Dreams: By Tag: Death

Friday, September 03, 2010: Wife eats a peanut

He and his wife were standing in the kitchen. His wife ate a peanut to see how she would react. Her face swelled up and she feinted, falling into his arms. He picked up the phone and called an emergency number and shouted at them to hurry.

Friday, July 16, 2010: In Search of a Bus Stop

In search of a bus stop, he walked at night on a street in a strange city of low brick buildings, streetlights, and brightly lit shop interiors. Other people walked the streets, some entering and exiting the shops.

He walked into a building, climbing up and down many flights of stairs and through many corridors. He thought in general that he was moving below ground level. He entered a large room with a crowd gathered in a vague queue. He saw a concession stand with popcorn, a ticket booth, and a marquee. He realized it was a movie theater. He walked away in search of the bus stop.

He stood before a large platform open to daylight and a long descent to the ground. His father stood on the platform. A man made an announcement over a loudspeaker. His father shrugged and jumped to his death.

Friday, May 21, 2010: Elements

He stood inside a stone building. Others stood around with him. Through a wide opening, they looked at the water and the light of day.

But something viscous, black, and malevolent surged within the water. It began to bulge and lift itself up through the opening. Panic spread through the others. Darkness fell. He grabbed a thick branch and climbed upstairs.

Already, the sky was black. Trees bent in the wind. He leaped into the air and flew, carried by the wind backwards and upwards. Below, savages with spears pursued him. He pointed the thick branch at them. He expected lightning to shoot out from the branch, but instead, out came a glowing green streamer of energy that remained on the air and floated down softly.

Thursday, April 01, 2010: The Devil

He died.

He stood outside, looking down at his body on the ground. In a moment, he found himself inside a dark stone building. He stood in a waiting room before an open door. After a short wait, a secretary said that the devil would see him now.

He walked into the room and sat down. The devil was sitting behind a desk, flanked by two secretaries. The devil appeared to be a well-dressed, mannered white-haired man with a beard. The devil greeted him, and began to review his life and ask him questions, while the secretaries took notes or presented factual documents.

One question was, "How many acts of selfless love did you commit?" He wasn't sure. One of the secretaries handed the devil a paper, and he said, "I see here that you have committed nine acts of selfless love during your life. Well done."

There was no sense of a trial, condemnation, or judgment. It was a review of his life. This place, too, was not one of punishment. He was sure this was hell, but it was organized, structured, purposeful, elegant; it was a bureaucracy, devoid of any negative elements associated with bureaucracy.

At the conclusion of the review, the devil said, without menace or guile, that he had a job for a man like him.

Monday, March 08, 2010: Zombie Apocalypse

He walked up Pilgrim Ave towards his house, with a gun in one hand and a sword in the other hand, fighting off wave after wave of shambling zombies. He escorted a couple up the street, making sure they were armed to continue their journey. Another couple, one a ghost and one alive, passed him on the sidewalk. He arrived at his house, now reinforced with concrete and steel. From time to time, he opened a gunport and fired out at the zombies.

He woke up, went back to sleep, and the dream continued.

He entered a white room. There were weapon in one corner. He passed over the rapiers. He selected a longsword and a dagger. He asked his friend Bob what was his weapon of choice against zombies. Bob replied axes.

He walked into another room, and swung his weapons at the walls.

Thursday, February 25, 2010: Chased by a skunk

He walked down Hamilton Street at night. At the corner of Pilgrim Ave and Hamilton Street, a skunk carrying a smaller dead animal began to chase him.

Wednesday, November 04, 2009: Leeches

He walked down a cracked and pocked sidewalk along a dead-end street. Some of the holes in the sidewalk were filled with black smoking liquid. On his right was a tall fence with a hedge, and there were tall trees behind the fence, on the other side of the street, and at the end of the street. It was day, but there was only dim light because the trees shaded the dead-end road.

Others walked with him. They seemed to be searching for something. A moment came when they changed direction, away from the dead-end.

A father was looking for his son. The father said that his son told him there was something in the sidewalk. He changed direction again to show the holes in the sidewalk to the father. The holes had changed. They were filled with clear liquid, and tiny black leeches slinked and jumped out of the liquid. He and the father reacted to them by changing direction again, away from the dead-end road.

A school bus passed by. Something was wrong and people were being rescued.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008: Medusa

He stumbled out of bed into the bathroom. Dark shapes slithered behind the shower curtain. His vision dimmed until he was blind. He called out for help, but there was no answer.

He found himself back in bed. In the dark, his wife stood over him. He began to get up, and saw her face was a mass of writhing worms.

He knew he was asleep, and he tried to call out in his sleep to his wife sleeping next to him. A scratching at his leg woke him; the dog must have heard him crying out.

