Tag Archives: dream

Had an unnerving dream. Might as well write it down.

Dreamed that I went with my mother to take my sister back to Cornell. Mom and I waited in the car for Lauren to finish her first meeting with her roommates, but it was taking too long. Mom went in, I hesitated and followed. On the way in, mom started laughing- butterflies were landing on her cheeks and forehead and nose. I cursed my neglect of my camera and ran back to the car to get it. As I was taking it out, a butterfly flew from my mother to me. I was not careful and accidentally tore off part of its wing (I think in an attempt to detain it) and it clumsily fled from me. I watched it fly into barren trees.

We went into the tall building. We could hear my sister screaming from outside. When we went inside, it was quieter. Lauren was breathing heavily, grinding up ice for a slushee. She wasn’t using the actual slushy machine (which they apparently owned), but used a Magic Bullet (our aunt got us these for Christmas a couple years ago… mine complains when I try to make hummus with it, but that’s a different story) instead to grind up small amounts of ice at a time.

Lauren told us that they were taking a break, that her ex-suitemate was being a bitch, that they were having a disagreement over damages to the building taken last semester.

I noticed that the rest of the residents in the building looked haggard. I went outside to wait this out.

Lying on the pavement, I closed my eyes. Somebody asked me if I was alright. Opening them again, I noticed a college-aged boy staring down at me. I told him that I was. He asked me if he could sit with me. I told him to go ahead.

Next thing I knew, I was back in the building. Except, it seems, Mom had left and there were more people. They were showing me pictures and my memory was being jogged. “I know that building,” I told them. “I remember climbing through it when I was wearing Spider Man’s skin. Set off alarms and had to flee. Wore a trench coat and used a grappling hook to zipline to another building.”

They laughed and invited me to stay. Lauren was okay with this, they told me. I had not seen her since earlier that dream.

Next conscious moment in a pre-play party. The building has a main room, which has been darkened. I brush against a person dressed as a Wall. In the hallway is the younger sister of a person my sister knows. She’s busy trying to get some sour cream out of a vegan dip where somebody dipped a pretzel into the former, then the latter in succession. It’s not incredibly effective. The cream eludes her spoon, or slides off it with the rest of the dip when she does get it. I suggest two spoons, like separating an egg.

Her sister comes and says something stern to her. Then she leaves, disappears into the flashing black of the main room. I talk to the girl and she tells me that there’s a plot. She gives me a note to memorize, then burn. I can’t memorize, so I copy the things that would slip my mind and eat the rest of the note. It had said something about a neurotoxin from a special type of puffer fish (Pacific Blue-Ridged Spitter, which is not a real fish) and that there’s a plot against one of the play attendees.

The girl bursts into flames and starts to scream. It’s part of the plot- I can smell incendiaries. We rush to the bathroom, but I tell her not to go into the shower, as she was prepared to do. Instead, I get a fire-resistant blanket and smother the flames. She is not horribly burnt. I tell her to leave before a second attempt is made on her life. It is. She collapses not two seconds after a dart hits her neck. I turn and see nothing.

The girl is dead. My perspective shifts to an older, male detective (perspective change is a common feature in my dreams, though I am not sure why) and I race to the main room, still mostly dark. The lights are focused on the stage and eyes are fixed that way. I raise my voice and call for lights, lights.

A patron is already dead, eyes glassy in the growing lights over the audience seating. The play is over.

I am myself again, as though the dream were trying to assert itself as nothing to be frightened of. The residents of the house have split into two on the field in front of it. We’re going to play at war and I’m a pawn in blue. The boy dressed as a dolphin in front of me comments, “They got all of the athletic people. What are a bunch of nerds going to do in this situation?” I look and see that the red side did get some athletic people, but it wasn’t as bad as it looked. Then I remembered that my younger brother told me this story. The blue side loses, but not in a slaughter.

We rush the red side and hit them hard. We lose, but we lose in laughter, in good fun.

Then I look to my left and a boy younger than me has fallen, dart in his thigh.

Detective again. Visiting a good friend, a scientist. He understands things like this and he just so happens to be in for a convention (with a bunch of other like-minded people) in the building. He tells me that there is a cure for the toxin, but the toxin is so fast-acting that it’s pretty impossible to administer before death. He is in a wheelchair. The first dart misses him, but the second does not and he goes limp before I can move, before I can give him the necessary dosage to save his life.

I move through the people. As I question a woman, she tells me that it’s not what it seems, Mr. Holmes. You need to look past the obvious. People are dying, but why are they dying? What purpose could there possibly be? I tell her, I don’t know. I’m scared and it’s getting worse. She dies.

God dammit.

I run through the house. It no longer seems like I’m at a convention for scientists. I’m at a convention where people go to be murdered. They don’t mean it, but it happens and I am powerless to stop it. I go to the room where my friend died. I look at the darts and something doesn’t add up. A short woman comes in to talk to me and we decide that my friend’s equipment has the same look to it that the darts have. She falls down as we make this revelation. I crouch behind a refrigerator.

And my friend walks into the doorway. I shift my weight and discover a box of the darts. It dawns on me.

“It was you this entire time!” I shout. “You pretended to be murdered so you could be at liberty to kill everybody.”

“Indeed,” he replied, and a couple darts clink against the front of the fridge. “I didn’t want you to get embroiled in all of this, chap. It’s just too bad that you have to go too.”

“Why,” I asked him, “Why?!?”

“To find the cure,” he commented seriously. I get mad and fling a bunch of darts at him and duck back behind the fridge. He cries out. I peer around the edge of the fridge as he collapses.

I look at my arm. There’s a dart there too.

I wake up.

It’s too late for me to go back to sleep. By the time I drift off, I’ll have to get up anyways to go to Ornithology lab. I guess I’ll go look over my notes again for the test.

Good morning.