Monday, July 16, 2007

Anyone care to analyze this dream?

I woke up from a dream this morning that was just too fun not to share. I dreamed that I was in line with my family to ride a new mystery ride at an amusement park like Six Flags or Disneyland or something. No one knew what the ride was, but we were warned not to ride it if we suffered from a heart condition or if we were pregnant. It didn’t give any age limits, so my two small kiddos went with us. (In real life, that would NEVER happen.)

As we’re in line to ride the ride, we are taken into a dark building. We get on the ride in the building. As the ride starts, we hear music up ahead and soon come into a room that is made out to look like a nightclub from the 1950’s or something. People were playing pool, some were making loud chatter at the bar, others were sitting in booths pawing at each other, and still others were seated around a stage where a lady was singing the blues, backed up by a mighty fine acoustic jazz band.

As we’re nearing the end of the room, we hear a single piercing scream. We all look, including all the patrons of the club, and more screams follow as we see these guys with gas masks and white lab coats come storming in, injecting people with serums of ‘something’ that makes them fall to the ground, and they start gassing the place.

The ride quickly speeds up and gets rough, tossing us from one side of our car to the other. Before we know it, we’re outside, going up one of those long hills that’s meant to increase anticipation, and then we fall forward, increasing speed enough to make a loop. After a few more violent turns, we slow down and re-enter the dark building.

Because we enter through a different side of the building, the inside is made out to look like the aftermath of the attack on the club. There’s no song being sung by the jazz singer, there’s no pool players or bar drinkers, no public displays of affection. Everyone is lying on the floor, twisted uncomfortably with looks of panic on their faces, cemented forever by rigermortus. Everyone, that is, except for about 5 police officers and detectives who are trying to figure out what happened here. The flash of a camera draws our attention to a photographer who captures the gruesome scene on film for future investigation.

Then we hear a small beeping. Like an alarm, and a song with lyrics like ‘rise and shine’ in it. The police start looking around, putting their hands on their firearms. Then we see the jazz singer, slowly, but surely, getting up. One officer runs over to her to help her up, and she lurches forward and bites him on the neck. We have now encountered zombies, ladies and gentlemen. What in the world am I doing dreaming about zombies?!

We quickly see the rest of the ‘dead’ clubbers get up and attack the policemen. And of course, our ride gathers speed and gets us out of there. We overhear, apparently from a news station over a radio somewhere in our cars, that the park has been taken over by zombies. Then we enter into an ascending tunnel that is enclosed by a more transparent material (not glass though) because we can see pretty well in here. The sunlight is coming in from the top. On the sides of the track that we’re riding on, there is a staircase going up to an opening where sunlight is bursting in. Out of the light, we start to see figures coming toward us. That’s right, our fears are coming true. Zombies are in the tunnel with us! They stumble toward us, trying to shake off the stiffened muscles perhaps. They’re moaning and groaning and slobbering all over themselves. We scream, and the ride speeds us again.

Now we’re outside, and the ride feels more like a roller coaster again, spiraling around and rocking us into the (un)lucky person sharing a car with us. We eventually end up in yet another building where we’re told that the ride had to be averted from its regular drop off point because that platform had been overrun with zombies. We are now being rerouted to stop our ride at a local diner. So we enter into this diner, and all is quiet.

Too quiet.

There are, of course, workers there, dressed like waitresses and waiters, releasing the lap bars and telling us to exit the ride by going down the left corridor. The first people who go down this corridor soon discover that it’s a ‘dead’ end and that there are zombies in there, so they jump and scream with delight and cause a scene. Then the overhead speakers apologize and inform us that we need to try the right corridor. We do, and the ride is over.

Isn’t that silly? In my dream, my dad and brother somehow were on the ride too, although they had started off in the club. They just jumped into two empty seats as we were fleeing the scene. Gillian and Ben happily screamed throughout the ride because, let’s face it, when are we allowed to scream at the top of our lungs for the sheer fun of it? And Josh just clung to me, when he wasn’t thrusting his little 2 year old arm out, extending his hand into the ‘STOP’ pose, and saying “NO! Don’t eat ME!” in a tone that sounded like a ballgame vendor, actually. “Get your Hot Roasted Peanuts here!” “Sweet Cotton Candy!” “Cold Beeeeeeeer!” “NO! Don’t eat ME!”

No comments: