(EDIT: Not sure how coherent this is. I’m feeling a little out of it.)
I had really, really, reallyreallyreally weird dreams last night. Pythons that tasted like chocolate chip cookies and clown-zombies that we had to shoot and I think we might’ve been in Iraq—and by we I mean (I think I mean) me and my platoon. I think it was my platoon, because we had a captain and we were all wearing Marine-ish stuff and knew how to use giant guns. And I think we were discussing/considering my turning into a vampire because I was the second-weakest in the group and then I’d be able to help protect us.
The butcher who dealt with the pythons was a very sweet guy, though. Italian, I think. Like someone you might imagine meeting in Chicago, though, because he definitely spoke English. I’m not sure why he was in Iraq, but he was helping his wife plan some kind of celebration. It might’ve been for a wedding reception. But I distinctly remember that at one point he held up an enormous piece of skinned meat and told her, “See this? It’s not good enough. Too soft.” And then he tossed it down on the worktable and the meat oozed the way undercooked cookie dough will when you try to get it off the cookie sheet. It would’ve been super gross, except I could see the chocolate chips in it.
Very odd.
Too many vampire stories? Maybe. I finished a thirty-three-story-long vampire anthology that tended to scare the crap out of me a few weeks ago, and I just started reading Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat, so yes, there’s the distinct possibility that all had something to do with the apocalypse scenario and the discussion about ruining my life in the long run by turning me into a vampire so I could protect people in Iraq.
But as terrible as the clown-zombie apocalypse was, everyone was nice enough to me and each other that I reeeeeally didn’t want to wake up. The captain and the python butcher especially. They were looking out for me, which is one of the most wonderful things I can imagine after spending three days sick as a dog and looking out for myself.
Maybe that’s why I was willing to consider the whole turning-into-a-vampire thing. To be able to protect the people who were nice enough to protect me from zombie-clowns.
Who were really frigging creepy and scary-looking, by the way. And I’m not even afraid of clowns.
I feel ya! I used to have weird dreams on penicillin - type meds. The most frequent one was walking through a barren, featureless desert at a normal pace, but moving super fast with the wind in my hair. It feels lonely, so when I see a speck on the horizon, I head toward it, arriving in record time at a pyramid so enormous it can't even be described. Standing next to me is someone who is holding a piece of something tiny. Pinching it between her fingers. She places this grain on the pyramid and disappears, but I notice a single file line of thousands of people behind her, stretching beyond the horizon. They're silent. Each does what she did when it's their turn. I'm curious what the pyramid is made of and reach out to touch it. The moment I barely make contact with it, it collapses with a deafening roar, leaving me and everyone in line ankle - deep in this substance the pyramid was made of. Everyone in the line turns and looks at me, expressionless. That's when I always wake up.
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