The Unreality of Great Wolf Lodge

sophie bernik

When I was younger, I dreamt vividly every single night.

…

Part of the reason—one of the main reasons—I liked the Great Wolf Lodge so much was for the foyer alone.

I’d walk in and it would gape around me. I was dwarfed in the middle of it, swallowed whole by the five floors of empty space hanging heavily above me and the roaring fireplace and the colossal statues of bears scattered anywhere they fit and some places they didn’t.

…

My dreams were usually good and sometimes not, which if you ask me now I’d say is a pretty good ratio but at the time was cosmically terrifying. Because who’s to say that when I went to sleep I’d have the normal dreams—muddled recreations of my classes that day—and not the alternative. The alternative being, usually, something to do with zombies.

…

The Great Wolf Lodge was special for a lot of reasons: the water park, the interactive magi-quest, the fact that somebody decided that those two things belonged together in a wolf themed hotel.

…

I had a whole thing about zombies, actually. Enough that they warranted their own category of dreams. Zombie Dreams: ghastly, long-drawn, and almost annoyingly transparent in the anxieties they conveyed.

They were quite simple. I was scared of zombies, and in the Zombie Dreams I’d get chased by zombies, and then I’d wake up with the fear reinforced, and I’d dream about them all over again. 

…

I dreamt about Great Wolf Lodge sometimes but the dreams weren’t usually about Great Wolf Lodge. They just took place in it, or, more accurately, my dream version of it.

If the real life foyer of the Great Wolf Lodge swallowed me whole, the dream version of it digested me.

…

My Mom once suggested I imagine zombies looked different than they really did—mainly less terrifying—so that they wouldn’t be scary in my dreams. So I started imagining them with fish for heads. But I will tell you a secret right now: zombies with fish heads are not any less scary than normal zombies, just more monstrously aquatic.

…

I don’t remember every time I did the magi-quest but I remember an amygdala of them. I’d talk to a magical tree, and then collect some coins out of a suit of armor, and then get a rune. Sometimes I’d stand in line to fight a dragon but never for long enough to actually fight it.

…

Eventually, the fear of zombies was habitual. Boring, even. I’d lay awake in bed every night and stare at the stucco circles on the ceiling, terrified I’d fall asleep and dream about them again, but increasingly more fatigued by the terror than anything else.

…

Magi-quest was not one thing so much as an experience. Not to mention one of the most entertaining experiences you could get without ever leaving Southern Ohio. And for less than fifty bucks including your wand!

…

It was quite simple really: I couldn't roll over, I couldn’t clear my head, I couldn’t make myself stop dreaming about them if I wanted to. I could imagine them with fish heads and then I could be scared by fish-headed zombies, but that wasn’t an improvement, just more embarrassing.

And so maybe I should stop calling them Zombie Dreams, maybe the more accurate term would be nightmares, but it feels like there’s something dishonest about that too. They weren’t so meaningless in their threats as a nightmare. They meant something and they had the conviction to see that something through.

…

My dreams about Great Wolf Lodge were, usually, segways into dreams about other things. Giants, mermaids, the Frozen movie. Sometimes—on several occasions, actually—the three would converge in one.

…

In my longest and most vivid Zombie Dream I was standing in my own house.

…

The way it worked was the Great Wolf Lodge’s hallways—the ones decorated with the coin bearing suits of armor and the talking trees—led away from the foyer, and if I walked for long enough I’d end up somewhere else. In another dream, fighting off giants.

…

There was the pottery barn sofa, and the big bay window, and a locked deadbolt on the door because there were zombies outside and they wanted to eat me alive.

…

And if I wound up back in the foyer of the Great Wolf Lodge at the end of the dream, all the better. There was a fire that crackled perpetually on one side of the room and a buffet on the other. Everything smelled strongly of mac’n’cheese and faintly of smoke. Why would I ever leave?

…

The dog kept barking because there were zombies outside and he didn’t know they weren’t people.

…

I’ll reiterate—the dreams never actually took place inside the Great Wolf Lodge. What came before and what came after. Not the waking up, I mean. Just the moments that weren’t in motion.

…

I was panicking. Crying. Because there were zombies outside and they were going to eat me and I was going to die.

…

I’ve only ever had one dream about the exterior of the Great Wolf Lodge. It just wasn’t as pretty as the inside, perpetually crusted in a thin layer of ice but never quite snow.

…

When I realized it was a dream, I stopped. I stopped crying. I stopped panicking. I wasn’t going to die. At worst, I’d get eaten alive and then I’d wake up.

…

The air was thin and cold. People intermittently walked in and out, blowing gusts of heat outside as they did but it didn’t quite reach me. Only the tip of my nose.

…

The dog stopped barking like I finally got what he’d been trying to say the whole time.

…

I was standing on the road right outside the front doors to the Great Wolf Lodge, and I knew I couldn’t go inside.

…

And I needed to wake up, I knew that. There was no time to try to fly, or conjure up a castle like I usually did when I was in a dream.

…

And I knew I couldn’t turn around because if I did I’d have to face the facts. I’d have to look at where I was. Where the Great Wolf Lodge was. Stamped in the middle of a cement parking lot, hung below the heavy midwest sky, constantly gray like it was threatening rain but didn’t know how to follow through.

…

Waking up meant going outside. It meant leaving the house and knowing that the zombies could get me. But for some reason, it was the only way I could wake up and I knew that if I stayed in the house no amount of squeezing my eyes shut and praying that when I opened them I’d be somewhere better was going to do it for me.

…

I couldn’t go inside because I’d beaten magi-quest. I had collected all the runes and while I still hadn’t beaten the dragon I had stood in line waiting for long enough for it to count. 

…

I paused at the door, my hand hesitating on the knob, listening to the sound of mangled un-dead moaning from outside.

…

The dragon was dead and I had to leave. The fairies and the elves and the gilded knights or at least their hollow suits of armor—everything was over and done with and I had to leave but I couldn’t turn around.

…

I opened the door because there was no other option.

…

I felt the cold wind press at my back and through the frost scraped windows I could see inside.

…

I stepped outside because there was no other option.

…

People were crowded on the leather sofas by the fireplace, drinking hot cocoa and smiling. But I couldn’t go back inside because I beat the game and there was nothing left to be done.

…

I started walking to the center of the road because there was still no other option, but at least the dog trailed after me.

…

I beat the game and all that was left of it was me and my glittery pink wand clutched in my hand, damp with sweat and shining.

…

Slowly, the zombies turned their half decapitated heads and started to drag themselves towards me. Inching, half rotted limbs trailing behind them like an afterthought.

…

I heard the sounds of cars maneuvering in the parking lot behind me, tires crunching on slush and ice. A car pulled in front of me, obstructing my view inside the Lodge. I took a deep breath in and I didn’t smell gas.

…

I took a deep breath in and it was a dream because zombies smell. They smell like wet mold and coursing rot but I didn’t smell anything at all. I looked at the dog and I told him: I’m going to wake up now. I squeezed my eyes shut tight.

…

I couldn’t turn around.

…

And then I did.

Sophie Bernik is currently a sophomore creative writing major at Interlochen Arts Academy. Her work has previously been published or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The Red Wheelbarrow, and Fledge. She was in the top 0.5% of Mitski listeners in 2021 and owns 7 leather jackets.