Dreaming of Evil Again

I don't know why I'm so often hunting or being chased by something evil in my dreams. It just happens. Here's one from a few weeks back, where I dreamed about trying to keep my buddy safe from demons, and perhaps the Devil himself. Hope you enjoy as an opening to Halloween Season 2010!

It was late afternoon. The day was sunny and cool. I was walking through a nursing home in a suburban town. Well, more like I was sneaking through it. It was all a one-floor structure. There was an obscenely large number of people roaming the halls - nurses, visitors, etc. I was suspicious of each and every one of them. Did they know who I was, what I was doing there? Did they recognize me?

Eventually, I located a room that seemed familiar, and knew it would help me find what I was looking for. Inside, a nurse was putting sheets on an empty bed. The room looked vacant; I guess she was prepping it for a new guest of the facility. There was a quick conversation between me and her that I basically didn't hear, but here was the gist: I asked her something, and she seemed to recognize me for what or who I was (whatever or whoever that is). She warned me of something, like a threat. I asked her something else, much more fiercely. She answered. The whole thing at this point seemed that she was either evil or knew enough about the evil folks to tell me it was useless to resist or go through with my crazy plan. Then again, she asked, why was I here? Holy shit, was I there because something important was there? Freakoutfreakoutfreakout. She tried to run away, and I wasn't about to let her, but there was chaos down the hall. Damnit, they had found me. I had either been followed or someone had spotted me.

I raced back the way I had come - toward the main lobby and entrance. I could hear angry yelling, like newcomers arriving and demanding answers from the people there. People were scurrying down the hall past me, eager to get away. I realized then that the noise was coming toward me. I cast around, trying to figure out what to do. I couldn't escape, and I hadn't found what I had been looking for. Up and down the hall, doors were open, and frightened face peered out. Except one room, on the left, near the lobby. In an inspired moment, I rushed toward the door, praying it was unlocked. Fortunately, it was, and I threw myself inside, slamming the door shut again just as the cacophony outside reached that part of the hall.

In the room, I found my John, standing next to a desk, looking as if he expected to be shot or stabbed on the spot. He didn't know me, whoever I was. We had a short conversation, where John essentially asked if I was there to kill him. I responded that I was actually there to save him. John wanted me to explain further, but at that moment, the noise outside rose to nothing short of how Hell itself must sound. Something had arrived. HE had arrived. From the hall, all was a roar of violence and anguished screams. It was overwhelming, and for a moment, I froze. I had not expected HIM to arrive.

"Out the window!" I hissed, regaining myself. John just looked at me as if I had asked him to cut off his own hand. "Now!" I bellowed. In a moment, John had thrown open the window and thrown himself outside. I was directly behind him and didn't look back.

I felt only slight relief as we crossed the manicured lawn of the nursing home and trekked into a maze of backyards. "We got away, right? What was that?" John asked over his shoulder, pressed forward by the fact that I kept moving at a brisk pace right behind him.

I chuckled mirthlessly. "I don't know how you drew HIS ire without knowing who HE is, man, but HE is pure evil. HE is like the king of all demons and evil men." Seeing Johnr disbelieving look over Johnr shoulder, I pressed on, telling the horrors that HE could commit and the powers HE possessed. I went on for some time, directing John through back yards, only crossing streets when absolutely necessary, as dusk began to approach. As I finished the litany, I mentioned, "...and HE can take and control regular people, as long as they're inclined enough in their hearts to become evil or commit horribly evil acts."

"How do you mean?" John asked. As if to answer, a dozen teenage kids on bikes and on foot, holding flashlights, guns, and anything sharp they seemed able to find, came rushing toward us between two houses, screaming both wordlessly and in simple shouts such as "Get them!" and "There they are!" Their eyes seemed glossy and dead. And it was very bad that they were so close we could see that much detail.

We ran. I can't even say how we eluded them. At one point, we pulled a half a block awy from them, and they lost track of us. We cut out from yards to cross a street, only to find a man there walking alongside his bike. The moment he saw us, his face went slack and all his energy seemed to flow from him. Then, he took in a huge breath and howled at us. In the distance, the growing mob seemed to answer in kind and approach. I ran up to the man, with his bike between us. He reached over the bike, as if to grab me like a zombie. But, I kicked out and connected with the bike, knocking the man to the ground. Kicking him again heavily in the head, I dashed back to John, grabbed his arm, and we began to run again.

