Apocalypse at a Funeral

It was the early morning, and I had just awakened. I looked outside and was alarmed to see a black and white sheriff's SUV driving around the back of my property. Figuring they would be headed towards the front, I went to open my front door and find out what this was about. 

On my way there, I looked out another window and saw a dingy white Ford Escort station wagon coming through the gate which adjoins my next door neighbor's property. They went bombing down a horse trail to the driveway, finally exiting out my front gate, with the sheriff in pursuit. Good for them, I thought. Just what I needed. Tweakers using my property for God knows what.

It didn’t take long for that notion to be dispelled, however. As I went around to the front door, I noticed a steady stream of vehicles coming through the gate. My whole front yard was a parking lot. People were getting out of their cars and heading over to my neighbor’s place. I heard someone mention the words "grandma" and "funeral," and I began to put two and two together. 

My neighbor, Jeff Jackson (not my current neighbor, but the one previous) was holding a memorial service for his beloved grandmama. I guessed I was going to have to put up with some parking issues, but it seemed unavoidable, so I turned to go back in the house. 

That’s when I noticed that my entire house was full of people. Some of them I knew from work, like Mike “Carnitas,” AKA the Little Chocolate Bunny Rabbit. I tugged on his ponytail, and he looked up at me. 

"Hey, Spark. Sad deal about grandma," he said, looking down at his feet with the expected expression of survivorship contrition upon his face. The usual funeral stuff. 

My cousin Tim was also around somewhere, presumably looking for Wheat Thins and cheese. I began talking to an Asian lady, not sure of our relation, but possibly an aunt to my coworker, Houa Vang. We were having a nice conversation about the poignancy of life when an insect landed in a spiderweb.

"Oh, how sad!" The Asian lady said. 

"Why?" I asked, noting that the insect had only landed there briefly and then flown free.

It occurred to me at this point that this event in my house had not been authorized by me, and I began going from room to room trying to determine who was responsible for letting everyone in.

“This ain’t no party--” I began, quoting the line from Life During Wartime by the Talking Heads. (Even in my dream, I realized that the date was January 20 and that soon we would be having another four years under dictator Donald Trump, so the irony of those lyrics coming out of my mouth was not lost.)

"Who the fuck--the actual fuck--is the fuck responsible for letting all these people in here?" I said, startling myself with my own ungraciousness. "I mean, really, who is the person who let the rest of these people in?"

I was not really mad at this point, so much as just curious, since the party was actually quite a success. There were plenty of people just milling around having conversations, and they didn’t seem to be breaking the place up. I was actually quite pleased with the turnout, in spite of myself. I had always wanted to have a party here, but I never seemed find the right occasion. 

Some people took the hint, however, and began filing out the front door, to my disappointment. Nonetheless, I was glad to get some of this traffic out of my living room. Things were bound to get messy. That’s just the nature of parties.

I went around to the side of the house and sat down on a bench. The Asian lady and I were still having a conversation, and Mike "Carnitas" came and sat on the bench next to us. I looked up in the sky and saw a wobbly vapor trail that looked suspicious. 

"That looks like a rocket!" I exclaimed. The others looked up and saw it too. 

It was indeed a rocket, a missile to be precise, and it was headed on a very low trajectory towards some farmland to the north. It was my estimation that we were geographically situated somewhere near Bakersfield, possibly Lake Isabella, and the rocket was severely off course. It was going make impact in a populated area near a school. I could read the big black letters on the side of the missile as it slowly descended. It read CCCP.

"It’s a nuke!" I said, suddenly feeling the heaviness of the moment. "Great. We’re being nuked."

I saw the beginnings of a dust cloud, then some orange flames, and for a moment, I thought it possibly had been a dud. Then the familiar shape of a mushroom cloud began to form.

"Close your eyes, and duck!" I admonished those on the bench with me. "Get ready for the blast!"

We’re dead. 

I don’t know if I thought the words or spoke them aloud, but that was the sense of it. We were all going to die when that blast wave came through and incinerated us. 

The blast wave never got there, however, because I woke up first. Out of the dream and into the nightmare, as it were, as it is fast approaching January 20, and no amount of closing our eyes and ducking is going to shield us from The Big Orange Blast.