Ireland’s Tom Sin decided on a resurrection as his St. Patrick’s Day present to himself. Nothing big, no flamboyance, just a few invites: his dead peacock, brain-aneurysm Fred from across the block, his blind second cousin, and the landlord, old widowed Mooge Elliot. But this present, Tom knew, would come at a price. One couldn’t simply dig such a thing up in Escobarian grave robbery fashion. And it wouldn’t follow suicide either, because such an ignoble exit is too easy. The great one, his friend Hay Soõs, only rose from the mud after much brownnosing with his family-connection at the firm upstairs… Many times Soõs explained to him that internships aren’t easy to come by and that he didn’t know of any intern, other than himself, who had been invited back for a full time position. Tom wasn’t so dumb as to attempt to follow the noble Soõs in this respect. All he wanted was to experience resurrection. So, Tom Sin realized, he had to be tactful. An oracle, his drug dealer Omabe Kush, had let him in on a potentially crucial secret: short lives lived well often prove to be the best of lives. “Once” had always been Kush’s motto. He had always sworn that reliving past experiences seldom delivers renewed happiness. Eternal life burdens those who have it with inescapable déjà vu, yet of a kind these victims recognize as no trick. Under such a curse, a fifth run around of that spring picnic kiss with Sally Smith wouldn’t be nearly as sweet. Her lips would likely taste like horse turd. Kush’s mind, made up of half crack cocaine and half dead matter, saw eternal life as tantamount to eternal punishment… Kush had plans to cut the chord jointly with Vanilla Ice, a friend of his whose déjà vu had set in upsettingly early. He encouraged Tom Sin to aim his telescope at the horizon in a few weeks’ time to observe Hay Soõs lighting Kush’s heavenly joint and God’s angels schmoozing in Vanilla Ice’s bubble bath bong. Conscious of his impending death, Omabe Kush had been trying to straighten out his karma just to ensure his spot beside his idol Aaron Burr in the sky. The answer emanated from an unlikely place: Kush’s hemorrhaging manhood that had plagued his love life for many years. To his great misfortune, sex often aggravated his condition. No fewer than a handful of times, Kush accused his partner of lying to him about her period as a cover. In each of these instances, Kush proceeded to run off like a grade-schooler and, in the process, trip over his blood-soaked jeans. With his karma in mind, Kush embraced his condition as a blessing and decided to donate his manhood’s leaked blood to leukemia patients in Scottsdale, Arizona. What’s the message Tom Sin drew from Kush’s meditations? Kush’s assumptions on eternal life say it all. Tom Sin had to offend God so much so that in death, God would punish him with renewed, immortal life. Tom Sin had to do something so base, so inhumane that God would interrupt his peaceful slumber and make him a zombie, only the second one in history. Tom began his preparations of the eve of leaf-green ginger day in the shallows of the River Liffy. Fumbling around for his fishing net, Tom Sin found a nun bathing under a nearby wicker tree. Her presumed ongoing dialogue with Hay Soõs could prove useful, he thought. So, he chucked a rusty gutter pipe at her, managing to get her attention. Tom Sin then found a rusty medallion with the twelve apostles on the rim surrounding a beaming John Wilkes Booth. And he also found a woman arranging floating soda bottles in the shape of a soon to be dismembered cross, taking the river’s current into account… And he just knew they would be thrilled at the news… Tom Sin trudged up the river’s muddy banks, dragging the nun, the soda bottle lady, and the medallion in his fishing net. On the way back, the nun struck up a hearty conversation with the bottle lady. However, once Tom learned that the soda bottle lady could expertly craft a cross out of anything, he tuned them out entirely, duly satisfied. Tom Sin continued his preparations back at the house. He dug a ditch under brain-aneurysm Fred’s parlor window, and hung a piece of raw meat directly above it, just out of arm’s reach of the window. He knew the meat’s stench would be too much for his rabid, flesh-hungry neighbor. For the predatorial Fred, the irresistibility of the meat would surely leave him with no choice but to lunge for it head-on, without considering that with every leap there is a descent. Brain-aneurysm Fred plummeted into the ditch as planned. As he ravenously devoured his raw meat, Tom Sin casually filled the ditch, humming to himself… He wondered if Fred had finished the meat. Tom Sin then turned to his blind cousin. He sent her a new book in the mail, which he claimed was the latest in braille experimental fiction. Not two days later, she called him, raving about how the book unmistakably presented a topical cure for the blind. Her devotion to the book’s message was impossible to deny. The next day, Tom Sin scooped up his now-dead cousin from her home’s front stoop. Her eyes were bloated with what the book had reassuringly called “Miracle Drops.” The true miracle, however, was that his cousin had simply poured drain cleaner on her face. As the eye is the express highway to the bloodstream, the drain cleaner didn’t take long to end her. After her recommended dosage of 20 oz, she had become less of a blood-saturated being than a rapidly-deteriorating poop repellant. Tom Sin then turned to Mooge Elliot. Finishing her would complete his plan. After entangling the sleeping Mooge Elliot in his fishing net, which he had hung from the ceiling of her bedroom, Tom Sin baked a cake. The cake looked good. And Tom Sin wanted some. But the comforting thought of his fast-approaching glory made resistance easy. So Tom Sin handed Mooge the cake, which she graciously thanked him for, grabbed his impaling stick with which he killed Mooge’s pet lobster Roko, showed her the bloody result, and let her imploding heart do the rest of the work. The cake was just a further provisionary measure. Its sugar would intensify her hysteria and speed the process along. The dead bodies were left for the scrap artist to deal with, along with the medallion. The nun was told to keep doing whatever she was doing. To ensure that Hay Soõs would interrupt his lifeless slumber and sentence him to an immortal dwelling, Tom Sin concluded that his own death had to be severely blasphemous – even more deplorable than the three murders combined. Tom Sin had to launch a frontal assault on the zombie, Hay Soõs, and all he stood for… The plan was simple. Naturally, he had always wanted his death to be a simulation of the Salem Witch Trials – the movie industry had yet to release an accurate account that duly praised the colonials for their quick thinking. Tied to a cross that the bottle lady had built from the severed limbs of Tom Sin’s victims, Tom Sin felt at peace. For good measure, he shoved his keistered Mel Gibson limited-edition action figure further into its snuggly home so it wouldn’t slip out in the fire. He wanted Mel Gibson’s all-benevolent spirit to stay with him and witness glory. The nun then came forward to do her part. She asked for Hay Soõs’ attention, draped the Wilkes Booth medallion over Tom Sin’s proud neck, and lit the fuse. The next instant, plastic Mel Gibson caught fire and exploded, taking Tom Sin, the complicit nun, and the bottle lady with him to hell’s fiery abyss. Hay Soõs, Omabe Kush and Vanilla Ice looked down as they lounged in the sunset’s magenta clouds, snorting crack cocaine and ripping on a never ending joint.