Licked by a Zombie

Sitting in Radio Bar, Natalie and I had finally gotten a chance to hang out. We've known each other for about 2 years but have only had chance meetings and brief conversations. It took determination and lots of rescheduling, but we finally set aside time to sit down and have a relaxed conversation.

So of COURSE I took advantage of the opportunity and got her permission to record a story for this blog!

Natalie had been telling me about different types of counseling and spiritual therapy she'd been experiencing. Topics like this fascinate me. She told me a little bit about her therapy and then moved on to sharing about a recent dream.

"Well, I’ll draw… we’ll draw mandalas and stuff, we’ll do art therapy and… she actually works at the Tau Center on the side and then counsels on the side and everything."

"Um, so I had a dream last night that I was on a space ship," Natalie ventured, "and something, some liquid, was leaking into the, the space ship. You know, and it hit like a crease in the floor and it started to run and if you touched it, you’d turn into a zombie."

"And then, but you could turn other people into a zombie if you were a zombie… you’d have to lick ‘em," she elaborated. We both laughed. "And so," Natalie said, "I pretended I was a zombie so I wouldn’t get licked."

That sounds to me like a VERY intelligent idea and, should I ever find myself in similar circumstances, I hope to implement this same tactic for my own safety....

"I have a lot of alien movie, alien dreams," Natalie explained.

I asked, kind of teasing, "Are you on any medication?"

"Yes," she said plainly.

(I couldn't help but laugh out loud; I can relate to the dream thing. Heh...)

"I am," she affirmed, with a twinge of humor in her voice..

"Because," I explained, "I am on medication and I know that makes me have a LOT of vivid dreams." I confessed... "I love it!" Eh, what can I say. I like to dream crazy dreams I can remember and sometimes even write about.

Natalie continued, "I have alien dreams… I have alien robot dreams, too!"

"Really," I inserted.

"Yeah," she said. "Alien robot dreams. So, okay, so I’m on this, I’m on this spaceship, this liquid starts coming, I don’t know how to stop it; I don’t have anything to stop it. It’s nighttime, and then, somehow it kinda transitions into like a mall. And so every, like, so a lot of people who turned into zombies kinda start movin' through the mall to get to people who haven’t been turned into zombies yet. So, I pretend that I’m a zombie so nobody’ll lick me."

"Okay!" I laughed.

Natalie continued further: "And, um, so, you know, there’s like the, the store keepers for each of these little stores, you know? And like, um, we’re moving through the mall and then we get to, like, an office and we go through all the offices so I kinda take the lead so they think I’m a zombie, right? And so we find these two executives hiding; they’re, like, tryin to hang in this closet but you can see their feet… you know? And so, like, I’m licking them; I’m like," she mimics whispering to the characters in her dream, "'Just pretend.'

"Um, and then, I’m on the ground and they wanna lick me I’m like, 'I’m one of you!' And… and so, this um, and so it’s a black guy, I don’t know why, he goes, 'Let me lick you anyway.' And I’m like, 'Honey, I don’t want you to lick me.' But he, you know he’s like, and I’m like, 'Help me up and let’s get goin.'

"And, you know what I mean, so we’re, like, moving through this hallway and then, like, we come to this thing and you have to get across… and you see all these different levels and you have to kind of get across to safety or whatever… and, um, that’s kinda where it ends.

"But, I don’t remember if I… I think I could fly… cause I can fly in a lot of my dreams."

"Okay!" I laughed again.

"You know, though lots of times I don’t have control over, um, my flying… but I can fly. So maybe I can’t quite get high enough, I can’t… steer how I wanna steer, but I can fly."

Natalie grew up here in south Louisiana, went to school at St. Joseph's, and lived in Chicago for a number of years. She recently moved back to Baton Rouge because her teenage niece has been fighting a rare strain of cancer. Fighting, and winning! Natalie loves her family; it's obvious from the way she talks about them.

Natalie's main interest is photography. In her spare time, just to pay the bills, she lends her services to a local Starbucks.

In short, Natalie rocks.

I am very glad to have gained Natalie as a friend and hope, in the future, we can make some more time to just hang out and chat over a few easy drinks. She's a lot of fun and a good person to know.