I must have this thing about zombies. Since I was a child I've always been obsessed with the idea. I remember catching a few mere seconds of a zombie film when I was about nine and thinking about it literally every day for about a year afterwards. Maybe it's really a fear about losing my own mind or control of my own actions, or soul or whatever, but the idea of a mindless undead corpse that will stop at literally nothing to eat my brain gives me the absolute howling fantods.

And I have nightmares about them. At the age of 27, I still have cold-sweat nightmares that make me want to call my mother. Here are two examples:

A few years ago I had a dream that I went to visit my friend Eric who at the time was going to USU. Some unspecific events happen, and all of a sudden us and a crew of ten or fifteen attractive young teens are exploring the famous "haunted horticultural greenhouse." The manager is with us and spends several minutes explaining to us the rules of the haunting. Always in my zombie dreams there is a baroque system of rules that one must follow to survive an attack. Under no conditions must we disturb the newly tilled soil in the northeast corner. We can do anything else we like, but we can't touch the garden in that corner. So we're screwing around, throwing things, trying to scare each other and whatnot when, you guessed it, a couple of dopes decide to test the limits of the undead, and they bend down to pick up a handful of the sacred earth. As soon as they touch it, it breaks like the crust on a créme broulée and zombies pour forth by the thousands. They eat us all. Or just possess us, I'm not sure, but the point is that we all die horribly, and like not even our souls survive. We're erased from all sentient existence.

So now the other night I have this dream where I'm not even in it, but it's a movie starring Mark Wahlberg in the crappiest-casted role of Johnny Cash ever. He's dressed like Prince and has this weird Willy Wonka hairdo and keeps talking like Slingblade (in an attempt to sound remotely like Cash, I'd assume). So anyway he's darting from place to place, and this time the zombies have attacked full-force, but disguise themselves as regular humans. Mark/Johnny can see them, and they're your classic decomposing corpses, complete with doll-like dead eyes and pieces of flesh hanging from their face, but to everyone else they look, sound, and act like whoever it is that the zombie infected. Until, and again here come the rules, the zombie comes in contact with a real dead body. If that happens they're exposed and break out into a screaming rage. Their physical form dissolves in this really grotesque and awful way but they get like super enraged and the zombie ghost is released to wreak unbelievable havoc upon the living. So the key is to let the zombies live, but to keep them hidden. That way at least they're not free to, you know, do their zombie ghost thing. Dreams always sound so dumb when you explain them to others.

After this latest dream I woke up staring into the dark void of my closet and could have sworn to you that I saw a bunch of shadows moving around inside. The hairs on my neck stand up just thinking about it. My wife found me a few minutes later standing in the middle of the closet with the light on, just staring at the ground. I couldn't really give her any rational explanation for why I was there, so I just came back to bed. Nothing remotely scary has happened since.

You know what the worst part is, though? I can't get enough of zombie movies. I love 'em. I want to see them all. Even the crap ones that everyone laughs at and throws popcorn at the screen and stuff. I think that I would benefit from professional help.

Interpretations, advice, anyone?

ps- 14 more shifts to go before I'm done with my hellish job. Hooray!