Maybe I should do this again

I dreamed that I was being haunted by an impish spectral gremlin. I visited the voodoo shop at my local community shopping mall, where I was informed that this foul beast had been sent by it's master Herman Cain. Apparently word got through to him that I'd been making fun of him on the internet. 

The priestess recommended a simple personal apology as an alternative to living with the constant and terrifying spectre of a grinning demon. I weighed my options.

I dreamed that I had a screaming argument with my brother in the pickup truck that he only owns in dreamsylvania. He had a number of shocking and untenable political beliefs, including this little doozy - "Immigrants don't technically have the legal right to wear hats." That's the one that really set me off. I got out of the pickup and walked home over that one.

The rest of the dream was me trying to debunk this myth on snopes.com. Unfortunately, no web page would load fully. I think this is the 21st century equivalent to trying to run away from a monster but your legs don't work.

A monster named systematic misinformation, in this case.

I dreamed that I had died and been born again. Reincarnated. Many of my friends had, as well. I was the only one that remembered our former lives and former friendships.

I was also the only one that had come back with laser eyes, super strength and the power of levitation.

I met them all one by one at the local mall in what seemed to be a series of happy accidents. I attempted to make a good first impression by showing off my awesome superpowers, but none of them gave a shit. I remember Adrienne and Becky being particularly unimpressed.

In spite of my vulgar display of power, everyone got along well and I was invited to a bonfire. We drove in a groovy 70's van to the burn where we met up with my BFF Matt, who immediately began telling me about the dungeons and dragons campaign he was playing. I told him "Oh cool. You and I used to play dungeons and dragons in a past life where we were best friends. Nice to meet you!"

We both agreed that this was pretty rad and resumed the friendship more or less where it had left off.

I dreamed of a zombie apocalypse as I often do.

My semi-paralyzed father and I were stuck in a small building surrounded by the walking corpses of our friends and family.

I cared for him as long as I could, but eventually he got up and walked again as a member of the undead. He begged me not to destroy him. He was no threat to me, he just wanted to get out and explore.

It was bittersweet to see him moving again.

I was

one of the left behind.

The faithful had ascended to heaven. I was left alone on earth, the last sane person in a sea of the demon-posessed.

They caught me. They unloaded from a school bus and offered me up to their diety, a giant ginger-faced disembodied head with a shit eating grin. It ate me.

Dark Water

I have recurring dreams about evil carnivores lurking invisibly under the black surface of a body of water.

Sometimes it's the ocean, but more frequently it resembles lake houston. I remember riding on the jet ski my brother owned for a short time. My family has a history of large, foolish nautical purchases that are soon regretted and resold. I enjoyed it, but out in lake houston I couldn't put the fact out of my mind that there were alligators out there, and if we ran over one I'd probably be eaten and there was nothing anyone could really do about it.

Often the dream involves the collapse of the bridge over lake Houston, spilling me and my car into the water. Sometimes I can drive it for a while, like a submarine. Generally I'm forced to abandon it.

Last night I made it safely to shore to be greeted by a group of unsuspecting local yokels out barbecuing on the soily lake-beach. They were pretty much asking for it.

A great white shark with the coloration of an orca attacked. If you've ever seen an orca attacking seals on a beach you know what this looks like.

After the initial attack, the shark managed to somehow pull itself along the ground with om-nom-nomming jaw motions, jumping forward a few feet every time it chomped some poor, unsuspecting suburban fool. I'm still not sure whether it was more amusing or horrifying.

The shark had a swarm of shark puppies that followed it onto shore soon after the carnage had died down. They fed on the scraps and limbless torsos left in its mother's wake.

Knives n Hooligans

I was working at Wal Mart again. I have no idea how this happened. I avoided work for a while by wandering the halls, watching episodes of South Park on the demo TV's that existed exclusively in my dream world, and trying to sneak in naps on the dirty floor.

Eventually I just said "fuck this" and left. I walked outside, dropping my retail-slave garments in a garbage can. I turned a corner, looked up, and noticed there was a ladder up the side of the building and a smallish ledge. An unmarked door rested on this ledge tempting me with its mysteries.

I climbed up this mysterious ladder only to find it was guassrded by spoiled little suburban tweens who thought they were gangsters. Our British friends would call them Chavs, I believe.

I ignored the Chavlings only to find myself being punched in the back of the head as I attempted to open the mystery door. I found myself unable to fight back. I can't tell if it was due to cowardice, a moral responsibility to not hit children or oh shit that one has a knife quick jump over the side.

