From the Dream Archives: Whoopi Goldberg, Nosferatu

(ORIGINAL ENTRY DATE: 2 MAY 2015)

Had a particularly creepy dream wherein I ventured into an ancient, dilapidated, moss-shrouded house,

wherein I was attacked and vampirized by a bloodsucker which looked like a dessicated Whoopi Goldberg.

*shudder*

If I ever realize my dream of becoming a filmmaker, I must make a short film based on this.

The Infamous Lake Country Wildfire of '17

I, my parents, and my sister were out visiting neighbours when a wildfire sparked off to the east of us. It was so intense, it sent a veritable pillar of flame into the sky, a thick blanket of gray smoke unfurling to cover the firmament. The fire was very close — several hundred metres away at most — and due to its ferocity, it was believed it would grow beyond control and overtake our homes before fire fighters could arrive to contain it.

Fearful for the fates of my pets and belongings, against the warnings of all others, I took off in a dead run for home to collect who and what I could in the short time allotted. Something then happened to me, something which knocked me out cold. When I came to in the hospital, weeks had gone by. From my family, I learned that our home had been caught in the fire; all our possessions had been destroyed and one of our dogs had died.

The dream then jumped forward in time ten or twenty years. I found myself cutting across the grounds of the UBC Okanagan campus, where I crossed paths with one of the female students.

(She was the spitting image of Keegan Connor Tracy.)

I inquired if she knew of the infamous Lake Country Wildfire of '17; she said she did. I then asked her if she'd like to come with me to visit the old neighbourhood; she said she did. Together, we made the trip on-foot to my old neighbourhood. The townscape had transformed considerably since the 2010s. For example, where there had once been a small church now stood a series of Arby's restaurants.

(Arby's had transitioned from a chain of sandwich restaurants to a Dairy Queen clone in the intervening decades.)

Arriving on the site of where my house had stood, we found no remaining trace of it. In its stead were several white houses and sheds, some enveloped in clear plastic, all smouldering. There was even a Chow Chow lying on a front yard who was ashy and smoky.

(He was alive and uninjured in spite of this (I suppose some dogs are just more fire-retardant than others.).).

My companion pondered on how the area could still be smouldering after all these years; I gave an existential answer about how the location still retained the memory of that fire in its soil or something poetic like that, but I knew what was happening was truly the direct result of a recent wildfire.

The Mini-Bear/My Bisexual, Polyamorous Girlfriend/The All-Girl Lacrosse Game on My Front Lawn/Illya Woloshyn vs. Pat Roach

The family and I won a miniature, cat-like bear by way of a call-in radio show. We initially planned to donate the bear to a zoo, but upon seeing how well our dogs bonded with it, we decided to keep it.

* * *

I got myself a girlfriend.

(She strongly resembled the actress Emily Holmes.)

My mother didn't like her, as she was both bisexual and polyamorous. While I tolerated her promiscuity, I got the sense our relationship wasn't fated to last.

* * *

Two all-girl lacrosse teams were out on my front lawn, playing a match. I recall the colours of one of the team's uniforms: red jerseys with black shorts.

* * *

Illya Woloshyn

and Pat Roach

were out on the streets, surrounded by an audience of hoodlums, engaged in a fierce battle-royale-to-the-death. Illya was using a baseball bat as his weapon of choice while Pat was using an oversized carpenter hammer.

Trance Loses Her Hair/The Orgy on Ferenginar/Don't Buy This Product!!!

Trance Gemini and Seamus Harper from the TV series Andromeda were on a ship stranded in a pocket universe.

(As is wont to happen with my luck, it was Gold Trance, my least favourite incarnation of the character.)

Since this pocket universe was so minuscule, there were very few stars present inside it. This proved detrimental to Trance, as being the living incarnation of a sun, she needed long-term proximity to stellar bodies to remain healthy.

Growing progressively weaker the longer they spent trapped in the microcosm, Trance's hair started falling out.

(You won't see me mourn that rat's nest.)

