High School Polyamory/Retconned Death/幽靈海灘/Star Wars: Dune

I was a teenager, standing with my girlfriend in a school hallway by some lockers, making out passionately.

As we stopped to take a breath, a lovely girl approached us. She was clearly attracted to my girlfriend, and my girlfriend to her, so they French kissed right in front of me.

I wasn't angry or jealous; I only wanted my turn at kissing this girl. But when I leaned in, she stopped me, making it clear she wasn't interested in my tongue. Respecting her bounds, I took an amicable step back.

My girlfriend and I were soon approached by another girl.

(She resembled an older, bespectacled, brunette version of Ponyo from the eponymous anime.)

She wanted a kiss from me. I didn't find her attractive, but I didn't want to leave her dejected, so I slipped her some tongue.

* * *

My father showed up, alive. Though I knew he was supposed to be dead, no one else remembered his death.

I don't often have bad dreams, but this was certainly one of them.

* * *

I visited my local food bank to receive a hamper. Unlike in reality, the food bank was the size of a hotel. Thousands of people had come to receive food, but there wasn't enough staff to serve them in a timely manner, so tempers began to rise, with visitors cursing out the workers, some of whom began suffering nervous breakdowns from the abuse heaped on them.

The dream then shifted focus. It was the '80s, and a boy was standing over a cliff overlooking a large lake. A prepubescent white kid, he was dressed only in swimming trunks. He either jumped or fell in, dashing his head against the rocks on the way down. With a bleeding head wound, he floated onto the shore of a local beach, where he was spotted and dragged in by beachgoers. This boy, who was white, suddenly was black, and his head was missing. It was implied his head was eaten by the ghosts haunting the beach.

This beach belonged to a small park only a couple acres in size. Prior to the 1920s, it had been used as a graveyard for Chinese immigrants, though by the 1930s, it had ceased to be used as a burial ground; only a pair of turn-of-the-last-century cremation ovens left outside to rust and a handful of water-eroded graves stood as testament to the original purpose for this plot. All this was related to me by the ghost of a Chinese woman who had died in a fire; her burns diminished as she told me the story.

* * *

When Denis Villeneuve said his Dune would be Star Wars for adults, he meant that literally; the script for his movie placed Dune inside the SW Universe. The Bene Gesserit were an all-female Jedi splinter group; Duke Leto and Poe Dameron were one-and-the-same character; the Harkonnens had a fleet of TIE fighters.

One absurd image from the dream has stayed clear in my mind: a TIE fighter, chained to the moon, desperately trying to take off but failing, repeatedly chipping its panels against the stony ground. No, not the moon of Arrakis or any other world from Dune — Earth's moon; the big blue marble hung right up there in the sable sky.

Mommy, Would You Like Some Sausage?/There Will Be Mermaids

A confession: I don't know how much longer this blog will continue. With my father's death, my mother's chronic hospitalization, my sister's breakup with her boyfriend, four months with a terrible roommate, and ongoing financial difficulties, 2019 was a terrible year for me. My ability to recall dreams has gone to shit this past year, no doubt due to all this stress. It's been over a month since I last recalled a dream in any detail, and even then it was hazy.

What follows are the last dreams I've had worth sharing. Unless my dream recollection improves, they may be the last ones you'll get to read for a long while.

* * *

I was standing in a room with a woman. The white walls were empty, blank save for blue light which created a gradient effect upon them. The woman was a lovely brunette, with long hair which trailed down her back. She was wearing a gray bathrobe. Loosening her robe, she let it down about her shoulders, exposing them to me. Leaning in close, I began kissing her graceful back and shoulders, slowly, tenderly.

Then I was suddenly in my basement. A man I didn't recognize was putting a damp, sausage-shaped pillow up on a line to dry. He told me the pillow represented loneliness and longing.

* * *

What follows is a fragment from a larger dream which, true to my luck, is mostly a blur now.

I was watching a deleted scene from There Will Be Blood. Daniel Plainview had sent his son, H. W., down into a great deep lake without diving gear to build his lung capacity. At the bottom of the lake was a submerged palace. While exploring inside, the kid encountered a mermaid. She was about his age, friendly, with black hair and a pretty smile. I think she had dark brown, almost black eyes and webbed hands, but I may be misremembering.

