Insomnia

I'm afraid that there will be no post for tonight. I have been suffering from sever allergies for the last two weeks, so yesterday I finally broke down and went to the doctor. I was given a steroid shot, and I believe it is the culprit for this new found insomnia. I think I've slept a grand total of an hour tonight. Not exactly the best way to start the new semester this morning. Sigh. Well, maybe I'll try to write up an old dream a little later to make up for it. Hopefully everyone else had good night's rest. ^-^

The Nail and Hammer

Night before last...January 14, 2012

I was living in some sort of ranch colony, where all of the men and women slept in separate areas of the ranch. It was really a very beautiful place; rolling hillsides and tall grasses as far as the eye could see. I had a best friend named Emily, Em for short. She was a wonderful soul; unfailingly kind and honest and loyal. I loved her like a sister.

They called us all into the meeting house, said there was a big announcement to be made. Em and I hurried in, arms linked, and found a place to stand among the crush of people clustered around the podium. We whispered and laughed as we waited in anticipation for the big announcement; the thrushes beneath our boots released the sweet smell of fresh straw into the air around us.

The great doors to the meeting house thudded closed behind us, and we all pressed together closer, trying to get a better view of the podium. Then we heard the locking beams on the outside of the doors falling  heavily into place. Everyone looked back at the doors, confusion knit between their brows. Then came the hammering, the terrifying sound of hundreds of nails being driven into planks that had been industriously placed across the windows. People began to scream, women clutched their babies to their chests in fear, Em and I pressed closer to each other, holding each other’s hands for comfort. Torches were thrust in under the doors and pushed in through gaps in the barred windows; thick grey smoke began to billow down from the rafters. Everyone was screaming, and coughing, and clawing at the windows and doors, trying to find a way out. The cloth curtains around the podium caught fire from a torch that had been kicked across the floor in the trample of feet, and I could feel the heat across my face as it licked up and up into a towering blaze. I pulled Em over to a window and began to push and tear at the screen in a gap under one of the wooden planks. It came free! I pushed my right arm and head through the gap and found I was just small enough to fit through. My left hand still held Em’s; I could hear her gasping and choking for breath.  I let go of her hand and I pushed my way through the window gap, then turned back to help Em through. She pushed her arm and head through, but she was too big to fit.

I began to scream in a panic, “Em! Em! Come on, you have to try harder!”  I could feel that my face was wet, I was sobbing and holding on to her hand through the window. I could see her terrified face covered in a haze of dark smoke. I began to pull on the boards blocking the window, willing it to budge just a little so that Em could get through. But it was nailed fast. I grabbed Em’s hand again, “Em! Please Em! Em!” The shrieking of the people inside began to ebb as people were either consumed in the flames or had asphyxiated from the smoke. Em’s hand grew limp in mine as she succumbed to the heavy smoke that had invaded her lungs. “Em! No! No, no, no! You can’t leave me! No, Em, no!”

I could feel the heat from the window, so I had to let go of Em’s lifeless hand as the flames began to eat away on the side of the building. I collapsed into the dirt a few feet away, unwilling to move further. I wanted to feel the heat and the sorrow, and the unfairness of being the only one to escape. At some point, after the meeting house was only a raw pile of burning embers, I slept from the exhaustion of crying.

When I woke up, I was in my narrow bed in the women’s quarters, and Em was in the bed next to mine. I felt drained and my face was still wet from crying. Everyone was still asleep, dawn was just curling her fingers around the edge of the world. It was a dream. Just a dream. I took a deep breath and rolled over to face Em; her sweet face deep in sleep. I never wanted to see that kind of terror in her eyes ever again.

We got up with the morning bell, and the day went on as it usually did. During lunch break Em and I climbed up the tallest hill in the valley, our favorite spot, to eat lunch and watch the community busy with work. I looked at Em, so pretty in her mauve and grey cotton dress, her hair in a long blonde braid down her back. A gust of wind crept over the hill to pull her bangs out from the place where she had tucked it behind her ear. She turned and looked at me with those grey eyes of hers, a smile sliding across her square face, cheeks dimpling in pleasure and said, “They are calling everyone to the meeting house after lunch. They said that there is some big announcement!” Her eyes widened in excitement at the prospect. I felt all of the blood drain from my face. She must have noticed because she said. “What’s wrong? Do you feel ill? “She came over to me and took my hand. Should I say something about my dream? Or would she think I was crazy? Her terrified face engulfed in smoke flashed across my vision for a second, and I knew that I had to say something. I told her about what I had dreamt the previous night, and her eyebrows pushed together over the bridge of her nose in concern. “Maybe we should keep this to ourselves for a little while. When we go down to the meeting house we will look around first before going inside. If we see anything suspicious we will tell the others.”

