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// Introduction 
// Story: Heartbeat 
// by GermanBrony 
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I am dead, but it's not that bad. I've learned to liv...deal with it. I'm sorry but I can't properly introduce myself, I don't have a name anymore. Hardly any of us do, we lose them like horseshoes, forget them like appointments or anniversaries. I think mine have started with an `S´, but that´s all I have right now. It's funny, because back when I was alive I used to forget other ponies names. My friend `L´ says the irony of being a zombie is that everything is kinda funny when you are dead, but you can't smile anymore because your lips have rotted off.

None of us are particularly attractive; missing limps and bloody, ulcerated lacerations all over the body have become standards. In my case I´m one of the lucky ones, I'm still in the early stages if decay. Just the white empty eyes with the dark circles under it, the ruffled fur, the unpleasant smell. I could almost pass for a living pony in need of vacation.

Before I became a part of the undead herd I must have been a guard; I wear this blood-smeared golden chest plate since I can remember. I used to have a helmet too but I lost him a few hunting trips ago. The rest of my appearance consists of a short blue mane and white fur. Maybe white isn't even my natural color, the armors magic changes colors into this monotone royal white. It's has just been to long for me to really remember.

`L´ makes fun of me sometimes. He points at my armor and tries to laugh, a chocked, gurgling deep in his gut. I admit, it's ironical; an ex-guard walking around and randomly killing ponies to eat them. At least I'm conflicted about it.

`L´ has the usual zombie look, green fur, orange mane, no clothing. The only thing that makes him distinguishable from the herd is the gasping wound in his neck. The area around it is looking pretty macabre by now, he should really go more into the rain when he has the chance.

We like to 'talk' and speculate about the clothes of the others, since these final fashion choices are mostly the only indication of who we were before we all became no one. Some are less obvious than mine: cap and scarf, saddle and dress, shirt and glasses, sometimes a cylinder and a monocle. So we make random guesses. You were a royal. You were a fashion designer. You were a mailmare. Ring any bells? It never does.

Nopony I know has any specific memories about the time before we died. Just a vague vestigial knowledge of an Equestria long gone. Faint impressions of past lives that linger like phantom limbs. We recognize civilization but we have no personal role in it. No history. We are just here. We do what we do, time passes, and nopony asks questions. But like I've said, it's not that bad, although me moan and groan a lot.

We may appear mindless, but we aren't. The rusty cogs of cogency still spin, just geared down and down till the outer motion is barely visible. We grunt and groan, we shrug and nod, sometimes even a few words slip out. I wonder if it's very different from living.

The only thing that makes me sad is that we've forgotten our names and lost our cutie marks. Out of everything, this seems to me the most tragic. I miss my identity, at least I want to know my own name. I mourn for everypony else's, because I'd like to love them, but I don't know who they are. 

There are hundreds of us living in an abandoned castle on top of a mountain; I can't remember the name of it anymore. We don't need shelter or warmth, we are already cold, but we like the walls and roofs over our heads. This place somehow also reminds us of the past before dead, I can't explain it, it just feels that we belong here. I don't like open fields, to have nothing around me, nothing to touch or look at, no hard lines whatsoever and just the gasping maw of the sky. I imagine that's what being full-dead is like. An emptiness cast and absolute.

I think we've been here for a long time. I still have nearly all my flesh, but there are also elders who are a way more rugged than me or `L´,  I believe that they were dead long before I was. They lost all of their fur like a bird loses his feathers in the molt, their flesh is gray and cluttered with tons of bite injuries and their eyes are almost dried out completely. These guys mostly stay around in the darker places of the castle and the don't hunt or move very often.

The cellar is full of them, I limped down into there by accident a few weeks ago and found something similar to a changeling hive down there. They built themselves some sort of a shrine down there, sitting around it the whole time and starring at it, like it would bring them some sort of...salvation. 

If we can 'die' of old age, they must be in the final stage of it, but I've never seen any of us die that way. Getting decapitated, stabbed, slain, shot and these stuff are the main reasons for our demise, there's always a reason behind it, it never just randomly happens. 

Maybe we would live forever if we don't get slain, I don't know. The future as as blurry to me as the past. I can't seem to make myself care about anything to the right or left of the present, and the present isn't exactly urgent. You might say death has relaxed me.