No Dogs, No Masters/Witchspin/The Mutant Calicoes Beneath My Garage/Ghost Dad/And the Suns Became as Red as Blood ...

My mother and I joined a plethora of anarcho-communist/anarcho-syndicalist organizations, all of which catered to cat lovers in particular.

* * *

Had a bi/transerotic dream which included witches and werewolves in powdered wigs. I remember nothing coherent about it.

* * *

There was a hole in the floor of my garage. The hole led down to a cave/hollow beneath the foundation. All my cats which had gone missing over the years had gotten trapped down there, where they survived and bred. After nearly twenty years of inbreeding, they were almost all calicoes, and while a portion of them remained attractive animals, another portion was mutated/deformed; one cat had three heads, another had a teeny-tiny head as a result of getting their head permanently stuck in a bottle cap as a kitten.

* * *

The ghost of my father began manifesting about the house. He stayed in bed for the most part, sick as he had been in the months leading up to his death. Though he'd periodically talk to us, I got the sense that this was no sapient Earthbound spirit; this was just a spectral recording, a semi-interactive ectoplasmic hologram, and his true soul had moved on to the next phase of its existence.

* * *

I was in my kitchen, washing dishes, when the power went out. After about a minute, the overhead light came back on, but the rest of the house remained without electricity. I looked outside the window; the sky was black with thick cloud. Showing through this otherwise solid blanket of black, haloed in red, was not one, but two suns.

Exsphinxtion/Up in (SUV) Smoke

I was taking a casual stroll, minding my own business, bothering nobody, when I crossed paths with a Greek sphinx.

She gave me a friendly smile, then proceeded to attack me. I took off running to get away from her, but she was incredibly swift, so I really had to pump those calves to keep ahead of her.

I soon came to a tall flight of dirt steps which led to a Greek temple. I ran up those dirt steps, telling myself not to look back, that if I looked back I'd see the sphinx right behind me, falter from fear, and be swiftly overtaken, so I forced myself to keep looking ahead.

Unbeknownst to me, the sphinx had circled around, and before I could reach the temple, she was before me, rearing up, ready to take me down with her claws. I tried warding her off with a baseball bat, but she was too massive and powerful; I was dead meat.

* * *

Just north of my house lies a large empty field. Seated inside my sister's F-150, I was parked on the edge of this field, just staring straight ahead at nothing in particular. That's when two SUVs came driving through, racing each other at breakneck speed. One of them passed too close, knicking a headlight. After the SUVs were past, I leapt out of the truck, yelling after the one who'd hit me. When I went to check the Ford for damage, I found it hadn't so much as a scrape, luckily.

A small pack of wild dogs came running past, following the SUVs. Fearful they'd get run over by those careless assholes, I followed them, trying to persuade them to leave the area. That's when I found amongst them Cheech, my dog who'd gone missing this April. Around his torso had been secured a plaid bandage. Apparently he hadn't been killed by coyotes as the family and I had believed, just injured then nursed back to health by some good Samaritan.

Getting my family to assist me, I picked Cheech up and carried him inside the house, taking care not to jostle him too much because he was still healing from his ordeal. At this point, I began suspecting what was happening wasn't real, just a dream. Then I awoke. Cheech is still gone, almost certainly dead, and I miss him.

R. I. P.

Cheech

March/April 2004 — 25 April 2019

Swedish Tongue/Back to the Dead/Burtonverse: The Special Edition

It was the '60s and I was in Sweden, on the set of a movie being filmed by Ingmar Bergman. I'd been hired as an extra, but due to an actor's absence, I was promoted to bit player. I was to deliver my lines in Swedish, but not being fluent in the language, I had to recite them phonetically; I flubbed them badly.

On the plus side, Bibi Andersson and I shared a mutual attraction; we spent the whole time flirting and consulting a Swedish-English dictionary to bolster my understanding of her tongue.

*swoon*

* * *

In the near-future, the end times came upon us. The human birth rate had fallen to zero and the souls of the dead were no longer permitted to pass into the afterlife; they remained tethered to their decaying bodies, intelligent zombies which maintained an uneasy, sometimes hostile co-existence with the living population.

