Madness

Descent into Madness They say all great nations come to an end. I always imagined that nation conquered nation by military might, but it looks as though the United states is dying in it’s sleep from a thousand self inflicted wounds.

Saturday November first in the year of our lord 2008, I begin to vent my soul, allowing untold years of misery and grief to feel the fresh breeze of an autumn day. As you may have guessed this is day one of my attempt to record for posterity collapse of the United States and the fall of mankind. I only hope I live long enough to complete the tale. Yesterday was Halloween. I saw a few children trick or treating in Rockford; out of maybe twenty kids three were wearing costumes and carried bags of candy. The others just carried their handguns. I don’t know who got more candy. Of course being on the road with my family I didn’t consider slowing down to check the amount of candy in each bag, and there was always the chance of a car jacking if I slowed down too much. Then again in my case it would have to be called a van jacking as I was driving a Dodge caravan. Why the people at Chrysler would call this vehicle a caravan is beyond me. Wouldn’t you need at least several vehicles lined up and going in the same direction to make a caravan? Or is that a convoy? It really doesn’t matter much one way or the other though does it? There is a small town with a population of less than 20,000 souls on the West Side of Illinois called Dixon. It claims to be the hometown of our late great president Ronald Reagan. I’m telling you the truth about this. I have seen the home and have taken the tour. It is said the young Ronald Reagan saved many lives as a lifeguard on the Rock River. This may or may not be true. I can’t imagine anyone ever wanting to dip a toe in that rank filthy greenish brown water with all those three eyed catfish swimming around in it. I say anyone who cared so little about their life that they would risk taking a dip in the Rock river deserves what ever they get, but maybe it was different in Ronald’s day. I know about this town because I have lived here for the past seven or eight years. I can’t be more precise because somehow time has a way of slipping away from you here. For that matter I would have to give you a margin of error of at least another ten to twenty years to be honest. Perhaps Dixon was built on an Indian graveyard, or over an ancient nuclear waste disposal site left behind by ancient astronauts. That would explain a lot. What would draw a person to come to live in such a place you might ask? I can’t answer for everyone, of course, and I haven’t really done a study on the subject. Although someone from a think tank somewhere really should consider doing a research project on this town. Dissecting the ins and outs of the infrastructure and the outfrastructure, the politics, the crime, the genetics of it all so to speak. A genetic sampling of the populace would speak volumes I’m sure. Crime, you say, there certainly can’t be much crime in a town so small other than an occasional pie cooling on a windowsill being stolen by an overanxious youth. But, yes dear, reader there is crime in Dixon! It is a multi million dollar enterprise! It may be the largest employer in the county for all I know. Many a wayward citizen calls the Dixon Correctional Center home, looking for nothing more than three hots and a cot and a little

free cable television. The Correctional Center, I believe was built on the grounds of what was once known as the Dixon school. The Dixon School was where all the unfortunate, unwanted baby's were sent back in the day. I remember seeing an old video of a television broadcast from a Chicago television station, where the director of the school closed his tour pleading with want-tobe Dr. Frankensteins to come and use his wards for experimentation. The school worked with a staff to child ratio of approximately one hundred children to one staff person. I believe they were literal bathed with garden hoses. I'm not sure that all of the staff completed their training in Nazi concentration camps, but I bet the administration did. Just north of the park where children currently play soccer there is a cemetery with hundreds of little tombstones, some with names some without. This is where the children kept in the Dixon State School went when they graduated. An odd thing about Dixon is there are always people moving here from the Chicago suburbs, yet the population of Dixon never goes up. It's as if there is an official limit on humans living in this area. X number move in then X number must die or move away. I've been told by natural born native Dixonites that this is a good town to be from, as far from as possible, oh if only I had listened before I signed the contract on our house. I remember the night we found it. Of course we first found our house online, It looked ideal from the outside two story tall, with burgundy shutters on all the windows with polished brass lanterns at the front door. We were at relatives for thanksgiving dinner and admired their queen ann style home. Judy suggested we move out this way and for fun we looked online to see what was available. That night we didn't bother to try and look for the home. It was late and a long drive home, but the seed was planted and it festered in our imaginations. That week I remember doing research on the home, found out the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, the size of the yard, that sort of thing. I believe I even printed the color picture included with the listing to show around, but mostly I just held it and stared at the picture myself. I don't mind admitting it now, now that it's too late for anyone's help, but I felt the house even then burrowing deeper ever deeper into my consciousness. It is well over a hundred years old, my home, but with a new face of vinyl siding and windows. It has electricity and indoor plumbing and is even wired for telephones and the Internet. I believe in Europe this would still be considered a relatively new home, but by American standards it is ancient comes with a wonderful basement view of the river especially lovely in the spring when the heavy rains come. Today is election day 2008! Thank Gd it is almost over except for the revolution. I am expecting something not quite as grand as “Doctor Zhivago” you see I have no summer palace to run to. So I guess I will have to satisfy myself watching the Obama youth goose stepping down main street recreating that long forgotten pastime called Crystal night in the English tongue. I suppose it will begin with riots in Chicago centered around the Obamarama scheduled for this evening well only time will tell. One of the oddities one notices if alert to the paranormal is how the natives of Dixon appear to instinctively know when they are being thought about. It isn't something I can prove beyond a doubt, but from experience I can tell you that on many occasions when in the park, or walking down the street or driving around town, I will notice one of the Dixon natives and a casual thought about the person will pass through my mind and no sooner than the thought comes I find that person staring at me as if I had spoken to

