Phantasms of a Bereaved Orphan

Some context for this dream. On 1 February, 2019 my father passed away after a short battle with cancer. On 11 of last month, after over two years of chronic hospitalization, my mother passed away from complications with COPD.

* * *

I was asleep in my bed when I felt a presence with me. Opening my eyes, I found the spirit of my father sitting over me, 25-30 years younger than he'd been when he passed. Calmly, with much affection in his eyes and voice, he told me he'd been dwelling in Bethlehem, that he'd been sent to watch over the family. He then vanished into thin air. I was elated by this news, but that elation didn't last long; I quickly realized something was amiss. The way he'd referred to Bethlehem was as if it was a spiritual plane, which it clearly isn't. But the biggest glitch in the matrix was my mother still being alive, which I knew was wrong. At this point I realized I was dreaming and woke up.

Except I hadn't woke up. It was a false awakening. Then I woke up. Except I didn't. Then I woke up. But I still hadn't. I was trapped in a cycle of false awakenings, one quickly sequeing into the next.

I emerged from the cycle. Getting out of bed, I went outside. In my mother's garden, she and my sister were hosting a party with a group of 5-6 people. I can't remember who all the guests were.

(Barbara Hershey and Vincent van Gogh are the only two I'm certain about.)

I hadn't emerged from the cycle after all.

I approached my mother. She was 35-40 years younger than she had been. I tried making conversation with her, but she didn't seem to notice me; she only stared into the distance, face expressionless.

The number of guests suddenly doubled or tripled in size. Now among the attendees was Tara Reid, wearing a bulky bodysuit of cabbage leaves. I took her in my arms and started peeling her leaves away, eagre to uncover her body. However, once I peeled the last of the leaves away, I found nothing but a transparent membrane containing green protoplasm and organelles undernearth. Without the leaves to provide rigidity, her head came clean off her shoulders, killing her.

Then I emerged from the cycle. I went into the kitchen, over to the sink, and standing there, looked out the window. The layout beyond was radically different than I knew it to be; in reality, where a long unpaved driveway surrounded on each side by empty fields are, were two pristine homes with neat lawns directly facing mine. My sister, with her friends Todd & Dave, were fleeing one of these properties in a hurry. Tripping and falling, she transformed into Dave, Dave transforming into a third man I'd never met before. I hadn't emerged from the cycle after all. Entering the home, Todd, nuDave, and Man #3 headed towards the basement. As I approached them, Todd introduced us; it was Alice Cooper.

Then I emerged from the cycle.

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.

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.

I Can't Get No Satisfaction

I was invited to a party being held at a spacious mansion. Once I got in, I found I was one of hundreds of guests present. The door locked behind me, and I found I couldn’t escape the place. The hostess turned out to be the ghost of a woman who resembled Charlotte Rampling.

She kept her own perfectly preserved corpse strung up and used as a marionette.

I went up to the bar and ordered a glass of absinthe. Even though I was clearly thirty years old, the bartender refused to sell me any alcohol without first presenting ID. I didn’t have any ID on me, so the bartender refused to serve me the drink. I spent much of the rest of the dream wandering about the mansion in search of absinthe, but couldn’t procure any. I even came across someone else’s derelict glass of absinthe, but when I picked it up, it turned into a cup of coffee before my eyes. In between trying to satisfy my absinthe craving, I tried ordering White Russians as an alternative, much to the same degree of success.

At one point in the dream, I met Tori Amos, who got flirtatious with me. I repaid the favour, only to have her almost immediately sour towards me and ignore me henceforth.

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.

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

Watching '80s Horror Movies on VHS/A Chat with My Inner Spirit

I was watching B-grade horror movies from the '80s on VHS through an old CRT TV.

(By gum, those were the days.)

A young(er) Donald Trump appeared in the first movie I decided to watch, playing himself.

(Could he ever play different?)

He chastised a female character for finding religion, then began monologuing to himself on how he once sought belief in a higher power before deciding to believe in himself.

(What's that, subconscious mind? Donald Trump worships himself? I already knew that, but thanks for the info anyhow.)

Gears shifted and the second movie was on.

A small group of rich, spoiled teenagers/early twenty-somethings

decided to hold a séance in the last house remaining from a poor, decaying neighbourhood that was otherwise completely bulldozed over and replaced with brand spankin' new homes built for the rich decades ago.

Assembling at a large square table in a room located in the centre of the dark, decrepit building, they used florescent ink and florescent gas

as conjuring substances to summon forth a spirit of the house. Quite suddenly a short, squat woman with messy red hair, wild eyes, and an impossibly wide mouth materialized atop the table.

(Imagine a three-way cross between Fiona Dourif, Henrietta from Evil Dead II, and the Cheshire Cat and you get the unsettling picture.)

Scared shitless, they all bolted from the room. Some got lost in the dark trying to escape, but most managed to get out to safety. I don't know what became of those trapped in the house with the spirit made flesh.

(But really, I do.)

* * *

I was now in a sterile classroom, where a social worker

(who will now be played by the saucy Elisa Donovan)

gave me a list of outfits which could help me find a job to copy down. I tried writing down some of the addresses, but for some reason I couldn't concentrate on the words and failed to do so.

In a flash, I was then on the back porch of my house. I was there with the social worker, and she was trying to communicate with my inner spirit, which looked like a human-shaped bundle of dead leaves dressed in a blue vest.

(Close enough.)

When I told the social worker her presence wasn't helping, that my inner spirit wouldn't emerge with her standing around acting all demanding, she left.

Then my inner spirit took on its true form; it looked like a dirty Avery Brooks.

(Grime to be added in post-production.)

My inner spirit then began lamenting on how it — and by extension, I — should've married and had kids by now.

"On second thought, I shouldn't have driven the saucy redhead away."