About two blocks away, I noticed an empty house for sale. We ran around the back, lucky to discover that someone had left the back door open. We snuck inside, ducked behind the kitchen counter and waited for hours, hearing the neighborhood search for us. Among the searchers, we could tell there were...others. Probably those who had originally rushed into the nursing home. Large men, if that was what they were. Their voices boomed. We could feel their presence through the walls of the house.

A few hours more, and we finally relaxed. All had gone quiet. The search was over, or the people lay in wait. We weren't sure which, but I was confident that if we could stay hidden until dawn, everything would be ok. Something about dawn was powerful for us. We snuck through the dark of the house, making our way to the living room, where we planned to take turns sleeping for the night. The room had a skylight, and just as John fell asleep and I took the first watch, I noticed a shadow pass over the square of light on the floor, cast by the moon. Looking up, I saw something that looked like a man crossed with a bat. It thumped twice as it stepped around the skylight, but froze as it saw me.

"Up! Run!" I said. John jumped up and we scrambled out the back door. It was silent outside, which was terrifying - I couldn't tell where the enemy would be coming from. We made our way up a rise to the suburban street. Nothing stirred within the circle of a streetlight's glow. Then we heard a sound and dropped, pressing ourselves to the perfectly cut and now dew-covered lawn. I risked a quick glance over the rise and saw my friend Mark's Pontiac pull up, him in the driver's seat, and his wife in the passenger seat. The car stopped, her window rolled down, and Mark shouted, "Get in!"

John hesitated. "What if they're...his?" he asked. From looking at them, I was fairly confident they were not. They didn't seem half lifeless. On the contrary, they were emphatic that we get in the car as quickly as possible. So we got up and climbed into the back seats. Still, as the car sped us away, onto highways that would hopefully take us to safety, I couldn't help but wonder if HE had gained the ability of a new type of possession, where his minions seemed more normal than half-zombies. Saying nothing, and watching the night highway pass by, I began planning...just in case.

C Is For Give Me My Damned Samoas!

I had a bizarre dream last night. I was roaming a high school during a lunch period. At a table in the corner of the cafeteria, two people I knew were selling Girl Scout Cookies. One was my old boss, who I will call Hank, and the other was a fellow intern from that job/internship, who I will call Beth.

Hank was standing in front of the table hawking the Girl Scout Cookies like a 1930's carny, and Beth was sitting behind the table taking the cash and handing out the products.

Like anyone with a soul, I love Samoas. They're fabulous. This is important to the story.

So, I walked up and Hank said "Buy some Girl Scout Cookies, man. They're awesome."

Happy to oblige and get my annual Samoas fix, I prepared myself to purchase two wonderful boxes thereof. However, upon inspection of the table, I found no boxes of cookies. Instead, there were only piles of plastic tubes, with a display of sample bowls of each flavor of cookie in front of them.

I asked Beth what was going on with the Girl Scout Cookies, and she explained that the company had decided to reformat this year, to be a bit more "hip" in its selection of snack foods. As such, all the Girl Scout Cookies were now "nibble-sized." In each of the sample bowls was a pile of different Girl Scout Cookies, mashed to crumbs.

I did not want that filth. I wanted Samoas, and I told her so in no uncertain terms.

But then, Beth and Hank started pushing the crumb piles on me like mean teenagers in an after-school special. They were full of "C'mon, everyone's doing it," and "What are you, chicken?" They pressed me so hard that I even considered just buying the junk, until I noticed that there were none in Samoa flavor. Not even Samoa crumbs!!!

I had had enough. I stormed to the other side of the cafeteria, where my brother was sitting at a table. I told him all about Hank and Beth being mean to me, and I described their sub-standard Girl Scout Cookie selection. Like me, my brother is very particular about his food, so I knew he would understand. But in response, he merely slid a bowl of Tagalong crumbs across the table toward me. Seeming to stare straight through me, he said in a detached and emotionless voice, "Just try them, man. They're really good. You don't need any Samoas."

