I had the strangest dream last night. It started with my being at work at the library and it involved a possessed collection of old pop-up books, a wheelchair bound psychic (who looked more like Frankie Muniz than Professor X), an unexplained celestial event in which the Earth was orbited by two moons, zombies/ghosts that moved like that girl in The Ring, blizzards, a good friend who has been away for many months, text messaging to open a portal to the other side, and a lonely princess who just wanted to talk to someone. Yes, all that from the same dream. How on earth do those pieces go together, you ask? Allow me to attempt an explanation.

I was at work at the library. Somehow, in the midst of doing my other duties, I came across the collection of possessed pop-up books. If I recall correctly, I was either told, or had heard tell of a former library employee who had discovered that the books were possessed but was not believed. But it was indeed true that ye olde pop-up books were possessed, but not by an evil spirit. No, they were possessed by a princess whose spirit was trapped inside the books somehow and was very lonely because she had no one to talk to but herself. Enter the psychic. The Frankie Muniz-like, wheelchair bound psychic was visiting the library for some reason and the trapped princess wanted me to contact him so that she could talk to him. Now, why she needed a psychic when she was clearly communicating with me is unclear. I am undoubtedly un-psychic and was just as un-psychic as always in the dream. So maybe she wasn’t quite talking to me, but I was gleaning bits from urban legend and from the texts? Regardless, the plot had to progress somehow and so I diligently attempted to tell the psychic the princess’s plight. However, the psychic was in a meeting with some library bigwigs, and I couldn’t get to him to tell him the princess’s tragic tale. Despite my efforts to crash the bigwigs’ meeting (at one point I told a supervisor about the possessed pop-up books and received some skeptical looks), I instead had to settle for waiting outside their conference room, trying to telepathically get the psychic’s attention. End part I.

Now, it was closing time at the library. As I was trying to get things in order for the end of the day, many strange things occurred. As I tried to take up my last cartload of books for the day, I found the elevator was already being commandeered by another coworker with many empty carts. After negotiating some way of sharing the elevator, the coworker gave me condolences on the death of my grandfather. I n the dream, this seemed to make sense, even though it was unexpected and unrelated to anything else in the dream. The strange occurence of two moons and the eclipse of Saturn by one of those moons was observed. My friend Celia appeared and, after having traveled abroad for some time, had returned, also intrigued by the urban legends surrounding the possessed pop-up books. I tried to dissuade her from investigating further, whether for her safety or for the safety of the books, I cannot recall. However, she was not to be dissuaded, and this point, the zombie-related adventures began.

Regardless of my failure to obtain the aid of the psychic, Celia and I were able to embark on a mission to help free the princess’s trapped spirit. Although I remember getting a rather detailed explanation of what was happening at the time, the details of this part are a little fuzzy. What I do recall is that there was some kind of alternate world/dimension that we had to cross over to in order to help the princess, however, crossing into that world required unleashing some kind of zombie/ghost people that we had to avoid. Basically, when we wanted to cross over into the other world, we had to first escape the zombie ghosts who also wanted to cross into the other world. This became rather harrowing, as we had to text message the other side to find out where the portal would open. All the while, the zombie ghosts would pursue us. This unfortunate set-up between the world of mortal beings and ‘the other side” resulted in the dream’s dramatic finale (ie, he last thing that happened when my alarm work me up). Celia and I were trying to cross to the other side and somehow became trapped in this glass enclosure that was something like an elevator lobby. Outside, however, it seemed the world was falling apart. A bone-chilling blizzard of swirling snow and ash was swirling furiously around our little elevator-lobby shelter, blocking out any view of the outside world. And of course, we were trapped inside with the zombie ghosts, unsuccessfully trying to find a portal and cross over to safety. The last I remember one of us had opened on of the glass doors in an attempt to freeze the zombies to death, and then… I woke up.

I was a little disappointed at being unable to see how my sleeping brain was going to try to work things out, but frankly, the fight with the zombie ghosts wasn’t going all that well in the first place. Perhaps it is best that I woke up when I did. Perhaps I should also just stop watching horror movies before bed time ;-)

Tomorrow I head back to the Windy City to begin a new year of mischief-making and overall unproductiveness. Stay tuned!