First of all, Merry Christmas to those who celebrate in any way for any reason.
It’s the fourth Tuesday and time for Rena’s Web. As we end the year I thought I would do something a little different. Below are a few dreams too incomplete or too chaotic to merit their own individual posts. They are still interesting enough to share.
Enjoy the holidays and these little vignettes of my subconscious. Cheers!
Zombies: A family story
There were zombies. Where I was from they were violent and fast. In this new area they were passive. They had to be provoked into attacking. This led to a different philosophy.
Zombies were our former friends, neighbors, and family members. In the more violent areas it was deemed safer, and a mercy, to put them down on sight. But in the passive area they were treated like people with a brain damaging disease. They were even fed raw meat, including the brains of animals.
There was a conflict between the newcomers, us, who felt that this was dangerous and wanted to put down the zombies for fear they would turn violent and on the grounds that even nonviolent zombies are still contagious. The locals felt that these outsiders were coming in trying to destroy their people and a way of life that worked for them.
Oh, and there was magic.
On the ground floor there was a nonbattle as we newcomers were tired of fighting and didn’t want to kill our fellow humans and the locals had no desire to fight at all. Upstairs there was a conversation in which the zombies are likened to babies.
Me: In my experience babies are explosive. From the poo, to the spit up, to the tantrums.
Faded
I’m in an apartment helping some white girl and mention where I live. She scoffs and says, “I could never live there, how do you live in such a post stamp sized place?”
I go home to the apartment I moved into when I was 19. I’m 25 now, have a good job and can afford something better. Much better. But what bother when I don’t take care of what I have? The place is not filthy, but dirty around the edges.
The landlord shows up with a gas mask and says I have to leave.
Is it mold?
Gas?
Insects?
I am splitting into two people. The person narrating and the one doing. I am a white girl. The other me, the person doing is a white guy. He’s kind of gross, no more so than I am, but it seems more acceptable coming from him.
As he and the landlord leave the apartment I am drawn with them. I seem to be attached to him, the former me. I am shouting at both of them now.
HEAR ME
they can’t
Page 33
I am a teacher teaching an English class. Page 33 is different in my text than the text of the students so I’m using the board to diagram a sentence. We hear gunshots.
It’s an active shooter situation. We run to the back of the school. There is a large, beautiful, wooden deck overlooking a field. Beyond the field is a wooded area. The deck and field are all open, with no real cover. Shots get closer.
A teacher with a French accent says we must run the five miles across the meadow to the woods. At this point I have morphed into a student. We run. I think to myself, I need to do more cardio. I am in front but it’s not a meadow or a field but a bog. Water comes almost to my knees. Mud sucks at our feet. We finally get to the woods and have to go through an old, abandoned, brick ruin, that’s been locked up.
Another teacher, Patrick Stewart, shows us a way through where the grates have been cut. I am the last and when I crawl through the window I am alone on a tiny platform hundreds of feet up in the air. In the distance I can see the Baton Rouge Hills. (Real BR has no hills.) The platform is a roundish concrete thing that looks like a door that hinged down. It also feels like a door, springy, unstable, and not meant to hold a human being. It’s windy as well and there are no rails.
Did I mention I am afraid of heights?
A little girl appears. I don’t know if I just didn’t notice her in my mental freak out or if she somehow dropped in. She’s young, small, maybe three or four at the most. She’s scared and her fear helps me get over mine. I scoot away from the edge, the platform bouncing lightly with every movement. Finally I am next to the building, next to the girl. She takes my hand and we ease around the side where, to my intense relief, there is a door.