We headed to the meeting house a little early. I pulled Em around to the side of the building, and there, hidden in the bushes, were piles of wooden planks, a box of nails, and several hammers. All along the outside wall there were similar piles hidden amongst the brush. Em said, “Those could just be for repairs…” But I could see that her face had grown pale. Then, hidden behind a barrel by the entry way was a bundle of wrapped torches and a box of matches. We ran back up the hill towards the community center. We could see people walking towards us in clusters, making their way to the meeting house. We stopped them and told them of my dream, and of what we had found. Everyone began to murmur, spreading the news like a fire across the groups of people. The head of our community stepped forward and said, “Are you sure of what you saw? This isn’t just some kind of foolishness?  A vision spurred from a girl’s nightmare?” We told him that it was the truth. He could see from the looks on our faces that this was no child’s trick. He turned to the group standing behind him, and began the first step of the uprising.

Then…
I woke up.

A Fence That Needs Mending

Last night.

I had a dream that I was at my Aunt Chelsea’s house.  She has a wooden gate on the side of her house that leads to the back yard. I can’t remember if I was going in or out, but I opened the door and all of these purple dogs came rushing out. They were in all different shades of purple and all different sizes. Some just had purple spots or stripes, while others were completely purple. I pushed them back behind the door and I tried to close it, but more and more dogs kept coming. A tiny silky-coated violet colored dog pushed its way under the gate and began to run around my feet yapping. All of the dogs were howling and whining all at once, and the sound was absolutely deafening.  My Aunt Chelsea came running around the corner of the house to help me. She and I pushed on the door, trying to keep more dogs from escaping.

She started yelling at the little violet dog, “Sammy! Sammy, you get back under that door right now!”

The little violet dog named Sammy squeezed his way back under the door, but just then, the door and the whole fence started to fall apart and sway back and forth. And the neighbor’s dogs started to push on the fence next to us, poking their blue heads in between the loosening slats.

Then…

I woke up.

A Summer House

Night before last. January 12, 2012

I had a dream that I was going to the funeral of a distant cousin. The funeral was taking place somewhere near the East coast. We arrived at a huge Victorian style house that had all of these different rooms all added on to the original structure, so that it looked like it was twisting up and up into the sky. It was all painted an antique cream with ivy-green trim, and it glowed in the summer heat, bees lazily droning around the honeysuckle bushes that clustered around the windows. It smelled like magic. I went in to the house through one of the many doors on the left side of the house. The door I entered through was a sliding glass door with a screen. It entered on to a dining room with a long wooden dining table running through the center of it. The table had a long elegant legs that ended in lion paws, and a long, tapered, maroon embroidered runner was placed in the center of it. There were white porcelain plates trimmed with gold set around the table at each chair, and a floral center piece with cream flowers and a candle shielded in a a hurricane lamp. Along the back wall was an ornate mirror with wooden vines curling it's way around the edges placed above a caramel-colored sideboard.
At the left end of the dining room was a set of white french doors that opened on to a pale-blue sitting room filled with white wicker furniture with cushions in varying shades of medium to pale-blue. There were dozens of white lamps set out on little mahogany tables. There was a marble fireplace with little gold figurines clustered on top of the mantel in the wall to the right, and a veranda that looked out onto the summer garden on the left. Next to the fire place was a little winding stairway that I went up. I came upon a hallway that twisted and turned at uneven intervals and had doors that led into rooms in random places. I picked a door and opened it.
There were people milling around in this room, with handkerchiefs dabbing at wet eyes. Many of the women wore large hats and long summer-colored dresses, with white gloves, like I had taken a step back in time. This room didn't seem to have a specific purpose like the ones downstairs; it had lots of little furniture in it, child-sized furniture. There were little round foot-stools in ivory and dusty rose all over the place. And there was a small vanity, which seems very important because I focused on it for a long time, and began to fall in love with the little things that were scattered across it's surface. I crouched in front of the vanity, afraid to sit in the little chair, and looked at myself in the three-pane fold out mirror. I had my hair tied in an elegant bun at the back of my neck, and I wore a large straw hat with a magnolia flower in it. I had on a golden-yellow calf-length dress of a very light material with little white flowers all over, with a heart-shaped neckline trimmed in lace, and little capped sleeves with pearl buttons. I also wore white gloves that came just to my wrists and a long strand of cream-colored pearls.
On the vanity there was a little sliver hair-brush and a strand of pearls, and little glass jars of play make-up. I pulled off one of my gloves to gently run my fingers over the little silver hairbrush. It felt sad. It was then that I realized that I was at a child's funeral, and I cried because the child was so little.
Just then, a woman came up to me and said, "It is very sad. But they are thinking about adopting you. And you could come and live here."
I stand up. Something about this frightens me, even though I would love to live in this strange house filled with hundreds of rooms. I need to find my mom and my grandmother, but I can't remember how to get back downstairs. I feel my heart begin to race a little, fueled by panic. I go back out into the hallway, but I can't find the stairs down.
Then...
I wake up.

