Ms. R. stormed into my life in 2005, rearranging the furniture in my brain, so I wrote her this letter not knowing what she would think. And I let her see it before publishing it. She said it was sweet and the nicest thing anyone has written about her—poor girl.
for Rachel H.
I know a woman who dreams and whose dreams feed upon the Earth—dark dreams where the living dead seize this Earth one agonizing victim at a time. With one bite, the heart pumps infected hemoglobin down dark arterial paths that twist and branch and broaden from species to genus and from genus to phylum where they terminate in the Kingdom of the Dead.
But zombies have always failed to seize me.
For my dreams are not earthly dreams, they are dreams forged in the arid and attenuated atmosphere of Mars—a place where old minds give birth to old patterns of an alien logic; a place where strange thoughts rise from red dust and move with the deliberate grace of the Martian war machine.
Has she worked herself into the wrinkles of my brain? Has she seized my beating heart? She haunts me through my days and nights.
The mere thought her rushes upon me like a zombie attack.
©2005 Kent Gutschke. All rights reserved.
MARTIAN DEATH RAY 