Thursday, April 17, 2008: The man who fell to earth

He found himself riding in a shiny metal bus. The bus was floating through space. Neither the driver nor the passengers could control the bus as it floated through space. There was little they could do about their situation.

He could see that the bus and its passengers were floating towards a very bad, very dangerous part of space. Some passengers decided to abandon the bus. He did not know where they went, but they departed just the same. He and the few remaining passengers braved the dangerous part of space together.

Soon, asteroids struck the bus, and the thin metal of the bus tore open. The bus broke apart completely, spilling him and the rest of the passengers into cold dark space.

Alone, unprotected and adrift, he exhaled a final breath. He felt his body freeze solid.

And for a long time, nothing happened.

After some time, the man woke up. He found himself on planet earth. He examined himself, clenching and stretching out his softening hand. He felt warmth entering his body again. He realized what he had endured.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008: No one should brave the Underworld alone

He looked left and he was riding on a blue-green bus; he looked right and he was in a long white room. On the left, his wife sat across from him on the bus. On the right, his wife played a banjo and sang a song. Everybody on the bus or in the room applauded when she finished the song. He thought it was unusual that his wife was playing banjo, as she normally plays guitar.

His old friend William was in the white room; it was an apartment. There was a lot of clutter they were sorting through. Amidst the clutter, they found two tightly bundles stacks of dark gray rectangles. These were some kind of artifact they had created but forgotten, whose purpose they could no longer identify.

An old friend (who took his life many years ago) was playing guitar and singing Jesus is my Friend, which he always played tongue-in-cheek. The space he was in seemed to be like the blue-green bus only more open.

He found himself walking with a companion, underground. He was moving through a series of vaults. These vast rectangular chambers were cut from dark gray stone. He and his companion were exploring, though there was little light to see by. Suddenly, a menacing giant whose body consisted almost entirely of a large head came upon them and began to harass them. His companion said to ignore the giant and move on.

They came upon a chamber with a feature; a large crevasse in the far left corner. A violet light emanated from it. He thought perhaps this could be a way out. But he was hasty, parted with his companion, and leaped before he looked. He found himself falling into a deeper layer of this Underworld. Fortunately, he landed on a rough flat square stone. The stone hovered independent of the crevasse shelves. He rose on the stone into the air. Another man was using his will to lift him up.

You may noticed that this dream is told as a third person narrative. I am experimenting with this method to give myself a different perspective on the material.

A slight alteration has been made to the episode order: the deceased friend playing guitar happened last.

The companion in the underworld, his guidance, and powers resemble the idea of the psychopomp.

Sunday, March 16, 2008: Power in the blood

I had a dream that my wife and I were at a lavish outdoor party on the patio of a mansion. The hostess was an Egyptian woman. She poured drinks for us from an alabaster jar into our glass goblets. The wine was golden, clear and sparkling. My wife and I drank it. When we spoke again, I noticed that my wife had long incisors. This did not frighten me at all.

I entered the mansion and found a dark chamber where captives were slaughtered mechanically and drained of their blood.

Thursday, February 07, 2008: Fighting a dragon, dog injured and healed, suicide

Together, we were fighting a monster in a dark place. The monster was lit with flickering blue and violet flames.

During the fight, I found my dog, injured on the ground. His jaw was broken; he was in pain. I took a towel and wrapped him in it to carry him off to a vet. But I looked down in the towel, and he was completely healthy.

I was in a parking lot at night with several coworkers. I was standing with one coworker talking. Suddenly, as we looked beyond a fence, a woman jumped from a high brick building and died; I recognized her as yet another coworker. We were shocked and saddened.

Friday, October 12, 2007: Class Room Anxiety

I sat in a chair at the front-middle desk of a cramped and dim classroom. I wore a dull green winter coat, a gray wool hat, a dark blue scarf, black gloves, and black boots. I arranged a heavy load of books and a backpack on my desk and under my chair. I thought that I must stand out; not only was I encumbered more than my fellow students, but I was also the only adult in a classroom of teenagers. The teacher spoke up; she reminded me of my high school French teacher, a large, pale, light-haired old woman. She told us to begin our assignments.

I shuffled through a stack of mimeographed papers. Upon examination, the assignment seemed to be a comic strip about aliens, written in their language. But there were no blanks to fill. The teacher, to clarify, held up a copy of the assignment; it was a different one that I was looking at. I shuffled through my papers again and found the correct assignment, which had a lot of blank space for writing, and appeared to be a geometry assignment, with diagrams of circles and triangles. But as I was writing my name at the top of the page, the teacher said to hand them in.

