This afternoon I was in the living room and looked up to see our cat Chet coming around the corner to sniff at our new cat’s scratching pad.
Odd thing is, Chet died last year.
Tag: cats
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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.
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fragments
…a long bodied cat, muscular and lean, stalks through the room — insane eyes, gaping mouth drooling as it swivels its head from side to side . . . its long gray fur matted and ragged, trailing after it in the air…
…I turn and see the electrical plug floating in the air before my face, the cord dangling. With a start, I snatch it from the grasp of the unseen hand and shudder.
I lay it down on the bedspread and turn to the nightstand. When I turn back the plug is floating there again. I dart my hand out and grab where the wrist would be, feeling something unseen struggle against me.
I let it go, fascinated and supremely creeped out. Objects on a nearby shelf rattle as something passes around the room. The lamp overhead swings and I can see, in my mind’s eye, something there circling overhead — a faceted, multicolor crystalline rat. Waves of malign hate pour off of it.
I command it to appear, my voice full of authority and strength.
Unable to disobey, the creature shimmers into view — altering its form, taking a friendly cartoon shape as though made out of balloons.
I grasp it in one hand and command it again, demanding it shed its false form and reveal itself for what it truly is.
It struggles against my hand and the slow pull of my voice, drawing it out, forcing it into a form I recognize…
… I wander through the modular home, amazed that I’d forgotten we bought it just in case the new house didn’t work out. And in the back bedroom something terrible and sad lies under a sheet on the top bunk…
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mother, father, cat
Do demons stand still? Can you look for them in corners or out of the way places? Do demons stop long enough for you to see them? Do demons stand near us? Where do they stand?
In the dream, my house has been transformed into a filthy hole. The kitchen is a mess, bits of food, dirty pots and pans, and crusty dishes piled everywhere.
My mother sits on the patio and smokes cigarettes.
My father sits in the living room, studying Talmud.
I try to clean up the mess.
My cat walks though my dream, his mind embraced by madness. His mouth gapes, his eyes stare, insane light shining through. His tongue flaps out between his fangs, drooling mucous and vomit. He yowls to wake the dead.
I call to my mother to put on her glasses. I ask her “Can you see him? Can you see the cat?” She doesn’t answer. And I ask her again, and then I say “Can you see demons..?” And I go into my earlier ideas on demons. I speak and the cat yowls and in the living room my father is a dusty corpse.
When I woke from this dream I was saying “Do demons stand still?” in a breathless gasp.