Marty McFly had developed an addiction to pizza; he ate multiple slices of pizza multiple times a day every day until he became obese, died of heart disease, and came back a zombie.

He continued eating pizza — old, dry, mouldy pizza topped with human skin.

* * *

Dreamt that I watched alternate cuts of the Tim Burton Batfilms which had been re-edited to better conform with the Schumacher films. Not only had a mention of the Riddler been inserted in Batman '89, but a new scene with Dick Grayson had been placed in Batman Returns; he was Vicki Vale's new boyfriend, and he was shown driving a shape-changing holographic car.

The dream ended on a mortifying note. In a Returns post-credits scene, the soul of the Penguin — reduced back to infancy, back in his gothic baby carriage — was sailing down the River Styx. As his androgynous soul made its voyage along those brown waters, the disembodied spectral head of Tim Curry materialized over it.

Looming large over the carriage, Tim Curry's disembodied head metamorphosed into the disembodied head of Pennywise the Clown, complete with large, burning red eyes. Looking directly at the viewer, me, he showed a ghastly grin of sharpened teeth. For several seconds I had no choice but to stare back into those hideous eyes before I forced myself awake.

The Wood Pushers Meet the Killers, Mario & Luigi

I really wish I could remember how this dream began. The beginning was particularly wacky, involving superheroes and my family and I living on a deserted island with carnivorous dinosaurs.

I recalled these sequences in some detail after I woke up, but I went too long without recording them, so now those details are lost. 😒

The dream proper I do recall quite well. It was another one of my frustrating "back to high school" dreams.

IRL, there's a hallway showcasing photos of all past graduates. In the dream, however, only grads from the last thirteen years were represented; grad photos from 1960-2005 were tucked away inside a folder, which was sealed in a glass case on the wall. This flustered me greatly, as I wanted to see the '05 grad photos.

(that's the year I would've graduated IRL if life hadn't bent me over a table).

Thwarted, I left, taking care to hide my face from any teachers/counsellors/etc. who would've recognized me as I crept along the halls. As I stepped outside, I peeled off my shirt and discarded it; this drew the attention of douchebag jocks, who started heckling me over my copious back hair and less-than-trim physique as I left school grounds.

As I entered downtown, I found myself in a heavily industrial area (IRL, no such area exists in my hometown). There I stumbled upon four old casual friends/acquaintances/occasional enemies from my high school years who were on their lunch break. We got to talking, and I came to mention my mother's heart attack, my late father's cancer, and that we were constantly in need of firewood to heat our shanty. This is when they informed me they were wood pushers — i.e. sellers of illegally acquired firewood. They agreed to sell  me a cord if I met them at the abandoned power plant where their deals went down.

Deep down in the power plant's humid, musty, rusty innards I met up with the four guys. There I learned from them their supplier had given them crappy apple wood. Taking a piece, one of the guys deposited it on the ground for me to examine; though it resembled a ruptured potato, I thought it looked perfectly burnable. Then we heard commotion outside. Telling me to stay put, the four left to see what the deal was. Minutes passed. There was loud shouting, cursing, then abrupt silence. More minutes passed. One of the four returned, panicked. He told me a pair of contract killers employed by rival wood pushers had killed his friends, were coming after him, and that we had to get to safety quick.

I followed him deeper into the plant. As we came upon a final door, I saw strong light coming from behind it and assumed it was a back exit. Instead it was a small, cramped room containing empty lockers, a medical examination table, and other detritus; there were no doors or windows to escape through and no decent spot to hide. The guy was skinny enough to squeeze into a locker, but I was too big to fit in any. He hurriedly told me to hide under the two foam mattresses stacked atop the examination table; I hurriedly secreted myself under the mattresses just as the killers came through the door. Somehow I could see right through the mattresses and hence see the two killers. They were Hispanic/Latino (they spoke in Spanish/Portuguese), dressed as Mario and Luigi, and armed with flamethrowers.

As you can very well guess, they knew someone was hiding in that there room. While I remained still, hoping beyond hope they hadn't noticed me and thought my comrade was the only person in the room, he left his hiding spot, offering to cut a sweet deal in exchange for his life. They agreed, but only as a fake-out; once his guard was down, Ersatz Luigi toasted him with his flamethrower.

