The Night of the Living Dead

As I opened my eyes and my misted vision cleared I saw lights, curiously angled and multicoloured, swimming in my tears. My faculty of hearing crept gradually back and I heard the rising volume of music - a drum beat, basic and deliberate and not much faster than a human pulse, with emphasis on the fourth note. The air was stale and smelled of sweat and, with my sense of touch restored, I realised that I was wet and lying in water. My mouth and throat were tight and dry.

As my vision further crystallized, it sculpted from the shadows silhouettes of people, hunched and staring, and circling around me. Their bodies were short and spasmed and supported oversized heads in which lurked curious and hungry eyes. They shuffled closer as a group, their black lips set in unsettling leer until they domed around me and returned me to the darkness. Their grisly faces inspected and poked me and they looked as if they were trying to interpret my presence. Suddenly they stooped, all of them, and fifty pairs of hands tugged at my body and hoisted me from the floor to shoulder height. A cheer erupted from the crowd, now below me and visibly numerous, and all attempted with outstretched arm to aid in my conveyance. I twisted and fought to restore a footing but no matter which way I turned, an ocean of hands forced my back the way I came. From my involuntary perch I was afforded a view of a man standing on a platform. He was dark skinned and bald and, as a smile dawned on his face, the golden beam of an artificial tooth flashed across the room. On the fore of his arm was etched the outline of a curved blade and falling from it a drop of blood. I swallowed and tasted it. It seemed to be from him that the music came. Indeed it seemed to be generated directly by the muscles of his body which were visible through his tattered clothes and which tensed in announcement of every beat.

The wave of arms on which I floated crested then crashed and washed me up on an unsteady wooden seat in the direct glare of a violet coloured light. The arms turned and faced the Bald One who, in recognition of their attention, intensified the music he squeezed from his sinews. His bodily rhythm was enforced on the crowd by his suggestive symphony and soon he and his herd were stepping in mechanical harmony.

As the music crescendoed and died to a throb, a tall lean woman appeared in the heart of the throng. She wore a long black dress of exotic material. It reflected some of the light and accentuated her whiteness. She stood for a moment in the movement around her and struck me straight in the chest with a lancing stare. Thus pinned, I watched her approach carve open the crowd and leave bobbing behind her a sea of awestruck faces. She stopped when she reached me and, with uplifting eyes, dragged from my chest to my mouth the lance that had pinned me. She licked her black lips slowly with her blood red tongue and brushed her long curved nails, like fingertip blades, across my cheek and my lips and my throat. She withdrew her hand with a flourish and left it dangle behind her. Her solemnity thawed and unearthed a smile, faint and unpracticed, but sufficient to reveal teeth like talons. Her smile changed to snarl to bear better her fangs and she leaned towards my face to, I assumed, take a chunk. I fell from the chair into a terrified heap and thrashed with my legs to go backwards. Once I got standing I changed through the crowd, who flailed listlessly at my wake, past the fanged woman, past the bald music man and up a flight of rickety stairs. At the top I looked back, like I do in my nightmares, and saw, to my surprise, that I was not being pursued by some fleet-footed demons. Instead there lay behind me an ambling mob, swaying in unified pedestrian pursuit. I waited no longer and sprang through the doorway.

The street was deserted and quiet, the only sound being the skitter of litter driven along the pavement by a cold wind. I ran with the litter through endless streets, the drums long gone but my heart still beating. After an unknown time I came to a figure hunched in the shadows. Green fluid gushed from his mouth and splattered on the ground and his clothes. He turned his head slowly to see me, but his lifeless eyes located no more than my feet. I continued on my unfamiliar route until I came to a group in a huddle. They were ripping apart meat and swallowing it in chunks. I felt my stomach turn nauseous and my legs went weak. The group broke their huddle and lurched their way towards me. My head felt hot, the cold, then hot again and I saw brilliant little stars before me, bespeckling the oncoming mob. Then, everything went black.

I awoke the next morning still in my clothes and lying diagonally across my bed. I had a pounding headache and my body was sore. The dream that I had seemed so real and tangible - I could still sense the fear. Still, to this day, I am looking for proof of its reality. All I have so far is what I found in my jacket that morning - a birthday card, addressed to me, and an admission ticket to Copper Face Jacks. www.mikehogan.net