Centretown News reporter Emma Speed participated in the Thrill the World competition on the weekend. This is her personal account.
Tonight, the worse I looked the better.
I was liberated, like a child who’d got permission to go outside the lines in a colouring book. For once, I deliberately smudged my lipstick and didn’t try to hide the unfortunate bags under my eyes but embraced them.
With tangled hair and ripped clothes, I joined my fellow zombies.
After one final practice of Thriller, our zombie pack headed into the darkness towards Tabaret Hall for the main event, bounding in our excitement and instinctual efforts to avoid hyperthermia.
Once at Tabaret, we took our positions in front of the hall. The floodlights meant we could barely distinguish the crowd watching us with cameras.
The countdown started.
I felt scared.
At 45 seconds, I imagined what might happen if it went horribly wrong. At 30 seconds, we were lying in our starting poses on the concrete and I considered playing dead for the entire song. By 15 seconds, I was so cold I realized that unless I danced soon, my playing dead act might become a little too realistic.
As the 10-second countdown began, my fear vanished.
I remembered why I was there. People all over the world were lying on the ground just as I was, counting down the same seconds in different languages, feeling the same anticipation.
The music started and our zombie crew united in dance. It didn’t matter if we looked at the ground or slouched, bumped into each other, or even if we went wrong.
Before I knew, it the six-minute dance was over and I was surrounded by the happiest, high-fiving zombies I’ve ever seen.
All the hours of learning, wrestling and cursing the routine had been worth it. We had danced with the rest of the globe and as I pictured the hundreds of other zombie clans celebrating in the same way we were, I realized that the whole world has potential to be a community; we just need something to connect us.
That, alongside Jackson’s Thriller, will be playing in my head on permanent repeat.