She gave a lock of it to Harper, asking him to weave it into his own hair.

(While the dream trailed off there, I like to believe that Harper and Trance escaped the pocket universe off-screen, culminating in her transformation back to her former, perfect purple self.)

* * *

On the world of Ferenginar, most of the Ferengi — bodies slathered in silver body paint

— were engaged in a worldwide orgy.

(Lots 'n' lots of oo-mox. Ooh yeah!)

Then the Cardassians arrived. A large invasion fleet at their command, they conquered Ferenginar with next to no resistance. Once their ships landed, the Cardassians began rounding half the Ferengi population up for transport to offworld internment camps. The remaining Ferengi? They began having consensual sex with their new Cardassian overlords right away. One of the Ferengi being hauled off called this action a "rank abomination".

* * *

My parents bought a purple cleaning product advertised in an infomercial.

Unfortunately, the stuff proved too caustic; it began eating holes in the floor soon upon application.

Furthermore, the seller of the product turned out to be the thrall of a skeletal female vampire.

All Dogs Go to Heaven (And Sometimes Come Back)

Dreamt that I was visited by the spirit of my dog, Sheba, who's been dead since 2011. She appeared to me as she had appeared throughout much of her life — chunky, but without the mass of tumours which had developed on her chest in the years preceding her passing. Accompanying her were the spirits of several other dogs, some of whom I recognized, others I didn't. They hadn't come to haunt me; they just wanted me to know that death was not the end.

R. I. P.

Sheba

c. 2000 – 2011

The Lonesome Death of William Bruce Rose Jr.

I had a dream that Axl Rose

(wearing a tuxedo, holding a dirty needle)

was sitting up in a cherry tree in my backyard. After leaping out of the tree, he proceeded to rant and rave to everyone within earshot, dangerously waving the needle about.

I ended up beating him to death with a baseball bat.

The Abandoned Insurrection/Ride with a Pederast/Throwdown with the Trio from Tartarus

I led (or at least participated in) an insurrection which took place on the grounds of the Okanagan College Kelowna campus in the dead of winter.

(I suppose them's the breaks when your math instructor fails to communicate with you in regards to continuing your tutelage under him in spite of repeated efforts on your part to get in touch.)

Then I found myself away from the college and the insurrection, waiting for a bus in the cold, wet snow. I was then run down by a car or some such vehicle. I received no major injuries, though I was knocked senseless and ended up missing the bus.

A man at the wheel of a red car pulled up and offered me a ride. Since he looked like the bastard love child of Ernie Coombs and Hans Moleman,

I took him as harmless and took him up on his offer. Once we got to my neighbourhood, he propositioned me for sex.

That's when I pretended to whip out a knife and held its invisible blade up to his throat.

I threatened to cut him good if he didn't let me out and drive off toot sweet. Presumably none too eagre to hurry through his twilight years, he did just that. Oh, and it wasn't winter anymore.

As I proceeded to walk the rest of the way home, the red car reappeared. Ernie Moleman was no longer behind the wheel. There were three unfamiliar men in there now, one of them wearing a white hood over his head; he had a bloody hole smack-dab in the centre of his forehead. As there was little cover to be had, I cut across someone's backyard and ducked down behind a short length of fence, hiding where I could see them but they couldn't see me. But they weren't human, after all, and they didn't need sight to locate me. Emerging from their car, they strode right up to where I had secreted myself. That's when I took up a length of hard, heavy wood and began beating at them with it.

Of course, being supernatural, they had greater endurance to pain and injury than any mere man. I'd hit them, and at best that would slow them down. Taking up their own lengths of wood, they in turn began hitting me; I wasn't as tough as they. Taking up a trowel lying within reach, I attacked one of the men — a portly, balding fellow — and stabbed him right in the brainpan. Twisting the trowel around, I managed to pop his eyes out, leaving them danging from their sockets. That didn't kill or incapacitate him; he was as brimming with piss and vinegar as he had been when this scuffle commenced.