Armageddon

          It was terribly cold in the garage last night, and both Brian and I were shaken by very strange dreams. He forgot his upon waking, but mine is almost as brilliant as if I had lived it. The entire dream, everyone was preoccupied with the knowledge that the world was on the brink of the apocalypse. In the first sequence, my father and I shared a tearful hug on the balcony of a lighthouse while huge mounds of unidentifiable trash rolled in. After this, I was in my kitchen frantically packing food into a bag along with Iris and Shannen; the two items I remember were root beer and bacon. I then found myself in a burned-out concrete building in the company of two priests, a monk, their various followers, and some others. Among the crowd I spotted Ariel and some vaguely familiar faces, but not anyone else that I knew personally. We waited among the rubble of broken walls and concrete benches, though for what, no one seemed to know. At some point, I became aware of a procession forming within the room. I thought it was for the sacrament of communion, so I crossed my arms to be respectful and receive a blessing from the priest who was approaching me. Instead, he roughly threw me into the line, and the older one tried to pull me along by the collar. I pushed him off, looked around, and realized it was some kind of funeral procession. The monk I'd seen earlier lay with his throat slashed, cause unknown. They completed the procession without me, and I felt very unclean. We moved outside, sat at wooden picnic tables, and watched the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen. I joked and made small talk with the younger priest for a few moments, then saw that water was inching up around our feet. How appropriate, how biblical, that the world would end not in flames, but in a flood -- like a reverse baptism. In a split second, I decided to ride the wave and die on impact with some obstacle than be pulled under and drown among hundreds of struggling bodies. I was first into the water. A man with shaggy hair had the same idea, and we shot downhill through a wooded cemetery. None of the stones looked big enough to do more than break my arm, so I slipped around or pushed over them, losing my companion at some point. (One large headstone was for a man named Jack Granny-Smith Apple, with the epitaph: "EAT KFC.") I made it through the cemetery and slid into a large workshed. Inside, a beer-bellied, foul-smelling backwoods pastor was preparing his flock to drown together. I was worse off than I had been at the start, so I surged forward, climbed up a shelf and kicked out part of the false back wall, revealing a small living space. The pastor shouted, "Don't you dare!" To which I replied, "What, am I gonna find your kiddie porn?" A fat , shirtless guy in a white cowboy hat pushed through the crowd and called, "Right behind ya!" Together, we escaped and sprinted through a quiet forest until I was cornered by a yellow snake with hundreds of centipede-esque extremities. It was faster than the eye could see, and I pondered whether I should let it bite me. If I died quickly, that would be fine; if I died slowly, that would suck; and if I was crippled or simply agonized without damage, that would really suck. My brain ran out of things to do at this point, or maybe froze from the cold, and I awoke.
          I worked a bus shift this evening, and it was generally uneventful. I was setting a table and overheard one customer tell a funny story about getting in trouble with the nuns in Catholic school. They had workbooks that were permanently unused, so he drew tons of sketches of the Flash in his and got busted after a friend exclaimed how cool they were. A family came in and the younger adults quietly informed us that their grandparents were senile and would order alcohol but that we could not serve it to them, which was a bit sad but also kind of amusing. There was also a tartar sauce fiend who asked for extra tartar sauce three times. After work, I hung out at Logan's. We played a dramatically mismatched clix game; I ran a team with the five original X-Men, a change of pace from my usual "villains of the week," and Logan used some BS Teen Titans/villains/Superboy mashup team. I was soundly rolled within four or five turns, and we retreated to his room to watch Batman Begins and read comic books. I was somewhat disappointed by Battle For the Cowl; it felt like there were so many Batmans, pseudo-Batmans and Robins running around that there was hardly room for a good villain.
          Quote of the day:
"Ah! You're the best." - Customer M, when I refilled their bread