/yesod

Category: dreams

  • interpretation

    Lovecraft on the Interpretation of Dreams

  • forearms

    Napping this afternoon on the couch, I dream…

    …we’re sitting at the dining room table, my wife and I.

    I hear someone call “Tom” from the back hallway. I turn to see something there, down at the bottom of the steps — small and pale, almost like a child.

    “Don’t look!” my wife says just as it rushes up towards me…

    …awaken with a gasp, lying on the couch with my arms across on my chest.

    I cannot open my eyes. I cannot breathe. I cannot move.

    Something is holding it’s hands on my forearms, pressing me down.

    My breath hisses out between my bared teeth. Little gasps push out of me. I can hear myself whimpering as I struggle to rise, to open my eyes, to speak the name of my God.

    Panic. I can feel my body shaking with the effort to move, those hands holding me down . . . something over me, drawing the breath out of me in long, hissing strands.

    Finally I manage one word: “Ssssssssasssssstop.”

    Immediately, the pressure on my arms lightens and I sit up and open my eyes.

    Alone in the room.

    Even now, writing this, my shoulders and forearms ache as though I’d been carrying a great weight.

    And I can still hear that hissing whimper in my ears. It sounds a little bit like laughter.

  • almost

    …as we’re passing through the room, I stop and take note of our surroundings: The concrete walls of the service tunnel, the exposed pipes . . . it’s all so familiar.

    Then I have it. In a flash of recognition, I turn to my companions — he is tall and dark skinned, she is waif-like and pale — and say “This is exactly what the places I dream about look like. Exactly.”

    They share a glance with each other and roll their eyes.

    We continue on through the door.

    It is only later (much later) that I realize that I almost had it. I almost had a moment of awareness there in the dream.

    But what really gets me is the realization that the other people in my dream knew I was dreaming, even through I didn’t.

    They knew. And they thought I was a fool.

  • on the way to bed

    10441532_10152677677358637_6430375996104631477_nConversation with my four-year-old daughter…

    “Time to sleep, sleep and dream.”

    “I don’t always remember my dreams.”

    “That’s okay. They remember you.”

    I think this might be the best thing I have ever said or ever will say.

  • beginning of the end

    …and my wife’s face contorts in pain, her brow furrowed. I ask her what’s wrong but, before she can answer, a wave of distortion ripples through the air like a mirage.

    “Something’s happened.” I look out the window and see a mushroom cloud rising in the distance.

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    The television fills in the rest of the details: Every major city in the US is in chaos after multiple ‘dirty bomb’ attacks.

    The footage is terrifying. People flood the streets. Suddenly we are all refugees.

    Holding our daughter between us, my wife and I start making plans…

    …I wake in the pre-dawn dark, wondering if this dream was just that or something more: A precognition of something to come? Or just a byproduct of sleeping with a sword under my bed?

  • a sad girl

    …lying in bed this morning, I woke to the sound of the bedroom door opening.

    I hear my wife slowly close the door behind her. I hear her footsteps on the floorboards, approaching my side of the bed.

    I cannot move, cannot open my eyes.

    I feel a fingertip on my arm, just inside the hinge of my elbow.

    The footsteps move away. I struggle to rise, to grasp the her arm but my hand feels strange, tingling in the air where I reach for her, a moment’s resistance . . . then the woman pulls away and walks into a little alcove on the other side of the room.

    The woman is gone. It was not my wife. It was someone else, someone younger — her hair was longer, darker — and she had long scratches or cuts down her arms. And she was sad.

    I cannot confidently say whether or not this was a dream.

  • jump

    I dream of flight, from time to time. Even awake, it seems like the ability is just right there and all I have to do is…

  • a tornado, two corpses, and a leather sofa

    Inside the house, people are starting to panic. The sky outside is dark and green, the wind bending the trees to almost impossible angles. We can hear the sirens and, in a house this old, there is no safe place . . . every room has windows, the elderly frame flexes and creaks in the wind just like the trees outside.

    Women huddle with their children, people cover in corners and try to stay out of the way as pictures fall from walls, little knickknacks shatter to the floor.

    I can feel a pressure in the house, a suction that ebbs and flows as the storm overhead rages on. I move from room to room, peeking out of windows as I pass, making sure they stay open so that the suction won’t blow them out completely.

    Through one window, I watch as a massive trees outside comes down. The entire house shudders under the weight of it. People are screaming now.

