Dream: The George Bush Zombie

Dream 20030611, 3:00 AM:

There is a lot of this dream beyond what I could remember, or at least I woke with a sense that I began remembering the plot in mid-stream.

Chris and I are walking, coming back from somewhere. We’re walking along a road, through a heavily wooded area that reminds me of some of the woods around where Grandmother and Granddad used to live. There are lots of tall pine trees; it seems like this area was slated for development, but not completed – the streets are cut, but there aren’t lights or houses. We are carrying large white wicker items; they look like large chests, or small bed stands. I don’t know why we’re carrying them. I start to recognize the area, and I realize that this is a place that Bush has used for press conferences; he likes it because it’s out in nature and makes him look like he’s involved in the ecology. I tell Chris, and we look across the street at a meadow, and there is a press conference just about to start. It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of reporters, just a bunch of ordinary people sitting in rows of pews to listen. There’s a podium, and a few reporters, and a lot of Bush’s staff and handlers. We decide to go sit and listen.

We put down the white wicker furniture, and slip into the side of one of the pews. It seems like we’re at the back of the “room.” Bush comes out, and begins to speak. I don’t remember a thing that he says; I just remember watching him, because he doesn’t look right. He looks kind of sick and strange, and he doesn’t really look like himself, almost as if he’s an impersonator or a double. I’m thinking about how I’m used to seeing him on TV, and that maybe it’s just different to see him in person; I think for a while about how different it is to see him for real, and wonder if that’s all the difference, or if this is really not the same person.

At one point, Chris has to get out of the pew, and he has to step in front of someone. He looks at her, and says, “Excuse me, but I have to step in front of your face,” and slips past her. He returns shortly. I think he went to the bathroom.

Bush walks back and forth, glibly talking, not using a podium or a teleprompter that I can see. It seems like one of those gung-ho, morale-building type talks, not stern or particularly momentous. When he’s done talking, he walks past where Chris and I are sitting. Chris reaches his hand out and shakes hands with Bush; I follow suit. I think to myself that I may not like or agree with him, but shouldn’t pass up the chance to shake hands with the President. He doesn’t have a good handshake; he kind of puts his hand half-way into mine, and squeezes the ends of my fingers. I mentally shrug and think, “Hm, the President has a weird handshake.” I look at him, and he still looks kind of wrong.

The group starts to break up, the speech is over now. I’m watching President Bush, and he’s not well. He looks sick. Somebody puts him onto a gurney, and wheels him off. Something is wrong with me, too – I don’t remember why, but they have to put me into a hospital gown. It seems like it’s over my clothes. I’m in the hospital waiting room, and watch as orderlies wheel Bush in on his gurney, and he seems nearly dead. I remember Chris (who seems to also be Kim G. from college) telling me that he saw the most amazing thing; he tells me that he saw the President being wheeled off on a gurney. I have to go into another room. There is a young woman, an orderly, here, and she tells me I have to wait here. Another woman comes in, and says that she’s obligated to check the “backline patients.”

I look, and realize that one of the patients in this back room is President Bush. I wonder if the orderly knows that he’s here, but decide that she probably doesn’t. I look over at Bush, and realize that he’s dead as a doornail, lying on the gurney. A couple of the hospital staff pick him up and flop him into a big container; it’s shaped like a coffin, but looks more like a big Rubbermaid storage bin. They don’t lower him gently, just kind of dump him. They’re chatting back and forth, like they’re doing everyday tasks. I watch, and see that his hands and feet look wrong; it seems like the bones have snapped, or broken through the skin; it reminds me of the finger joints on one of the characters in Poltergeist III.

Then, he gets back up, still quite obviously dead looking, with his weirdly broken wrists and ankles. I’m thinking to myself, “Oh, my God, this is appalling, we’ve got this zombie for a President…”

I get up and walk out, past where Kim G. is sitting and talking to an older woman who reminds me of Sherri. The place that they’re in is like the pews where we were sitting earlier. I lean over and touch Kim on the shoulder, and say, “I saw the most amazing thing, I’m going to tell you all about it, can’t right now, but Oh, My, God.”

I go into this little shop, looking for a bathroom. It’s like the tiny micro-convenience stores that they have tucked into airport terminals. As I see the bathroom door, the shop attendant comes out of the bathroom. Then, I notice a little machine, it kind of reminds me of the ones where you flatten a penny, only much less ornate. I have a piece of metal, it looks kind of like a pointed sealing wax candle, but made of brass or something like it. I push the point into a hole in the machine, and the machine somehow pinches a piece off of the end and puts stuff into it; it looks sort of like a stuffed tortelloni pasta. I take this and put it in my pocket, and I think I make some more, because later I remember having several of them. I think that I use the bathroom, but don’t remember anything about it, just that I seem to have finished what I wanted to do.

I’m walking home, but to the Kingwood house. I approach from the alleyway (which no longer exists in real life) and as I’m walking up, I think to myself, “I wonder if these work?” I have my hand in my pocket, feeling the little things that I made with the machine. They’re some kind of bomb; they stuff wrapped up in them is gunpowder. They don’t have any sort of detonating cap, though. It’s raining outside now. I take one out, and throw it diagonally across the yard. It hits and explodes, throwing up a little spray of dirt, but nothing big. I shrug to myself, thinking this would be helpful in certain situations, but not a very imposing weapon.

I walk into the house, and Chris is somewhere inside; I walk in the back door, and start checking the laundry. I open the dryer, and there are a bunch of whites in there; I think to myself, “Ah, good, they’re all clean, but I don’t need to fold them right now.” I walk on in, trying to find Chris to tell him about seeing the President being flopped off the gurney into a body box, and then getting up and acting like nothing was wrong. *end* When I woke, it was thundering and raining, which is probably the source of the ‘bomb’ sounds.