nicholasThis was from a couple of 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 hear muffled screams around the neighborhood and I beckoned my family to run inside and hide 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 as 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 long time 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.
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