W. Bruce Cameron

Things to Do in Poland When You’re Undead

Editor’s Note: The following column was originally published in 2008.

According to zombie legend, “undead” beings are slack, shambling creatures who stumble through life without motivation — sort of like a teenage boy asked to do household chores.

I suppose the term “undead” can also be applied to all sorts of hideous creatures — vampires, Frankensteins, women who have had too many facelifts — but it probably came as a shock to a certain Polish person named Piotr Kucy when he, too, became undead.

The first step in transforming into an undead person is to be declared dead, which you can do by going down to the department of motor vehicles and standing in line for four hours. Or you can drown, which is how Piotr Kucy handled the matter. The city officials of Polkowice dragged his body out of the water, said, “Yep, that’s Piotr all right, he never could swim or spell the name ‘Peter,’” and had a funeral for the guy — whoever he was.

You see, Piotr went from dead to undead when he showed up a few days later, wondering why everyone seemed so surprised to see him. He also didn’t understand why people sprayed him with holy water and tried to jab him in the chest with wooden stakes, but a quick trip to the registry office revealed the problem: The town had declared him dead — plus, several people said he was a bad dancer.

Piotr: But I’m not dead, and I dance the polka like everyone else around this place — have you ever seen a good polka dancer?

City Official: Our records show you dead.

Piotr: But I’m not dead! I don’t even have a cold!

City Official: Next?

Piotr had apparently left town for a few days to do some ice fishing, which might explain things: The only difference between an ice fisherman and a corpse is that the corpse smells a little better. Once you’re declared dead in Polkowice, however, you’re dead, no matter how well you dance the polka. Reuters, in a Jan. 29 story, says that a registry office official stated, “This citizen does not exist.”

Piotr probably thinks he does exist, but then again, he’s not an official registry official and hasn’t been trained in such matters.

So Piotr remains undead.

He’s not allowed to work because of the well-known prejudice in Poland against hiring corpses. Not too many women want to go with him to the February Polkowice polka festival, either, though several of his buddies say he can come ice fishing with them because “what the heck’s the difference?”

“Ya, when old Czeslaw had his heart attack last December, we didn’t know he was dead until the ice melted and he fell through it!” another one of Piotr’s buddies said. (The actual quote was in Polish, which I don’t speak, so to obtain an accurate translation I had to make it up.)

The good news, though, is that Piotr no longer has to pay taxes: Somehow the old adage that the only two things one can be sure of in life are death and taxes doesn’t apply to him, because he isn’t doing either right now. Instead, he is concentrating his efforts on getting someone to hire him despite what it says on his driver’s license.

“Sure,” sneers one employer, “he says he’s not dead. But isn’t that what they all say?”

Apparently, Piotr’s identification doesn’t specifically state anywhere on it that he is, in fact, alive — but then again, neither does Charlton Heston’s.

“Mine doesn’t either!” Keith Richards is quoted as saying. “Maybe I’m not — wouldn’t that be a gas?” (Keith doesn’t speak Polish, but I made up this one anyway.)

I was unable to reach anyone who could verify for me that Keith Richards is alive, but my sister, who is a doctor, told me it looks to her like he died in 1996.

And, of course, there is a flip side to Piotr’s undead saga. Somebody did drown in the town of Polkowice, and they did have a funeral for him — somebody who must look something like Piotr Kucy after three days in the lake. No effort has been made to determine who this person might be.

Whoever he is, he’d better be paying his taxes.

To write Bruce Cameron, visit his Website at http://www.wbrucecameron.com. To find out more about Bruce Cameron and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at http://www.creators.com.

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