First I Went to Medford, Then I Had a Zombie Dream

I was down in the ancestral manse in Medford last weekend. (I should probably point out that this isn't the dream yet.) My sister Matie was recovering from an operation and Mom and Pop implied that she would need to be pestered and poked a lot. As I said before, I'd just graduated. My future looming before me like the great starry void where the formless Outer Gods whirl maddened and piping around the daemon sultan Azathoth    a compressed air bolt gun at the end of a blood- and feces-spattered cattle chute  a happy rainbow, with dewdrops and pixies, I motored on down.

Also, my mother said she'd take me shopping for business clothes. The only thing worse than having to put on clothes at all is having to put on a lot of different items of clothing in the same day, most of which either don't fit or are hideous, but worse than that is doing that alone. If left to my own devices, I would give up after about three pairs of slacks and shamble aimless and pantless out of the mall until I found a nice ditch full of decomposing leaves to sleep in.

So I packed everything and headed to Medford. I woke up entirely too early, with the same plan I have every time: I'd leave at 6 AM, arrive at 9 and surprise everyone. As usual, I ended up leaving at 9. For breakfast I had some vegetarian sausages, which were an even worse idea than you'd think, possibly because I bought them from the incredibly cheap mysterious food store. They weren't past their expiration date, so I guess they ended up there because they tasted horrible. Which they did.

My left contact lens was very uncomfortable, and around Roseburg (metric = about an hour in) I pulled over to inspect it. The lens had a huge, ragged chunk taken out of it. That was my last pair, so I dug out my glasses. Those turned out to be awfully out of date and not terribly helpful for seeing, so I drove the rest of the way with one eye alternately shut and open and fuzzy. As Sean wisely said, "Who needs depth perception for driving? Goddamn sissies, that's who."

I eventually got to Medford, where my sister wasn't discharged yet, nobody was home and my old room was full of boxes, toy guns, doll parts and cat urine. After a while, people found me and I ate lunch and saw Matie (with one eye). She was doped up, bloated and in a hospital gown, entertaining the fellows from her GURPS game. I gave her a copy of Jim's Journal, but she wasn't too enthused. I would have been hurt if my reasons for selection hadn't been "I found this at the used bookstore and have finished reading it already." (I also found a copy of American Psycho, but she's not getting that.)

We eventually found an optometrist in town to look at my eyes and give me free trial contact lenses and a prescription, so that was groovy. By the time I got back from doing that, my sister had thrown a Jesus statue through the window and made a break for it, so we were all together again.

Highlights of the visit were a showing of The Big Sleep in the park, long bouts of pants and shirt location, cat wrestling and two chances to make waffles.

I didn't get to bake anything, but making waffles is almost as good. I made waffles for Pop, then later some of Matie's friends and I got into a one-upmanship contest the details of which I have forgotten, other than that the winning move was to suddenly and without explanation make chocolate-chip waffles and make the guys eat them.
Also, Pop soldered my favorite telephone back together without my even asking him to.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about! On the second night, I had a dream:

There were zombies in our house. There were zombies everywhere, but not so many that we had to be concerned about the ones outside. Just the ones in the house.

We had three zombies, and they were in the guest room. These were particularly stupid zombies, and in order to lure them into the kitchen (where Pop and I would kill them, I guess because the floor is only linoleum in there) I had to stand in the living room until one of them saw me and staggered over through the guest room door, across the hall and into the living room.

While it was doing that, I'd be walking across the living room and standing in the dining room, perpendicular to the zombie's original path. The carnitrope would pause in the living room when it got to the first spot I'd been standing, so I'd wave from the dining room. As soon as it would start shambling in that direction, I'd go into the kitchen and get my shovel.

I don't know why, but Pop and I were killing the zombies with sharpened shovels, swung like pickaxes. The narrow kitchen made a good chute while we stood side by side, mechanically chopping at the hapless zombie. When it finally fell over, it was time for me to go lead another zombie our way.

Matie was outside with a pitchfork, guarding the backyard. Like I said before, there weren't very many zombies, so she wasn't too busy.

After Pop and I had killed the first two zombies, I got a look at the third. It was a tall and muscle-bound guy with no shirt and a bushy mustache. Although dead, he looked very strong. I didn't really want to fight him. Pop didn't either.

He asked me, "Do you know this guy? What is he doing dead in our house?"

I decided to walk around the side of the house and see if I could attack the zombie from a different angle. As I rounded the corner, I saw Adolph Hitler on the sidewalk. He was dressed in civilian clothes, carrying an umbrella and a briefcase. He walked up the sidewalk to our front porch and went in.

That was unusual. I followed him into our living room, which was now about the size of a school auditorium and outfitted as such. The big beefy mustache zombie was still shirtless, but looking less dead. He was adjusting a microphone stand in front of a sea of attentive Nazis in folding chairs. Among them were various neighbors and my sister.

As Hitler started giving a speech, I found my position inside the front hall was analogous to standing in the wings, and that the shovel that I'd been lugging about had become a rifle. Since the mustache guy didn't seem to be a zombie anymore, it seemed like a better idea to try and kill Hitler instead.

I looked at my rifle. It wasn't very good. It was a .22, pretty small, single-shot and it looked like tiny mammals with big teeth had been chewing on the stock. I decided that I should get really close before I shot Hitler with it.

I walked quickly and quietly onstage. The lights were bright, but everything was dusty. I could only barely see the sea of Nazis beyond the podium. About five feet behind Hitler, I aimed and fired.

The gun jammed, and a gasp went through the crowd. The beefy ex-zombie M.C. was standing equidistant from Hitler and me, but he didn't make a move. Hitler turned around and looked at me with sad, rheumy eyes. Everyone stared at me as I wrestled a bent cartridge out of the chamber and reloaded the rifle. I started crying as I put it right up to Hitler's forehead and shot him point-blank above his left eye.

The half-naked non-zombie started walking slowly towards me. His expression was more avuncular than anything; not at all threatening towards me. I turned the rifle around, grabbed the barrel and started beating him with the stock.

He slowly walked forward as I hit him with all the force I could muster, sobbing all the while. He didn't flinch, but he didn't bruise either. He deformed, as though his body were a thin film of skin over a mass of Silly Putty.

I hit him and hit him and hit him, until eventually he was a vaguely conical pile of amorphous flesh, with empty eye sockets, hair and a mustache spread out all over it.

I looked into the crowd, wondering how long it would be before I would be torn apart by the brownshirts, but the auditorium was empty.