TOAST

Adding insult to injury, Dave’s breakfast was interrupted at half eight on a quiet Monday morning. The concept of simply ignoring something in the hope that it would go away was not to be applied to this situation. Past experience in said situation has proven that ignorance only leads to horrific injuries, and inevitably, death.

Dave worked at one of those banks where most of the staff have been replaced with touchscreentechnology, i.e. machines with mystical metal holes in which you place your hardearnedcash, and as if by magic, a day later the funds appear in your bank account. It would seem that for the time being, humans are supposedly incapable of performing tasks they have been carrying out for years. It must be terribly demeaning to have your position in the workplace taken by a machine - more so if you have spent most of your working life in said position.

Dave’s job was to inform people which of these touchscreenmachines to use, one of the few human tasks remaining in the bank (although it is entirely probable that he too will be disposed of soon enough).

Dave was wearing his thin dressing gown, due to the Summer weather. He had prepared himself a slice of toast and sat down to watch the morning news. As he was about to take a bite into the toast, a dull knock at the door interrupted his routine. Dave had been expecting a parcel containing a t-shirt he had bought from a guy on eBay. Well, he presumed it was a guy. For one reason or another, it appears to be human nature to classify all unknown people as a ‘guy’ or a ‘He’. I am sure it is only a matter of time before political correctness resolves this problem, and I am equally as sure that it will be a change welcomed with open arms. I know that, if I were a woman, I would certainly be offended if a person credited me with being a man, without the accuser having a decent enough amount of evidence to back up their assertion about the status of my gender.

The t-shirt was one of those ‘ironic’ t-shirts that has a funny message on it (here, the word “funny” is almost as deserving of inverted commas as “ironic”), the kind of t-shirt that makes the wearer momentarily or permanently think that strangers who see it will believe that he is a “funny” guy”. The sad irony is that this is generally not the case (th

From the knock at the door, Dave was Expectant of said t-shirt awaiting him in the hands of his postman. Dave stood up, walked into the hallway and opened the door with a smile, his toast still in hand. This smile lasted only a few seconds however, as rather than being greeted by the postman (who of course always rings twice), he was greeted by a conscious rotting corpse (and most people are aware that the dead generally do not ring at all, hence its knocking). In this situation, most people would worry, cry, scream, die, or collapse (or even employ a happy combination of all five actions). Luckily for Dave however, he had recently rented the DVD release of ‘Dawn of the Dead’ (not the original, the remake, the one with Ving Rhames as the muscle-bound police officer brandishing a highly-clichéd, yet highly effective shotgun. in the original 1978 version, the zombies are slow and lacking intelligence, making them relatively easy to defeat. the difference in the 2004 remake is that the zombies are capable of running at high speeds, despite being as predictably stupid as they were in 1978).

Dave hadn’t paid much attention to the film, but remembered that a sharp blow to the head killed the undead for good. He half-ran, half-walked to the kitchen, taking a bite of his toast on the way. The zombie stayed pretty much put. He proceeded to arm himself with a large kitchen knife. Dave strode back to his front door (luckily for him, this particular zombie was of the slow and predictably stupid 1978 variety), and with great force, drove the kitchen knife into the zombie’s soft skull. Dave watched as the body keeled over backwards onto the concrete. He stepped outside and dragged the body away from his doorstep, as there are only a few things in this world that could drive away guests from entering your home before they even ring the bell. Rotting corpses are included in this short list (along with door-mounted swastikas, crucifixes and the smell of old sprouts). Dave considered the humour in scribbling the word “WELCOME” onto the zombie’s chest with a permanent marker and leaving the body in place of a doormat, but decided against the idea as the joke might be taken the wrong way by some, creating somewhat of a name for himself as the ‘unfunny’ guy.

Dave went back into the house, locked his door and returned to watching the television. The news was on, and various ‘experts’ were offering their opinions to the viewing public on how these zombies came about in the first place. Dave sighed to himself, knowing that they were wasting their time looking for the cause of the pandemic – what they needed more than anything else was a solution.

It’s an unfortunate thing when interruptions occur, especially during breakfast. Even more so if it results in your toast going cold.