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.

A Nightmare on Shanks Road

It was the early 1980s and I met Heather Langenkamp/Nancy Thompson.

The dream proper was preceded by this random bit where I was chasing after a faux Heave-Ho.

Unlike a real Heave-Ho, it had two smaller, separate platforms which operated side-by-side rather than a single larger platform, and it was not built strong enough to flip Mario-sized objects. Even though it wasn't capable of launching me into the air, the thing remained dangerous to come into proximity to, so I was cautious in apprehending it. Once I got my grubby little hands on the mechanical bastard, it became a miniature Audrey II and started singing. As I offered it my thumb to suck from, I immediately found myself watching a videotape of Little Shop of Horrors, recording a copy in EP mode as it played.

Suddenly I found myself in the '80s. I don't know if I travelled back in time or this was a universe where I was a baby boomer — the dream was vague in this regard — but there I was, in my late teens, having just watched A Nightmare on Elm Street on the big screen, emerging from the cinema only to meet Heather/Nancy and Johnny Depp/Glen Lantz as they were also coming from watching the movie. Though I said we had all just watched ANOES, it wasn't 1984; Heather/Nancy was still in high school — about 16/17 years old — so the year was 1980/81. Also, though the two had starred together in the movie, Heather/Nancy & Johnny/Glen acted like they didn't know each other and had only now just met for the first time.

As the three of us stood out there, making our acquaintance, I tried my damnedest to keep Heather/Nancy from forming an attraction to Johnny/Glen, striving to get her interested in me instead. It seemed to have worked to some degree, 'cause I soon found myself hanging out with Heather/Nancy and her girlfriends with Johnny/Glen nowhere is sight.

A rusted can of pop and a woman's magazine in hand, one of Heather/Nancy's friends read out a list of the attributes Heather/Nancy found most desirable in a man. From the way she spoke and the combination of words she used, the girl sounded like she was singing the lyrics to a Bruce Springsteen song. I can't precisely remember the lyrics, but there was a line in there going something like "Together, we are drawn to things which will/won't burn us."

Then I woke up.

(I think Wes Craven would've been proud of this dream.)

With "Friends" Like This, Who Needs Enemies?

I was sitting in my 7th grade classroom, watching an episode from a new season of Friends.

The episode was strange in that it wasn’t comedic at all. The tone was dead-serious, and the plot very bizarre; Monica was experiencing some weird Twilight Zone scenario where the world around her was transforming into one straight from a soap opera; even the look changed halfway through from a modern HD digital look to a worn-out, hazy, shot-on-video look.

And David Arquette was the guest star.

Taking a break from the episode, I stepped out of the classroom, and found myself outside in my front yard. I wandered under a tree or into a field (or both at different times), where these tiny, mite-sized black widow spiders began swarming over me.

They began feeding off me, which started leaving me giddy and light-headed.

After a minute or two, I returned back inside the classroom to continue watching Friends. I repeated this scenario several times, taking a break from the TV to go outside, allowing evermore spiders to feed off me.

And art was imitating life; on Friends, Monica & co. were going outdoors, where they, too, were serving as smorgasbord to tiny mite-sized black widows. In the end, everyone — myself included — were left desiccated husks drained dry of all fluids.

I think I remained alive in this state.