Thread:Lilboops/@comment-35525658-20180923183820/@comment-35525658-20180924144009

I open my eye and find I am lying on my back in the woods near Alexandria alone. I don’t panic. It’s always so important not to panic. I know this is a dream. I’ve had this dream before. It’s twilight and the sky is pouring down its alien hue of electric blue that paints shadows of its eerie glow on everything in the woods it touched, except for the fog. The rolling thick white fog. (Blink) I hate fog because it reminds me of my eye. Not the one I use to survive with but the other one I lost the night we were trying to leave Alexandria. It reminds me why of I hate to blink. Every day I walk through this 💩 storm of a world surrounded by darkness and light. My good eye always scanning, always watching and always searching to keep us safe. To keep me alive. My bad eye always in darkness and when I blink the darkness is complete. I don’t like the darkness to be complete, I need the light. I need a reason to keep pushing forward. A reason to survive. (Blink) The fog obstructs my view, just like the darkness I tow in my wake since I lost my eye. If anyone was brave enough to ask me what is the worst part about losing my eye my answer would be (Blink) the darkness.

Right on queue here she comes. Gliding out of the fog and into my view. (Blink) Michonne laughed softly and gave me the same reassuring smile she always did in this dream. A smile that said, “I know I’m not your Mom, but I love you very much”. She walked over to me and gestured for me to rise and after I contemplated what may happen if I just continued to lay there I slowly began to pick myself up off the ground. She then turned partly away from me and pointed to a path that is barely visible through the fog, her smile slowly fading into a neutral trance-like expression, but there was still something in her blank staring eyes that said: “you have always trusted me and you always can”. I turned to look in the direction Michonne pointed in (Blink) and with a sigh of inevitability, I began walking toward the path.

As I step onto the path I hear them. The dead always the dead. With their animalistic growling and snarling and the dragging sound, they make as they shuffle their feet across the floor of the woods. They sound as if they are getting closer and the handle of the ax I’m suddenly holding felt good in my hands. I loathe the part of me starting to get a little excited because it knew what’s coming up soon. (Blink) My dark half who likes making the dead be still like they are supposed to be, exist purely outside of my comfort zone, but since it solves a lot of problems I have formed an uneasy alliance with it. I wondered who I’m going to encounter besides the dead this time as I traveled down this path, when yelling and sounds of a struggle gave away the identity of the next person to get a cameo in my dream.

“Nooooooooo! Stop! I won’t do it! You can’t make me do it, Merle! Get off! I said get off me!!!”  I turned to my left and saw Darryl and Merle wrestling in an open mud pit. Merle was one-quarter submerged and silent but his eyes burned with determination as he grabbed and tore at Darryl in an effort to pull him down deeper into the pit. They were both covered in mud but Daryl was managing to fight Merle off and not sink down into the mud at the same time. “I’m not like you! I still have faith in other people! Let go of me! Daryl screamed as he maintained his death grip on the edge of the mud pit with one arm and threw wild punches with the other arm alternated with swift kicks from the leg closest to Merle in Merle’s general direction. (Blink) Every time one of Daryl’s hits landed Merle recoiled for a few moment then redoubled his efforts to drag Darryl down into the mud he was slowly sinking into with a glare and a scowl. I knew better than to run over and try to help Darryl. Every time I did Merle managed to drag him down into the mud completely and Daryl’s blood curdling cries while it happened always broke my heart. It looked as if Merle was dragging Daryl to hell itself and then another person would start to shriek with terror as their imaginary foe a little bit further down the path tormented them, while the dead closed in on all of us hungry and growling. I was relieved to note this time in the dream Merle was just as alive as Darryl was and not the decomposing walker he had been in other versions of this dream. Maybe it was an omen Darryl was starting to see his way through past the inner turmoil that was making him despondent since his escape from Negan’s camp. Carl! Carl help! Carl help me, please! Darryl shouted as he continued to punch and kick at Merle, his head swing from the direction of the fight to me and back so fast his mud splattered hair slung mud in and out of the pit. (Blink) I turned to walk away. I had other business next for I knew this dream well. Other business that had me palming the handle of the ax I was holding in anticipation like a lover caressing his sweetheart. (Blink) I could hear them clearly now. The dead. They were in a frenzy and sounded as they always did at this point as if they were blocking the path. I couldn’t see them through the fog yet but I knew they were there and my dark half craved them as much as they craved the flesh of the living.