I landed on the sidewalk and vowed revenge. I went to the nearest unattended mom-and-pop retail store hoping to find something to bash their brains in with. Fortunately that store was "Wooden Things N Things." It was no "Bludgeondale's" but it was sufficient. I found a metal-plated sword-like cane-thing and struck out with bludgeony vengeance in my heart.

My anger turned to fear as I realized that the chavlings had summoned their protector: 1980's style leather-jacket wearing sexually ambiguous nihilist gang leader with funny hair and pointy knives. I think this may be a result of watching part of "The Lost Boys" the prior evening.

He approached me menacingly as the rest of his gang of Judas Priest fans and 80's skank bitches backed him up. I tried to run, but my legs told me "stay and fight, pussy!" The part of my brain controlling flight or fight reactions were clearly taking a day off. Noticing my obvious nervousness, he kindly reassured me "Don't be scared. They're just knives!" without a hint of irony in his voice.

He wiped the edge of his blades on my shirtsleeves impotently, failing to so much as leave a crease in them. "Ha ha, I got you! Won't be long now! You're bleeding like a pig!" he exclaimed triumphantly. I went valiantly upside his dome with my cane thing and then bravely stabbed the defenseless man to death with his own knives.

The rest of his gang lined up to come at me one a time, black ninja style. I poked aother man to death before a third tackled me. I was terrified, sure that I was seconds away from stabby, bloody doom.

I pulled a desperation play: "Hey, I killed your leader. That means I'M your leader now!" It worked. They lead me back to their hideout where I could have all the skanky gang bitches I wanted. Many of them were partially dripping with melted cheese for some reason.

I no longer cared about the wal mart mystery door.

Domocritz Tooltar

My boss popped his head in the door. "Hey Aaron, who is Domocritz Tooltar?"

"Oh, I know that name... one second. Let me pull him up."

Minimize this, Close this. Open that.

"Just a second and I'll have it..."

Scroll scroll scroll.

Awake.

Old Dream 7 - Old Hag

This one's reeeeeeeal good, I hope you read the whole thing.

Matt called me and woke me out of a deep sleep. I stumbled out of bed druggedly to answer the phone, and we had a conversation that I can barely remember. I knew it was him before I managed to answer because everyone who calls me has a distinctive ring assigned to them. All I remember saying was how I just woke up and felt like I had taken some kind of sleeping medicine because I was was barely able to stand or think.

I woke up again and realized that the previous conversation was only a dream. I got up and stumbled to the refrigerator in my room, where I had a couple of new CD's I wanted to listen to. Then I realized that you don't put CD's in your refrigerator and I didn't have one in my room anyway.

I woke up again, trying to move and scream, but feeling paralyzed and barely able to. I eventually struggled out of bed, and the difficulty I was having convinced me that someone had drugged me. I stumbled downstairs to tell my parents to call an ambulance...

And I woke up one more time. Again I struggled to move or scream, and this time I noticed a woman in a hooded robe hovering over me in the shadows at the foot of my bed whispering something unintelligible that sounded like a dead language. At first I thought it was my mom, who'd heard me yelling in my sleep and decided to mess with me and have some fun at my expense. My parents have a weird sense of humor like that sometimes, if not any hooded robes.

After the woman probingly raked my foot with a clawed hand, I ruled out that particular theory. I just about shit my pants trying to scream and and wake up. An attempted scream started as a rasping breath, and I eventually yelped out a weak "Grraaarble!..." and sat up. I looked around the room, terrified of the darkened shapes of the various things in my room as if I was 7 years old again. A stack of boxes in the corner of my room by the bookcase particularly looked like someone crouching. I threw a blanket at it and yelled "Dammit mom, that's not funny!" Recalling the anti-monster training of my early childhood, I stood on my bed and leapt to the door, careful to give my ankles a safe distance from the area under everyone's bed where achilles-tendon-slashing villians always lurk. I sprinted downstairs, where I collected myself and realized what had happened.

I just got a visit from "the old hag." I'd seen a documentary on it years ago and always thought it was an interesting phenomenon. Apparently people have long talked about being visited by an old woman in their sleep who messed with them in various ways while they struggled to move. It's real big in the superstitious areas of New England, particularly. Sometimes she sits or presses on their chest, and sometimes its not an old woman but a smallish gremlin. You may have seen old paintings of people sleeping with grinning little demons on their chests, and this is the sort of thing that inspires it. The documentary suggested that this same phenomenon is what causes people to dream about being visited by aliens, too.

Here's some good excerpts from the above link, which happens to be a scientific explanation from what I just noticed is coincidentally a "paranormal" website even though I know better than to think of it as such a thing.

