Summer Zombies

As the school year rounds comes to a close for college students the zombies are out and about again. The spindly claws of summer reach into the class rooms to drag students away from their studies, keep them up all night drinking and carousing until the small hours of the morning and spitting them out to wobble to class and finals in the morning. Students long to wile away their hours at the oceanfront, sunning themselves on the beach and cooling off in the water instead of cramming facts about 20th century painters or mathematical equations for their impending finals that they are veering into. Time progresses and students gleefully flee their dorms and apartments with summer properly started they are free.

They are free until August when summer isn't quite over but school drags them back. They go from staying up all night, sleeping all day, drinking when they please and working at some point to having to get up early in the morning, just shy of an hour from when they would go to bed. They lumber to class, dragging sun blistered and tan bodies into the air conditioned buildings with the bright summer sun outside to mock them. As the weather turns cool and ultimately cold they fall into the rut of school sleeping habits which are minimal as opposed to the excessive hours of rest from summer. They're wired of caffeine for class and work, running to and fro until winter break, a month to hibernate, the beaches are too cold to sleep on anymore. They lust and dream for summer, for the two weeks of being a zombie with the tantalizing warmth paying the Pied Piper luring them outside once more. The vicious cycle seems to never end, but the cycle breaks when graduation arrives and jobs with a yearly salary arrive and work happens all year round. The new graduates lust for the school cycle of work and rest, narcolepsy and insomnia in a yin yang harmony that drives them insane, but is a rote and comfortable track to follow.

Jasmine P.