Friends weren’t easy to come by for Kye. In fact, he couldn’t remember when he ever truly had a friend. Maybe it was because he never felt present in his classes; he’d been told more often than not that he looked like a zombie, and therefore his sullen, pale face plagued him as unapproachable. Or maybe it was because his blonde hair stuck up at weird angles, as if the straw colored strands were looking to fly into the heavens. Or maybe -- definitely -- it was because he spent countless hours in the cemetery after school ended.

He wasn’t particularly fascinated with cemeteries; he actually found them quite dull and depressing. He didn’t walk past hundreds of tombstones every day in hopes of seeing some sort of apparition. Although, if he did happen to see a ghost, he’d be positive that he’d turn tail and bolt in the other direction.

Kye walked two miles to the cemetery every day to visit his mother’s grave, and just simply sit beside the cold stone engraved with her lovely name until it grew dark, and the giant iron gates used to access the home of the dead and forgotten closed and locked. She died when he was rather young, merely a choppy memory in his imagination, but he missed her dearly. Kye always found the tombstone to be comforting, like he was sitting beside her under a tree, just basking in the pleasant silence.

But he had to admit that it got a little lonely. Actually, it got very lonely. Especially when he saw the numbers on his math homework as one big jumble, and would ask her for help, only to be met with an unpleasant silence. It only grew more so after that, the tombstone’s silence suffocating his very being and making his throat close. Kye’s grades had plummeted because he had no one to go to for help; no one to answer his questions, or just simply speak to him.

He kissed his hand and placed it atop his mother’s tombstone as he prepared to leave one day. It was getting increasingly dark, and it looked like a large storm was about to blow in, so he made his goodbyes quick. As he was walking between rows and rows of stones, something twitching on the ground caught his eye. As he knelt down, he realized it was an arm. A real human arm sticking out of the ground, flexing and unflexing long fingers as if it were grabbing for something. Without thinking, he dropped his books, and took hold of the arm, and yanked. The flesh felt squishy beneath his fingers, like the rotten peach he had thrown out the previous morning. With a lot of strength and frequent breaks, Kye managed to free the struggling human from the underground.
Before him stood a man who would have been taller if he hadn’t been slouching so much; his clothes were dirty, but they looked nice beneath the layers of grime, and there were maggots falling from his brown hair and back into the earth. He was relatively normal looking, despite his filthy appearance, and the fact that his flesh had sunken in and fallen off in some places, leaving hideously red sores. He scanned his surroundings without moving his head, and quite luckily, too, because it looked like it would have snapped off with any type of movement.

Kye exhaled, “Uh, hi.”

The man from the earth seemed to notice him for the first time, and he suddenly lurched forward. His slow movements allowed Kye to leap out of the way before he could be grabbed by his dirty, dirty hands. The reanimated corpse let out a long groan as Kye held him back with his hand on his chest. Eventually, the man seemed to give up, and dropped his hands to his sides. His unfocused eyes began scanning the area again, almost as if Kye was not standing right in front of him. He seemed to have forgotten about him completely.
Kye frowned as he contemplated what to do with the man; he didn’t know if he should leave him here, or if he should bring him home. He did dig him out, after all. Kye looked at the tombstone:

Stan Beesly
1967-2012
May he rest in pieces

Thunder rumbled loudly overhead, but it sounded far away. Not wanting to gamble with the storm, Kye took the pen he had been using out of his pocket and clicked it multiple times. Much to his delight, the zombie turned his attention back to Kye, or rather, back to the source of noise in his hand. When he moved forward, Kye moved back as well, and when he stepped forward again, Kye stepped back. He did this until he could walk out of the cemetery with Stan following closely behind him, grasping for the clicking pen. Stan’s slow walk caused them to get caught in the rain anyway, but luckily it washed most of the dirt and maggots from his body.  
Kye opened the door to his house and peeked into each room to find his father; he was snoring loudly on the couch with a beer bottle in his hand, and Kye exhaled in relief. He went to let Stan in the house, who he had told to wait on the porch. Kye wasn’t sure if Stan understood what he was saying, but he found him waiting patiently on the front porch where he had left him. Kye ushered Stan into the house, and he closed the door quietly. He took hold of the black tie around Stan’s neck and pulled him in the direction of the stairs. Rather unwillingly, and with sick crunching noises, Stan managed to climb upstairs.

When they reached his room, Kye immediately shoved Stan in his closet and locked it. He could hear thuds and groans as the zombie repeatedly banged his head against the closet door in protest. Kye told him he’d let him out in the morning, and the banging stopped.

The next day, when Kye’s father had left, Stan was freed from the closet. He groaned and shuffled around Kye’s room, occasionally knocking books from his desk, until he decided to just bang his head against the window.
Going down the stairs was much easier than going up, because Stan just fell down entirely, and squirmed at the bottom of the steps until Kye lifted up his rotting corpse. He continued shambling around like nothing had happened. Kye stole a hat from his father’s room, and placed it atop Stan’s disgusting hair; the hat didn’t match Stan’s sharp suit, but luckily it was large enough to hide his repulsive face.

At the local diner, the waiter took Kye’s order, and then bent down to peek under Stan’s floppy hat. He stood up with a knowing look, and told them he’d be right back. He returned shortly with Kye’s breakfast, and a raw steak for Stan. The zombie devoured it before Kye could even touch his eggs, and soon enough, he was grappling at Kye’s bacon from across the table.

After they were told to leave because of Stan’s poor table manners, Kye suggested they see a movie, to which Stan groaned in approval. Or possibly disapproval; Kye couldn’t decipher between the groans Stan made.
They were kicked out of the theater because Stan had shuffled into an elderly man and knocked him into the ground, so Kye brought him to the park.

Soon enough, they were kicked out of there, too, because Stan had chased someone’s pomeranian into the lake.
“Dude, you have to stop.” Kye told him.

A groan.
“I’m serious.”
A grunt.
“Don’t mock me.” Kye said defensively.
A gurgled, choked sound that sounded something like laughter.

Kye groaned as he took his usual route to the cemetery; he didn’t visit his mother that morning, and was looking forward to telling her what was happening. He walked between the tombstones, Stan scrambling behind him, and knocking into the grave heads. He leaped over a huge hole in the ground and continued walking, until he heard a flump behind him that made him turn around.

Stan had fallen in the hole.
More specifically, he had fallen back into his grave, and was lying, unmoving, at the bottom.
Kye sighed, “Stay there; I’ll be right back.”
Stan grunted in affirmation.

He walked almost robotically towards the gray tombstone with his mother’s name. Even though all the graves were gray, hers stood out to him the most, and all others were simply scribbled upon. He sat down beside the stone, and said, “Hey, mom. You won’t believe what happened.”