Now it was just me, clumsily hidden beneath two mattresses, a pair of merciless killers armed with deadly weapons standing before me, blocking off my only escape route. I didn't know if they knew I was there and didn't know if they wouldn't torch the place regardless. That's when my body forced me awake.

Me & Mia Malkova/My Uncle's Antique Typewriter/Son of Tales from the Gimpy Hospital

I was sealed in an impenetrable safe room with Mia Malkova.

Usually I enjoy dreams where I get some, but I didn't enjoy this one. The safe room was dank, I got the sense she was only jumping my bones because my bones were the only bones available, and the dream had this undefined but pervading Lovecraftian atmosphere to it.

* * *

An uncle and aunt of mine moved into the bottom storey of the duplex I lived in briefly back in late 1998/early 1999. When me, my parents and sister visited the place, we found they had renovated it so thoroughly it only barely resembled the home we had known.

My uncle had in his possession an antique typewriter from 1908.

He allowed me to try it out. My mother was miffed at this 'cause my uncle had inherited the typewriter from their father, who had inherited it from his father, and she considered it a family heirloom too priceless to use for such everyday, mundane purposes.

* * *

In my original bedroom, an old CRT TV had been set up in the otherwise empty room. I believe I'd set it up so I could play Super Nintendo games on it, but there was no SNES console present and only snow playing on the screen. It was summer and quite hot in the room, so I'd opened the window to cool it down. I'd opened it only a crack, though, because there was no screen over the window and I was fearful of yellowjackets entering through the spaces in the gauzy white curtain.

For some reason or other, my parents wanted me to visit the hospital, so I took the bus there. At the hospital, I found a black, brown, and white tabby kitten wandering the corridors.

Taking the kitten with me, I went outside to the bus stop. Climbing aboard the bus, I asked if this was the bus for my hometown; D

who was present on the bus, told me this was indeed the right bus. I took a seat back away from her and the bus rolled off.

During the trip, I took up a conversation with the young woman seated beside me. She was a pleasant lady, so I offered the kitten to her as a gift; she accepted the kitten, but in a strange roundabout way. 

As the bus entered my hometown, I looked out my window; the landscape was recognizable, but the landmarks eerily different somehow, as if certain buildings had been demolished/relocated/replaced during my brief absence.

The Unholy Trinity

Had myself an unwelcome bout of sleep paralysis.

I was in bed, dozing, when I heard my sister calling for me upstairs. Her voice sounded distant, muffled, so I figured I was asleep and dreaming all this and didn’t bother to get up or respond. Then I heard the music from the Pink Floyd song “In the Flesh” playing in the background.

It was if my sister had turned it on at full-volume to rouse me from sleep, though it had the same distant, muffled quality her voice had.

Then I felt myself being shaken. I opened my eyes and saw three figures over me; the first was my father — some 20-30 years younger than he was before his recent passing; the second was a rail-thin man with fine hair and stringy beard who looked vaguely familiar; the third was out in the corner of my eye and I couldn’t see them clearly.

(My sister?)

My father looked kinda-sorta concerned for me, but the second man had something of a malevolent look on his face, and he moved forward in a creepy herky-jerky fashion.

All of them made these unsettling noises, like something between roars and hisses. I shut my eyes and tried to move but couldn’t. Then I felt a weird sensation, like the room was quaking around me. Then it was over and I was fully awake.

(I guess this is what comes of a night spent watching horror movies and reading Hellboy comics.)

From the Dream Archives: D & the Wolf

I meant to post this on the 19th, the 2nd anniversary of this blog's existence, but time got away from me and I plumb forgot. 😞

Anyway, this'll be the final entry from the dream archives, as it's the last dream I recorded prior to my turning this blog into an on-line dream journal. It's a good one, too — a perfect subconscious rendering of my scarred psyche.

* * *

(ORIGINAL ENTRY DATE: 20 NOVEMBER 2016)

I don't remember how the dream started, but the earliest part I remember was taking a trip to D's university. For reasons unrevealed to me, a party was being hosted there in her honour, with lots of balloons and confetti and friends and family and acquaintances.

