#like. blunt-force violence? beaning someone in the head with a heavy object

[theearnestonion]

had a dream last night. no one asked but I'm telling you all anyways. warnings in the tags.

I think someone had captured a coworker of mine and I was trying to save them? But for whatever reason I was in a city, a grey and vaguely apocalyptic city. I am in a deserted street or alley, and I take a seat on a grungy weather-worn wooden chair to read an article on my tablet. (Why I have wifi here, I do not know. Why I have my iPad at all, I do not know.) I look over and sitting on the edge of the seat across from me is a ghastly skeletal monster, the bones of its hands held together by tight grey papery skin stretched between them like webbing, and enormous darkly-shadowed holes for eyes. It sees me as I sit, and I avoid their eyes out of some combination of fear and politeness. There are creatures in this city, and while I have chanced to meet very few, I know there's no reason to believe it is malicious based on its appearance. So I I cross my legs in a triangle, lean back, and turn my attention to the article on my screen.

In my secondary vision, I see the skeletal creature move, and position itself in front of me, its face framed above my screen. It stands there, impossibly still. Watching. Waiting.

Seeing as this is both deeply rude and deeply unsettling, I shift in my seat, as casually as possible, so the tablet blocks my view of the creatures face. Perhaps it thinks I have sit nearby because I want to talk, which I very much do not. No offense to them, but I've got things to read and people to save.

The creature quietly shifts to the side with inhuman smoothness, so it stands in the left of my field of vision. It's still a few feet away, but it seems closer, somehow. More of a threat. Daring me to make eye-contact. Again, I quietly shift my position in my seat, as if merely trying to get comfortable, and turn myself to the creature, positioning my screen directly in front of it so I can no longer see it.

I blink.

The creature is closer.

I try to force my eyes to read the screen but I can't focus, my heart pounds and my breath quickens. I blink again. The creature, without having moved, is suddenly closer yet.

I blink again.

Bone-white skeletal claws come crashing around the edged of my screen, ready to fling it out of the way to meet my eyes and do whatever such creatures do with those who they chose to do things to.

There is a sudden t h u m p .

A tall, ill-kempt bald man in old, worn-out clothes stands before me. He appears to have slammed a large chunk of cement into the skeletal creature's head. The creature itself does not bear visible injury, but is certainly unconscious and crumpled to the ground in a dramatic manner. I can't begin to guess if it is dead, seeing as it appears to have been dead to begin with.

Those around me (there are now people around me, somehow, despite the street having been empty moments before) all praise the man for his valor in saving me, hailing him as a hero, the sort of hero-hailing that is forgotten by the next afternoon. The man tiredly raises a hand to those who approach them, not in humility, but in genuine to desire for them to stop. He wearily explains, somewhere between frustrated and pleading, that there are remedies and repellants for aggressive undead available at grocery stores. You can pick up a gum-like substance made from various herbs at your local Meijer for ten buck and carry it with you in a leather pouch to Avoid this Whole Debacle, so he wouldn't Need to play hero and save anyone. There's no Reason for any of this! It's all very simple! He explains in the way of a customers service worker who is just too tired to get angry. I can't express the defeated, desperate exhaustion of this man.

The man picks up his dusty duffel and leaves. I carry on my way. I hope I thanked him. I think I find my friend eventually, having escaped an unethical experimentation facility. And I presume we would have returned to work at the apocalyptic Tim Horton's meeting the next day, had I not woken up.