Completely defeated and despondent, I just shook my head and sighed.

Kenny and I Had the Same Dream Last Night

Part 1:

Part 2:


Damn, I have to stop drinking so much. Vacation's over.

It Has a History

It was one thing when I recently admitted all my lifelong nightmares to my mother. Even now, I'm afraid she'll have me committed. All the same, when I did, all I got was, "Yeah, you always had a lot of nightmares."

Huh!? OK, I guess it stands to reason that she'd have noticed, but it just seemed weird that I would not know, late into my 20s, that my own mother knew I had some strange shit cooking up in the old brain pan.

Well, now I've even managed to creep myself out. I just found my third-grade composition notebooks, in which I had to write stuff a couple of times a week. They'd usually give a topic, but we weren't required to follow it. I'd often write about getting my own helicopter or getting out of school early.

In flipping through my literary genius, though, I found a very short entry (they were all short - it was third grade), and rereading it now, I wonder that I wasn't walked straight down to the school therapist. It essentially said the following:

"Everyone's going to die someday, but not me! I'm not going to die, because I'm already dead! Haha!"

What the jumping shit!? I wrote that? At the tender age of 8?

I have no response to my own deranged thought processes.

Back to Normal

Three nights, three nightmares. I don't welcome this condition, but I'd gotten so used to it since childhood that after their disappearance for the last two months, I'm actually relieved they're back:

In prep for St. Patty's, I guess, I dreamed last night that I was at a haunted house. There were woods outside, from which I heard a faint sound of bagpipes, supposedly from the ghost of the Irish inhabitants of the house 100 years ago.

The night before last, I was leading my family in some ritual or spell that was going to destroy the world.

I don't even remember the one from the night before that, but I woke up winded and sweating. (I hope I hadn't actually been running around in my sleep. I was on Long Island in a hotel, and scantily clad...)

The Demon's Crow

In case you didn’t know this about me, I’m prone to twisted evil dreams. Believe me, you don’t want to see what I see when I close my eyes at night. So, I had a dream last night that is a perfect example. In all seriousness, this was fairly average for me.

Stepping out of the car, I looked at the scene. A couple of miles back, on the main road, the sun would soon be up, but there in the thick of the woods, the grey before dawn was just barely perceptible through the canopy of the trees.

The small home was flanked by nearly a half a dozen police cars, their lights still flashing. Uniformed officers milled around, their hands in their pockets and their breath visible in the air. They had arrived less than a half hour before. There had been a frantic 911 call. There had been screams and sounds of violence.

The house, as best as I could see it by a few sets of headlights, had originally been a trailer, but had since been expanded upon. It was an old, dirty place. As I approached, a detective in a trenchcoat walked up to me.

“Glad you’re here. There was some sort of fight. When uniformed officers arrived, the parents were gone,” said the detective.

“Yeah, they were attacked by vampires!” shouted a uniformed cop, evoking a round of laughter. It was obvious that this wasn’t the first round, by any stretch.

“I’d tell it,” said the detective, “but I may as well let the kids. They saw the whole thing. They’re inside.”

Saying nothing and ignoring the further comments that we had better bring crucifixes and garlic along, I followed the detective inside. Once there, we entered the sole bedroom, which was clearly where the entire family of seven slept. There were blankets and pillows throughout the room.

Officers were talking to most of the children. As the detective began to offer more information, I knelt down and spoke to a little blond girl, about five or six years old.

“Hello,” I said. “Is this where you sleep?”

“Yes.” The girl glanced around furtively. She avoided looking me in the eye.

“Were you sleeping here tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see where your parents went?

“Yes.”

“Where did they go?”

“The dark men took them. They came in through that window,” she gestured to a small window near the ceiling, about two feet by three feet. “They got in a fight with my mommy and daddy, and then they took my mommy and daddy with them.”

Just then, the detective tapped me on the shoulder. “You should come see this.”

I followed the detective into the living room, where a crow sat perched on the back of the couch. It remained still, and seemed to be watching us. I knew the crow immediately for what it was. A calling card, of sorts.

