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Another Dream

darker...

It has been a while since I've posted anything.

Well, I'll explain that in a minute, but I'm posting because I've had another one… another dream. A haunting dream. This one, I would even call a nightmare.

I was running. I was running down a hall and all the doors were closing on both sides of me as I came near them. I could hear them slam and bolt shut, one by one by one…

And I kept running.

I know why I was running too… someone was chasing me.

I could hear their steps echoing down the passage way behind me. I was afraid to turn and look behind me… afraid for how near they might be… afraid of what they might look like…

The terror welled up within me as I ran. I was yearning to look back, and yet yearning all the more to get away. The fear of what was behind me intensified. I wanted to look… to see what it was for sure. I wanted to turn around and look… but I couldn't. The fear controlled me.

And it didn't stop.

I kept running and running until I thought my heart would burst, and all the while the fear kept welling up inside me, and then, suddenly, it burst.

I shot up in bed wide awake, drenched with sweat, and breathing heavily.

So, now I've gotten out of bed and come to tell you.

It is a little bit of a relief to say something, but I'm still afraid. I'm afraid to go back to sleep.

What if it happens again?

But then again, I'm afraid to sit up. I drew all the drapes, closed the kitchen blinds. But the darkness outside is foreboding – it narrows in on me, seeming to crush my tiny apartment in its grasp.

I thought at first I would feel better to climb into bed, and pull the covers around me. But that didn't do. I could still hear those echoing steps running behind me.

Well, I'll tell you what I've been doing and maybe that will help.

I had some community service to do on account of the assault charges. So, I've been volunteering to hand out leaflets for the EOO. You remember the Eternal Order of the Onion?

It really isn't so bad. In fact it is kinda interesting. Most people don't even look at you while you stand there, but every once in a while someone actually stops and talks.

Like Martha. She's been stopping and talking to me every day. I think she's pregnant. Anyway, she says she's really into the onion thing. It reminds her of being pregnant. She hasn't said that she's pregnant, but you can kinda tell she's a bit round down there… like the onion. How when you peel off layer after layer there is a baby inside. (Her words, not mine.)

Anyway, I feel sorry for Martha. I think she's homeless and pregnant, but I'm not sure. She walks around on the streets late at night stinking of alcohol and somebody else's cigarettes. At least I've never seen her smoking herself.

I'm not into the onion thing myself. It was just something to do to get my CS hours.

Well, I'm kinda sleepy. I think I'll try and hit the sack once again.

TaD

Well, so I am back. There is so much to say that I almost can't think where to begin. But I'll start at the beginning and work my way from there. You are probably wondering why I was in jail, right?

Damn good to be out of that rat hole!

Anyway, it all started at my neighbor's party. Well, I guess it even started before that. I had another one of those dreams, you know. Where they are unscrewing a wooden lamp from some lady's torso. It's really a wierd dream, because the lady comes in the door, screaming and covered with blood. Her friends (are they really here friends?) gather around her and offer to help. They uscrew the wooden lamp from something that looks like a slot near her neck. There is now even more blood, but the soman actually seems to be okay.

She sits down on the couch and says: "Shit, that was awful. Someone bring me a cup of tea!"

And then I wake up.

Now as you recall, I recognized that wooden lamp. My neighbor across the hall has one just like it in his living room. So, I got antsy. I saw my neighbor was having a little party and I decided to wander across the hall and invite myself. There remained two little mysteries I wanted to try to unravel: his missing girl friend (I mean the lady lived with him for years!) and the fact that I'm pretty sure I saw my missing paperback book sitting on his coffee table through the open doorway.

So, I wander over to his party, and at first I am relieved. He acts like he invited me!

But then I start to get suspicious. All these people are acting too much like they know me! How? I've never seen them before. And then I wonder... are they the same group of strangers that was gathered at his apartment (now I'm sure it was his apartment) in my dream??? And if they are strangers, how is it they are so friendly to me... act like they know me.

So, I try to conquer my nervousness and start asking Andy's friends about his girfriend. Nobody knows. They haven't seen her in weeks... but why don't I ask Andy. It isn't a big deal. Andy goes through girlfriends like chips. Treats them about the same way too. And then they start laughing. Treats them the same way - laughing!

So, now I start to really wonder. Not just about Andy but about his friends! "But Carolynn was a real nice lady," I tell one of them. "She was friendly to me every time I passed her in the hall." And he starts laughing even more than the other guy did. "Say, Andy! Listen to this kid!" he shouts. "Carolynn was getting fresh with him in the hallways. Maybe this guy knows something about why Carolynn left you, bud!"

Now I'm starting to flush with anger. I get up and start pacing, taking deep breaths - ignoring the jibes and jeers all around me.