"The medical establishment is quite aware of this phenomenon, but has a less sensational name than "old hag syndrome" for it. They call it "sleep paralysis" or SP (sometimes ISP for "isolated sleep paralysis")."

"...sleep paralysis occurs when the brain is in the transition state between deep, dreaming sleep (known as REM sleep for its rapid eye movement) and waking up...

"Sleep paralysis is often accompanied by vivid hallucinations. There may be a sense someone is in the room, or even hovering over you. At other times, there seems to be pressure on the chest, as though someone or something perched there..."

"...disrupted sleep schedules or circadian rhythm disturbances can produce an episode of sleep paralysis."

I think it's safe enough to say that this is a result of an irregular sleeping pattern. On Thursday I went to bet at 6pm and woke up at midnight and was up all day. Friday I went to bed at midnight and awoke at 9 am. Tonight I went to bed around seven and had this incident at 11. It scared the bejeezus out of my initially, but now I just think it's pretty kickass. Like I said before, I always thought it was an interesting phenomenon and wanted to experience it myself. I'm still kinda pumped up about it. I just wonder when I'm going to be able to sleep again in the near future.

Dream 6 - A Woman Leads Me Astray

I dreamt once again that I had developed supernatural powers. In this case it was telekinesis. I remember mainly using it to have minor objects fly into my hands to save me the trouble of walking over to them to pick them up. A remote, my keys, a can of Ragu, etc. It also dawned on me that I could probably make a good living as an entertainer of some kind, using these powers in some kind of big Vegas magic show or something like that.

Happy about this prospect, I went out for a walk. I noticed a moderately attractive woman jogging about 30 feet in the air along the wall of a large building. This gave me an idea for another use for my newfound powers: Impressing babes. I ran up the wall along side her to chat her up, and almost immediately blurted out something like "Hey, I've got telekinetic powers! I can like, move stuff with my brain!" 

She was not at all impressed, but she took it as a conventional conversation starter and informed me of a hidden gathering place for people such as us in the nearby area. She led me to a large dirt mound in the middle of what looked like Denton, pretty much right next to some kind of busy college administration building. I thought to myself that it wasn't a very well hidden secret freak haven, but cool nonetheless. The mound had several entrances which people were disappearing into, which gave it the appearance of a large manmade anthill.

I followed the woman into one of the tunnels. The inside was well lit, but the tunnels were very confusing and I couldn't go into some of them because I seemed to lack the specific superpower necessary to enter. Some people shrunk themselves down to get into very small holes, for example. I got separated from the woman who was guiding me and ended up wandering for a while, but my sense of direction won out uncharacteristically quickly and I reunited with her.

I found her in a large, bowl shaped room that looked to me a lot like some kind of Greek temple. The room was filled almost knee high with water, and on the far side it had a raised platform on it with what could have been either an altar or a bed, it's difficult for me to remember exactly. On one side of the room there was a huge red curtain. My new friend pulled it back a bit to go behind it, and I caught a peek of a vast dark room that seemed as though it could have been seating area in a theater. She turned to me before disappearing behind it to warn me angrily  not to look or go behind the curtain. So I stupidly waited in the watery temple by the altar/bed thing for her to return.

When she did return, it was to frantically warn me "GET OUT OF HERE! If they see you here they'll kill us both! Get! Shoo! Go on now!" This pissed me off for a number of reasons. For one, I hate it when people refer to 'they' or 'it' or such ominously before it's clear what the hell they're talking about. For another, I was really curious as to what was going on here and now it had to all end in a cliched movie moment where "'they' will kill us if they see you here." In retrospect I should probably just be glad I wasn't ritually sacrificed to Cthulhu.

Old Dream 5 - Africa

I dreamed I was an African tribesman back in the later part of the era of European colonialism.  I feel that I was somewhere on the eastern coast of Africa, possibly across from Madagascar. 

I was on the beach, being forced by my chief and his spear-wielding enforcers to swim out into the ocean and gather some sort of rare sea herb. Apparently the last few men to attempt this were swallowed up by the ocean, which had grown hungry for human flesh.  This puzzled me, as in the distance I could see a bunch of British people playing golf out in the water.  The fact that they had invented an aquatic form of the sport was somehow not so puzzling to me (though in retrospect it IS odd because I didn't know they had ESPN2 back then) as the fact that the malevolent sea was not trying to kill them as it had my fellow tribesman. 

I scaled down the cliff to the beach as my chief sat on a lawnchair sipping a fancy drink and shouting half-hearted encouragements. As I approached the ocean, it beckoned me closer in a way that was far more enticing that frightening, as it should have been.

