By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues
Be careful what you wish for! Want to be a zombie in the Walking Dead? You sure the universe isn’t listening? Read the whole story in Zombie Blues now available on Amazon.
WANNABE ZOMBIE
Do you know that old saying, be careful what you wish for? Yeah well, the zombie apocalypse most certainly threw that one in my face.
I’m the world’s foremost zombie cosplayer, Miles Milligan. I love my name as it makes me sound special like Peter Parker or Bruce Banner. I’m the man with a secret life, desperate for attention. I live with my mom and dad and two younger sisters. I say sisters but they’re more like those ghost twins out of the Shining. That movie was what got me hooked on horror and we all know there is no one better than Mr King.
I used to sit up with my mom and dad watching the late Saturday night horror double thing horror bill. I devoured every movie, every book I could and loved every minute of it. From that came model making of the most famous characters in the genre; Dracula, Creature from the Black Lagoon and Pumpkinhead to name but a few.
Then I discovered cosplay!
What is cosplay I hear some of you ask? Really? Ok, well cosplay is a global hobby where you dress as your favourite film and television characters (or anime but that’s not my scene). For example, Spiderman or even a Transformer like Bumblebee or Optimus Prime. Any era, any character, Jack Sparrow, Mister Vader himself or Harley of the Quinns. It is done mostly for fun but there are some out there who see it as something more. They see it as a personal ego trip where they can step on anyone to be the best there is. They will go into debt and danger just to be the best costume. For those people I believe they secretly want to be famous but are frustrated that the closest they get to fame is meeting the actors from their movies and television shows. They think that gives them a privilege but it’s a false fame. It’s phantom fame based on their costume and no offence some of them need to chew on a few salads before declaring how amazing they look as a particular character. Cosplay may be colour blind (rightly so) but it’s not that blind when ridiculousness surpasses sense. But hey, let those idiots wallow in their own self delusion because real cosplayers do it for fun and raise money for charity too. Those are the real heroes.
Me, I love to dress up. I always have and my never miss show is The Shambling Death; you guessed it, a zombie show.
While it has its critics, it is amazingly popular and they keep coming up with new and inventive zombies every season. I would sit glued to the screen each week on repeated viewings and in my mind, I was that zombie. I wanted nothing more than to be an extra on the show as the most bizarre zombie they could make. And what better way to attract the attention of the shows producers than by going to the fan conventions as the best zombie there was and maybe, just maybe that magic moment would happen where they say ‘Miles, would you like….?’
I had it planned to the letter. I would make sure I got photographed with various actors and production staff and post them to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram…anywhere it could possibly bee seen.
All I ever wanted was to be a zombie. Well, I must have seriously pissed the universe off because as they say, be careful what you wish for.
I suppose the greatest irony is it happened at a Shambling Death convention (expensive bugger it was too on the photo ops alone but hey, any price to get where I wanted to be!).
The Time Warriors and Beyond 