When all of your family, and you, get murdered by the Slaughterhouse Nine, one doesn't expect to be wandering a town square with people giving you wide berths.
When you find all of your dead family, one doesn't expect to feel slightly hungry.
All of these things happened to me. And I can't help but feel rather indifferent towards it.
Sure, I'm clinically dead, walk and talk like a zombie, have to eat meat everyday, but being dead has given me surprisingly powerful abilities.
I don't know the full extent of them, but I can lift a tank with one hand, regenerate from all damage, am immune to mind-altering/power-stealing powers and feel no pain.
I made money by working as a librarian in the town I died in. I can only say single words and make noises, so I don't talk, and most people can tolerate my lack of dexterous, and slow, fingers. I can run just as quick as a normal human, but that doesn't apply to my fingers apparently. Plus, reading the books makes me feel normal and human, so I have that.
Then, one day, after working from 7am to 7pm, being a zombie meant I needed no sleep, while I gnawed on a chicken leg, I saw an ad for a librarian in Brockton Bay, offering a small pay-check in a school library. I didn't care about the money, I only ever needed to buy meats in small doses, but meeting new people, kids always knew how to have fun, was always fun. I looked up the nearest airports, one a few miles from my covert village, and said my goodbyes to everybody. One offered to drive me there and I accepted.
I drew many odd looks for my lack of speech, shamble-walk and my pale and dead skin, but soon I was on the plane to America, near to Brockton Bay.
I wasn't going in blind. Someone like me, dead basically, would be considered a Cape with my superpowers, and the PRT would definitely want to poke and prod me, but I just want to be a normal person, as normal as dead can be, in a library, reading books and helping strangers.
A few hours later...
Winslow.
No idea what this school is about, but meh, a job's a job.
I entered the school, found a map and shambled to the principal's office.
I was about to enter, when I heard voices.
"One for pretty much every school day starting last semester. Sorry, I only decided to keep track last summer. September ninth, other girls in my grade had been encouraged by those three to make fun of me. I was wearing the backpack they had been thrown in the trash, so every girl that was in on it was holding their nose or saying I smelled like garbage. It picked up steam, and by the end of the day, others had joined in on it. I had to change my email address after my inbox filled in just a day, with more of the same sorts of things. I have every hateful email that was sent to me here, by the way."
A girl's voice, probably a few years younger then me, began before there was a soft thud and the shuffling of paper.
From the speech, it looked like bullying, so I stepped back and waited for the meeting to end.
A half an hour later...
The door burst open. I was frowning and slightly pissed.
For a solid 30 minutes, I heard the principal, three other girls, a lawyer of some sort and two other adults ignore and reward three bull- no torturers.
My appetite for this job has vanished completely.
The girl being bullied and her father left the room, the girl frowning in anger, frustration and sadness while her father tried to calm her down. I immediately followed, spitting on the cheap tiles in anger.
The duo were ahead of me quickly because of my slow shambling. I wasn't attempting to catch up, only leave.
A place like this was a breeding ground for crime and gangs.
Which led to me wandering the streets.
People looked at me weird, obviously, and the amount of money in my pocket would last me a year on buying meat, so I needed some way to make money.
I walked past a basketball court, which had gangsters holding bats and knives and talking about the score they just stole.
An idea formed.
I wandered onto the basketball court, looking around aimlessly, until I saw the gangsters approaching me.
I pretended to not see them until they had surrounded me.
"Awful late for a guy like you to be walking alone." A muscular guy with no shirt and some dirty joggers with a knife began. "So hand over all your money, and bad things won't happen."
My response was a punch to the stomach, which sent him flying away with a wheezing hack.
"Oh shit! He's a cape!"
"Fuckin' Run!"
"I ain't dyin' today!"
I'm glad they ran, or I would've had to fight and probably eat one of them.
I took the money pile they left behind and put what could fit into my wallet safely. The rest I left for someone else.
The cash I got would sustain me for longer, but I still needed a permanent job.
The Wildbow school was out, period.
I didn't want to turn to villainy, but if I ever did, I'd be a hell of a Brute.
The kind people'd pay a arm and a leg for.
I'd consider it, that's all I'm saying.
The PRT had programs for someone like me, since I do look fairly youthful, 19 to be precise, which was my age of death.
New Wave or the Wards, I wouldn't mind either. One is more covert and the other is very publicised.
I would need a name, Zombie or Corpse would do, and it'd be pretty hard for someone like me to hide their identity.
In fact, I'll sit on it, on this bench in the park I've wandered into unconsciously.