them out loud shouted to them to get their attention in fact. I assure you dear reader that I never have done such a thing as shouting out to strangers, but I have had the occasionally thought regarding one left unspoken, yet the object of the thought was instantly aware of the thought and it's source. Perhaps they have a group mind, or a herd mentality greater than that of most Americans, or a flock mind. I suppose the last would make them birdbrains. Speaking of birdbrains I think I may have witnessed Something a bit macabre shortly before the polls closed. Hundreds, I swear its true, hundreds of zombies meandering down the streets towards the Loveland Center, I assume they came to vote. Some of them looked to have stopped to grab a bite to eat along the way from the cemetery, as they had assorted human limbs in their hands and gristle and blood still dripping from their mouths. And they said Acorn voter registrations were fraudulent. I say there isn't anything at all wrong registering a dead person to vote as long as they have the wherewithal to claw their way out of their moldering grave and make their way to the polling place and vote. So what if a few hapless people get eaten on election night. It is better that a few hundred Dixonites get eaten by Zombies than one should lose his or her right to vote simply because they have passed beyond this mortal veil. Speaking of mortal veils brings Myskatonic University to mind. Good old MU, old Mysky I call it. A place of dreams, a place of pre-morbid higher education, a place to find oneself, but not after dark. Just thinking of those hallowed halls brings a tear to my eye, or is that the formaldehyde seeping in from the basement. Doesn't matter, nothing can change the fact that good old MU is my kind of school. A place where a young man can explore the finer oddities of life, can really dig into a subject without concern that the police will look too closely into a desecrated grave here and their. Ah those were the days. Enough reminiscences though, there is work to be done. The zombies are knocking at my door. I can hear their piteous cries. “Yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can!” Over and over and over, but I'm too busy boarding over the windows. I know from past experience that the danger will pass soon and that my family and I are safe as long as we don't venture out onto the streets until after the election results are called by CNN. It helps that most of my neighbors are unaware of zombie etiquette. I can always count on one of them to open a door to peek out at the zombies and draw the zombie's attention away from my house. Most zombies don't pay much attention to my house anyway. Its almost as dilapidated as they are so they assume I'm one of them and leave me alone. Normally its only the real die hard zombies that come knocking at my door, zombies or Jehovah witnesses. Tonight I'm in luck I see a couple Jehovah's witnesses coming down the street as we speak. Yep, the zombies have caught their scent too and are leaving my doorstep for easier prey. Once the polls close the acorn zombies go away until the next election and it will be safe to go out again. Hiding at home behind boarded up windows every couple of years for a day isn't too much of a sacrifice to live in a free society. What do we do until then? In the past I've tried to photograph the walking dead through the knot holes in the boards I used to cover the windows, but they never quite turn out. There the last board is in place and we still have time for hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps. An election night tradition starting tonight. The hours past slowly as I kept watch, waiting for the moment when it was safe to open the barricaded front door of my home. I must have dosed for a moment for I awoke with the distinct memory of someone, one of the recently deceased showing me a

