I Dream of Zombie

If you’ve read About Me (The Director’s Cut), then you know I’m afraid of sharks and zombies.  You also would be aware of the fact that I just have to know what happens.  If Pandora’s box is a tv or a computer (I heart you, Wikipedia), then call me Pandora.  I know I shouldn’t watch Zombieland.  I know I shouldn’t read the plot synopsis of every single The Walking Dead episode.  But I do did won’t stop.

The odd thing is, I mostly don’t get nightmares from scary movies.  I always expect to, but it rarely happens.  No, I get daymares (sigh).  For a week or two after I see a really good zombie movie, I expect to see them standing around in my front yard every time I go outside.  I still open the door because, you know, zombies aren’t real yet.  But my mind flashes that image in front of my eyes as I reach for the handle and it’s kinda scary.  Would you think less of me if I admitted to a little pause every now and then, before I turned the knob?  To peeking a bit before I opened the door all the way?  What if I only peeked at night?  Okay, well, I never do those things, so that was just hypothetical and all.

So here’s the thing: I’ve had four or five zombie dreams over the last few weeks.  I thought I had zombie dreams once every few months, but this… This is throwing me for a loop.  What if I have zombie dreams way, way more often than I realize?  What if I have zombie dreams all the time, like once a week?  Or every night!  This is very disturbing!  I don’t like the idea that my brain is up there doing things that I don’t know about.  It’s not right. I mean, who knows what those zombies have been doing in my brain while I sleep.

Anyway, the last zombie dream I had was a movie.  Sometimes I make movies while I dream, just not good movies.  This movie was kind of a combination of a lot of different zombie things I’ve seen or read the plot synopsis of every single episode.  The landscape was deserted city (28 Days Later), with a touch of war-torn decimation.  The protagonist was a regular kind of guy who becomes the leader because of his leader charisma, I guess (The Walking Dead). (Did I really need to parentheses that?) (You haven’t been living under a rock or anything, right?) He was the strong but deeply caring type, and he was really concerned that his wife was going to become a zombie, which (spoiler alert!) she eventually did.

I hate blood and guts, so my zombie dreams are pretty lame tame.  This movie was no exception, so the zombies were mostly just walking around and doing nothing severely threatening (Shawn of the Dead; you’d have time to throw records at these zombies).  They were slow and bumbling and brainless (haha), and they got that way from a virus (Contagion).  That’s how I explained to myself that none of them appeared bitten or anything else gruesome or horrifying or seeping.

Rick (if that was really his name) was leading his little group around trying to find a safe place where the virus was not gonna get them.  No one they came across would let these outsiders into their safe little hidy holes, and next thing you know, Lori his wife is a zombie.

I know!  So scary.

Well, he’s pining away a bit (Oh, the Humanity!), and following her around when I realize that these zombies are totally wimpy and unbloodthirsty. Hmm… That ain’t right. So all of a sudden these vampires show up. I knew they were vampires, but they were big and kind of shaggy, do I decided it was a group of vampires and werewolves (Underworld) and maybe some mixed breeds. Because that is how the zombies would go from brainless slow-walking contagious bodies, to brain-hungry, blood-thirsty evil dead. See, these vampire wolf things were going to start biting the zombies (though I don’t know what put that idea into their heads, except they’re just mean), and that would turn the zombies into ravenous beasts.

Well, I figured that would save what was left of the movie, but I can’t screen my eyes with my fingers while I’m sleeping, so I woke up. I just knew I wasn’t going to like the truckload of gross that was about to be unleashed.

So, that’s it. I feel like I owe you an ending, but I only write movies while I sleep. I’m really sorry, but you’ll have to come up with your own ending. Make it a happy one if you can, will you? Those are my favorites.

PS: I wonder why I’m not scared of vampires or werewolves?

♦