The next thing I remember I was scaling back up the cliff with the herb tucked under my arm. The sea had risen and was lapping at my back, whispering eagerly for me to let go and fall back into its embrace. As I reached the top, the chief ran to the edge and was commanding me to toss the herb up to him. I reached up, grabbed his leg and threw him to the ocean.  No longer hungry, it receded back out to the horizon.

Fortunately the chief's enforcers did not require vengeance. I can only assume they were happy to see him gone. As I headed back to village, I saw the sea-golfers returning from their game. I asked one how it had gone. "Not well, I'm afraid. Several people drowned!" Pfft. Stupid white people.

Old Dream 4 - Giant Pulsating Testicle of Doom

I dreamt that I was driving to Tulsa for a wee visit and having a damn hard time of it. I could barely stay awake, nothing looked the way it used too (much more of a sprawling metropolis now) and worst of all, I kept finding myself turned around backwards going in reverse down the highway. Fortunately, I seemed to be very good at flipping around the right way in the middle of a busy highway.

I stopped a few times at various places for food, naps, directions, whatever. At a barbershop I found myself reading the Tulsa newspaper between naps. On the front page was a feature story of the local band "Dooooooom," which was apparently a black metal band comprised of young men with very odd looking facial hair. They were all wearing beards that appeared to be a hybridization of the Fu Manchu and the classic prospector beard. They were all rather nerdy, gawky and young, which made the beards that much more bizarre.

I looked up from the paper to realize the "Ghoulies 4" was on the TV in the barbershop. I was surprised by this as I was not aware that the series had gone beyond a trilogy. I reasoned that it must be a very recent installment.

For those of you who didn't watch Monstervision on TNT when you were kids, "Ghoulies" is a B Horror series from the 80's which features cheap non Judeo-Christian hand puppet demons that gad about and make nuisances of themselves. It was like a highly dignified version of "Hobgoblins," or a much goofier "Gremlins."

This non-existant installment of Ghoulies that my subconscious brain created featured the also non-existant band "Doooooooom" being doooooomed by Ghoulies cultists. The lead singer was chased into Matt Dolph's Tulsa basement and eviscerated by the High Priest at an altar to the Ghoulie Megatherion. He cried out to his bandmates for help, but they were either too scared to help or were conspiring with the cult. I suspect that they were going to audition a new singer anyway.

I began to observe from inside the movie itself rather than from a chair in a barbershop. I was now a character in this awful B Movie, which took it from amusingly bad to terrifying. I listened as the priest explained that the Ghoulie Avatar was a giant testicle (a symbol for man's agressiveness and willingness to dominate or some kinda bullshit, I thought to myself) and with that human sacrifice was free to come to our plane of existance and doooooooom mankind. I had no time to find this amusing or to question what is threatening about a giant testicle. I saw the edge of a huge purple peeled grape coming around a corner and I took off as fast as I could in the opposite direction.

I ran out onto 21st street (or 20th, wherever Matt's old house was) and got in the car. I started it up and a horrible chant came over the radio. It is best compared to the music from "The Omen." I switched stations, but it was on every station. Not a good thing, I judged. I made the rational conclusion from this that Mankind was on the eve of a grand horror movie apocalypse in the Romero tradition. I set out to round up as many of my friends as possible and get them to the least populous area I could find. This, I have learned, is the winning game plan in these situations. Be it zombies or bloodsucking monsterships from Mars, you head to Canada and they're less likely to come looking for you there. You certainly don't try to get to fucking Boston. Fucking Tom Cruise, you dipshit. Maybe if you watched more zombie movies instead of auditing yourself clear of Thetans all the time you might have a proper apocalyptic survival plan.

The unwise part, however, was that I was willing to drive back to Texas to get you suckas. I'm sorry but in the event of a horror apocalypse, if you're not with me when all the clear channel stations start broadcasting "Ia, Ia, C'thulu F'thagn" marathons, I'm not coming to look for you because you might try to take a bath in my entrails when I find you.

Of course, if I'm more lucid in the event this dream comes to pass, I will know to just to give the testicular dark lord a good square kick, deep fry him, and feed him to those goddamn Okies. Mmm mmmm, extraplanar lamb fries! Come'n'git it while it's hot 'n ectoplasmic, Jeptha!

Old Dream 3 - Broccoli Head

I hate the way I used to write. Is it still this bad? Surely part of the problem was the rush to record my dreams before they slipped away.