Adventures on Death Planet

I had this dream when I was a teenager in high school. It was so vivid that even years later I still had no trouble writing it out. Enjoy the chaos. ^-^

I sat at a little table by my window. I held between my hands a little plant in a terracotta pot. Grow! Grow! I willed it with my mind. Grow! Just a little! Grow! Then, it suddenly shot up an inch and its leaves grew large and juicy, like enormous emeralds.

“Yes!” I shouted into the air.

“India!” My dad called me from downstairs.

“Coming!”

I ran down the stairs and found that the front door was open. So I stepped outside onto the front porch.

“India, come see this! It’s amazing!” said my dad. He was standing in the driveway, staring at something just around the corner of the porch. I stepped off of the porch, and in my driveway was a black chrome, three-piece train. It stood upright on its end like a rocket and hovered above the ground perched on top of a thick white cloud.

“Look! The cloud is made of cotton candy! Try it, its delicious!” Said my dad, as he pulled a big hunk off of the cloud and stuffed it in his mouth.

I pulled a small piece off and nibbled on it. It was cotton candy, sweet and fluffy. Then the door of the train slid downward with a hiss, revealing a black doorway. A little platform popped out of the side of the train and a stair quickly unfolded to the driveway. A little pudgy man with a red handlebar mustache and an orange and purple stripped conductor’s suit stepped out onto the platform; he surveyed us with his little black eyes that tunneled deep into his eye sockets.

“Travel to Death Planet!” He shouted. “See the Stars!” He said, a hint of awe pressing his words forward as he swept a plump little hand above his head.

I turned around to my dad, and by then my step mom and my Grandma had joined us. “Can we go? Please!” I begged.

“Of course we can!”

We all filed up the stair and into the train cabin. I sat in front next to the conductor.

“This sure is a tight squeeze.”  I said as we all squished in together. Then the cabin slowly began to expand until we all fit comfortably. The conductor pulled a leaver and we shot out of the driveway with a loud BOOM! We passed the moon, swooped around Saturn, then Pluto; we were going faster and faster, and the stars and planets began to blur.

Then everything went black. I was cold. And something wet was falling on my face. I opened my eyes, and there was a dark blanket of clouds above me. Lighting crackled across the clouds and a peel of thunder followed it, growling as it moved across the sky in pursuit of the lightning. Rain started to pelt my face harder and I sat up. I was sitting in mud, it covered my clothes. I shivered and looked around. My family members were scattered around me; they too were just waking up.  Somehow my mom and my Aunt Tina had ended up there also. The train conductor was nowhere to be found. We huddled together in the mud and looked around us; off in the distance stood two houses, so we headed for the one that looked closer off to the right. When we reached the house I walked up the wooden porch steps, which were warped and groaned as I stepped on them. I knocked on the door, I could see through the gaps in its wood slats into the dark house inside. The door swung open, and a man stood in the doorway. He wore a faded brown hat that was bent and warped from being wet, and it came all the way down past his eyes; all I could see of his face were his yellow crooked teeth. He wore no shirt and he had a large belly the pushed on the muddy suspenders he wore; he had on black rubber boots that were also caked with mud and he held a rifle in his left hand.

“Wa yoo wah?” He said as he ground something between his yellow teeth.

“Uh…um…we were just trying to find somewhere to stay…until the rain stops.” I stuttered, and backed up a few steps.

“ Shioo whar in graam fhish I chang iirim gruud my dog! He said and pointed to his back yard. Just then an enormous worm surfaced from the mud in his back yard as a streak of lightning cracked in the sky; its razor sharp teeth spun around inside its mouth as it howled up into the rain. It plunged its gleaming body back under the mud and disappeared.

“Um, no thank you.” I said as I retreated from the porch. “We’ll just try the next house.”

