Since finishing a major writing project, I’ve been playing
quite a bit of a Undead Nightmare the past few days. This is a zombie video
game based on the western Red Dead Redemption. I’m having a lot of fun. There are
four different kinds of zombies, including fast crawlers and “retchers” that spew
green puke at you. There are also mythical animals like the sasquatch, the
chupacabra, and the four horses of the apocalypse, which you can catch and
ride. So far I’ve only caught “War,” who is on fire and burns all the zombies
he touches. Last night, zombies entered
my dreams, and the results were quite hilarious. I was living in a zombie
apocalypse but wasn’t a zombie. To survive, I was mimicking their behavior. Here’s
the tale:
I’m shambling along when I bump head on into another zombie.
He snarls at me and I snarl back, but neither of us will give way. We start
battering against each other with our heads and upper bodies, trying to knock
the other aside. I look more closely at the other zombie after a moment and
realize he’s the chef from my favorite restaurant. I still won’t give way and
keep battering. Gradually I seem to be winning.
Then, three other zombies come over and start beating at me
with their fists and arms, and I realize it is to make me leave ‘their’
favorite chef alone. The next thing I see is a quick cut of the restaurant itself,
which looks like a wooden plank shack on the side of a river. The door pushes
open and dozens of zombies start stumbling out and coming toward me. One is
carrying what looks like a hoe. I realize that they too are angry at me for
attacking their favorite chef. In the final scene, I’m lying on my back, victorious
after my battle with the chef, and I’m holding up his mandible. I shout at the
zombies coming toward me: “let’s see him talk to you without this.”
Had I written this instead of dreaming it, I surely would
have had my hero holding up the chef’s hands and shouting: “let’s see him cook for
you without these.”
I can’t help but add one more scene that seemed to follow
this dream. I appeared to be a real zombie this time, and shambling back and
forth across a stage that had been set up for a rock band. Suddenly a bra landed
on the stage at my feet. I guess I’d earned a fan!
