Short story, zombie mom on social media, adult son feeds her parts of himself

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I read this short story (I believe as part of an anthology, probably no more than 30 pages) in 2015 at the earliest.

It features a world where there is a virus that is chronic and terminal and turns people into zombies over the course of a couple of months. The virus is common enough that everyone has heard of it, but it hasn't ravaged the world in a traditional zombie apocalypse way. Zombies were described as pretty stereotypical zombies (at least once they fully turned) and I'm almost sure they actually called them zombies and not some other in-universe term.

The main character is a young man whose mother has contracted the zombie virus (I think through a fairly mundane way). He ends up buying an estate somewhere in north Africa (I think Morocco specifically) because that's where his mother grew up, so they can live their together until the end of her days. He runs some kind of social media account detailing their journey, and it's definitely considered unconventional how long he's keeping the mom alive (by feeding her raw meat and such.) Eventually he starts cutting off pieces of himself and feeding them to her (at first some fingers and then an arm), much to the concern of his followers, and finally goes offline. Someone calls a wellness check and the authorities enter the estate and find their dead bodies. The last line of the book is something to the affect of

"Inside her were all the bones of her son, curled up as though he wished to take his rightful place and be born again."

Or something similar with a theme of the son wanting to return to his mother's womb/become one with her.

I was hoping this would be a very easy Google, but I'm not finding it unfortunately. I'm guessing it might have only been published in an anthology and therefore isn't discussed independently on the internet anywhere, so I'm hoping someone recognizes this! I remember it being a really cool story and I'd love to read it again!

Posted Jun 3, 2026, 11:43 PM UTC

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