Nicholas Dreams

Ceilingless Cathedral

This dream was of such a cliched Anglo-Saxon nature it was almost comical.
I was inside a massive forest, attired quite simply as a traveling knight. I distinctly remember wearing a layered outfit. Chainmail, a tunic with a  leather belt, a cloak and an array of weapons on top of everything My head was uncovered and I was holding a sword, hilt up, blade down.
I emerged from a wall of trees and in front of me stretched a massive structure. It was very long and narrow and made of stone. It resembled an unnaturally long ceilingless Bavarian inn with multiple, tall, slender, A-frame, vertical extrusions along the edges. These triangular faces were primarily constructed of stained glass and they were radiating multi-colored beams into the interior of the space. The floorspace was incredibly long and composed of enormous, wooden floorboards. It gave me the impression of being one enormous nave. I could faintly recognize rows of figures lined up along the floor.
There was a small stone stairwell protruding off of one corner immediately in front of me. I felt amnesiac, like the space was familiar to me but I had forgotten it existed or even that it was located here in the first place. I knew that I was expected to enter the space but couldn’t remember why.
As I stepped up onto the upper level I was greeted by an incredibly long nave-like floorspace. There were no furnishings, just a continuous line of people arranged in two lines facing inward. I was beckoned forward and I began slowly making my way down the central aisle.
I was immediately welcomed with warmth and congratulation. To such an extent that the assembled group felt as if they ought to be family. It was predominantly bearded men garbed as if they were knights or other Arthurian era dignitaries.  I proceeded down the aisle created by two long lines of people.  Gradually as I walked farther in between them it became more and more obvious that I was being intensely welcomed home.  They began patting me on the back and laughing at my bewilderment.  I began laughing when I realized it was real and there was nothing malevolent or false about their behavior.  I needing to stop to catch my breath as I was overwhelmed by the wave of approval and positive energy coming from them.

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.