
Two entwined dreams last night. In one, I was part of a trio of children-- ain't that always the case?-- in a sort of Series of Unfortunate Events or Addams Family situation. One of my siblings was Leigh, which isn't exactly crazy. We were away at summer camp, Scout camp, on a mountain somewhere-- a mountain that has been figuring in a lot of my dreams, lately. The Scout camp was also a military base, & we had a few reasons for being there-- notably, there was a huge building filled with medical freaks-- people in comas, or clones like from Alien Resurrection, of genetic outliers of whatever sort...& "Room 43." The military was collecting anomalous humanoids, & our parents where there too; we didn't care about our parents, never visited them, but they were there. It was Room 43 we were interested in-- not exactly a room & more like a carnival funhouse ride welded shut with a transparent grey alien inside. Maybe not a grey alien-- maybe just a sick little girl, or a hybrid, or a mutant, but she looked like the x-ray of a Zeta Reticulian. Big eyes dark blots against a strangely proportioned skeleton surrounded by a flimsy membrane. We all adored her, & talked to her telepathically-- which is what set off the sensors on the military base, the inside-out SETI scopes on the mountain, pointed at Room 43. They went off, & they took the girl, but we found her, put her inside the skin of a Girl Scout & a gas mask, took her away, & left me behind to set the place ablaze. As it burned down, I found a peep hole in the General's office that showed a boxed off room-- no doors, no windows, just a secret hole for viewing into it-- with an IT costume-- a clown mask, a space robe, a Pennywise alien's clothing.
The other dream was just post-apocalyptic-- me & two other survivors had banded together. I'd talked the guy down from suicide & the girl & me had bonded since our significant others had died-- the three of us had lived through Armageddon & were a family now. We were a tribe brought together by being reliable & genius enough to survive the end of the world. I was kidnapped twice-- once by a rival tribe for bullets, & I beat them with the butt of my .44 snubby & terrorized them back; once by a group of people living as if the end of the world meant it was time for Tupperware parties, just a cult of Amway people who were living in my old house. I'd bumped into them when I went back to get a backpack & supplies, & left with one of the girls from the party, the cult member who had shaken off the brainwashing. My family had left, been forced out, but they left maps & clues to tell me where they'd gone to: Miami! So me & the girl I'd rescued started heading south through a world on fire. "Is zombie edible?" we laughed, & I told her I was a Black Atlantean. I had a war hammer & we told other survivors our last name was Malleus, siphoned gas out of stranded cars with a piece of hose & our mouths, always heading south, knowing I could trust my family to be there when I got there. This was the world after the girl from Room 43 got done with it. It was the perfect world for me.