Dream a Little Dream

10Oct08

Early this morning I had the most vivid dream.

If you have the stomach for the most horrifying descriptions, read on. If not, go here, to read more pleasant things.

The dream started off rather normal, though all through I was aware of being surrounded by very high things, whether fences or ceilings or staircases or buildings.

I was at my parents’ former house in the country, where I grew up, only it wasn’t quite like there. I guess it just felt like it. The garage was the same (for some reason, I always dream of the garage. Maybe because I snuck my first wine-dipped, rum-tipped Colt there!).

There was a pool in the backyard, and we had a bunch of people over at night, some of whom I recognized but who aren’t even my friends but friends of friend. The party took a strange turn as people got drunk, a cockatiel was offered me and then it escaped and I climbed a dangerous fence and was able to get it again, only to witness it being restrained with springs, and one of the drunk guys jumped into the pool. I was watching this particular scene from high up somewhere, perhaps on one of the surrounding chainlinks, and I remember saying while I was watching that I was ready to rescue him if he looked in danger. But I realized he jumped in the pool because he hadn’t been feeling well and as he swam, I saw it was actually making him better.

I don’t remember anything more from that scene, though I know there was more. Instead, the dream became extremely dark, strange, surreal, horrific, though it was almost as though it was so horrible it lost its ability to scare, like overstimulation.

I was suddenly in some dark Gothic-style house, and there were people, vampires, dressed in dark velvety flowing clothes, milling about everywhere. Oh, and I just remembered, I was actually a guy in this part of the dream, supposed to be marrying this woman vampire in a ceremony about to happen. Somehow I overheard what horror was awaiting me: they were going to sacrifice me, and not in a nice clean dagger-to-the-heart kind of way.

So I asked my fiancée, who was ushering me along a hallway, and she smiled, showing her teeth, and said sarcastically, sure, that’s what will happen, but then she started to describe it, and I realized she wasn’t joking. We ended up in a room on our own and proceeded to have a ridiculously bloody and slashy fight to the end, with swords and knives. I remember thinking while this was happening, Not even Tarantino would love this, it’s far too exaggerated and gross! Body parts everywhere and tons of gushing blood.

I defeated her. I seemed fine, But then she became a sort of centaur, and while she was pulling herself together, I suddenly became stealth, and was able to escape quietly from the room. There were several very high chain-link fences bordering the house and I managed to labour over these silently, half-leaping to incredible height, half climbing. Once, I trapped myself, and in that moment, just before I jumped, I noticed two things: one, the vampire-centaur, in the yard below, calling for me, and two, that I was using super-human powers to get away, with the ability to be silent and jump so high.

Finally away from the house, I walked through the dark, wet streets as stealthily as I could, but there were all kinds of underground people about, in little groups in front of places, or walking alone. No one really paid any attention to me.I knew for certain, though, I wasn’t close to safe yet.

The next thing I remember I was at this strange factory, very complicated and industrial, surrounded by barbed wire and guards. I, a girl again, was on the inside, among rows of huge muscled men, covered in green filth, like the entire factory. Everything was very…visceral. It was like putrifying body mess, like minced guts, or vomit, something like that, only it was a sort of green-grey colour and it covered absolutely everything, from floors to walls to ceilings to vats and troughs. Here and there as I went through the factory, I saw bodies, lying simply where they had died, trampled on, or parts of bodies, like arms and heads sticking out of the filth in a trough or out of a stainless steel wall. I remember wondering what the hell this place did, and if it just dealt in liquifying humans.

[One of the things I wondered while I was dreaming this bit was how I could possibly have thought any of this totally dark and disgusting stuff up. How was such horror in my mind? When I woke up, I remembered a particular artist a former friend used to like, H.R. Giger (this was eons ago). Giger's art is so dark, cold, hellish, and utterly fascinating at the same time, probably because of all the incredible detail and nightmare-like qualities. It's very...psychological. Bio-mechanical. Industrial. Alien. And most of all, perhaps, pornographic — there are phalluses, among other sexual images, everywhere! Lots of birth and death imagery. It's nauseating to me, for the most part, and makes me feel dirty while at the same time morbidly intrigued. It's whatever is worse than totally disturbing and horrifying all at once. What an utterly twisted mind. (And what's really disturbing is that he actually looks like the horrifying babies in his art. He is SCARY SHIT to look at).] But I digress.