    I look up to the mass of gray swirling in the sky, like ink in milk . . . funnel clouds dance around each other, like strands of barbed wire twisted together. I count five of them, shouting out to the people to take cover. The funnels move in.

    I head into another room and suddenly the house is vibrating, a low hum that slowly builds to unbelievable intensity. I can feel it in my eardrums, in my molars, in my gut.

    People are praying, people are crying.

    Looking back on it now, I am surprised I did not think of the gods.

    The ceiling of the room I am in begins to peel away, I move quickly to the other side of the house . . . Just in time to see something so odd, my eyes have trouble making sense of it at first.

    It is a rubble in the suddenly still air of the room, a wavering column of distortion that runs from floor to ceiling, as wide as a refrigerator and spinning. It moves across and through the opposite wall without leaving a trace of its passing.

    Then all is quiet once more — save for the sobs and cries from the other rooms.

    Later…

    The specific circumstances of it escape me now, but at some point I am helping out with a local theatre company in town. One of the actors has an old van that we need to pick up to haul props. I volunteer to go over to their house and collect it.

    They live in a seedy part of town, their house is a hoarder’s nightmare. Out back in the tall weed a is a rusty van, engine idling.

    I go to see if they’re inside, ready to go . . . only to find that while they are inside, they’ve already gone.

    Her face is bloated, her lank gray hair matted to her skull with sweat and vomit. There’s no way of telling how long she’s been this way.

    Repulsed, I back away.

    And later still…

    “I need to talk to you,” my son tells me. I nod and suggest we go out back where it is quieter and the people at the party won’t bother us.

    Why we are having the cast party in the dead woman’s house, I don’t know. It didn’t seem odd at the time, but I have a vague recollection of being worried that she might be discovered back there and somehow spoil things for everyone.

    On the rickety back porch, I see the van in the weeds — the engine has long since run out of gas — and I suddenly remember that I never called the police.

    My son is already down the steps, trying the side door of the van. I call to him to leave it be but he is curious. Something dark and vile has pooled at one corner in the grass below, running from the door frame like a faucet accidentally left on.

    He opens the door and I hear his disgust. He starts to move the body, to try and get her out but she’s become a liquid, gelatinous mess. I tell him to leave things as they are, otherwise the police might suspect him of trying to cover something up.

    He runs inside to call 911.

    Standing there in the dead grass, I turn my head to look down the broad alley at the back of the house. A few yards down there is a splintered wooden fence, leaning to one side. A large dead tree bends low over it, the skeletal boughs hanging over the alley.

    Caught in the boughs is the body of a small child.

    And just before I wake…

    My wife and I are walking through the house, we cannot believe that we are so lucky to have a place of our own at last. In the attic room we find an old leather sofa that the previous owners have left behind. I flop down on it in exhaustion. Under my hand, the dull surface gleams as I wipe the dust away.

    My wife stands at the gable window and looks out onto the street below. She turns and raises her blouse over her head, tosses it aside. Her jeans and panties follow. By the time she gets to me, I am ready for her.

    She straddles me and we begin to move, the old sofa creaking under us.

    Somewhere down below in the house, we hear a door slam. A woman calls out, we hear the voices of children, little feet running up the stairs…

  • dark ride

    I am surprised to see a Ferris wheel looming over the downtown district, pale against the darkening sky. As evening descends, we make our way towards the carnival.

    It is dark everywhere. There are no flickering lights, no music — just the mechanical clack and clank of the rides, the muted murmur of the crowds.

    (This seems ominous now, awake. But at the time, dreaming, it did not seem so.)

    Bright rings of neon dart overhead, flying saucers, small and almost toy-like. I remark to my companions that the adult rides are further down.

    We find ourselves in a queue, jostled by children at every side. At the front of the line I watch a kid climb into a small bucket-like car and rattle away on a track into the darkness.

    “It’s a ghost train!” I exclaim. “I love a good ghost train.”

    I realize I’m speaking in a British accent and make a conscious effort to drop the Doctor Who act.

    At the front of the line, two queues feed into the start of the ride. Everyone fumbles in the darkness, taking turns to climb into the little carts. I let one of my friends go ahead of me and then wait for a small child to take their turn.

    As I’m getting ready to take my turn, a fat middle aged couple shove ahead of me dragging their little pig-faces son with them.

    I step back and watch in amazement as they try to squeeze their combined bulk into the one-person cart. An impossibility, so the husband lays down over the cart and his impossibly bloated wife lays on top of him, her doughy face turned up to the sky. Their son scrambles on top of this quivering bulk and the cart spins off as they lie there like starfish with their limbs out for balance.

