Zombies Zombies Everywhere and Not a Plot to Fake 

Last night I ate zombies! Or was it "they ate me?" No, it was my dream I ate the freakin' zombies! Sure I know, you can shoot them in the head, or cut their head off with a sword, but when the only weapon in your hand is a ream of blank paper, you do what you can. It's a common misconception: zombies are not nearly as susceptible to paper cuts as they would have you believe.

"No, seriously, one sheet of 20 weight and my head lobs right off, and you have yourself a nice little Rorschach memento."

It's all zombie PR. Zombies are great at misdirection, and once you see them you can't see what's important. You might say you miss the forest for the zombies. Trust me I know. In my dream last night I had to fight off a bevy of zombie woodys--woods. Zombie woods

Wow! What was I nightmaring about? That's what happens when you kick off all your covers and get cold in the middle of the night. It affects your dreams in horrible ways--making them a fleshy mess.

That's not to say that you still can't use your dreams to search your subconscious. When I was young I didn't have reoccurring dreams. Now as I'm getting older, I don't think that I have any original dreams. Well the zombies were original a few months ago. Right now, zombies are on the subconscious hit list.

I mention them to the Pirate Queen. Not the queen of my dreams, the queen of myreal life. In my dreams I'm alone.

"I have zombies."

"That's nice. I have crabs."

"You're joking, right?"

"Maybe, bet you're itching to find out though."

"Uhm…"

"So show me your zombies. Where do you have them?"

"I don't know. It's dreams. I haven't figured them out yet."

"How do you feel in these dreams?"

How do I feel? Let's see, I have color dreams, I have vivid dreams, and when I was young I had wet dreams. I've never had feely dreams. How do I feel? Why, I don't know.

"I don't know, scared that they're gonna eat me?"

"So you bite them back? Is this how you got through kindergarten?"

"No." I lie.

I have no idea what my shrinking pirate is after here. She approaches her dreams by feel. I always looked at mine through their atmosphere. What's in them? What does that mean to me?

Zombies. They're easy. As a kid I loved movie monsters. The best ones were the old ones. I hated black and white movies, but if they had unknown creatures sucking crimson blood or eating grey matter, that was all the color I needed.

"Mars needs women!" They'd proclaim.

"So do I!" I'd respond.

The thing I liked was that each monster had a themed evil: Dracula was lust, Frankenstein was pride, Wolfman, was boss-jock radio. I identified with the creatures. They were loners. So was I.

That's what made the zombies real monsters. They were a pack society, mindless and dead, trying to kill the individual free thinker. If you don't know what I mean, spend a year in high school or a week embedded in a website with online cliques. Yeah, that's the real terror we're talking about here.

Armed with that information torch and a pitchfork, I still didn't need to know how I felt, but I knew what the problem was. It was obvious: I'm afraid of my lawn. Yup. Every blade bursts from a sinister plot of earth. The brown mounds, the green hoard, all of it the same colors found in my dream zombies.

My lawn lurks out my door ready to swallow me in a pit of mouse tunnels and dirty roots. It's the tough turf daring me to come out and play. Skin my knees, soil my pants, whatever. Every grass blade just like the next, I'm the lone human that stands between it and yard domination. Even as I type, they plot to mow me down and bury me in common dirt. Nobody would be left to wonder, "What happened to Rob?"

Of course I have the queen, but she's working on feelings. I'm dealing with absolutes. I'm afraid of the path less taken though my yard. I wonder how many of us are paralyzed by our dreams. How many dreams die before we wake up to their reality. In our sleep there are monsters, but demons don't have to steal our dreams.

That's what I get from my zombies. That and they taste like chicken. Now maybe I can concentrate on more important things.

Did she say she had crabs?