real life. I regretted finishing all ten snacks I had with me during my shift at work. Bored, I eavesdropped on the conversation the two ghouls were having at my right.

-...Her return will cause a lot of problems to the Court, mark my words- The first one was saying. 

The second one shrugged his shoulders. -Who cares, politicians are all the same. They don’t give fuck about us.-

-The current Demon Lord maybe. A foolish, pampered boy.- Spat the first ghoul, with contempt. Then he gazed outside the window, like he was lost in his memories. -But the Queen is wired differently, had an existential crisis a few years ago and left the Court. The righteous ones left with her. I saw her once in a parade, thirty years ago. She was such a beautiful woman, her vampire knight in shiny armor at her side…- He sighed. -But you don’t know, you’re a new Earthborne immigrant.-

-I know enough- Snapped the other ghoul, annoyed at being condescended. -I know that only lunatics would run away from all that money, let’s be honest. If I was her…- 

But I never heard what he was going to do if he was her. My stop arrived and I got off the carriage-train. I walked toward the gray, run-down coffin shaped condo I called home, lost in thoughts about the conversation I just heard.

The return of the Queen, and her entourage, was on everyone’s lips. Someone was saying she was living in a floating beautiful castle where she was having bloodbaths and orgies everyday, someone was saying it was a floating monastery instead, because she repented and became a nun. I didn’t know much actually, but I agreed with the second ghoul. I didn’t give fuck about an undead queen nun, her orgies or her magical floating home. Politics just bored me to death. 

“It wasn’t like that when I was in highschool...” I remembered how passionate I was back then, while tiredly walking on the dirty stairs of the condo. 

I tried to focus on the synthetic brains burgers waiting for me at home,  fantasizing about the next story-life I would experience. The little trip I had on the carriage-train was way too short and the main love interest was a little bit of an obsessive psycho, but turning-off the brain cells while eating brains was the first rule and being colorblind to red flags in romance fiction was the second one. 

I arrived at my floor. I stopped walking abruptly when I saw a ragged vampire sitting slumped near the door of my studio apartment, his head low and an empty phial dropping Dark Blood in his open hand.