When we reached the next house the door was open, so we just went in hoping that the tenant was hospitable. Everything inside the house was in black and white, like an old tv show. We called out to see if anyone was home, but no one answered. We were all very tired and scared because the wind outside was howling and the rain was beating down on the roof with wet fists. We searched the house for somewhere to sleep, and we found a room with an enormous white bed that was big enough for all of us to fit together. We all crawled onto the bed and huddled under the covers together, listening to the storm outside screaming around the house. There were two sets of French doors on either side of the room with white curtains, and vines were growing through under the doors. Lightning flashed and lit up the glass in the French doors, I pulled the covers up to my eyes. I heard the shriek of a mud worm outside and pulled the covers over my head and fell asleep.

I woke up the next morning and found that everyone else was already awake, and I was alone in the big white bed. I got up and started to explore the house. I walked down a hallway and found another room. It was all pink and there was a little white bed that sat on tall thin stilt-like legs; it was piled high with frilly stuffed animals. I climbed up one of the legs and into the bed; I found a large pink teddy bear that I liked and I softly ran my hands through its fur. My mom found me up in the bed with the stuffed animals.

“India, now you know you can’t keep any of those stuffed animals. They don’t belong to you. Now, get down from there.” She said.

I stuck my lip out and put the bear down, then slid down the leg of the bed. I walked further down the hallway and found a picture of a man and a woman hanging on the wall; everything in the picture was in black and white, except for the peoples’ hair, it was red. The woman looked very business like and wore a string of pearls around her neck and her hair in a neat up-do. The man looked very intelligent and serious, and he wore small round glasses on the bridge of his long thin nose. I pulled the picture off of the wall and took it into the kitchen to show to the rest of my family.

On my way down the hallway I looked in at a room to my right. Inside was my Uncle Edgar, and he was sitting in a large arm chair in front of a blazing fire, with a deep red colored dress robe wrapped snugly around him. There was a pair of French doors in the left wall, and a cat was meowing on the other side. I opened the door and let the cat in; He was dark grey with white spots, and soaking wet.

“Poor kitty. I bet you are hungry.” I said. “let’s go to the kitchen and find you something to eat.”

I walked into the kitchen, which was at the end of the hall, and it was connected to the dining room and living room. The kitchen was in the middle of the two other rooms and looked out onto them over a breakfast bar. Just as I was about to open the cabinet to look for some cat food, the front door slammed open, and a gust of wind swept through the house. I looked down, and there at my feet was the little boy from the picture I held in my hand. He was playing with a set of toy cars, crashing them together and screaming, “Crash! Smash! Boom!”

I said, “Excuse me little boy, but where is your mother?”

He did not answer me, as if he couldn’t hear me. Then another gust of wind ripped through the house, and there, sitting at the breakfast bar was the man from the photo, and he was reading a newspaper. He didn’t seem to be able to see me, because he just continued reading as if I wasn’t there. Then, another gust of wind blew past me, and standing in front of me, staring directly at me with black hateful eyes, was the woman from the photo.

“What are you doing in my house?!” She bellowed.

And suddenly I wasn’t in the kitchen anymore. My family members and I were in a tall round room filled with levels and levels of floors; the levels opened down the center of the room so that you could look down to the bottom floor where a large red demon lay sleeping in a pair of ragged khaki shorts. We were all dispersed on different levels, and some of us began to scream. The woman appeared on the bottom floor with the demon; she shook him awake and smiled up at us with a malicious grin.

The demon opened his eyes, which were a bright yellow, and when he smiled you could see that his mouth was filled with rows and rows of sharp teeth. He laughed, and it was a deep sound, that seemed like it came from many voices screaming all at once. He inhaled deeply and from his mouth he shot a gleaming black cannon ball up through the floors above him. Up the cannon ball shot, shattering and splintering the wood floors, and just when it seemed like it was going to lose momentum, it leveled out and grew a mouth of its own, and little white slits for eyes; it then proceeded to chase my family members, eating the floor as it went.

I was on the top floor, looking down, watching as my family members were getting eaten by the ravenous cannon balls. I had to do something, but I couldn’t think what, when suddenly the room around me stretched, like it was made of rubber. Then I was standing back in the kitchen, holding a tub of butter and inside the tub of butter was the room that I was just in. Everyone was screaming inside the room inside the tub of butter, so I ran over to the sink and turned the hot water on. I placed the tub of butter under the hot water and it hissed and fizzled. Then all of my family members were back in the kitchen, like nothing had happened.

Then…

I woke up.