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.