But, the real problem maybe is that by now I've had too much to drink. Andy comes over to me and gets right in my face. I mean RIGHT in my face! I can smell the sour cream and union dip on his breath. That, and cheap bourbon. And he smiles at me. Smiles at me while I am shaking with anger.

"What did you do to her?" I shout. I never should have done that. "What did you do to her!"

And now the whole room is laughing.

"Wanna pull down your pants, buddy, and I'll show you," he answers. Calm as can be.

So now I'm pissed. I take a swing at him. And before I know it three or four of his buddies are on me. I'm fighting and squirming and after a minute of this I black out, and the next thing you know I wake up in the infirmary at the county jail.

So get this. My neighbor kills his girlfriend. What for? I haven't figured out the motive yet. But I end up in jail for assault. They said I wasn't invited, and that I had barged into his apartment and picked a fight.

So, now there's this restraining order, too. How the heck am I supposed to stay away from the guy when he lives across the hall from me?

This really sucks.

But I've got more to tell. I'll try to get to it later. Can't afford to spend too much time on the net just yet. But I found my book... the missing one. And that is even more suspicious than the missing neighbor lady.


All for now.

Theodore Alfred Dennison

For Your Information Only

Mr. Dennson asked that I log into his blog and inform his readership that he is currently unavailable, serving 20 days for assault. He will be out on the 11th possibly earlier. I'm sure he shall have something interesting to say for himself at that time.

Jonathon T. Barkington, Esquire
Attorney at Law

http://www.barkington.com

The Book and The Dream


It's getting stranger: the situation with the book. Now, it isn't a big deal - I mean, who really cares if my neighbor across the hall stole my book, but it is just the fact that I fell asleep with it in my hands and woke up with it being in the neighbor's apartment across the hall that is so unsettling.

Anyway, I was in the grips of a good story and had to go out and find that book again. It pisses me off because I bought it for half price at the used book store, and had to pay full price for it at Barnes and Noble the second time.

So, I start reading chapter 4. Check this out! This is Terry Brook's Running with the Demon, from page 45:

"The demon stepped out into the midday heat in front of Josie's and felt right at home. Perhaps it was his madness that made him so comfortable with the sun's brilliant white light and suffocating swelter, for it was true that it burned as implacably hot. Or perhaps it was his deep and abiding satisfaction and knowing that this community and its inhabitants were his to do with as he chose."

He followed Derry Howe and Junior Elway to the later's Jeep Cherokee and climbed into the cab with them, sitting comfortably in the backseat, neither one of them quite aware that he was there. It was one of the skills he had acquired -- to blend in so thoroughly with his surroundings that he seemed to be a part of them, to make himself appear so familiar that even those sitting right beside him felt no need to question his presence..."

Isn't that spooky! I wonder if there could be anyone like that.

Anyhow, it gets spookier than that. As I was reading this book I started to realize that the face I had given in my mind's eye to The Demon was somehow familiar to me. I started thinking where I had seen that face before: and guess where? It was the guy standing on the street corner from the Eternal Order of the Onion. And so as I was reading, and thinking that somehow I had given this man's face to The Demon in the book, the words slowly began to dissolve and all I saw was the Onion. The great crystalline blue Onion! And somehow I managed to fall asleep reading that book again (never fear, the book was lying on my lap when I awoke!) and I had a dream.

I dreamt that I was feeding a baby ice cream. Kinda weird, because I can't remember ever feeding a baby before. This baby was sitting in a high chair with his puffy, marshmallow baby face gazing up at me, and I was putting spoon after spoon of ice cream into his puffy little face. And as I fed him his face got rounder, and puffier, and suddenly he was laughing at me and saying something in French, and I realized that he wasn't a baby any more, he was full grown. Then I suddenly realized who he was! It was Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent) from Moulin Rouge! He was standing there staring into my face, laughing at me, and then he spun away from me and danced into a crowd of revelers. He was wearing his white suit just like in the movie. In fact, the next moment of my dream was exactly like in the movie Moulin Rouge!

Then, the spookiest thing happened. I looked up at the moon, to see if it was really as large as it looked in the movie. And sure enough, it WAS. But the worst thing about it: it wasn't the moon as we know it, pockmarked with craters; it was a pure, pearly white onion!

Well, thankfully I awoke sometime later and didn't remember dreaming anything after that. And as I say, the book was laying on my lap. I've started to wonder: did all this strangeness begin after I started reading that book? No, most certainly not. The dreams have been going on for a long time now. But lately, the way it seems... it is almost like the book is somehow connected with the dreams. And I am still defintely going to try and figure out if my book was actually stolen by the neighbor!

:.\TaD/.:

Okay, now where was I...

I can always blog at lunch and they can't say anything about it. How could they? I'm on my own time now.

