Nicholas Dreams

Confused Patricide in a Suspended Japanese Inn

My brother, father and I were being held captive in a small room. I was aware that the surroundings were distinctly Japanese. In fact we were imprisoned in an incredibly spare traditional inn, replete with tatami, sliding screen doors and dark wood everywhere.
My father was being held captive by an enormous giant of a man who resembled an mongoloid, obese, Bruce Willis. He was kneeling behind my father, holding his head in a sleeper hold. He kept on threatening to snap his neck but seemed intent on keeping us in suspense.
My brother and I were pacing in circles around them, they were in the middle of the room kneeling on the tatami. As we circled around them we became increasingly agitated that the giant was actually going to carry out his threat. I decided to take matters into my own hands.
I grabbed an enormous kitchen knife and clambered up his back. I proceeded to cut deeply into his neck until I felt his body go slack.  As I climbed down from his body and surveyed the gory scene I realized that somehow his body had merged with my father’s and I had inadvertently committed patricide.  My little brother began crying profusely and as I attempted to comfort him he began shaking violently.  He gradually shrank in size and became an infant version of himself.  I picked him and threw him over my shoulder and wrapped him in blankets.

An enormous siren went off throughout the building I was in and I realized I had triggered some sort of alarm system.  I threw the door open and began running around the inn carrying my little brother.  Eventually I came out onto an open, wooden terrace.  I was faced with an enormous industrial scene.

The inn itself was suspended from the underside of an enormous bridge.  Underneath us, sprawling in every direction was a gigantic refinery.  There were miles of pipes, concrete buildings and smokestacks belching exhaust and flames.  There was an elaborate system of suspended, concrete walkways coming off of the inn in many directions.  I could see small platoons of security guards in the distance attempt to get closer to us.  I began running carrying my brother all the while.  I chose paths at random hoping that they would lead us down to street level.  I kept on looking over my shoulder to ensure that the security guards were still at a safe distance.

Finally we exited at the bottom of an enormous concrete ramp and we were at a basic intersection.  It looked like any number of grubby, harsh street corners in Brooklyn, underneath the BQE and overrun with traffic.  I attempted to flag down a taxi.  Finally, in a astate of exhaustion I sat down on the curb, put my “baby” brother down on the sidewalk and began crying spasmodiaclly.

Backwards racecar driving, ignorant mafia and anger blueberries

This dream is another foggy one but had some nice distinctive qualities.  It was riddled with a fair amount of anger and rejection issues.  I was championing a set of odd causes, anyway, moving on.

I remember driving across an enormous bridge in reverse.  I had a whole car full of people and we were clearly trying to escape something.  The bridge was packed with other attempting to evacuate.  I was actually really enjoying the free-wheeling apocalyptic free-for-all that was the exodus.  I was behind the wheel of what felt like a 60’s era, white, Toyota Corolla hatchback.  It felt really beefed up and like it had way more horsepower than was appropriate.  Strangely, in the car with me and my friends were some Mexicans who were were clearly attempting to make a border crossing and somehow gotten planted in my car.  They clutched each other as we careened around traffic.  As we approached the center of the bridge I threw the wheel in one direction and began driving in reverse, looking over my shoulder and firing a really ornate .45 handgun out the window.  I remember it had amazing engraving and inlay in the handle and I had loaded it earlier that day as I intended on taking revenge on someone.  I realized, as I was driving backwards, that I ought to expend all my ammo in advance to ensure  I didn’t hurt anyone.

Fast forward in dream-time.  I am inside an enormous, loft-like boardroom of sorts.  It has high ceilings, black-iron windows, and beautiful, luminescent, warm wood floors.  There is a huge table in the middle of it and seated around it are a bizarre array of what I can only assume were crime-bosses.  They weren’t of the generic Italian, Chinese, Russian variety.  They were attractively dressed, in their 20’s and 30’s, of both genders and most of them had really good hair.  They might have been a group of mafia-esque designers and creative types but I couldn’t be sure.  There was a heated discussion raging about the fate of one of our members who was not present.  It was clear that I was considered one of their number, in that I was clearly a mob boss or at least a consigliere.

As the group debate progressed it became evident that there was a lack of faith in our absent colleague who was evidently female and was considered to be a liability.  I for some reason felt very loyal towards her and fiercely protective and had a sudden impression that she was going to be “rubbed out” as a result of this meeting.

It was also the case that once we left the room there was going to be some sort of hand-to-hand gang war against some other group and we were busy discussing how to arm ourselves with random weapons.  I had a handful of nails clenched in rows between my fingers.  There were several enormous bowls of freshly washed, plump blueberries in front of several of the members.  I became very agitated about the decision to eliminate our mutual friend.  I began angrily brandishing my nail-hands at various members.  I walked around the table several times, grabbing people at random by the hair and holding the nails at their necks.  I remember screaming that if I heard she was injured at any point I would not hesitate to murder or maim my colleagues in the heat of battle when they least expected it.