I arrived there looking particularly disconcerting, dressed only in a loincloth, my hair long and unkempt, rockin' the Kubrick Stare. I tried gaining access to the party, but D ordered me kept out. As they tried shutting the door on me, I wedged my shoulder in the door. I can't remember if I begged her to let me in or not, but as I was slowly pushed back out, she stared hard at me. Wearing a humourless grin, she told me I'd never ever be allowed to see her again or get to be a part of her extended family.

Locked out of the party, I then suffered a complete psychological breakdown. Losing all sense of reality, the entire world dissolved around me into amorphous shapes and swirling colours.

With there being a psychiatric ward at the university, I decided to commit myself. The doctor who saw me was a black man, kind of roly-poly; I think he was patterned off of Paul Winfield.

I was then somehow out of the ward and away from the university, where I encountered a pretty, petite brunette. She sported shoulder-length hair and was wearing form-fitting red-and-black clothes.

(She looked much like the girl at top, dressed in the outfit at bottom, with the aforementioned shoulder-length hair.)

She wanted me to do her right there and then against the wall. As we got going, I began my transformation into the Wolf. The personification of all the secret, base desires I keep bottled up inside, the Wolf didn't just want to screw this woman's brains out figuratively, but literally. It wanted to take all my misery and rage and hate against the world out on her, to tear her to spreads and bathe in her blood.

(Scarred psyche indeed.)

Fighting against my escalating impulses, holding desperately onto my humanity, I pulled out and away from her and quickly left before I lost myself to the animal within. Returning to the ward, I had the doctor lock me back up. Now in a secure cell, the Wolf retreated, allowing me to breathe a sigh of relief.

The dream ended there.

From the Dream Archives: Independence Day: The Series/D Dream #1/D Dream #2/D Dream #3/Jennifer Lawrence vs. My Family

(ORIGINAL ENTRY DATE: 9 OCTOBER 2016)

Had a dream that the powers-that-be made an Independence Day TV series.

(The weirdest thing about it was that Ripley from the Alien films and Ka D’Argo and his son, Jothee, from Farscape were all major characters in it.)

* * *

(ORIGINAL ENTRY DATE: 10 OCTOBER 2016)

Had more dreams about returning to high school and searching about for D without any success.

My subconscious sucks.

* * *

(ORIGINAL ENTRY DATE: 13 OCTOBER 2016)

Dreamt that I was dead, a ghost, trapped within the walls of a 17th century palace. D was there, as vibrant with life as ever, and I attempted communication with her, doing everything I could think to do to get her to notice me. Try as I might, she couldn’t/wouldn’t see/hear me.

My subconscious is an asshole.

* * *

(ORIGINAL ENTRY DATE: 15 OCTOBER 2016)

Finally had a dream which wasn’t depressing.

Trying to describe it isn’t all that easy. All I can say is that it was filled with imagery from my home town, permeated with a distinct '90s atmosphere, had locomotives, some posh-looking scientist who looked like a cross between the Monopoly guy and Col. Sanders, and was completely disjointed.

This is also the first dream I recall ever having that was anywhere near being a lucid dream. There was a point in the proceedings of the dream where everything became very realistic — the colours and textures took on an almost life-like quality — and I willed D to appear. I didn’t want her to appear as she has been appearing in my last couple dreams — largely unseen, distant, and afraid of me — but as someone who loved me and cared about me. So she appeared, a broad smile across her face, and we embraced.

* * *

(ORIGINAL ENTRY DATE: 21 OCTOBER 2016)

Dreamt that I was in a burgeoning yet troubled romance with Jennifer Lawrence.

For reasons unknown to me, Ms. Lawrence decided to leave her life as a successful and wealthy actress and move in with me and my family. Though we had lots of chemistry —

(We did lots of smooching and cuddling and talking.)

— having to suffer the overbearing crassness and ignorance of my father and sister was placing undue stress on her; she was all but ready to move out. This frightened me, 'cause if she left, I would be unable to go with her and would lose her forever.

The dream then came to an abrupt end with my father telling me to harvest two cucumbers, one of which had been partially devoured by, and covered in, yellow jackets.

Though it was bittersweet and went unresolved, this was one of the best dreams I’ve had in a while.

From the Dream Archives: War of the Necronauts!