    My turn. I do my best to fit my lengthy legs into the next cart. It’s a bit cramped and I consider making a joke about having to fold myself in half but I realize that everyone is waiting for me. So I do my best and soon enough I’m off in my little cart.

    It’s a bit of a disappointment, too dark to see anythIng. I rattle along, vague shadows passing by.

    There is a little pause at a station, where a worker waits before sending me on through the last bit of the ride.

    This point in the ride is staffed by a young woman with long dark hair, her pale skin glows in the semi-dark and her soft voice has a light English accent.

    She flirts with me for a moment while we wait. I feel awkward and self-conscious all folded up in my little cart. And she’s too lovely, I can barely look her in the eye.

    It’s a relief when the ride moves on — the final sequence is a rolling section of track, a child-sized roller coaster. The ride opens up and the sky is lighter now. I coast through a landscape of unkempt hedges and stunted topiary animals as the ride comes to a stop…

    . . .

    The morning after the fair, I wake in a hotel suite overlooking downtown. The sky outside is pale and the light is cold, even harsh.

    The woman from the ride is there, wrapped in a thick white robe. As she passes by the bed on her way to the bathroom, I pull her down to me.

    She protests as my hands slide over her hips, exploring. “I have to take a shower,” she gasps as I slide my thumb into her. I feel her constrict around the base and she closes her eyes for a long moment.

    But then she pushes off of me and heads to the shower, leaving me there to throb with frustration.

  • kitchen door

    For some reason, I am holding a bottle of olive oil in my hand while my daughter and I take a walk around the block.

    (We are not at home, this is not the neighborhood where we live in the waking world. This is someplace else. I do not recognize it from either my dreams or the waking world.)

    Midway through the walk, she becomes scared and tries to hide between two hedges. Losing sight of her fills me with panic and I cast about, calling her name. Her whimpering draws me to her and I coax her out: “Let’s go home. We don’t need to finish this.”

    On the way back I notice that the olive oil is bubbling, almost boiling. The cap on the bottle is venting, spitting like a soda bottle that’s been shaken up.

    The house is dark inside, cheap paneling and shag carpet. The furnishings are mismatched and poorly constructed. My daughter runs through a low doorway looking for her mother. She is still terrified and I am starting to feel the same. There is an oppressive presence in the house.

    I feel it everywhere. For some reason my daughter hides under a low curved desk — a terribly tacky paneled affair with a curved return to one side. I try to climb below it to get her out but it is a maze of panels and pressboard beneath. I discover an electrical outlet bristling with jerry-rigged extension cords.

    The door to the kitchen opens before my hand can reach the knob. I attempt to pull it closed and I can feel the strength of an unseen hand pulling back against me.

    It is far stronger than I.

  • a moment of moore

    Alan MooreOn my way through the park, I see a familiar figure heading in the opposite direction. He shambles, one hand raised to shield his eyes from the afternoon sun. His hair and beard are wild and ragged as the hem of his overcoat.

    I change my course somewhat to interest his. He looks up as I approach, a patient mix of puzzlement and annoyance creasing his brow.

    “Mr. Moore? I am sorry to bother you. I just wanted to say thank you. Your work has meant a great deal to me.”

    He nods politely and offers his hand, still walking.

    As I shake it, he gives me a quick look. “Have we met before?”

    I shake my head. “No sir, but I sent you one of my books a number of months ago. My photo is on the back.”

    “Did you?” He frowns, studying me. Then he shakes his head.

    “It was called Assam & Darjeeling, ” I offer.

    His shrug is eloquent and he turns to continue on. “Nice meeting you.”

    “It had a pomegranate on the cover,” I call after him, realizing that I have gone — in his eyes — from Polite Reader to Insane Fanboy Stalker in about ten seconds.

    He waves a hand over his shoulder, picking up his pace.

    I watch him go.

  • neighborhood watch

    …and when the neighbors show up at our front door, they demand entrance and will not leave. Too small to be a mob, but there are enough of them to force their way in.

    In the entryway, they shout that we are heathens and devil worshippers — they begin opening doors and ransacking the rooms. Books are thrown to the floor, pictures and knick knacks smashed, curtains pulled down.

    The ringleader is a middle aged blonde woman with the sinewy frame of someone burning away the calories with their fierce zealotry.

    She discovers “Lost Girls” on one of our shelves and shrieks her horror at “this filth and pornography” (which, admittedly, it is) corrupting the neighborhood.