As I handed her my incomplete assignment, she said that my mother had called to ask if she needed to pick me up at 6:45. I thought for a moment and said yes, though in the back of my mind, I wondered how she was going to pick me up, because she was dead.

Saturday, April 07, 2007: Worms

I only recall dreaming about worms squirming on the floor. They were yellow, and varied in length and thickness. They made me feel uncomfortable.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007: Magic in the Office

I was in my childhood home. It was night, and the house was dark. I looked into my parents’ bedroom. I saw my mother lying on the right side of the bed, on her side, facing the wall, under the covers. Then I remembered that she was dead, and I woke up.

In my second dream, I was in an office. The staff was gathered around me as I drew five concentric circles on the carpet. When the circles were complete, I rapped my knuckles on the center circle. We waited. Suddenly, we noticed that the circles became grooves in the carpet. I dug my fingers into the grooves around the smallest, central circle. I lifted out a circular section of carpet and wooden floor, leaving a small hole the size of a hand. I lifted the next ring out, and the next, and the next. As I lifted the final ring, through the opening now five feet across, light fell through the dark hollow beneath, a plunge that dropped as far as we could see, onto some wooden scaffolding, but without a visible bottom. One of the staff was frightened; he told me to put them back. I replaced the rings and closed the hole.

Sunday, January 21, 2007: Drowning in a Green Sea

I dove into a sea of warm green water, and let myself sink. I wondered if anybody would rescue me. While I felt myself drifting, I could not tell if somebody was pulling me to shore, or if the current was pulling me further out to sea.

Saturday, January 13, 2007: Haunted Again

Twice, I dreamed that an apparition of my late mother was watching me through the windows of my house.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007: Stone Form, Bombed

We were in cramped barracks, fending off the brutal attacks of a martial artist made out of stone. A boulder was launched at him, but he deflected it. He raised his fist to crush me. I closed my eyes. I opened my eyes again, and his fist was still over me. “Do it quickly”, I told him, and closed my eyes again, as he brought his fist down.

We were running down a street as planes dropped bombs around us. At a fork in the road, a bomb fell close to us. Everything went dark and quiet, and I was aware only of my thoughts.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007: Ghar Point

I sat in the classroom of a professor named Doctor Grady. He had a round, rosy face. He gave us a quiz on an epic poem. I had already completed the first question. The second question asked, “What is a ghar point? And is there a passage in the poem that could be described as a ghar point?” I looked up ghar point in an English textbook, and it said that a ghar point is the crossing of a river, often symbolic of death. I reviewed the epic poem, and such a passage did exist in the poem. The professor also mentioned a significant series of numbers, 2-5-9.

Friday, November 17, 2006: House of Rose and Verdigris

I was lying in a bed under heavy white cotton sheets and a lemon comforter. I was alone. I had the impression that I was old. I felt very sluggish, but I could not sleep. I thought that I should rise and take some fresh air. I lifted myself out of bed, walked across the cold white marble floor, across the brick patio, and into a garden of geometrically-sculpted bushes. I admired the view of my palace, with its rose marble walls and verdigris dome.

Slowly, my eyes dimmed. I became weaker, and I sank into the grass. I could not lift myself. I crawled in darkness through the grass, feeling its blades and bare spots with my hands. I thought to myself, “I am going to die, alone, in this place.”

Eventually, I reached the patio, and my bedroom, and I lay in bed. A dark figure appears over me, and I woke up.

Monday, November 06, 2006: White Dragon, White Prison

A serpent-like white dragon swooped down from the upper chamber of a massive cavern and devoured me and my companions.

This came as a surprise to our raiding party, and there was much chatter in the VOIP channel regarding the strategy we should apply our next attempt.

The dream repeated, and we found ourselves alive and undevoured. This time, we approached the lair with caution. The white dragon was no longer a dragon, but a large white truck with a roaring engine. The truck swung from the ceiling on heavy cables.

Last night was one of those rare nights I listen to raid chat on Teamspeak while I play World of Warcraft.

I dreamed that I was in a minimum security prison. In fact, I could come and go as I pleased, as long as I was discreet about it.

I recall many stairs, halls, and rooms, uniform in color: beige, I think.

My bedroom was large. The walls, ceiling, and trim were painted white. There were two steam radiators, both leaking; there were dark water stains in the wooden floor. I locked myself in my room and went to bed.

The dream repeated, and I found myself fetching something from the closet, before I joined my friends. Next to the closet was a drafty window. The lights in the room did not appear to work, and I could not find what I was looking for.

Friday, October 27, 2006: Old Man

Under an overcast sky, I walked down a sidewalk. To my right was a road. To my left stretched a wrought-iron fence, and beyond the fence, a park with well-manicured grass and maple trees, still green. Leaning against the wrought-iron fence was an old man. I could hear him thinking out loud, “I wish everybody would leave me alone so I could just die.”