I continued along the path and my dark half smiled. There they were a herd of hungry walkers. They began to run towards me as soon as I stepped out of the curling mist. (Blink) I widened my stance, brought the ax up shoulder level and to the right, palmed the handle with both hands like a batter getting ready to take a swing at a pitch and sliced the upper top of the first walker’s head off who ran into range in one clean blow. It crumpled to the ground in front of me. I stepped over it while turning the edge of the ax blade upward and swung the ax up sharply with enough speed and accuracy to slice the next walker’s head open from chin to forehead in another clean blow. It fell to the ground just as the one before. “That was for Negan” I whispered with the ax still raised over my head and firmly held in the grip of both hands. (Blink Blink)  I rotated the blade so it faced the same direction I was staring in without looking up at it and brought the ax quickly down hard enough to slice into the top of the next walker’s head nose deep. (Blink) I kicked the walker hard enough to free the ax and noted idly as it too was felled. “That was for Lucille” I muttered. I sliced and kicked and put down a few more walkers. (Blink) “If Negan only knew how right he was about me when he called me a little serial killer” I said softly in a cold hard rage. Whoosh! Slash! Chop! Kick! Fall. Another few walkers lay still on the ground around me. “He would have killed me that night in the clearing” I uttered in a low clear voice as I resisted the urge to throw my head back and howl like a wolf baying at the moon. (Blink Blink) With the herd completely dispatched my dark half stretched inside of me contentedly and stepped inward to keep its vigil for the next chance to be of service and I wandered forward yet again down the path with gore and sweat dripping from me and my ax.

It wasn’t long before I heard him. He was standing off to the right of the path. Gabriel was stridently praying, his head was cast skyward and his arms were held up and outward as if he were flailing for an invisible hand to pluck him up out of his current predicament. “Please dear Lord help us your children steer past these current trials and tribulations. So we may survive and do your biddings and give glory to your name as we bask in the sweetness of your Grace” He prayed as a soft white glow began to travel down from the sky and slowly cover his face and head and inch its way down over the rest of his body. (Blink) He was surrounded by the dead and that strange light repelled them as if they were burned every time their rotting flesh came into contact with it. In their hunger, they kept trying to creep closer anyway only to get held off by the light over and over again, as if the equally strange dark light they were emitting was poisoned by it. (Blink) The dark light sank down into the ground, past the white glow and sprouted back up at Gabriel’s feet like vines which were slowly climbing up his body. The black glow tethered him to the spot he was standing and praying in just as surely as the white glow was in return. “I have faith Father. Faith this is all happening for a reason. Faith you will see us through” Gabriel said. I wanted to go over and put down those walkers just as I had the ones on the path before but I knew they weren’t for me and my ax. I knew my swings and my kicks would pass right through them as if they were a mirage. I think I forgave Gabriel the first time I saw him in this dream like that. Somehow having a deeper understanding of the man helped to breach the emotional wall I was building up between him and myself. (Blink) I turned to travel the path some more leaving Gabriel to his dark night of the soul.

The fog always got the thickest on this part of the path. I plowed slowly forward through it in spite of the fact I could barely see my own hand held in front of my nose if I tried. I felt as if I were a man bracing himself to take a blind plunge off of a precipice into an unknown awaiting him simply because it was his destiny to do so. (Blink)  The fog began to thin some after a few more steps forward and I was beginning to make out a figure standing on the path ahead of me. It was Beth. She was smiling and cheering and waving me forward. I could not hear her but every step I took closer I could see her more clearly. She looked beautiful, her blonde hair swaying around her face as she bounced and danced on the path before me making me want to call out to her and ask her to stop all this foolishness of being dead and gone and sing me another of her songs even though I knew it would be a waste of breath to do so. And that’s when the revelation dawned on me. (Blink) I was the one. I was always the one. The one to lead everyone one through this cluster#!@% world into a new way of life. (Blink) I have already been tested and paid the dues that were demanded of me. The price was an eye and still, I’m up on my two feet ready for battle. Prepared to do what needs to be done. I will be victorious because I’m exactly what this world needs. (Blink Blink) I am the Walking Dead.