I dreamt that I was scratching my scalp and it tore open and there was something green underneath. I reached in and pulled it out and it was a piece of cooked broccoli. At first i was like "mmm, broccoli!" Then I was like "AAAAAHHHHH! BROCCOLI!" Did I spell broccoli right? Then I started pulling out piece after piece of broccoli, and the occasional little round carrot slice.

When i was done pulling out the vegetables, my scalp just kind of slid off and I was a scalpless, hairless freak. I talked to my mom about it and she told me that it was normal and my hair would come back, but when it did it was going to hurt.\

Old Dream 2 - Hell's Customer Service Department

Also copied/pasted from the xanga

Sometimes I think my dreams could work as goofy B horror movies. This is one of them. As usual it seemed much less goofy at the time

I dreamt that I was riding in a double decker bus down a street in Port Aransas. There were military helicopters flying very low right above the street, and even stranger than that, we could see space shuttles taking off one after another from Houston. They weren't quite regular space shuttles, either. They were sleek and futurey lookin. I pointed this out to my fellow passengers, but I was the only person who seemed to think it noteworthy. I commented to the person sitting next to me that it was President Bush and all his pals evacuating the planet because he had just fucked up and started the Apocalypse. I was joking, but at the same time I was sure it was true.

Just then, a mushroom cloud could be seen in the direction of Houston. I jumped out of the window of the bus and started running in the opposite direction, as though that would help. After a few steps, all I could see was fire. I heard in my head a weird poem about fire which I don't remember very well, but when it was over it was credited to Darryl Strawberry. Weird.

Suddenly the fire was gone, and I was back in a field off the road in Port Aransas, but there were all these weird mutated lizardy things running around. I ran past them and into a deserted town, and began preparing for the inevitable post-apocalyptic zombie holocaust. I mean, that's what happens after a nuclear apocalypse, right? Mutated things, zombies, and depending on the number of human survivors, roving homoerotic biker gangs. Everyone knows that.

Anyway, I looked for a house that was suitably defensible vs. zombies. After eliminating one candidate, I turned to leave and on my way out I was suprised that there was a woman sitting at a computer the whole time who had turned to look at me. She seemed to be barely interested in the guy who had just barged into her room. As I was about to leave, the closet burst open and she was pulled into it by what I can only describe as tentacles of living shadow.

I decided that chivalry and heroics would probably be an act of male chauvinism or something like that, so I took off. As I was leaving the house, I met Travis Rathert and Eryck Kratville coming in. I forgot all about the terrifying closet monster and decided to make idle chit chat. They speculated as to why THEY ended up in a shadowy netherworld, even though it made sense for me to be there. "Maybe you guys picked the wrong denominations of Christianity," I suggested. At that point the computer woman came out of the other room looking all crazy and bloodthirsty a la 28 Days Later. The three of us freaked out and ran, although you'd think any one of us could take a small woman, in zombie frenzy or not. I guess we didn't want to risk her having some kind of unholy super strength or laser eyes.

We ran into another group of zombies(?) pretty quickly. These had sharpened sticks that looked like they had been ripped off of chairs. Trav and Eryck had inexplicably picked these up at some point too. There was some 'apokin and 'astabbin. A good time was had by all. At some point I was pinned beneath dead bodies.

Suddenly, all I could see was a computer screen. It was a survey to rate one of the "New 6 Circles of Hell" by "the 'awful' designers." I have no idea why awful was in quotes. I was I was to rate my experience in overall torment and terror quality. I rated it as overly high because I certainly didn't want them to increase the levels of unholy torture.

After the survey I found myself in a hospital bed with bandages completely covering my face. I tried to scream, but every time I did it sounded exactly like a muted jazz trumpet wailing. I woke up soon after this, and my blanket was covering my face. I assume that's what inspired this last part of the dream.

Old Dream 1 - Feets don't fail me now

Copied and pasted from the ol' xanga. I posted this in 2004 but it actually happened in 2003 I think.

I dreamt I went to the cupboard and it was full of giant alien larvae. I bolted out the door and ran down the street screaming. My mother ran after me, but I was somehow certain that she was an alien pod-monster replacement. I pounded desperately on a random door, screaming for help and for them to call the cops.

So I'm in my boxers, shirtless, screaming for help on some guys porch. My mother tries to calm me down, but I keep threatening to hit her because I think she's trying to replicate me in my sleep. And that's for real. It's not just a dream, it's a sleepwalking incident. I come out of it just in time for the infuriated neighbor to walk out and see me all crazy eyed and half naked outside his door. My parents told him I was sleepwalking and he seemed ok with it.

The next day my feet hurt like hell from running so damn fast on the gravelly road barefoot. They were all raw and skinless.