I would periodically jam huge handfuls of blueberries in my mouth while I was ranting.  I specifically remember examining the bowl for big fat plump ones while holding a handful of someone’s hair in my hands.  I woke up surprisingly agitated and totally confused by all the anger bubbling inside me.

Pastoral vacation turned voluntary vampire nightmare

This was from a couple months ago, stuck in my mind with extraordinary clarity.  I was on vacation with my family.  We had rented a huge mansion in New Hampshire or Vermont.  It was in a strange neighborhood with an array of other huge, beautiful homes.  It felt like an enormous Quaker village the way the homes were all clustered together.  It felt like a pedestrian neighborhood that was almost totally devoid of paved roads.  There were enormous, beautiful oak trees interspersed throughout.  It was quite idyllic.  I remember arriving at the house with my family (mom, dad and brother).  My brother and I rushed through the house eagerly checking out all the rooms.  The house was totally unfurnished and the rooms were all beautiful and sparse, with hardwood floors, wood paneling and sunbeams pouring in through the windows.

There were other affluent families living in the neighborhood and everyone was getting set up for their vacation time.  There was this very sweet, almost idyllic moment where we were unpacking things from the car and we all sat in front of the house, staring up at it contentedly.

As soon as the evening came closer we began to realize that something was amiss.  It immediately became bitter cold and some of the neighbors began complaining at the utter lack of supplies in their houses.  There was no food, no furniture, and seemingly no lights or anything.  Night fell suddenly and we realized that something was terribly wrong.  I began to hearing muffled screams around the neighborhood and I beckoned my family to run inside and hide in the upstairs.

As I stood in the kitchen of the house I heard a scrambling noise from behind the basement door.  I swung open the door and from out of the darkness I saw a horde of hairless, toothed, vampire-like ghouls rushing up the stairs, climbing the walls and hissing at me.  Strangely I was not in the least bit afraid as I realized I had total psychic dominion over dream-space and could do whatever I wanted with it.  I began vaporizing my antagonists mentally en masse.  They would vanish in a little puff if I pleased or I could pin them against walls at my will.  I shut the door behind me and erected an impregnable wall of brick in front of it.  It dawned on me that the screams all around me came from all the surrounding houses and that every home must have had demons in the basement.

As the realization that the ghouls were roaming the neighborhood dawned on me, true panic set in.  I sat down in meditation and visualized barriers all around the house to protect my family and then raced out into the night to see what was happening.  Just as I feared, people were being maimed and devoured all around me.  I could see the hairless Nosferatu-esque people dragging their victims around, under their homes, feasting on them out in the open and generally causing violent mayhem.  I did my best to destroy as many a I could see but I realized that I couldn’t help everybody simultaneously.

I realized, even lucidly within the dream, that there was some absurd overlap with some recent horror movies.  The thematic and situational closeness to I am Legend and 40 Days of Night were impossible to ignore and it actually helped me take the violence slightly less seriously.  Still I was incredibly dismayed by the violence and I was determined to prevent it.  I spent the remainder of the evening patrolling the grounds and boarding up houses with my mind.

The next day I remember being emotionally exhausted.  Strangely there was no carnage in sight and it almost felt like we might return to a relative state of normalcy.  As nighttime approached again I could tell my family was not looking forward to being trapped inside and having to contend with the sound of murder in the streets.  I promised them I would find a solution to preserve the sanctity of our home and that of our neighbors.  As the night wore on I followed the same bizarre rhythm of psychically boarding up our house, trapping the ghouls in the basement and then traipsing around the neighborhood trying to save everyone.  It quickly became tedious and emotionally draining.

The next day as I was taking down barriers from our house I noticed a strange character next to our house.  He was sunbathing in a beach chair, of the long, chaise-lounge variety, wearing red boy shorts and red-rimmed Ray-Bans.  He was skinny, incredibly pale and his hairline was greying.  He looked up at me through his sun-glasses and began speaking to me in incredibly familiar terms.

He was British, very sarcastic and possibly gay.  He proceeded to tell me that he had an even more omniscient level of psychic control over the scenario and that he knew everything that had been happening to me and could tell that I wasn’t going to be able to psychically endure for much longer as it was obviously draining me.  He said only he could offer me an exit immediately but I would have to accept that everyone (including my family) would be left behind and devoured in the most heartless and demeaning fashion.  He immediately gestured to our parking lot with a casual wave.