drawing a sketch of wheels within wheels, of gears and axis. At first it appeared a bit hazy then it began to move noiseless. Don't misunderstand me, the parchment didn't move, but the sketch itself moved as it would if it were the real item. I watched amazed, wondering at how this may have been done. Was I hypnotized by the undead, waiting patiently to be eaten alive, no the being holding the sketch was not one of the acorn zombies, it was much too civil to be such as that. This parchment was real! The sketch was alive and functioning, It dawned on me that this being, this sketch were both alive and living in more than three dimensions. Certainly the sketch contained height, depth, and breadth, but more than that in contained time as the movement with in the picture showed changed over time. Therefore artist of the drawing must reside with in more than four dimensions. I was able to hold this realization only momentarily before there came a knocking at my door! I jerked awake, my hammer still in my hand. I crept to a window and peered out. There was daylight! It was safe, by now the election must be over. I walked to my front door and began prying board away. “I'm coming, won't be a bit!” I called out to my visitor. In my hurry I broke one of the boards, “won't be able to use that one again” I muttered to myself. “what's that you say?” my visitor shouted. “Nothing.” I replied anxious to get the door open. At last the final board was pulled away and I could open the door to the sunlight and fresh air. “Hello there, my friend I said to the brownshirted youth standing at my doorstep. “There were rumors some of you normies survived last night. I was sent out to make a head count for this sector. Any more like you in there?” He looked like he meant business, tapping his nightstick in his palm. “Nope just me, I mean I live alone, nobody here but me.” I tried to sound sincere. “Our records show a family of five live at this address.” He replied flatly. His eyes darted about the room. “Nope, just me, my wife took the kids and left for greener pastures some time ago.” “I have no record of any changes at this address.” “Yeah well, women go figure...” I waited fearing he would force his way in and find Mary and the kids hiding in the kitchen. Before he said another word I saw past his shoulder, acorn zombies! “What? I said pointing behind the soldier to the zombies gathered in the streets. “I though they only came out at night during elections.” I muttered in fear. “Not any more” the brownshirt replied, “The democrats won the election and the acorn zombies are free to roam the earth whenever and wherever they please. My first instinct was to push the door shut and nail the boards back up, but the brownshirt was too big for me to do that. “What am I to do?” “That's why I here, to take a census of the normies so we will know if any of you go missing and we can take measures to ensure your safety in the event any of the zombies get a little bit hungry, a little bit restless, if you know what I mean.” He said with a evil sneer. “Just one here, just me.” I said and slammed my door shut, Nazi or not he wasn't going to have me keep my door opened when acorn zombies were out and about. He waited for a moment or two before deciding to leave, it sounded as if he marked my door

by scraping it somehow. I couldn't see exactly what he did and didn't really care. I had better things to worry about. I ran into the kitchen my wife and three children had fallen asleep at the table, unaware of the new developments. Zombies walking the streets in daylight, Brown shirted soldiers taking census of the normies, what was the world coming to? How would we survive? As mad as it sounded I knew we would have to leave our home and try to find safety somewhere. We would be zombie food if we tried to travel during the day, without the cover of darkness, but even then it we would be taking our lives in our hands trying to travel at night. Then the matter of where to go came to mind. Canada? Not on your life they were overrun by zombies years ago. Mexico? Too far, we'd never make it there overland alive. Japan of course Japan would be safe. What would a few million zombies be to a nation that has battled giant reptiles like Godzilla, but how to get to the ocean and find safe passage. Just then my son Chris stirred from his sleep. “Dad, are they gone yet?” Chris wiped the sleep from his eyes. “nope, they're not gone.” “But its light out the sun is up, they've got to be gone!” I heard panic raise its ugly head in my dear son's voice. “Chris we need to remain calm, we need to be strong if we are going to survive this. We need to be strong for mom and the girls.” “well, I'm hungry. I'll make some pizza rolls for breakfast.” To be continued as time allows...