As I was saying,

It happened again. That dream. The vivid one. The one where I am standing on a rock at the sea, and suddenly the orb comes toward me. This time it is purple. Oh, I suppose I could say lavender or violet or something quaint like that. No, it's just purple. But a glowing purple. The light seems to radiate from the orb as it descends toward me.

I am enclosed in the orb once again and speed out across the countryside. This time I see I am going to "The Church." I don't know if it is really a Church. It looks like a Church on the outside (little white building with a good old fashioned steeple), but whenever I'm taken inside, it looks like something utterly different: usually a performance or show of some sort. One time it was Michael Jackson singing Kumbaya to throngs of screaming teens.

Well today it isn't Michael Jackson. No, sir, this time it is the Man Himself! The Showman of Showmen: Frank Sinatra. Frank is standing on the stage, and (strange!) behind a pulpit. He's singing a song, but that isn't the first thing I notice. The first thing I notice is that he's flanked on the left and on the right by two strange groups of people. To the left of him standing there in flagrant Purple, Red, Green and Yellow are the four Teletubbies. To the right of him are Emma, Rupert and Daniel. You know who I mean... Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley. They are standing their in their best robes with wands drawn, as if they are about to battle some horrendous foe.

Then I notice the music. Frank Sinatra is singing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Now that is truly weird! I don't know how he could be singing that because of course there isn't any words to Moonlight Sonata - but things do not always make sense in a dream! Anyway, I was thinking of the beautiful blue light of the moon, and slowly the dream dissolved away into a moon - me sitting outdoors at night, staring up at the big beautiful moon.

That's all I can remember. Weird, huh?



::.\Theodore/.::

It came again...

"Lives in a dream
Waits at the window
Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door"
- The Beatles, Eleanor Ribgy (words by Paul McCartney)


It happened again. That dream. The vivid one. The one where I am standing on a rock at the sea, and suddenly..

Oh, heck. Got to Go. The boss just caught me blogging at work.

:.\Ted/.:

Well, I feel like I haven't been able to sleep at all the last couple of nights. It is almost like I'm afraid to because of that disturbing dream I had.

But then, last night something wierd happened. When I fell asleep (and I had this wierd dream - I'll tell you about that in a minute)... well, when I fell asleep I was reading a book. But when I woke up in the morning it was gone. I looked everywhere... under all the covers, even under the bed.

But that isn't the spooky part! When I was going out the door to go to work this morning, I looked in the door across the hall from mine (those people are always keeping their door open, it's freaky!) and guess what I saw? Sitting on the coffee table right behind that lamp (you know, the one in my dream) was my book. Sitting on THEIR coffee table!

Well, okay, I can't prove it was my book, but it sure looked like it: Michael Connelly's A Darkness More Than Night. I can't say for sure, but I'm going to try to get a close look next time I go past and their door is open.

Spooky, huh?

Anyway, about my dream last night...

I was riding on a white horse. I can't remember how the dream started. It didn't start with me on the Rock and the Orb like THE DREAM always does. But I found myself riding a white horse... no I think it was a unicorn because it had a single white horn on the top of its head.

I came to a place where I needed to cross the river and the horse (or rather, unicorn) wouldn't do it. Then the beast talked to me. The water was too muddy, he told me.

Well fine, I thought. So I started to climb off. Then suddenly the thing lurched and almost dumped me into the river. I looked down (hanging half off the unicorn) and now the river was way down below me.

The thing was flying!

It was really wierd, because unicorns don't fly.

Well, that's all for now.

:./Teddy\.:


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Eternal Order of the Onion

They're always making profound observations they've overheard.
- Gene Kelly in An American in Paris by Alan Jay Lerner

It isn't a dream, but I've just got to tell you about this anyway. It was so wierd.

When I came out of the building I work in downtown this evening, on my way to catch my bus home from work, there was a guy standing on the curbside handing out leaflets, or I should say trying to hand out leaflets. Anyway, I was trying to side step him best I could when I saw an onion out of the corner of my eye and stopped to see what it was all about.

Well, it was all about the Eternal Order of the Onion. Apparently it’s some new cult.

The guy started talking to me right away, of course, since I’d made the mistake of stopping to look at the bright picture of an onion he was holding up on one of his leaflets.

“We realized that god is an onion when we started to notice that the more you know about him, the less you know. I mean, there is simply layer after layer after layer,” he was saying.

“Uh, yeah, right.”

“Here I tell you what…”

I braced myself as he reached into his bag after something. I never should have stopped. The Eternal Order of the Onion? Heck, maybe he was reaching for a gun. Maybe I’d better get going.

But instead he brought out a small paperback book, titled (yes, you guessed it): “The Eternal Order of the Onion.” I was rolling my eyes back and thinking, oh great. The guy thinks I want to join his cult, but no, that wasn’t it at all. Apparently he was so happy someone had actually stopped and looked at him, that he was giving me the book! Now, it’s not that I was itching to read it or anything, but I considered that it may turn out to be quite amusing.

