I HARDLY EVER DREAM OF ZOMBIES
Cindy Maddera
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Early last night, not long after I'd gone to bed and drifted off to sleep, I had the worst stress dream I've ever had. OK. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but I do have welt lines on the insides of my cheeks this morning from chewing my face from the inside out. Michael and I were at the airport trying to get our boarding passes. We went up to the desk clerk and he put in all our information, but when he went to print the passes, his printer started eating the paper and completely jammed up. The clerk said not to worry, that he'd send the information over to the next clerk who could print it out for us. At this moment, Michael realized that he didn't have a coat and that he really needed a coat. So he left me in line to deal with boarding passes to go find himself a coat. I'm standing at the counter for some time before I finally see the second clerk print our tickets and then stick them in a paper bag. I stepped forward to get our passes, but thats when the supervisor stepped up and shouted at me "What do you think you're doing?" "You have to go back and wait in line." I told him that I had been waiting in line and that my boarding passes were ready. I explained about the printer malfunction and passing the tickets to the next clerk, but he just kept yelling at me and he made me so angry. Finally I just reached up and grabbed my paper bag containing our passes. I looked at the ticket supervisor and said "I will be filing a very large complaint about you and I will make sure that you are fired from this job."
I turned and walked away from the counter, pulled our passes from the bag and noticed that our flight would be leaving in ten minutes and we still had to go through security. Also, I had no idea where Michael was. I started running down the moving sidewalk that would take us to our boarding gate. I was about half way down the corridor when I saw Michael running on the moving sidewalk that was going in the opposite direction. I yelled his name, but he didn't hear me. I started running backwards on my moving sidewalk (like going up the down escalator, but way harder). I reached the end and there stood Michael wearing the most ridiculous coat I had ever seen. He replied before I could say anything "it's the only thing they had that would fit me." The coat was huge, gray and furry. To top it all off there was a giant lion skin running down the back of it with the front paws draped over the shoulders and the head of the lion acting as the hood of the coat. Now, let me just say, before there's outrage over me dreaming about Michael wearing a lion skin, the lion was not a real lion. It was a knitted lion. I looked at him and said that we had to hurry, but then I couldn't stop laughing. Every time I looked at him in that ridiculous coat, I'd just crack up. We're running through the airport, laughing and trying to find gate B. For the LOVE OF GOD WHERE IS GATE B!!!!????? That's the last thing I remember before I woke up.
I reached over for my clock to see that it wasn't even midnight. I rolled back over, trying to go back to sleep, but I couldn't get my brain to stop racing. I thought about how Mom and I had to run through Heathrow to catch our flight to Chicago. We were going through security when we heard them announce final boarding for our flight. I was that person hopping into her shoes while grabbing all of my things and sprinting to our gate. Mom followed behind, shoeless, yelling at me to "Go Cindy! Go! I'll catch up!" I came to a halt at our gate where people were lined up to board the flight and no one was on the plane yet. Final boarding in London does not mean what I think it should mean. That dream left me feeling like I'd just raced through Heathrow again and I couldn't stop thinking about it or Michael's coat. I finally got up and crawled into his bed. He wasn't asleep yet, but his lights were off and I startled him. He pulled me in close so that my ear was pressed to his chest. I have had dreams that have woken me with gasps of terror. I have woken from a dream nearly drowning in my own tears. I very nearly never run to his bed when this happens. Instead, it's the dream that stresses me out the most. It's the one where I end up running the wrong way on a moving sidewalk (that shit is HARD) that sends me to his bed.
I just had to tell him about the dream. I had to tell him about the rude awful ticket supervisor. I had to tell him how frantic I was. I really needed to tell him about that coat. When I finished telling him all of those things, I laid there a few minutes more until both of our heart beats slowed down to normal and I was finally ready to give sleep another try. I ended up back in my bed where I slept without dreaming for the rest of the night.