Dream About Blind Zombies

Dream Narrative: The Stream and the Blind Zombies It began in a world steeped in social media ̶ a digital stream of images, voices, and endless exploration. As I navigated the current, something shifted. The virtual world dissolved into a world overrun by zombies. These zombies, however, were blind. They could not see; they could only hear. If I stood perfectly still, silent except for my breath, they passed by unaware. I realized they could be right beside me and never know I was there. At first, I thought it was fake ̶ some strange performance ̶ until I went back into my home. Inside, everyone was frozen, quiet as statues. I hid in the bathroom, a space barely big enough to breathe. When one of the zombies entered, I held my breath and stayed utterly still. It wandered, sniffing, searching. Then it came closer ̶ pressing against me, crawling beneath my arm, as if testing whether I was real. It laid across me like a weight, moving me as though I were an object. I let my body go limp, pretending I was nothing more than furniture. Finally, when it grew distracted, I acted. It was smaller than I imagined, almost frail. My best friend and I decided we’d had enough. We tried strangling it with a cord ̶ it didn’t work ̶ so we carried it into the kitchen and cut it into pieces. When it was done, it looked like nothing more than a pile of meatballs. We threw it away. Then everything changed. I was somewhere vast, surrounded by children. I stepped onto an elevator and noticed the world outside had frozen again. I told everyone to stay quiet. I grabbed the kids’ hands, but Sasha ̶ my daughter ̶ broke free and ran. The moment she did, the scene shifted. The children were no longer mine, and I was no longer myself. I watched from above as if I were a spirit hovering over a world on edge. The girl I had called out to ran to a friend. The friend’s mother clutched her own child tightly as a security guard began patrolling. A man beside her murmured that if people didn’t stop running, she should start killing them. I prayed the little girl would stay still. She did. The guard started collecting mail ̶ letters, fragments of identity ̶ from everyone. When a woman handed over her letter, the guard paused. “I don’t remember you being from the Bronx,” she said suspiciously, before rounding people up and locking them into a large enclosed area. The woman tried to get inside, but the gate closed before she could enter. Her children were trapped within, and she was forced to seal the gate shut to keep the zombies out. Inside the barricaded space, silence fell. Time passed ̶ days, maybe more. When the gates finally opened, it was a graveyard of bodies. The little boy who had once been small was now older ̶ a teenager. He no longer looked for his mother, only his sister. He asked for her, begged for help, but no one responded. Around him, the people who handled the bodies wore disguises ̶ monstrous costumes mimicking the zombies themselves, as though pretending to be soulless had become a way to survive. The boy approached the same security guard and pleaded for help. She laughed with another woman, carefree and distant, her eyes refusing to meet his. He stammered, his words tumbling over themselves ̶ the way my son does when he’s desperate to be understood. But the guard ignored him. And that’s when I woke ̶ with his voice still echoing, lost in the silence in a world that refused to listen.