The Sinking Dreams Part 1.A

Ok. For a moment I'm going to interrupt my family reunion series. I had another sinking dream last night. This one was a doosy. I sank into not only snow but mud, and had to negotiate a steep bank and water and was embarrassing around a cute man and . . . just to add insult to injury . . . there were zombies.

For fuck sake.

I don't really remember how it started. I was the captain of a speed boat and I was very good at driving it. We were on a very big lake and I headed across it, into some kind of narrow tunnel kind of industrial place, for some reason. Two people were with me. At the beginning of the dream they were just two random people. In the middle of the dream, one turned into my sister and the other was a young boy. In the end of the dream, my sister had turned into a lesbian coworker and the little boy . . . well, he disappeared after the zombies.

Across the lake, the boat parked at the industrial water tunnel place, I had finished my business, whatever it was, and it was time to get home. The boat was parked a ways away from where we were and we had to cross a small stream to get back to it. The small boy found a narrow place in the stream where we could cross, but it was muddy and icy. The boy went across only sinking a little bit into the mud, leaving some deep foot prints. To me, it still looked safe. I stepped into the muddy place and sunk down to my armpits. Screaming and wiggling around I reached out for help and a Russian hiker tried to pull me out. He wasn't placed corrected on the shore and I nearly pulled him in. Then a gorgeous, kind hiker man came to my rescue and pulled me free. From there I still needed to get up the steep embankment to continue on to the boat, and couldn't for the life of me climb up it. Once again, cute hiker attempted to come to my rescue. He picked me up and set me up there, but I kept falling off. Twice he tried, and after that I just got embarrassed to ask for his help again. I ended up going a long way around and finding another way up a less steep part of the hill. As I walked up to join the small boy and continue on to the boat, I saw the hiker walk the other way. He walked quickly by, wearing headphones, and ignored me. It felt like he was mad.

We got to the boat and I thought we were home free. At this point the passenger turned into my sister, Ellen, and she went on the outside of the boat to untie us from the pier. I turned the boat and sped away and realized that Ellen had fallen off. I spun the boat around and picked her up. She was annoyed, but not hurt.

Then we hit ice. Thick, deep, hilly, snowy ice in the middle of the lake. It was like an island, frozen solid and snow had been falling on it for some time. It froze unevenly and we had to drag the boat -- like Shackleton -- up and over huge drifts. I kept sinking into the snow, pulling the heavy boat behind me. Over the highest and worst drift I sank deep, and buried under the top layer were picnic baskets and debris and zombies. I looked into the eyes of three, buried up to their shoulders but not quite dead. They watched as I passed, their eyes following me. Their heads frozen in place.

Out from under the zombie drift, cresting another hill and pulling the boat behind me, I went up a set of stairs and found a paved path. Down the path were people in a kind of pavilion, laughing and talking, and I thought for sure they would help us. I was headed down towards them, knowing it would be the easier way back to the unfrozen part of the lake, when I was jumped from behind by my lesbian coworker. She started screaming for me not to go down that path. No! No! She was hanging off my back, dragging me backwards as I tried to go forward.

Fine.

I went another way and was immediately on the unfrozen part of the lake. Poof. The sun was setting to my right and the whole expanse of the lake was red. Dark red water and dark red trees and shimmering houses on the far side. I got in the boat and gunned it. The evening was approaching, and I knew we needed to get home before the sun went down. Others were expecting us. As I drove away, I realized that I had left the lesbian coworker behind, and flipped around to go get her. As I headed back to the frozen ice edge, I put my arm deep into the water. She grabbed me from under the surface and pulled herself up. I stopped the boat. As her head crested the blood red water, I saw that she, too, was a zombie.

I woke myself up, feeling the lingering fingers of my lesbian zombie coworker wrapped around my forearm. It was hard to shake off.

This one wasn't fun. It freaked me out.

I hate zombies.