Sunday, October 01, 2006: Blood

The world was coming to an end. My wife and I decided to spend our last moments watching the end of the world from the third-story parlor window of my childhood home. Death was with us, but he didn’t seem threatening, rather, he seemed like a welcome companion. As the end came, thick red blood rained down from the sky and covered everything. Our flesh melted away from our bones.

Wednesday, March 02, 2005: Nightmares

While lying in the middle of Plantation Street, I watched as a child hurled handfuls of sticks into the air from the back of a truck. I felt afraid that I would get hurt, and I felt angry that nobody was stopping him.

I started walking up Plantation Street. It was night. It was so dark, I could only see the headlights of cars. After crossing the street, there weren’t even any headlights. I stood in total darkness, wondering what was happening.

I realized that I was dreaming, and that I wanted to wake up. But instead, I found myself in a dream that I was lying in bed trying to wake up. In one part, the dog was climbing up the bedroom curtain. I was afraid he would get hurt. He was barking at something out the window.

In another part, I found myself floating out of bed, drawn to a window. In the darkness, outside the window, I could make out a man-like shape, and a face like a skull.

I tried to speak in my sleep to wake my wife, but she did not wake me. I did dream that she got out of bed. Later, I asked her if she got out of bed during that hour and she said that she did.

I woke up at 4 AM today and could not go back to sleep right away. After tossing and turning for an hour, I fell back to sleep.

I’ve been playing a lot of World of Warcraft lately. The WoW dreams have subsided; I’m having normal dreams again. But my newfound hobby leaves me with little spare time to log what I have dreamed. Not to worry, I’m catching up.

Dream-wise, I’d say that last night’s episodes stem from feelings of depression and thoughts of death.

Sunday, September 12, 2004: Tornado

I was lying in bed in my house. There was a tapping at the window. My wife drew the curtains back and there before our eyes was a massive funnel cloud. It was too late to do anything; we were swept away house and all with the tornado.

Friday, August 20, 2004: Mom

I had a dream about my late mother. She walked up to me from behind, so that I could not see her. But she put her arm on my shoulder, and said, “Shhh... Don't worry.” Her touch was cold, so cold it burned.

Despite the coldness, I felt comforted by her presence and her words.

Tuesday, August 03, 2004: Apartments

I was standing across the street from a pair of three-story apartments, sitting on an open plain. The apartments had flat roofs and were constructed, if you had a bird’s-eye view, to resemble the letter W. The house on the left was yellow; the house on the right was white. By way of color, position, and height, the apartment on the right resembled my childhood home on Dartmouth Street, and the apartment on the left resembled... the apartment to the left of my childhood home. Because the apartments were on an open plain, I felt nervous about approaching tornados, though there wasn't a cloud in sight.

A woman was selling the yellow house. It seems I had already bought the white house. “If I had the money,” I thought, “I would buy both houses.”

As I examined the house, I discovered that the basement ceiling was very low, and I was able to move the floorboards overhead. The upper interior of the house had a wide open space with heavy, movable wrought-iron stairs, platforms, and even stranger structures, one of which I think was a folding cube.

My father, brother, uncles, and my father’s (now deceased) dog were in the house. As Bandit, my father’s dead dog approached me, I felt apprehensive, because I knew that, in real life, the dog was dead.

In another dream I had, I was in a hotel bed. I had a cold. My nose was very runny. I blew my nose frequently and put the tissues on the floor next to the bed. Steve (Jack Davenport) and Susan (Sarah Alexander) from the BBC TV show Coupling were in the bed next to me, arguing.

I had a dream that I was living in a first-floor studio of an apartment complex. A young black man outside my window was complaining about how loud my music was.

I had a dream that I was reading RPG review online, something that I was doing frequently last night.

Finally, in the last dream I remember, I was talking to a small latino boy and his family. He had a black pet that could talk, though I can’t remember if it was a cat or a dog.

Sunday, July 25, 2004: Minotaur, Hunters, Insects, Office, President

I had a dream that I killed a minotaur.

I had a dream that I was with some hunters. As they were shooting at an animal, they accidentally shot one of their horses. They didn’t kill it with the first shot, so they shot it again through the head.

I had a dream that I was trying to kill insects.

I had a dream that I was in my boss’s satellite office across from Billings Square Library. Or at least that’s where it was in my dream; my boss doesn’t have a satellite office. While I was in the house, I realized that this place could have the white room that I dream about so much. I found out that my boss hired an old friend of mine, Bob.

In my final dream, I had a dream that I was walking with a president. It was either Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Al Gore, or John Kerry. Maybe he was all four of them.