JACKASS, MS -- Seventy-eight-year-old Walter Williams has cheated the Grim Reaper. Pronounced "dead" five days ago by a doctor whose credentials are "under review" by the Amerikan Medical Association, Williams was on the embalming table, about to be groomed for his appearance in the hereafter, when he demonstrated, literally, that he was alive and kicking.
"Just as I was about to insert the trocar and pump out his innards," a mortician's assistant said, "he started kicking inside the body bag, and I thought, either I'm having an LSD flashback, this man's a zombie, or this corpse isn't a corpse, after all: he's alive."
The assistant notified her employer, who postponed the embalming procedure until such time as the mortuary received "clarification" concerning the cadaver's "status."
"I figured, what the hell, we can wait," the mortuary's owner, John Smith, who wishes to remain anonymous said. "I mean, he's 78; it's just a matter of time."
Physicians suspect that Williams' pacemaker may have started up after it had stopped operating five days ago, restarting Williams' heart and "resuscitating" him. However, Williams' family credit God with his "resurrection." "It's a miracle," they say.
Williams says he didn't undergo a near-death experience. "I wasn't near death," he says. "I was dead."
Maybe, he conceded, he was "gone too long" to recall such an experience, if it did happen. "Death sort of addles the brain," he said.
He didn't go through a tunnel, see a light, hear a voice, see deceased loved ones, hear angels, or see the damned suffering in hell, he says. "I didn't see, hear, smell, taste, or feel anything: I was dead."
Williams cannot account for his return from the dead. "I'm not a great sinner," he admitted, "nor am I exactly an angel. I guess it just wasn't my time."
His relatives, however, call his return a "miracle."
The only thing Williams says is different now that he's "back" is that he has become nocturnal, has an aversion to garlic and crosses, and craves blood.
