So you want to know what Brains looks like? Well, I will tell you right now: he is not pretty—he is a zombie who will yell at you for using that slur. Regardless, I will start from the top. Brains’s tangled mass of matted salt & pepper hair stands in stark contrast to the fashion of his world—they keep it long, but he had it cropped more closely. It will not grow back, however, so he refuses to cut it any closer.

His skin is pallid gray-green, splotched and mottled with dark spots that could be mistaken for freckles at great distances—but do not come any closer. He has a high, thought-creased forehead, thin peppery eyebrows touched by grave lichen—the left eyebrow partially chewed away—and his eyes are dead. His pupils are fogged over, but they positively glow an eerie, sunshine blue.

The structure of his face is also interesting, like he paused between adolescence and adulthood. This is just a fancy way of saying that he has a baby-face, but Brains could pass for human if it were not for the ragged wound that ate his right cheek. Between the ribbon of flesh near his mouth and the bulk of his jaw, you can see blunted teeth and the tattooed ridge of his jawbone.

You can also see vertebrae and, if you get really close to him, you can see the base of his skull. This ragged wound rounds off near his clavicle, which squirms with ancient marks. His right ear is a gnawed cavity. Brains appears to be emaciated, but his arms are bound in thin muscle—dead flesh somehow strengthened through persistent use. His right hand is mostly whole—he is missing the distal phalanx of his middle finger.

The fingers of his left hand are worn to the bone. His knuckles are bare bone and his fingers tips are rounded. His pinky finger is completely gone. Brains’s hands are stitched to his arms, and they can be detached, but his stitch-work on his wrists is immaculate and elegant—loops of leftover thread dangle like obscure talismans. His hands are somehow sentient, cursed with diametrically opposed ‘personalities.’

Do you see that second gaping hole in Brains’s torso? He does not know what caused it, but it stretches from his belt to just under his arm pit and eats his belly button. It does not impede his movement—anymore than being dead does—but it does provide a glimpse into some strange thing. A faint pale light glimmers from the center of his chest, peeking coyly from the ragged edges of this wound.

You can see the remains of floating ribs, internal musculature and internal organs as well. Brains carefully keeps this hidden from others though because he thinks that disrupting this force is the only way to kill him—runners kill shamblers by… he would rather not talk about it, but (as far as he knows) no one else can actually legitimately kill Brains. The rest of his body (legs, feet) are unremarkable apart from being dead.

Brains’s Keeper uniform is traditional, though it has some flourishes to distinguish it from the others. He dresses very formally—white collared shirt, blue tie, black slacks—which is strange for someone in his capacity, given that he will have to use a lot of bleach to maintain them. He tucks his slacks into his black, calf-high boots. He wears a large, inverted color-scheme buttoned-overcoat that flares out behind him as when walks. He wears a belt with suspenders that secures his pack, which carries all of his supplies, to his back. Someone suggested that he should wear large, rubber gloves—he pointedly ignored them.

The universal symbol for ‘medical professional’ is on the shoulder of the coat. Unlike the familiar symbols of humankind, the symbol for ‘hey, if you’re dying come see me,’ is a stylized DNA strand (which all life, sentient or not, has been proven to possess by this time) pinioned with four seraph wings. So now you know what Brains looks like and, fortunately, I do not think that I have forgotten anything.