Isn't It Time You Were Brainwashed?

After a graduation ceremony, all the people I know filter out of the large room and fade away into the verdant forest. I meet up with Andrew and Aaron, they look ridiculous in their caps and gowns. We clamber off the road, across a large log and onto a small mountain trail.

I am in the van with my family. We are in a hurry. I look out the window and see that much of the other people and cars are beginning to film over with a strange white substance, like they are covered in a chalky mold. When they are fully covered in the substance, they become zombies. Our van is becoming slower to respond, I can tell we are being converted, but we are nearly out of the city.
Pulling past a stoplight, we do a u-turn into a park. There is a grassy area surrounded by hills. Another family has sought refuge there and are playing frisbee, relieved. We ask if we can join them, they agree. As we begin to settle in for the night, though, the cold sets in, and we realize that we have no blankets, nor provisions. Nervously, we decide to split up. Mom journeys over the hills in search of food, while Dad and I head back to town to get blankets and sleeping bags.



Our control center is infiltrated. The lights go out. A small beam of sunlight from a crack in the ceiling illuminates the now-prolific dust motes. THe building is suddenly ancient and full of grace. As moss crawls over the stools and display panels, several phosphorescent beings flow in under the crack of the doors. Their glow illuminates the entire room. They have the appearance of land-dwelling jellyfish, without tentacles. It seems they can take any form they like. They circle the edge of the room, and as they come to rest, a small lightform presents itself in the center of the room, in the beam of sunlight. It stretches upwards, un the sunlight is refracted through it into each of the other strange beings. This signals the beginning of an intricate dance, which proves to be sometimes hesitantly mournful, sometimes blindingly violent, but always brimming with light and colors.
They finish. We are convinced they have bestowed special abilities upon us.

I encounter a blonde boy of about thirteen. He is exceedingly rude to me, but I let him continue on his way.
A little farther into the building, I literally run into the same blonde boy. He apologizes profusely. I realize that the strange beings have brought special powers to the world, but in balance - there is good, and evil - hence the two blonde boys. They appear to be the same, but have dramatically different personalities. I must bring the two of them to the room where it all began - the control room. However, it is by now an ancient ruin and getting to the center will be difficult.

Dragging the boys by their arms to my car, I am stopped by a Hispanic-looking man. He seems to think I will do the boys harm. I insist that I have magical powers and that I am on an important mission. I try to barge my way past him, but his compatriot appears. I grow Exceedingly frustrated. I try to demonstrate my powers on the car, but nothing happens. As they continue to smirk and block my way, I concentrate with all my might on my magic. I finally succeed in making the locks on the doors wriggle violently, but my aggressors do not notice. They drag the boys away from me and towards the city.
All is lost.

Exorcism

The dream begins in a well-lit, nicely furnished living room. There are many people, and one girl is possessed. The rest decide she needs an exorcism, and the violence begins. At times I am her, at other times I am participating in the exorcism, at other times I just watch. The pin her down to the floor, one on each arm and leg, one sitting on her torso, she writhes, alternating between moans and screams. She escapes, rips apart the room's furnishings, they capture he again and try unsuccessfully to physically force out the demon from her body. She begins to tear things apart with her mind, ripping the roof off of the car parked outside, and starting a great wind.

I get tired of watching and move off into another part of the room. My brother has returned from the ranch, and we wanders about in a floor-length red-orange chiffon nightgown with a blank look on his face. This is the mos terrifying thing I have ever seen. He speaks in a monotonous voice of facts he has learned, showing no personal connection to... anything. He sits down with me and my parents at the dining room table, and begins to mark x's on a piece of notebook paper, describing that each x represents a dosage of a drug on a given day. There are many rows of them, up to seven in a row for each day of the week. Then he begins to explain what each drug is and why he takes them. I interrupt and ask about the chart, because I don't understand the system. He responds, "No, There's one for every time per day. And this one is for when I feel anxious, and this one is for when Jenny makes me feel inadequate, and this one..."
I'm so shocked that I get up and leave the table to go back to the exorcism. He was supposed to get better, not become a zombie. The people on the other side of the room haven't made much progress, so I go grocery shopping. I am looking at the cheeses when I run into Ariana. We exchange the typical greetings, Hi how are you, How have you been, etc., and Ariana responds that she was doing fine until the first part of the quarter, but then her upstairs neighbor began bringing home this guy, and they made so much noise having sex that Ariana couldn't concentrate on her studying anymore.

