✴ She Was A Teenage Zombie ✴

SITE + STORY UNDER MAJOR CONSTRUCTION

What is SWATZ?

She Was A Teenage Zombie or SWATZ is a supernatural/slice-of-life/romance story concept I've been developing over the past year. This website serves as a hosting platform for the chapters I've written and the chapters I'm continuing to complete, as to allow others to give me critique and suggestions on how to update the story further. All things considered, it is still in early development, and will continue to be changed and modified in the coming months. The chapters will be completely unedited during first publication, flaws and all, to allow for MAXIMUM CRITICISM and to finish the draft as fast as possible.

The story follows Collin O'Connor, an 18-year-old junkie burn-out struggling with the loss of his best friend. After visiting the cemetery one night, Collin gets scared shitless when Abigail Fisher, a missing girl pronounced dead over a decade prior, emerges from the ground. With the knowledge that she's somehow existing between the realms of life and death, Collin begrudgingly pursues a friendship with her, in an attempt to somehow bring his deceased friend back to life. Along the way, it becomes increasingly obvious that Collin's classmates are not all that they seem, and maybe Abigail isn't the only paranormal entity in his town.

There will be two aspects to this blog--the canon chapters and the supplementary information about characters, town, and relationships. Everything posted on this site is not set in stone and will probably be changed in the future.

WARNING: SWATZ contains references, discussions, and depictions of heavy/minor drug use (alcohol, weed, benzodiazepines, opioids, heroin, meth, etc.), sex and nudity, mentions of sexual assault, body horror, and abusive relationships. If any of these are triggering to you, it's most likely in your best interest to not engage in this work.

main characters

• Collin O'Connor - The protagonist of SWATZ. He's guarded, angsty, and borderline insufferable, riddled with anxiety and self-hatred from past traumas. Despite this, and despite his contempt for most of humanity, he is very protective of his family and select individuals. Collin is a big fan of death metal, industrial metal, hard drugs, and not much else. He has few friends and no connection to his school, barely skating by academically. Besides listening to music and shooting dope, Collin enjoys the nostalgia and simplicity of his distant youth--a loss that he stills grapples with on a daily basis. His quiet yet melancholic world quickly changes, however, when he stumbles onto the grave of Abigail Fisher, a zombie girl who becomes obsessively attached to him and the only person who really seems to break through to him.
• Abigail Fisher - Bright, cheery, and up for anything--Abby has been in the crypt for too long. She's extremely extroverted and becomes friends, or at least tries to, with everyone she meets. Despite this, she doesn't trust anybody she meets, and below her shiny exterior is a girl afraid for her undead life. She's very clumsy, frequently chopping off her own limbs, head, and losing a few fingers, yet is virtually indestructible to anything besides burns. Because of her state, she is cold to the touch and has rougher skin than most. Besides this, she still smells like an average teenage girl and is somehow not decomposing.
• Claudia Crawford - Obsessed with anything fantasy, Claudia is a home-bound cosplay geek obsessed with the game World of Witchcraft. Her ditzy, clueless attitude towards anything besides fantasy culture can be offputting, but besides her reputation as a supreme dummy, Claudia is extremely talented at chemistry and alchemy. She comes from a very neglectful (albeit wealthy) family, causing her to be obsessed with attention and having a “pick-me” girl attitude, especially in online spaces. Unbeknownst to those around her, Claudia is a witch with an exceptional potion-making talent, which she primarily utilizes to bewitch her teachers and concoct love potions. She's helplessly in love with Thomas Ralphina, going so far as to have a shrine dedicated to him in her room.
• Felix "Skinny" Ortega - Collin's best friend, up until his unfortunate sudden death. Skinny was a big fan of rap, emo, and metal music, as well as streetwear and going to concerts. His family and the O'Connors are still close, even after Skinny's death. Skinny was well-known and well-liked by most of the people at Walten High, due to him being the town's resident weed plug.
• Thomas Ralphina - Star athlete, teenage heartthrob, heart of gold--Thomas had many titles to his name, and for an 18-year-old boy, he had many academic accomplishments and more to come. Tragically, though, he hides a dark secret from everyone, including most of his family, his friends, his classmates, and his coaches. He's a werewolf, stricken with lycanthropy at the age of fourteen, and completely powerless to his transformations when angered. To keep this in check, Thomas makes sure everyone in his life is happy with him at all times and makes sure, under any circumstance, he does not transform in front of anyone else. Although Collin dismisses him as a meatheaded jock, he is nonetheless kind to him and most people around him, although he can seem a bit scatter-brained and ditzy at times.
• Gray Lowell - The resident super-senior and BFF of Thomas Ralphina, even though their friendship status is extremely toxic. Lowell as a whole is just extremely toxic, to the point where his morals and justifications for his actions border on criminality and perversion. Like a barnacle, he feeds off the credibility and access to women that Thomas gives him as a star athlete. Despite this disturbing and problematic exterior, Lowell is a big fan of death metal and his girlfriend, Tracy Phan. He is utterly obsessed with her, despite her inability to love him back, and there relationship seems more of a cover for her than actual feelings. Despite this, he brings Tracy to every one of his parties--which he throws frequently--and tells everyone about her. This might be to hide his closeted bisexuality, or it may be because he thinks Tracy is way too good for him. Oh, and he's a werewolf, just like Thomas.
• Tracy Phan - 70s punk rocker and girlfriend to Gray Lowell--a fact that she despises. Despite his continuous love for her and showering her with gifts, she has her sights set on Collin, to the point of obsession and stalking. Her beauty cannot be ignored, as she's frequenty described as one of the prettiest girls at Walten High, yet when she sees Collin (seemingly) falling for another girl, she commits suicide. After this, she becomes reanimated as a Pumpkinhead--a zombie who, after losing its head in death, uses a carved pumpkin as a placeholder. She seeks revenge on Collin for rejecting her advances, and plots to kill Abby, once and for all, in the process.
• Dorothy Sallow - The oldest of the main characters, by about four hundred years. Dorothy is a vampire, being turned when she was young during the Black Plague. After traveling the world in search of solitude, she arrived in Massachusetts at the turn of the century, and has been hiding out in her tomb ever since. Although it had been almost half a millenia, Dorothy has only physically aged about ten to fifteen years, making her appear about 21-ish years old. She is very arrogant and cocky, holding a sort of superiority over everyone she comes in contact with, even if her royal ancestors have been gone for centuries. She is nonetheless kind to those that support her, in an almost motherly way. Her eyes, hair, and voice also carry an uncanny vibrancy, catching the attention of most people that view her.

