February 22, 2005

• I’m not sure why I dream so much, except that I enjoy it, even the scary ones. I enjoy my dreams as much as I enjoy a well-written book or a well-played movie. I view my dreams as entertainment, half because my dreams are next to impossible to interpret and half because I like being entertained. I know it’s a dream. I know I’m not going to get hurt. I might be scared or uber-creeped out or repulsed, but it’s still a dream… and a better form of entertainment than I’ll find on TV these days.

  
  

  I swear, they put such crap on TV any more. I haven’t seen a good (uncut) movie on TV since the 80s. Granted there was a lot of plotless, oversexed, ultraviolent junk on TV when I was a kid, but for what it’s worth, some of those same movies had great creepy atmosphere. I think I like my dreams because they have great atmosphere too, even if they’re incomprehensible otherwise. And now that each and every thing on TV, almost down to commercials, is rated, TV is hardly worth watching at all. There’s no mystery. I can almost tell you the ending of anything on TV just by watching the first fifteen minutes.

  
  

  I much prefer the “TV” in my head. If I could invite you all into my head to see my dreams firsthand, I would. I’m sure you’d be as entertained as I am. But until that’s possible, you’ll have to view them vicariously through the medium of my words.

  
  

  Sunday night I dreamed a group of jungle explorers were captured by an angry African tribe for the theft of a holy relic. They were not the group who had stolen the relic, but they were taken to the tribal “mystic” because they were interlopers and the tribe did not want to lose any other treasures.

  
  

  The explorers were taken to a swamp and left bound in the mud and muck. Eventually what appeared to be a naked eight year old child came walking through the water. She/it was caked in places by dried mud, so was mostly gray in color but appeared to be caucasion. I say “she” because it had long, blonde/white hair, but I say “it” because it was sexless. It looked more like an animated baby-doll, completely smooth and without definition.

  
  

  In the dream the explorers thought she was just some girl the Africans had found and raised, but I knew (viewing the dream from outside) that she was some kind of spirit. She told them that they were comdemned to death for the theft of the tribe’s holy relic, a black pearl necklace with pearls as large as her clenched fist. They cried and begged saying that they hadn’t taken it and that they would bring it back if they could. One of them swore he had seen such a necklace.

  
  

  Finally she relented and said that if they brought the necklace back, they would be spared. She also warned them that the necklace was cursed to such as them, and if they did not bring it back, it would be the instrument of their destruction.

  
  

  So they left the swamp and headed off to retrieve the necklace. Oddly enough, they found it at the top of a temple, with skeletons all around. Of course, once they had it, they rethought returning it to the tribe and their swamp baby shaman. After all, these were black pearls as large a child’s fist. The necklace was worth a fortune. They decided to take the relic and run, but on their trip home, they soon fell to squabbling.

  
  

  When the man carrying the necklace disappeared, they just assumed he ran off with it. As they searched for some sign of him, a monstrous thing leapt out of the jungle and proceeded to savage the nearest person. Around its neck was the black pearl necklace.

  
  

  The remaining members of the party ran through the jungle until the came upon an abandoned complex of buildings. They hid inside, but come nightfall, the monster started picking them off one by one. They explored the building as they tried to find a way to hide from the creature, and opening a crate, they found guns.

  
  

  The tracked the monster down (after a few more deaths among them) and killed it. Somehow (and I don’t know how anyone could be that dumb) they thought the monster was a sick wild animal. It had eaten their friend and somehow gotten the necklace stuck around its neck. So they took the necklace from the corpse and left, still with the intent of selling it to the highest bidder.

  
  

  Of course, before long the person carrying the necklace disappeared again and this time the three remaining explorers didn’t live long to track the new monster down and kill it, though they did realize before they died that the necklace really was cursed and the monster hunting them down was their former friend. Once everyone in the party was dead, the monster loped back to the tribe and died in the swamp. And the swamp baby mystic retrieved her necklace from the corpse.

  
  

  ***

  
  

  After that I had a short, inane dream about visiting grand parents in England (I have none so far as I know unless my father’s mother is still alive somewhere… long story). I cooked some breaded chicken and homefries for them while they asked me what I planned on doing with my life, and my “grandfather” asked me if I planned to be a cook because the food was better than he’d expected.

  
  

  ***

  
  

  Then I dreamed of a family in the future. They were a military family on holiday from working in space. They attended an “old fashioned” carnival, riding the ferris wheel and a tilt-a-whirl until they ran out of tickets. Then they went to a swanky restaurant with tables literally piled high with food. There was one table completely covered in steaming lobster.

  
  

  They then returned to the space station, and from there, shipped off to a colony on another world. It was actually pretty built up for a colony, but that was because they colony was built upon the ruins of an alien city. Once they arrived, the mother started acting stranger and stranger. At the same time, the daughter was suffering physical phenomena. Feeling someone touch her when no one was around or being knocked into walls without any apparent cause. She kept trying to convince her father that the place was haunted, but wasn’t buying it, being a very serious, unimaginative person at heart. He tried to hide his psycho wife from the public, and told his daughter to shut up.

  
  

  The mother finally went stark raving made, declaring that she was the voice of the dead and the ghosts of the past must be heard. Then she ran off. The father refused to deal with the whole thing, but the daughter took off to find the mother.

  
  

  ***

  
  

  Last night was another space dream. I dreamed that Lt Worf from Star Trek, the Next Generation, and I were one the run. We were trying to stay in cognito, but that didn’t stop us from going to an Old West theme park. Unfortunately, the director of the Park got mad because there weren’t any Klingons in the Old West, so Worf would stand out like a sore thumb. So I got him a hat to hide his cranial ridges, and unbraided his hair. He had this really fancy, multi-strand braid which had been in so long that a lot of the hair cracked and split as I unbraided it. I asked if he looked alright now, and the director just grunted. Then I announced that Klingons were very pragmatic and agreeable.

  • 7:35 pm
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