Zombies!

I ride my bike up a giant spiral ramp in the mall-like east end of the Art building. I stop near the top, where some of my future classmates stop at an espresso stand. As I stand there the bike almost rolls off the edge of the ramp, as it has no guardrail, but I keep my balance and ride forward. I have difficulty turning the pedals over to the proper side, because it hurts to kick them in bare feet.

Later, I have to get out of the Art building because zombies have started invading. The basement has partially collapsed and become a cramped, uneven tunnel. I run into Eric from Solstice and point him in the direction of the exit, but I continue deeper into the depths of the building. For some reason I have to get back to the east end, although I know there are many zombies there. I take the elevator to the first floor and find someone I recognize. Together we push open the colossal wooden doors to the Church that has taken the place of the library. A zombie plays the organ at the opposite end of the hall, and many others wander about hissing dumbly.

Outside in the Quad the sun sets as I walk along the path, surrounded by people I should know. They are all dressed in black to play capture the flag, and run about to tag the zombies surrounding us. I try to tell them how stupid this is, and not to look them in the eyes, but as I watch Gracie come face-to-face with a zombie, and in the dusk her eyes begin to glow red out of a darkened face. In my peripheral vision I see more red dots start to glow in the darnkness. I go back the way I came, realizing I any attempt to save another of my friends would be useless. I take a right by the Music building, but stop near a blooming cherry tree as several of my shadowy, red-eyed friends surround me. I climb into the tree and try to leap off of one of the branches and take off flying in mid-air, but apparently my flying capabilities are limited to slowly floating upward from an immobile position on the ground. I quickly get up and face the crowd with diverted eyes, but this time in my peripheral vision they brighten. I look up and can distinguish the faces of Josh Morris, Brian Le, and others. I thought it was already night, but when I look at the sky I see there was just a cloudy sunset, and a little bit of day is still left, but the threadbare blanket of clouds is about to cover the horizon again. I run.

I come to a deserted highrise building in the center of town with my friend. There is no sign of life, human or zombie, just many, many pigeons. We decide the highrise is the safest place to stay because zombies can't climb stairs (or something), and all of the panic-crazed humans fled long ago. We decide to climb up the outside of the building just to be safe.

Quietly we climb past ten or more of the paritally destroyed first stories, deciding we need to get higher to feel safe. We decide the next one would be acceptable, but as we haul ourselves up to the balcony railing we hear voices. We cling to the egde and carefully peer over. There are two giant, fluffy, talking cats living in the apartment. The grey one sits in a patio chair reading a newspaper and sipping coffee. The orange one (the wife) asks her husband if he would like anymore lemonade to finish his breakfast. She walks out of the kitchen (upright), holding a pitcher of lemonade.
In a whisper I tell my shocked friend that when all of the humans left town or turned into zombies the cats must have taken over, because zombies don't care about cats. Without the repression and all of the hormones from eating human food they must have grown into more human-like creatures and taken over our lives. While they might be able to protect us, I reason that they are probably more likely to kill us to prevent us from attracting the destructive zombies, and because of their longheld hatred for the opressive masters.

Carefully, we climb upward, past three more stories of cat families until we reach the very top, deserted floor. We will have to be quiet, but there is enough food to sustain us for a little while. Just there is a massive crashing as the building collapses below us. Only our apartment survives destruction, and now sits on top of a giant pile of rubble. I think of all the dead giant cats underneath us. I don't have long to think as the door to the balcony crashes open and a horde of wild-eyed men and women rush across a bridge of rubble into the apartment. The man in front, dressed in a voilently colorful floral shit has his hands outstretched to strangle me.