I took the book, thanked him, and to my surprise the guy just stood there with a big grin on his face as I walked away.

Get a load of this:

Pg 36 in “The Eternal Order of the Onion” by Mayagin Phardu:

“God is not a God that can be easily escaped. Take for example the stench that He maketh when he is laid out for a while in the hot sun. This is stench is no coincidence – nor is it simply an artifact of nature, but it is the clear and present danger of His presence: everywhere, filling all things.”

Well, it’s getting late, so I’d better can it for the day. I think you get the idea anyway.

:.Teddy.:

I never should have told you about my dream. It's all I can think of since I posted it here. Not the dream itself, but that one horrid scene of the woman coming through the front door all covered in blood. The squealing and agonizing sound of her gasps and cries.

I never could see her face. Only her back, drenched in blood as they unscrewed the… oh, I can’t say it again.

And things get stranger. I knew I had seen that lamp before – a long wooden floor lamp with the wood twisting from top to bottom like a screw. This morning (fortunately I dreamed nothing last night) when I went out to get the news paper, I glanced up into the apartment across the hall. My neighbor’s door was open, and someone was talking within – I think my neighbor was being sent by his wife (or is it girl friend?) out to buy something at the store, and he was getting last minute instructions. Anyway, there was that very same lamp, sitting on the floor next to their couch. I know it’s gross of me, but I had to look! I glanced around the room to make sure there wasn’t any blood anywhere. The couch and the floor between the couch and the door way looked okay.

Maybe I’m being psychotic about it. It was only a dream!

Anyway, I’m relieved in a sense, to see that the lamp is still just standing there like normal, and nothing seems to be amiss. Well, I’ve got to go. I’m afraid I’m going to miss my bus.

:|TaD|:

I have begun to have those dreams again...
... this time I will write them down.

Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
- Edgar Allen Poe

I’ve been having those dreams again. The ones that wake me up in the middle of the night, and I can’t go back to sleep again. I’ve been having them off and on for a long time now… can’t even remember when they started. Was it this year or last?

So, I’ve decided to write them down to better keep track of them. Oh, it’s not that I can’t remember them. I can remember them alright. But I can only barely distinguish one from another. They are all so remarkably the same, and yet each is subtly different. Maybe if I write them down, here, where I can re read them as often as I like… maybe then I will begin to understand them… begin to unravel the thread of the dreams before the dreams unravel me!

It was just like last time. I was standing on an enormous rock by the sea. The waves were crashing down all around me. I looked up and around to see if I could find a way down from where I stood – find a way to safety. But all I could see on every side was the tumult of the sea. I could feel the cool mist of the wave that rose up from splash after splash. The cool, salty breeze.

I shuddered, and awoke partially, pulling the covers around me tighter. It was too cold.

Then I saw it. Just like before, only orange this time. A tiny orb hovering above me. I should have known to look up. I should have know, for it is always there. But every time in the dream it comes to me as a surprise.

Anyway, I look up and as the orange orb gets close to me, I can see a reflection of myself in its glossy side. Then suddenly I hear a pop, and feel myself surrounded by orange light. I am now inside The Bubble (that’s what I’ve called it ever since I began having these dreams) and it is taking me away.

I dread where it might be taking me.

But as we soar across the coastland, I begin to recognize where we are going this time. It is a tiny white house in a valley inlet some distance from the sea. I have been there before, and I begin to tremble at what I will find there this time.

Suddenly I am inside that familiar room, and it is just as I feared. They are there again. I don’t know who these people are, but somehow in the dream they are my friends. They are a strange and inconsistent group of people – something very much like the people in David Lynche's Blue Velvet, and I am afraid that what is about to happen would be worthy of a David Lynch movie.

It is.

It has happened before and it happens again. A knock comes at the door, and when it opens there is a woman crying out in pain and suffering. Her friends gather around her to help. I am afraid to look up, because I know what I will see. I’ve seen it before. And at last, I do look up, and there it is again. She has been impaled on a wooden lamp the length of her torso. There is blood everywhere, and it does not rationally compute how this woman can be alive. They unscrew a wooden lamp stand from her body and I turn to run in horror.

When I look up at the wall as I flee, I see something new. It is a framed photograph of Emma Watson, dressed as J. K. Rowling’s Hermione Granger. I stop because I notice that it is autographed:

Gus, thank you for your letter. It was really sweet. Your friend, Emma.

I wonder who Gus is, but I never find out. The dream vanishes at this point and I awaken to the soft hum of my alarm clock.

Welcome...

This is a work of fiction in progress. It happens before your very eyes. It is a story told through dream-blogs, and borrows very little from the real world. I shall provide some little excerpts on the setting as time passes.

And soon we shall begin.

~ Arthur K