To those who don’t know me that well, in high school I was briefly in the possession of a wonderful and bizarre model of 80’s muscle car called the Buick Grand National.  It was enormous, boxy, hideous and could defeat about 98% of the cars on the road in a drag race with ease.  Parked on the flat bed of a car-trailer was a mint condition version of the car.  The engine was running, the windows were down and it was literally  sparkling with little light blings.  Almost without hesitating I told him to go fuck himself and that I had no intention of abandoning anyone.  As soon as the words were out of my mouth an enormous oak tree fell on the car, crushing it dramatically.  The trailer was driven on off the property dragging the tree behind it.

My British “friend” chuckled to himself, leaned back into his chair and wished me a sarcastic “good luck”.  I think he added something about how it was going to be a longtime until I achieved anywhere near enough psychic aptitude to govern this many simultaneous phenomena.

At the time, I thought he was the king of the vampires.  A day or so later, after having the dream, I realized he was an outside “visitor” who was merely chiming in to chastise me for my circular habits and doggedly wasteful self-sacrifice.

Creepy Commercial Corridor and Spontaneous Hindu Statuary Fed By My Tears

The chronology is fuzzy, didn’t catch this one early enough but it is still fresh in my mind.  I was hanging out with a large belligerent, dark-skinned man.  Sometimes he was black and sometimes he was Indian (Hindu specifically).  We were living in some sort of multi-tiered structure.  It resembled a really high end shopping mall of sorts.  There were escalators and balconies and most of the walls were steel and glass.  We lived on the mezzanine in modern, harem style luxury.  We were perpetually going on shopping trips in the space and elsewhere to look for odd items.  Some of my responsibilities were to vet new displays and retailers.  Make sure they were doing their job and had the right kind of merchandise represented.  Sometimes people would install totally inappropriate windows displays and I had to call the out.

I had this one interaction with this creepy, little person.  They weren’t quite a midget or a dwarf.  Just like a totally miniature human.  He was clearly male but also had a disturbingly androgynous quality.  To top it all off he was mentally retarded on some fashion.  It was really difficult to put my finger on how or why exactly.  He had long, almost hipstery, rocker hair.  He had been given a small nook off of the main promenade to sell knives and other semi-violent implements.  To get to his particular retail space, one had to climb a ladder into a small room.  It had one enormous opening that faced out over the main shopping gallery and one could see the contents of his room from most vantage points in the mall.  He had this incredibly inappropriate poster and wall-painting that depicted people getting stabbed and flayed with his knives as his main promotional material.  I made an incredibly diplomatic attempt to persuade him to take down the artwork as I was sure it would not only fail persuade people to purchase his goods but would probably offend most of our patrons.  He reacted very angrily and couldn’t see how or why it was an unsuccessful campaign.  In a moment of exasperation I ripped down all the adverts and threw them down the ladder onto the floor underneath.  He began stuttering and stammering angrily and brandished one of his blades to come at me.  He was incredibly easy to disarm and I kicked him out of the building in a fit of anger.

For the rest of the dream I was always aware of the threat of being stabbed in the thigh by this disgruntled midget and was extremely paranoid throughout.  I went back down to the mezzanine to confer with my partner/boss, the large dark-skinned man.  He was reclining on some enormous chaise lounge, absentmindedly mentioning girls I ought to devote my attention to.  Extolling their various virtues and haranguing me for not taking advantage of any of them.  At that point he suggested we go on some sort of extended car-ride or road trip to get our hands on some frsh tires.  He told me to go into the basement to fetch some provisions for the trip.  At that moment, a female friend of mine (from waking life) appeared on the scene.  She was dressed for cold weather, looking very elegant and beautiful.  She is one of the people in my life that I have always been deeply attracted to but never have been able to stomach her lack of existential control in life.  We descended down an escalator arm in arm to go to what I presume was the garage.  On the way down the escalator I was happily nuzzling in her neck and beginning to warm to her intensely.  As soon as we got to the bottom my dark friend shouted to me to come back up the stairs.  At this point I completely lost my temper and began berating him for his lack of sensitivity and total personal abandonment of all proper managerial abilities.  He was beginning to get all worked up for his rebuttal when he looked above my head with surprise.

An enormous wooden block was falling towards us attached to a parachute.  It landed softly at my feet and lay horizontal on the ground in front of me.  It was an enormous, door-size, wooden carving of a Hindu deity in profile.  It resembled Hanuman or Shiva Nataraj in a running position.  My dark friend began shouting orders at us to get it upright and store it properly.  I began chanting mantram under my breath and crying profusely.  As my tears fell on the sculpture my tears began flowing through the various furrows of the carving. As the tears began spreading from the center everywhere channel they flowed through began turning gold. As more and more of the outlines and details of the sculpture began turning gold the deity began animating slowly.  It smiled broadly and looked at me from the corner of my eye and began running in great leaps and bounds across an enormous mountainous landscape.  All of the anxiety and perturbation that had been pursuing me through the dream instantly vanished as I realized that this particular deity energy was always communing with me and always psychically available.