last nite i had a dream—tell me what this means..
i find myself alone in a high–rise apartment, standing proximately adjacent to an antiquated wall heater––a dormant industrial relic––affixed to and extending laterally across the room’s northernmost wall. outside, a zombie invasion has overtaken the earth––all of society fallen, infected, spiritually inebriated, consumed by something feral, contagious. i turn an arbitrary dial counter–clockwise and strike a fractured match..
i light the pilot, and a liminal moment of silence seems to span eons before fire finally catches..
behind the heater’s metal grating, darkness gives way to incipient incandescence, and fire surges violently to life as the entire expanse of the heater––and perhaps something else––is coaxed awake. nauseating heat pours outward into the room almost ceremonially, as though i am initiating not mere warmth but some volatile force long held dormant. i stand there transfixed, watching the ignition unfold with strange reverence, aware that something deep, atavistic has just been set into motion..
then my vantage evanesces––shifts..
i find myself perambulating a sprawling indoor mall superstructure––cathedral–scale, labyrinthine, seemingly endless in its fluorescent expanse––alongside a small cadre of survivors, navigating cyclopean corridors somewhere in the despondent aftermath of collapse. together we hunt the infected using improvisational weapons––knives, spiked bats, fragments of a fallen world repurposed for survival..
in spite of everything, there is adrenaline, even a tinge of exhilaration in the air amidst the (now deescalating) peril. from somewhere behind me, the words hold the line echo like some post–apocalyptic refrain..
we move with sharpened instinct, clearing the mall sector by sector as though engaged in some final purification rite of passage..
eventually, silence descends upon the mall. i can feel the collective begin to believe––albeit subliminally––that we have eliminated the last of the infected. yet i remain uneasy, drifting through neglected recesses and peripheral corners with lingering vigilance, searching for residual traces of contamination..
then we encounter a cluster of garbage cans gathered tightly together in a dim corner of the mall. something in me knows reflexively, immediately. i approach cautiously and tap one of the containers almost ritually with my weapon, testing whether some dormant remnant still hides within..
instantly, a final zombie erupts outward from concealment..
i neutralize it quickly––the last residual enemy of our cleanup mission..
we begin to celebrate as relief washes over the group. i stand there in a kind of daze, my immediate milieu gradually receding into a bleary backstory of my awareness as i panoramically contemplate the survivors, the corpses, the fluorescent debris of collapse, and all the strange, violent, beautiful things catastrophe reveals..
then suddenly, realization descends upon me with almost ontological force––i left my fire burning back ‘home’..
and from somewhere beyond me––half obscured by distance and dream––my high–rise apartment glows faintly against the nite skyline, beautifully aflame––not catastrophic, not devastating, not yet..
in the twinkling of an eye, my entire scenery begins to flicker, recede, evanesce––my gaze remaining reverently transfixed upon the fire of God as i descend into hypnopompia..