additional warnings + disclaimers + notes

This story is a work of fiction and does not depict my own thoughts or beliefs regarding politics, morality, sexuality, or any other controversial topic I talk about. My characters are used to show ideas and build a convincing narrative, which includes opinions I don't necessarily agree with. If what a character says disturbs you, you are completely valid to feel that way. However, what a fake character says is not an indicator of my views. Some of my characters are assholes.

This story is, overall, an analysis of different forms of PTSD and C-PTSD, as well as the coping strategies survivors use. After something happened last year, I had to stay at someone's house for a while, and I wasn't allowed to leave the house. During this time, I painted a zombie girl, looked at it, and thought to myself, "This is how I'm feeling, like the living dead." After a traumatic event, we feel changed, and it feels bad--it feels like something was lost that can never be returned. To put it simply, these characters became monsters because of traumatic events, and even though they can never go back to being human, they learn to cope with being monsters. A vampire, once plagued with a viral illness that traumatized their youth, can now never worry about death again. A girl, neglected by her parents and targeted online, can now get all the attention she wants by becoming a witch. A werewolf, abused physically and sexually by a elder close to him, never has to worry about feeling unsafe again. These traits, given to us by our trauma, are used to prevent these actions from ever occurring again.

Lowell's story can be triggering to SA survivors. While some characters have more fantastical and abstract depictions of trauma, such as someone literally becoming a vampire, Lowell's is not abstract. I'm still debating if I want to fully depict the extent of what his character suffered and how that could direct the narrative, but I'm still an inexperienced writer. It'd be very easy to brazenly state every violent and disturbing act committed by Lowell's very violent and very fucked-up family unit, but if I detail that, would I have to detail every other backstory as heavily? An old English teacher once quoted Hemingway to me, and he said, "The main thing is to know what to leave out. The way you tell whether you’re going good is by what you can throw away." Then he made me read Hemingway, and I realized all of that was bullshit. Nonetheless, I do think leaving out some details does make readers' imaginations a whole lot more disturbing than anything I could come up with.

about the author

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I go by h0ly on most platforms, so that's how I'll refer to myself here. I'm currently a sophomore studying neuroscience, as well as Scandinavian languages. I have an interest in horror movies, internet mysteries, 90s/2000s culture/music, baking, digital art, horror punk/metal, body horror, medical gore, biology, and theology.

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