aspect of the individual that lives on after death may be some partial element, or the entire soul, of an individual, which carries with it and confers personal identity. What does become of us? What happens after the physical body stops? Does the soul linger? Does it travel to a paradise or damnation? Is it reborn into the body of a new being? Or does it just cease to exist? Are the soul and the afterlife simply fairy tales we've told ourselves over the centuries to comfort our fear of the great unknowable? Why do we want to believe that the possibility of immortality exists, even if that immortality is a hellish bastardization of life? Zombie A person who is or appears to be lifeless, apathetic, or totally lacking in independent judgment; automaton; a corpse brought to life in this manner. The zombie is, in my opinion, the very essence of that bastardization. Much like the vampire, the zombie is a romanticized version of the afterlife based, partially -- and particularly the modern version of the monster -- on a distorted version of the Eucharist of Christ: " Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. .. " But unlike the vampire, which over the last twenty years has become a thing of teenage fantasies, the zombie is a complete horror that isn't hemmed in by the religious doctrine that dictates the vampires every move. The zombie