    It goes downhill from there. I manage to trick them into not finding my office by use of a clever hinged double door — when it opens, it covers the office entrance completely…

    …I wake up, the sound of angry voices and slamming doors following me to the waking world.

  • comedy and tragedy

    …when the comedian pulls up in the Winnebago, I hop in. We chat and get acquainted while his two cats prowl around in back.

    A few hours on the road and I realize we’re not going to get back home in time for me to help out with the baby’s bedtime. I’m embarrassed to say anything, I don’t want to appear unprofessional.

    We arrive at the venue — an old theater in Charleston, West Virginia. A few people are already in the balcony seats, waiting for the show to begin.

    While the comedian gets ready to go onstage, I call my wife to apologize and break the news.

    “I should be back around midnight,” I tell her. Then I remember the driving time. “Actually, it’ll probably be later than that.”

    She is annoyed, rightfully so. But she doesn’t press the point.

    I feel terrible and offer to rent a car so I can return early.

    She hesitates before answering. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but…”

    She tells me that there’s been an accident. The father of the two girls who lives across the way fell from their balcony and died.

    (Somehow I recall an earlier dream, while dreaming this one, in which the man’s mentally disabled brother also died. This family has seen nothing but tragedy, in my dreams.)

    I rent a car and, in time, arrive back home. A cloud of sadness hangs over the apartment complex, clinging to everything.

    Looking across the way, I can see into the windows of the neighboring apartment where the two little girls play on their bunk bed. I worry that they might fall.

    An elderly man comes into their room — their grandfather, I assume. He moves so slowly, weighed down with age and sorrow.

    I make a mental note to go over after dinner and offer to help.

  • the visit

    Halfway through my day I stop and reach desperately for a scrap of dream from the night before, a vague memory that my character Jee came to see me.

    She had something important to tell me.

    But the dream is gone, nothing left but a sense of something forgotten.

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  • in the shower

    …as I’m washing my backside, someone peeks in between a seam in the shower curtain — old and wizened, though I cannot tell whether it is a man or a woman. They roll their eyes up at me, almost comical, and purse their mouth in a silent “Oooo…”

    …and then I wake with a start, my afternoon nap ruined.

  • the right to bear arms

    …I’m stunned to see the President of the United States at the door. He bustles in before I can get my head around his sudden appearance.

    He is alone and clearly in peril. He slams the door and locks it behind him, thanking me for letting him in. It is strange to see him scared, completely alone. I wonder where his Secret Service protection has gone.

    He apologizes for the intrusion and removes his tattered coat. I notice he has a shoulder holster beneath.

    My mother comes into the front hallway and is clearly displeased to see him in her home. She informs us that his interruption is right in the middle of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and that she doesn’t “feel comfortable with that man having a loaded gun in the house.”

    Her glare is withering.

    I protest, saying it’s our duty to give him shelter and protection. But it’s clear that she’s unimpressed, perhaps because she didn’t vote for him. She returns to her program, leaving me to apologize to the President…

  • precision

    …with slow, precise snips of the nail clippers, I remove most of my right toenail, somewhat proud to have done it in a single, broad piece.

    The skin beneath is tender, painful. I hope my wife will not notice.

  • the apartment across the way

    We’re living in an apartment complex, a bit run down and seedy. But this is all we can afford.

    In the apartment across the way, a young couple live with their two small children. The woman is slight, dark haired and sickly. Her husband is darker, brows constantly knotted with rage. His mentally-challenged brother lives with them.

    It is a sad family.

    News spreads through the complex from neighbor to neighbor like crows carrying misfortune from field to field.

    I am work when my wife calls to tell me that the sickly woman has passed away, leaving the husband on his own to care for their children and his brother as best he can.

    The whispers don’t quite reach the point of wondering if he was the one who killed her.

    I see him walking, the baby in his arms and the older daughter — just only four years old — and want to offer to help. But I do not. I have a family of my own, after all.

  • david and mickey

    It’s night and we’re driving, my friend David and me.

    I’ve known him a long time. Since we were in sixth grade, I think. We’ve stayed in touch that whole time, mostly.

    Well, we fall out of touch and then back into touch. We haven’t seen each other in years — almost twenty, I think . . . though I’m not quite sure exactly how long it’s been.

    But we’re back together for the evening, heading over to the old mall to see the new Mickey Mouse cartoon that’s just been released. David is excited. I’m feeling sleepy a bit under the weather. I haven’t been sleeping.

