Remember, once upon a time, when there were unattractive people on TV? Whatever happened to protruding waistlines, stretch marks, zits, moles, and blemishes? Where have all the dad and mom bods gone? Wherever did all those homely actors wander off to, or the water-retaining sea cows scarfing down their bottomless steak fries before hurrying back on set?

       Where, I demand, are all my balding brethren!?

       Well, they’re all around us – they are us – but you won’t find them on screen unless a specific character demands it. Every side character, commercial, and news anchor has become easy to look at. And why not? They all want eyeballs, and those eyeballs are harder and harder to grab with all the options competing for our attention.

       There’s plenty of talk about the effect this has – especially on our young. I don’t need to rehash any of this – you’ve heard it all before. But I think we’d all be better off if we could step back for one second and acknowledge what pretty much everything on screen is.

       Complete fiction.

       

 

 

By Robert Stahl

 

       To believe the hype about the show, you’d think a man was about to walk on Mars. Life Beyond Death is what they called it. Mediocre title, but a killer tagline. “On October 31, the dead will rise.” How could you not want to watch?

       Seemed like everyone tuned in that night. Some out of morbid curiosity. Others because they thought it would be a bust but wanted to gossip about it at work, like when Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s vault and found nothing but dirt and some empty rum bottles.

       The businessman lay on a table wearing the clothes he’d been buried in, or so the narrator claimed. A skinny African in a bone necklace and a thong danced around him, his naked torso shining with sweat. In the corner, a grim-faced organist pounded out a mournful dirge. Whole thing was pretty corny: oversaturated lighting like an amateur horror film, fake cobwebs looped in the corners, a papier-mâché moon hanging from the rafters. You’ve seen better sets on Svengoolie. At home, people either howled with laughter or shook their heads in boredom, already reaching for their remotes. Meme makers scrambled for their computers, ready to pounce on comedic gold.

       Until those dead eyes fluttered open. Until the corpse sat up with a stiff jerk. Until his dry lips cracked apart, and a single, awful word twisted out into the world:

       “Moneyyyy,” groaned the dead-businessman-turned-reanimated-corpse.

       It was the highest rated show in TV history.

       The talking corpse was so popular, he took over the news cycle for a month. It didn’t take long until the network gave him his own reality show. The premise was that you had to compete to be the corpse’s best friend. Every week, he kicked off the person he disliked the most. “Die, loserrrr!” he’d growl, drenching the poor half-wit in a spray of rancid spittle. That show was something. The dead man reeked so bad they had to film with the windows open, is what TMZ said. Every so often, one of his eyes would bulge out of its socket. A stagehand would have to rush out there to push it back in. Or they’d catch him chewing on his own tongue like it was a wad of bubble gum. He had a foul mouth, too, and he was mean; accusing contestants of being ugly, coughing all over the snack table, and even telling the sound guy, “Your mother eats crap in hell.”

       People ate it up.

       Then, someone got the idea the corpse should run for president. What a joke, right? 

       It turned out to be the farthest thing from.

       That election season was the craziest ever. The other politicians were defenseless in the face of the corpse’s wild unpredictability. He steamrolled over them in debates. He called them dirty names. He bared his teeth and growled and spit and hissed. A senator from Florida was bit on the hand. Poor shmuck dropped out of the race before he even got to the hospital.

       Somehow, this rotting, grinning ghoul became the party’s nominee. And, in the most bizarre twist to ever hit the world of politics, managed to get himself elected.

       The four years that followed were confusing for everyone. It was like a dark chasm had opened somewhere in the universe, one that threatened never to close. The dead president proved to be incompetent beyond imagining. He was prone to making impulsive decisions, like canceling Christmas and painting the White House black. He converted the Arlington National Cemetery into a huge condo and decorated it with enough gilded fountains to supply a small nation with water for a week. In public addresses he was argumentative, contrary, hostile. He’d show up with a live python draped across his shoulders because…why not? He spewed hateful rhetoric that stoked division amongst the citizens for hours on end, pausing only to swallow a live gerbil or to dislodge a maggot from his nostril. In world affairs, he cozied up to some of the country’s biggest enemies while turning a cold, rotting shoulder to some of our staunchest, most dedicated allies.

       What was stunning was how so many people embraced his insanity.

       What was inspiring was how many people did not.

       When his four years dried up, the dead president was voted out of office. Of course, he wouldn’t leave when they asked him to. “Squatters rights!” he snarled. “I’m a very stable zombie.” He rallied his supporters to defend him; legions responded, sputtering up in rusty golf carts and motorized wheelchairs, cheap plastic Halloween skulls taped to the sides like the saddest apocalyptical army ever. Brandishing cattle prods and super soakers filled with pee, they scratched and bit, mimicking the undead antics of their leader, the air heavy with the smell of sweat and urine and the dying drone of “loser” fading like a funeral hymn. Dozens lost their dignity that day. At the center of it all, the corpse president cackled with glee.

       Eventually, the local mall cops stepped in to disperse the mob. The dead president was thrown out of office, and a new president took over.

       What happened to him after, you ask?

       The network knew they had a problem on their hands, but damned if they weren’t going to capitalize on it. They buried him under twenty tons of cement in a primetime special called Elegy: A Nation in Mourning.

       Ever so slowly, things returned to normal.

       Over time, the country looked back on that era as one of deep confusion. Some thought the world had been on the verge of collapse, while others insisted it all had been blown way out of proportion. No matter where they landed, though, everyone agreed on one thing: the dead president’s term had been a big letdown, like when Y2K turned out not to be the end of the world, or that time Geraldo opened Capone’s vault and found nothing but dirt and empty bottles.

 

~~~

About the author:

        Robert Stahl grew up in rural Texarkana, Texas. As a child, he read books behind his parents’ barn and found himself instantly transported away to magical lands, courtesy of authors such as C.S. Lewis and L. Frank Baum. He’s penned about twenty short stories for various publications and anthologies. Learn more at robertestahl.com.

 

By the way, we recently interviewed Wulf Moon in our podcast. Check it out for some great writing tips and to learn more about the book and the man behind it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moon teaches the award-winning Super Secrets of Writing Workshops and is the author of The Illustrated Super Secrets of Writing and the runaway bestseller, How To Write a Howling Good Story. He invites you to join his free Wulf Pack Club at www.TheSuperSecrets.com

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