19 November 2008

I Dream of Zombies

My friends, as long as we speak of interesting dreams, let me relate one of mine. This one passed through my thoughts on Sunday night, but my memory of it is imperfect. Some real people besides myself were there, but I do not recall their precise functions or locations, just as I no longer remember any context of the point at which I shall begin.

Where, then, shall I begin? Why at a swimming pool, of course! This, however, is no ordinary swimming pool. This one has a chair submerged about a third of the way down from the shallow end, which I add is about a foot in depth. The chair has thick and stout legs, a square seat, and an equally thick and stout back. I wonder for what purpose it is there. I suppose it must be for sitting. Now I am underwater with the chair. I wonder how one might sit in it for a long period of time, but I know that it is possible to do so. This question is never answered. The chair transforms into a platform structure of some kind. Now moving to the back of the swimming pool, I observe the depth markings. One says 300 ft. The next and last one says 400 ft. I wonder whether or not diving is permitted, not that I have any desire to go diving. I determine that 400 ft. is just the right depth to permit safe diving. The pool, however, is not safe for diving at all, since I notice that the 400 ft. deep deep end is only about two feet wide, with an enormous drop immediately beforehand. This is not cause for alarm, though, since there is a rope between the safe 400 ft. depth and the unsafe 300 ft. depth. Suddenly, though some fault of my own, the pool begins to drain, and all persons therein (whose numbers are few) must scramble out. At the bottom of the deepest part of the pool there are undead things, but since the water is drained, I am congratulated for having defeated them. On a side note, zombies in the pool was a real childhood fear of mine, so perhaps I am recalling something.

Having defeated this menace of the depths, I am struck with the realization that I must also defeat the menace above, which I suspect means there will be bats. I understand somehow that this means purging the attic of evil, never mind that there has been no attic anywhere thus far. Regardless, some dream people and I find our way to a house inhabited by a kindly old woman. It is violet in color and rather tall. The roof is covered in green shingles. We tell her that the attic must be purged of evil, so she brings out a metal extension ladder. There is an overhang over her front door, so we climb onto that. From there we raise the ladder up to the circular window of the attic, but we are forbidden entry. Fortunately, the kindly old woman knows what to do. We all climb down to the ground, and we notice that it is storming. The kindly old woman is making her way across her yard, which is a very dark green in color, toward a tree of similar hue. We urge her to return to us until the storm passes, but she is adamant. She refuses to even look back at us. Suddenly, lightening strikes, and I fear the worst. The woman was holding a fully extended, metal extension ladder vertically in the air, after all. Miraculously and irrationally, the lightening had struck the ground two feet or so to her left, and she did not even flinch. At last, she places the ladder against the tree, which I know will lead to the attic.

Climbing the ladder again, this time up into a secret passage high in a lonely tree, there emerges first a flying thing, resembling a bat, which quickly disappears, and a number of green people with oddly shaped noses from within the tree and behind me. The kindly old woman is gone. They are identified as Venezuelan futbol (that is, soccer) players, but it is not certain whether they form a team. At first they seem threatening, then they offer us some massive slices of what appears to be garlic bread from out their bubbling cauldron, the kind witches and cannibals use. We eat it, but it tastes strange, so it is my conclusion that we are eating the transubstantiated flesh of the kindly old woman. Thus we go back several steps in time so as to undo this tragedy, but we fall for the same trick. We do it again as the visions fade and I wake up.

I am not making this up. I could not do so if I tried.

3 comments:

maria said...

Reading that has definitely been the high point of my mostly dreary day.

Thorvald Erikson said...

I am sorry your day has been dreary, but I am glad to be of help, or at least I am glad the more surreal machinations of my imagination were found interesting. Also, as the optimist says, one third of the day has yet to come!

Chad said...

Zombies are making quite a comeback. Not only in movies, comics, and in dreams, but in professional philosophy as well:

http://consc.net/zombies.html