I found the meaning

Time is not important for the undead. We don’t talk about it. We have no need to track it. Humans love talking about things like that. They love to ask for the time, “Do you have any time for me?”

I don’t want to think about time. About how much time has passed since my parents were killed. About how much longer I have before my undead brain decides to go under, the sinking ship of a dead engine under the crushing pressure of the force of the moon.

I found the message. I feel I found the meaning behind the door in my nightmares. The shell of my inner peace was cracked, crawling into my stomach like a paralyzed parasite. It squirmed out like a leaking crack from a glass door behind a waterfall.

Lost list I found in my memory

1. Why can I dream but other zombies can’t?

2. Hours seem to have no meaning in dreams. Can we quantify time spent in a dream versus reality?

3. Find out why I can’t go beyond the door

4. Why is the number 3 in my head

Why can’t I ever win? I find myself slipping into deeper states of unconsciousness and it’s giving my husband despair. I am slowing us down. My friends and family won’t say it, but I know I am just a burden at times.

“Bexley, my heart, I see you shaking and weeping as you try to rest. I wish I could climb inside your head to fight these monsters away,” Stan signs as we embrace.

He’s not as strong physically as he turned last year as he impulsively had kissed me, making him a zombie too. But, despite this, in my bouts of catatonic depression, he carries me as our mixed family trudges slowly to get to South Dakota.

The dream I keep seeing shakes my core:

I walk up the door. It’s off it’s hinge, it’s tilted. Suddenly, I feel stuck. I can’t move. I’m going to try and open the door but there’s a break in the mood as the door opens and closes at my feet three times.

There’s something malevolent here. The entire world by the door seems to glitch with a malfunctioning spark. The tendrils of crackling air hit me like a train. It hurts me. I don’t usually feel pain. Ever.

I cry out as the door seeps a deep, dark red, so much it’s blanketed by the smell of metal and death.

There’s a ticking noise that is slow at first.

I’m sure it’s not far. As I am standing still by the door, I see two hands pointing at numbers. The longer one at a 12 and the other a 3.

The ticking is so rattling, pulsing and like a blow to my head. Over and over.

I have the most overwhelming urge to go past the door, but I can’t. Like in the strange sense of Alice needing to foolishly follow the White Rabbit, (a book I read when we lived at Asher’s uncle Jack’s lab) and I’m frozen yet yearning for repose. More than anything, I long to remember the door or find whatever is lurking past it.

Hudson is giving me these looks that feel like burns.

It’s not until I have the scariest feeling hit me with a smile right behind it.

Water. I hate water. As a zombie, you don’t wanna mess with me and that substance. I know my good friend (human) Emma has helped her Bloodletter girlfriend India feel better about water… but I can’t.

I feel myself screaming as my husband gets in front of me.

“Fuuuck!” I wail.

I usually can’t speak unless I really need to. This attack was something I needed to express verbally.

It was then I saw the thing that makes the ticking sound around someone’s wrist. I knew I needed it.

Hudson, India, Emma, Ax and Clara start fighting with the attackers: zombies? I feel disoriented and confused and angry from the water attack.

Zombies… zombies are attacking us? Why?

That’s when I saw the picture of a cave. One of the zombies dropped it.

It was a cave with a door.

I found the message. I must go to this cave. I must go to the door.

Whatever lies beyond it, I’ll risk it all to stop these bloody nightmares. Or at least, fight the nightmare with the ones I care about most of all.

Time doesn’t matter to a zombie like me, but I feel that this timer is running on a different level of powerful energy. There is the possibility of immortal questions being answered.

The night runs cold as I sink into the ocean of my dreams, the view of my heart and soul clinging the mortal remains of my ghost.

I will find the meaning. My meaning.

Dreams be damned, I’ll find my meaning.