(ORIGINAL ENTRY DATE: 15 SEPTEMBER 2016)

I had a pretty strange, semi-disturbing dream recently.

In the dream, Earth was at war with a race of aliens who flew around in biomechanical airships which resembled giant flying manta rays.

These airships would drop smaller manta rays to the ground.

These smaller mantas were actually bio-bombs, fleshy shells containing a short-range but incredibly virulent viral agent which turned any living creatures exposed to it into zombies. These zombies weren’t particularly violent — they weren’t brain or flesh-eating monsters — but they were extremely contagious and a danger to anyone close to them.

Anyway, I was a soldier in a squad stationed at a derelict ranch house, and we were tasked with taking out a bunch of bio-bombs before they could hit the ground and turn anybody into zombies. After dealing with the bio-bombs, we rendezvoused with another squad. At first, the men of the other squad were friendly. Then for some inexplicable reason, they became aloof and then violent towards us, taking their weapons and firing upon us. Though caught off guard, we quickly started fighting back.

As it turned out, our squad members all got exposed to the viral agent while we were dealing with the bio-bombs, which began transforming us into decaying zombies; that is why the other squad turned against us. Something in the viral agent rewired our brains to prevent us from recognizing the undead state we were in.

From the Dream Archives: Secret Kung Fu Agent Man/Glenn Frey: Hypnotist/3 is the Loneliest Number/Mad World/Reservoir Toydarians/Hissing High

(ORIGINAL ENTRY DATE: 12 JULY 2016)

I had this really wacky dream early this morning. I dreamt I was a time-travelling, Kung Fu-fighting secret agent — sort of a three-way cross between Marty McFly, Bruce Lee, and James Bond.

The dream was going really good — I foiled a demon’s attempt to re-convert me to Armstrongism,

(Read 1975 in Prophecy! to learn just how right he was.)

and I was kicking all sorts of malign ass — when the real-life bickering between my parents woke me up.

Just gotta love my parents. When they’re not sabotaging my life, they’re sabotaging my dreams.

* * *

(ORIGINAL ENTRY DATE: 16 JULY 2016)

I had a dream early this morning where Glenn Frey

hypnotized me and Gillian Anderson using a video played from a smartphone. Once in the hypnotic trance, I had a dream within a dream of a woman getting her teeth cleaned at a dental clinic.

* * *

(ORIGINAL ENTRY DATE: 19 JULY 2016)

Had a dream were I met and got romantically involved with two different, equally vivacious women.

I informed neither of the other's existence. Regardless, one of the girls found out about the other and gave me an ultimatum to choose between them. As I liked them both equally, I didn’t want to have to choose between them.

(Where's a Fly-type transporter when you really need one?)

* * *

(ORIGINAL ENTRY DATE: 7 AUGUST 2016)

My last dream was pretty disconcerting.

It was like I was trapped in a Twilight Zone episode where the laws of physics themselves seemed to be breaking down around me.

I would see things appear and disappear in-and-out of thin air without anyone else noticing,

and the people in my life themselves would change shape – take on different hairstyles,

skin colours,

even different dimensions.

Matters got so bad that I opened the front door of my home, and facing the cold winter weather outside, I screamed out to God to deliver me from whatever was happening. It seems God did answer my cry, for the weird breakdown of reality came to a halt. In this new stabilized reality, I found that I was now blond, in my early teens, with a pronounced overbite.

I was also the sidekick of both Superman and the Flash, dressed in some Kid Flash/Superboy combo outfit.

* * *

(ORIGINAL ENTRY DATE: 12 AUGUST 2016)

This dream began with me connecting an N64 console to my TV and struggling to get a pristine reception through the screen. Then some weird shit with my house catching fire transpired and the dream realigned. Suddenly I found myself watching a SW equivalent of Reservoir Dogs. Watto

had brought all these gangsters together for some nefarious purpose. One of the gangsters was played by Bryan Adams.

Anyway, Bryan did something which pissed Watto off, so Watto had him killed.

* * *

(ORIGINAL ENTRY DATE: 15 AUGUST 2016)

Had another one of my “back to high school” dreams earlier today. In this dream, I was crawling through the hallways and up-and-down the stairs on my belly like I was a giant lizard, hissing at anyone who looked at me the wrong way or tried to interfere with me.