Of Zombies and Zambonis

In my dream, I was being held against my will in the basement of a building. It was something like a clinic with various quasi medical apparatuses in a few different rooms. I was concerned about a middle-aged woman who was not there at the time. She dressed similarly to a nurse, but I perceived she was much more like a warden. I remembered having tried to escape, but somehow I had not succeeded, perhaps because of her or one of the unseen attendants.

In one dimly-lit room, there were about 9 people standing in a few rows. They were vacant, almost inanimate zombies. Their androgynous, naked bodies were slick with blood diluted by sweat and who knows what else. Every few minutes a tone sounded, and they would all adjust a limb or change their stance into a new pose so that their muscles would not grow rigid. I feared that I was to be made one of them very soon.

Then I was showering. Sensing that I was momentarily unattended, I made for the way out, still wet and unclothed. I went up a  stairwell that was painted in white enamel. The stairs came to a glass-enclosed landing. I pushed through the door into a government office with a long service counter behind which stood many gaping public workers. I told them that I am being held captive and need help. They just stared at me uncertain of what to do. I was naked. They could do nothing to help to me. What little compassion or ethical obligation they may have had was not enough to motivate them to action. I exited the same door into the parking garage, then–no longer naked–out through the traffic of a busy New York City street.

A small park was across the street, and there was a stand of neatly-planted  shrubs that formed a canopy of dense red foliage, knee-high above the grainy, dry soil. I momentarily took cover there, and then moved on.

At the park’s far end I met the street that ran perpendicular to the one I had crossed. A slow moving service vehicle crawled down the street toward me. It was made of heavy diamond plate patterned metal with worn yellow paint, an atop were two men operating it. I went between parallel-parked cars into the street and thumbed a ride, climbing aboard as it lumbered past. When I got on, there was only the driver. He wore old jeans and a coat, both of faded denim, and a red and black flannel shirt. He was poorly shaven and had a thick mustache of course blond whiskers that looked very blue collar.

Moments later we were in a parking garage that was painted in glossy white enamel, with railings painted with glossy yellow that accentuated them. It was very clean. I then knew that it was the same building from which I had just fled.

He parked not far from a clear glass door that apparently went into a residential area. He told me about how he was going to have a procedure performed that shrinks the brain to 1/4 its size. As he explained this, I watched a diagram showing an overhead view of the silhouette of a normal-sized brain, and a 25% scale silhouette aligned to the upper left of  the larger image for comparison. It had the appearance of high quality medical marketing material. Very slick and technical.

“Once done, you don’t have to think ever again. They got a TV channel with ultimate wrestling championships 24 hours a day. You can just watch,”  he said.

I then understood the zombies.

I asked him if I could take the Zamboni back out. It wasn’t a real Zamboni. I just called it that, tribute to Schultz’ strange Zamboni period in Peanuts.

The moustache-man handed me a keyring heavily-laden with keys. Then another that was even heavier. The second was so that I could get inside when I got back. I told him “Okay,” even though I knew that if I managed to get out, there was no way I would be coming back.

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When I woke up, I told Heidi a brief version of this dream.