lynching

chilacas little fat one with grilled veggies, water, late night bowl of frosted flakes

In a Target store. Looking at satchel bags, with my mom and dad, maybe. One is dark blue with light tan edging, my mom suggests it to my father as what he is looking for. I can hear men talking. Two white men are mocking a third, black man calling him "Robert."

"We know why you're here, ROBERT." He sounds slow.

"I know why you're calling me Robert, because Robert [so & so] was a famous [freedom fighter? Democrat? I don't remember, but it meant that he was a civil rights activist]

Choking and cursing noises. View from below as if I were laying on the floor, up past a shelf of shirts or something, as the two white men try to lift the black man, "Robert," up into a nylon-rope-noose. He manages to struggle free once, but then I can see as his head is forced through the loop and he is dropped.

I start awake at this point, pretty freaked out.

Back to sleep:

Out in the desert, at the intersection of two dirt roads. With Gavin Jackson. There is a port-a-john with a canvas cover on it, like a swamp cooler. I'm drumming a rhythm. Gavin walks around one side, I stay opposite him behind the box. I jump up on top of the box & begin to laugh my head off at him.

i'm bored & frugal, stephanie is a thief

falafel, kholaj, icecream sadwich, water

[first portion is lost]
Dana is a dentist, I am at her office, bored & lonely, trying to get her to pay attention to me but she is busy. There is a makeshift calendar hanging on the inside face of a doorjam. I put hearts around Feb 14 with a red marker. I grab a purple marker to add more hearts but then realize that it's a heavy duty permanent marker and might soak through onto the wall, so I don't use it.

Stephanie takes me shopping at the grocery. We're going to have buscuits & jam or something like that. We are looking at the jam selection, and I reach out & say "Boysenberry?" and she responds, "No, POISONberry." She insists that I will like it and that they usually have it at this store. She gets on her hands & knees to see back into the lowest shelf. There is a jar & I retrieve it.

We also grab some wierd plastic kitchen tool of some sort. I start going off about how I hate wasting money. Even if something is inexpensive I think, "Well, that's 98 cents I'll never get back." I go on and on about this. I see Stephanie slip the little kitchen tool into her pocket. I don't know if she just wants to steal it or if it is because I'm going on about money. I didn't mean to impply anything about what we are buying, though.

land of the dead

basic mac & chz meal, 4 hamms. sleepless until roughly 2am. dream right before i woke in the morning. (Land of the Dead doesn't come out for another week, mind you)

We are the some of the last holdouts from the zombie hordes. Slums around a river. Most surfaces are white but dirty. I am protecting a group of kids, kind of a church youth group. And their parents are there. Also some people my age, and there is a some sort of sexual interest I can't recall. [I think that I am a powerful spiritualist and leader, but I have not revealed myself.] We are holed up in a blown-out hotel. Everything is going well, but then there is all this noise, drilling. I find that a man with a giant drill is drilling cores out of the side of the building. I ask him when he thinks he will be done, as it is late and we are trying to sleep. He says, "January," because that's the schedule. I point out that all of his noise is attracting a lot of attention, but he doesn't care. Then, zombies come. We have to go. I get all my kids together & we move off through the early morning. Up over a rusting building with a slanting roof. Hard to get everyone up and over.

We get to an apartment building, sort of roadwarrior-ish society. This is a place run by a few warlords. We don't have time for all this, we get inside and up several floors. My Man is there, he is somone I knew who was killed by the zombies & turned, but I was able to reclaim him. But only for a project. I am recreating him as my own monster, slowly gathering the parts. He is made of cast iron. All that's left of him that is particularly human is his head, and he is genteel and british, gallant. But he is a thing I intend to use against the zombies.

There is unrest at this apartment compound. We are not particularly welcome, but I am influential enough that there are only minor disagreements. One of the warlords (all of whom are Hispanic, it seems; this is their place, and we are gringo pains in the ass) does take a shot at me with a pistol from the street when I am out on the balcony, but it is meant only to remind me of my place and I can accept that.

In the midst of all this, I have been coming and going, activating a host of other somewhat robotic dragoons around town, I sneak out, sneak back. Across a ruined urban landscape, up & over and around and always just ahead of zombie crowds.