I also now knew what I was dealing with. It was no vampire that had visited the house that evening, but a demon. Or two, if little Emily had gotten it right. It had left the crow behind, in part, to send the message that it had been there, but also, like a killer returning to the scene of the crime, to watch the resulting mayhem. It could see through the crow.

I reached out gently. The crow took a step back, flapped its wings once, and cawed loudly. I lunged and snatched it. It immediately panicked and began cawing more, and louder, while still flapping its wings wildly.

“What the hell are you doing?” cried the detective. “Let go of that thing!”

“No.” I said loudly, over the crow’s cries. “It can tell me something.” And then, more softly, to the crow, I said, “I know what you are. Tell me what you will tell me.”

At that moment, the crow stopped cawing and moving. It seemed to look directly at me again, and slowly, fully spread its wings. Then, almost inaudibly, I heard a whisper that seemed to come from the crow. Its voice was an evil, malicious hiss. “Yes, I see you. You won’t get them back!”

At that moment, the crow began to thrash even more wildly, and snapped at my hands and arms with its beak. I tried to squeeze it or ring its neck to kill it, but it was useless. The thing seemed indestructible. Its fit was becoming more intense, though.

I ran out the front door with the crow, hoping to find a stick or rock to hit it even harder. As I got just past the police cars, I tried one more time to break its neck, and as I did, its whole body suddenly crushed under my grip.

Blood began to spew out of the crow. More blood than it could have ever held in its body, even if it had contained nothing else. The blood gushed from it over my hands and down my arms, and though I tried to, I couldn’t let go.

I heard a scream. I knew immediately it belonged to the little girl. I turned toward the house and saw her in the window. Somehow, I knew it was just a vision, and that I was not truly seeing her. She was pale, like death. Her eyes were bleeding down her cheeks. She screamed again, “Wash my eyes with blood! Wash them with blood, and then I’ll see!”

She vanished and I looked at my blood soaked hands, which had dropped the lifeless crow. I laughed. Somehow, I knew - I had to go back into the house, to the girl, and rub the blood over her closed eyes. That would give her the power to track the demon, using the same connection that the crow had had with it.

I knew she would be able to help me find her parents.

Effed up, right? Sleep tight, kiddies. I know I will, after that one.

Fratboys & Injuns

I had a dream last night that I was at a summertime fraternity party. Upon my arrival, just after dark, there was a commotion on the property of the fraternity house. It was on a corner lot, and there was a group of trees right up at the corner. The main fraternity activities were to take place out on the lawn - a pig roast, beers, music, and other summertime outdoor activities.

There were a number of lights in the trees, though. A couple guys came and ased me to go talk to some people there. Once I got to the trees, I saw that one had fallen. Around it stood a number of native-looking fellows in grass skirts, with weird sticks through their ears, noses and lips, holding torches.

Apparently, the fallen tree had been the tallest of the bunch, and these natives, who lived across the street, had worshipped it from afar like it was a god. Now that it had fallen, they wanted to all come over to the fraternity property that night and hold some big ceremony.

So, now that I had arrived, the fraternity guys wanted me to sort the whole thing out. They didn't want anything getting in the way of their fraternity party, and they weren't about to share their celebration activities with the natives' funeral for their god.

So, I took the natives back across the street and tried to talk sense to them. This wasn't easy. Their religion demanded that they hold this ceremony on the night that their god-tree fell. They spoke perfect English (and even offered me a soda). They were insistent. I asked them more about the ceremony, and they explained that it entailed music, drinking their native fermented drink, dancing and a celebration of the god-tree's life.

Needless to say, I was struck with inspiration. I ran and grabbed two of the fraternity guys and brought them across the street to the natives' home. I explained to everyone there that they all, in essence, had the same the same plans for the evening. Why not share the fraternity lawn for it? All the better to get to know your neighbors.

The fraternity brothers and the natives agreed. That night, they drank, and they danced. The fraternity guys bid a respectful farewell to the god-tree. The natives learned new dances from the college girls. They partied late into the night and were friends forever after.

There I go, creating world peace, one effed up boozy dream at a time.