    Most times it seems like I always haven’t been sleeping.

    At the mall, David produces a small swipe card — somehow he’s managed to clone it from one of the security guards, in order to sneak in to the movies without paying. He has one for me as well and I’m feeling a bit panicky as we swipe our way through the back door, coming face to face with a guard.

    He ignore us. In our suits and ties, I suppose we look like we belong there, behind the scenes.

    I follow David through the hallways to an area behind the movie screen. There is a small riser of stadiums seats, sparsely attended, looking down on a little orchestra pit and a small constellation of microphones. I realize that the movie soundtrack and dialogue will be performed live for the premiere, like an old time live radio show.

    For reasons I that aren’t explained, the sound effects are recorded on the film, however.

    I watch the actors mug their way through the performance, mildly impressed at how well everything goes. I forget sometimes to watch the screen where Mickey’s antics play out in silvered, larger-than-life magic.

    A woman makes her way through the seats, selling concessions. She has the pillbox cap, fishnet stockings, and pin curls of yesteryear. But all she has to sell are oversized chili dogs in greasy wax paper envelopes — far more suitable for a ballpark than a movie.

    I buy one and, somehow, my youngest daughter is there to help me share it. Though she makes a terrible mess of it and I worry that my wife will be upset over the junk food and additives. We’re so careful with her diet…

  • frantic spider

    …the spider struggles against the pull of the water as the tub drains, a thin filament of almost wire-like web cast out like a dark line . . . it clenches like a fist in the water, and I feel the tug of the web and pull my hand away, leaving it to it’s fate…

  • the floating eye

    …and I have no breath to scream as my daughter falls twenty feet to the hard concrete floor, a gasp pressing out of my as I run to pick up her tiny, limp body.

    “Oh god, her eyes…”

    I turn away hiding her face from my wife so she cannot see how our daughter’s right eye has become detached and is floating freely between one socket and then other as she tilts her head, a dreamy smile on her face.

    It is horrible to see. It is my fault.

    So horrible that, later that day, I decline to tell my wife the particulars of my dream. I want to spare her the horrors of that image, the drifting float of our child’s eye.

  • opening night

    …I find myself in the front row, enduring an abysmal production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” directed by my ex-wife.

    It’s godawful. Pretentious and ponderous. They’ve changed the language, modernized all the poetry out of it. And, insult to injury, they’ve added songs, turning it into a musical.
    bogle
    Only Puck holds any interest. Dark and twisted, a spiky clenched fist of mischief scuttling around the poorly-lit stage.

    The production closes with a clueless rendition of You Are My Sunshine — rewritten by my ex to include a commentary on the unreliability of love.

    Ugh.

  • great

    I would be delighted if my ex-wife didn’t show up in my dreams, however briefly, ever again.

  • lounge act

    Woke early this morning with a handful of broken fragments from last night’s dreams, losing little shards as the day progresses, memories and images slipping through my fingers and lost for good.

    Here’s what’s left…

    …a heartfelt farewell from one of my clients, almost paternal in how touching his words are…

    …my wife and I stop off at a local bar set up in a aluminum trailer on the outskirts of town, an absolute shithole under new ownership — the proprietor is a short, pudgy twerp utterly clueless and out of place in his red satin tuxedo. I recognize him from a dream when I was very young, when he had a suave and menacing manner. His name is Kincaid. I haven’t thought of him in thirty years.

    While he vainly tries to chat up my wife, I’m cornered by a heavyset woman in a ball gown. Despite her ragged, bottle blonde shag haircut I recognize her as an acquaintance from my local theater days.

    I barely know her but she acts like I’ve been on her mind every single day of the past ten years. She tells me she’s singing now — the “talent” to keep the patrons happy. I make the mistake of saying that we’ll come by to hear her perform sometime, spurring her into an impromptu rendition of an old torch song.

    She fills each note with so much feeling that I’m mildly impressed — at least until she leans forward, putting her knee on the seat next to mine and. She takes my hand, staring deeply into my eyes as she sings…

    …I wake, a little embarrassed for her and a little puzzled by the reappearance of Kincaid after almost thirty years.

  • Sunday nap

    …there are three children playing at the curb, jumping in and out of a deep puddle of mud and dirt. The oldest of these, perhaps eight years old, stops in the midst of bossing the other two around and turns as he notices me…

    …and a man’s voice tells me “Look to the world around you…” as I wake up, wondering where this dream or vision came from.