I was trying desperately to escape. The large workers didn’t notice me. They trudged like zombies, trudging through the factory, shackled by chains, but not really doing anything. Still, there were sentient people around me, guards, and I needed to be free of the place in a desperate way. This is when I realized that in spite of the horror I was experiencing, it didn’t get to me: I was single-minded in getting to a place where I was free, where I could breathe and not be pursued or caught. This is also the time at which I discovered I could become invisible. Handy, but it took all my energy to keep that way, and every now and then someone would glance my way, as though I’d flickered, but then turn away.

I escaped the compound by climbing some sort of pole and leaping and being invisible. But my horrors were not over yet.

I wandered through this town, which was a total dump. Worse than the worst ghetto. Decrepit and dusty and hopeless. The people were of every ethnicity, milling about, exchanging things, doing drugs, acting psychotic, high, and simply without any semblance of what I view as normal. The world had totally gone to hell, and I was in the midst of it.

Then I spotted a church, a sort of long-house wooden type of building, with old signs announcing some sort of evangelical name. The words were painted in green, I remember. Thinking it might be a safe place, I went to it. But there were guards, thugs who were both high and mean. They wanted to search me for weapons, but this guy in charge, a good-looking man in nice clothes and with a white-toothed smile, let me pass to come inside. He sat down, women on his lap, and invited me to take a look around and try out what I wanted. The place was jumping with people under the influence of everything you could possibly imagine. Everything was out in the open. I shook my head, no, and asked to leave. He smiled at me, and without getting up, pushed open the old wooden door, which had remnants of pink paint, and let me through.

Outside, a guard, some bozo with huge teeth and looking straight out of Deliverance, wanted to search me for arms. I said I’d gone through that already before I went in, and with some argument, managed to get free.

Next, I remember being at a sort of hardware store lot. There were two huge transports, both gearing to leave. My ticket out. Suddenly someone else was with me, trying to escape as well, I thought, but when he tried to get on the truck to steal a reel of cable on there, he unhitched the thing keeping them all together, and chaos ensued. I immediately became invisible, and tried to get on the back of the next truck. Suddenly, it began to pull away, and I was trying to run after it but, as often happens in my dreams, I wasn’t getting anywhere. In spite of my output, I couldn’t move fast.

I made myself visible, shouting for the drivers to stop. They did, let me on the truck, and we drove off. I was suddenly sitting in the midst of a class of kids, beside the teacher, and I remember smiling, thinking this was a great disguise, but most of all I was relieved. If there was a normal bunch of kids on a class trip (never mind that we were sitting on a load of cable on a transport), civilization was nearby.

We had emerged from hell and were passing bright, neat houses, clean streets, and normal people. I remember feeling ecstatic. I was in heaven! Off the truck and having walked down the street, I rested, finally, revelling in my freedom. Some guy stood beside me, no shirt on, scruffy hair, as though he’d just come through hell too. We stood on a riverbank, watching the water. We looked at each other, and said with our smiles, All’s well now. We’re okay.

Interpretation

WOW. I’m smiling in real life now (though I thought I was actually smelling vomit and feeling nauseated when I was describing that factory—even though I didn’t smell anything in my dream). It was such an amazing dream, all aspects of it, how vivid it was, how many times I realized things while I was dreaming. I feel, though, as most do when trying to describe their dreams, that I didn’t capture it well. Because so much of dreams is atmosphere. A good writer should be able to convey that, but it’s hard to get hold of, and I’m also too impatient.

When I woke up, which was rather sort of immediate and strange, I realized three things: one, you can fool your subconscious mind into thinking that whatever you’re thinking or dreaming you’re really experiencing. Think of people who wake up screaming, crying, laughing, panting, sweating, or, er, embarrassed. Two, I won. Three, I’m a vivid dreamer, meaning, I make realizations about my dreams while I’m dreaming them. I am actually aware that I’m dreaming.

I also thought about what this particular dream was telling me, and I came up with a few answers. But after writing this here, now I’m curious as to what you thought. So instead of telling you what I think the dream means, I invite you to tell me. As always, the comments are open.

PS. The Giger image I wanted to put here wouldn’t allow me to save it for use. Probably for the best.

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Tags: dream, factory, Giger, Gothic, vampire