Virtual Bank Line Notebook

Last night's dream will definitely be mined for all it's worth at some future point.

There had been a terrible plague. Only about half of the human population survived, and those that did mutated. But when I say "mutated," I mean like Spiderman mutation. Everyone was some kind of amazing atomic super ninja.

Now, of the super amazing atomic ninjas left on the earth, half were insane and half were sane. The insane ones were extremely paranoid and believed that everyone was trying to kill them, and they responded in kind to everyone they met. The sane ones were lovely people. The hard part was that you couldn't tell who was who by looking - everyone looked perfectly normal.

The plague was also sort of slow-acting. There were still people dying all the time. The illness made them waste away, toughening their skin and wasting their muscles so that they looked like mummies. Finally, the heart and lungs were too weak to support life and the victims died, usually in their beds, although sometimes they would fall down in the street. The bodies would already be so dessicated that they would just crumble to dust.

I was rifling just such a body for whatever might be in its pockets one day when a man walked up to me.

"Was it someone you knew?" he asked. He seemed calm and lucid, but that didn't mean anything.

"No." I went on digging in the pockets.

"Are you okay?"

I turned to him. He was handsome - medium height, curly brown hair, brown eyes. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and some kind of backpack.

"Sure. I'm fine. It just seemed a shame to let whatever he...she...whatever might be here go to waste."

"Ah, sure. Hey, do you know of a good place to sleep?"

I told him about a friend of mine who lived about a block away. She had a nice place and was open to letting friends squat there while looking for a decent house that hadn't been too damaged by looting. He told me that he had to go take care of some things and went walking off, promising to be back soon.

I skipped off toward my friend's house. We were in a residential neighborhood with ranch-style houses and big lawns. About half the yards were dead or overgrown. The rest had well-manicured lawns, some groomed with obsessive zeal - garden gnomes, pink flamingos, ornamental wrought iron, etc.

My friend's house had a nice lawn littered with beach balls and croquet implements. Inside, she always seemed to be eating sweet and sour chicken. I went in and asked her whether she had room. I mentioned that the person in need was a handsome man and she immediately assured me that she had plenty of space. Then she told me that it was getting dark out and I'd better go. I went out the door at a run, nervous about the gathering dark and worried that the stranger would get back before I did and think I'd abandoned him.

In the twilight I made an uncomfortable discovery. The well-trimmed hedges, the careful topiaries were almost all made of thorn bushes, specifically placed to grab the clothing of anyone foolish enough to pass too closely. I tried cutting through a yard that had a tableau made with mannequins. A male mannequin was on the ground while a female mannequin loomed over him with her foot poised over his neck. I bumped into the female, nearly knocking her over. From nowhere, a woman appeared and demanded to know why I was upsetting her "reenactment of the recent crimes."

I was temporarily speechless, but then she stalked to a brick pillar at one corner of the yard. She stepped off the grass and said "Would you like to see what I've made for my yard?" I was looking all over, trying to figure out how I was going to calmly edge out of her yard without her going all ninja all over me. Too late.

She pushed a button and from the edges of the yard, wrought iron fencing edged with spikes came shooting out of the ground as a latticework of laser beams patterned the grass at my feet. As it reached higher and higher, I could hear the faint hum of electricity crackling through it.

"Yes," she said. "It's electrified. And you are trapped. If you hold perfectly still, you might survive the night. However, if you move a millimeter, you are dead."

But I knew what to do. I *AM* magnetized after all. As long as I only touch in one spot, I'm okay. I grabbed the fence with one hand. Swinging as hard as I could, I flung my other arm upward and let go of my handhold just as my other hand grabbed onto another spot a few feet above. Between my flinging myself upward, one hand at a time, and the inexorable upward climb of the growing fence, I was soon about 30' above the ground. I flung myself over the spikes at the top and jumped down, landing lightly on my feet.

The woman, who only just realized that she had lost me, was yelling at me as I ran toward the rendezvous point.

And then I woke up.

Yeah, this'll be come a story at some point.