Zombies

Zombies is a short story by Chuck Palahniuk, first published in Playboy in 2013 and later collected in his anthology Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread. Set among privileged teenagers at an elite high school, it follows a trend that spreads through the student body: kids deliberately starving their brains of oxygen to induce a dazed, zombie-like state, chasing a kind of self-erasure from the pressures of achievement, status, and their parents' expectations.

Told through Palahniuk's characteristic blend of clinical detachment and dark comedy, the story treats the "zombie" trend as both a literal medical danger and a metaphor for the ways teenagers numb themselves against a world that demands constant performance. As with much of Palahniuk's short fiction, the story pushes body horror and social satire into uncomfortably close proximity, refusing easy moralizing about what's driving the behavior.

This audiobook edition presents the story as a standalone release rather than as part of the full Make Something Up collection.