Sonnet 87

Voldemort has somehow triggered Armaggedon, and IP and I find ourselves smack in the middle of it during a museum visit in DC. We have some family and friends with us as the sky starts to darken, the streets of DC begin to crumble and allow molten lava to pour through, and shrieks of terror and despair can be heard all around. The challenge that we need to meet and stop all this to return things to normalcy? Navigate the surrounding Smithsonian museums, where a cavalcade of monsters, demons, and madmen await us. Accompanied by the irritating John Leguizamo who for some reason wants us to call him “Chato”, we began to make our way through the hell that good old Voldie has created. “Didn’t Harry kill him?” I keep on thinking to myself. “Thanks a bunch, four-eyes.”

We triumph, though, with no loss of life to our little team. DC returns to normal, those who had been hurt or killed in the fray restored to health and life. Fast forward to what is definitely a few years later: Voldemort is pissed off that an intrepid band of Muggles, led by a researcher and policy analyst, has managed to defeat him. He decides to send one more plague, one that’s a bit harder to contain: zombies. His initial zombie created, he sends this one out to attack Chato; Chato becomes a zombie and starts spreading the zombieism, his memory of us leading his band of dead brothers to our front doorstep.

I’m panicked – I know that this is much harder to control since a) one bite and you’re a zombie, 2) head shots are really hard and ammunition is limited, and III) no one really believes you when you know this is happening. IP doesn’t believe me in this case, conducting his everyday business without batting an eyelid. It’s the weekend, and we’re home with what appears to be our toddler daughter – she’s running around in a cute yellow and white checker-patterned dress, oblivious to all of this. I’m meanwhile loading us up with guns, ammunition, food and water, boarding up the windows and preparing to make a stand. We’re living in a beautiful house that’s bright, sunny and open thanks to large windows – wonderful in one sense, horrible in that glass is easily smashed by a horde of zombies. The infection hasn’t reached us just yet but it’s making its way.

A sudden knock at the door. It sounds disjointed, frenzied and inhuman, the exact sort of knock you expect a zombie to make. The baby squeals in delight and rushes to the door, but I pull her back and hand her to IP. I refuse to open the door and IP insists, putting down the baby and heading to the door. The opening of the door prompts the person on the other side to push in, and when I see this reaction, I panic and try to push the door closed. The person pushes back, and with IP pulling me away from the door, someone who I guess is a friend of ours stumbles in, unhurt but panicked – he’s seen what’s coming and it is not good. In all this confusion, the baby slips out the door. I look out the window after looking for her and see that she’s already managed to safely cross the street, walking towards another toddler and a large group of people. I can’t tell from this distance if they’re zombies or not, but I’m not going to let my princess find out by herself.

Urging IP to help me, we run across the street, successfully getting across after a few near misses (I was nearly hit by a bright blue cab). As we approach, we see that the people are not zombies, but they’re holding another group of people hostage. My daughter is playing with the other toddler and there are negotiations going on about them. These people seem aware that we’re all in deep shit and terribly exposed at the moment, but they’re not armed and not making moves to find cover. Dodging in between people, I scoop the baby into my arms. She struggles a bit, wanting to play, but stops when she realizes that I’m scared. She whimpers a bit, buries her face into my neck, and I then realize that IP, my daughter and I are new hostages for these people. I plead with them to let us go back to our house, but they seem hell-bent on making some kind of stupid stand.

I start to shout at them, calling them crazy, when a noise distracts me. As I look over—

I wake up.