Nightmare 8.28.14

Note:  I was going to title this post "What's in a Dream" but realized as I  started to type that this was really more of a nightmare and one full of symbolism and snatches of my reality and what's going on in the world at present.  I'll have to  ponder this one for a while.  

Mrs. B

I approach the door of my family home.  As it opens, I see that another family is living there, and a family that is not supposed to be there at that.  For lack of better term, I’ll refer to them as a terrorist family.  There is definitely something ominous about their presence.  Snaky.  Oily.  Over perfumed.  Threatening.  As I stand in the doorway, the male of the house, I presume the father figure, gestures me in.  There is a dog standing nearby, not my dog but some sort of standard poodle thing; not my favorite dog at all.  I look around and spot my dog, my Lucy; off in a corner.  She looks decidedly miserable; downtrodden, beaten; probably literally.  She is mangy looking and, pathetically, chews on an old stick.  I wonder where all of her toys are; her bunny, her squirrel, her hedgehog, her flea?  She sees me and her tail starts to thump on the floor.  With some show of her usual enthusiasm, she jumps up and races over to me.  As she approaches, the slimy man yells harshly at her and she cowers.  My heart breaks.  She tries to slink towards me but he keeps her from getting close to me.  He starts to take his belt off and holds it menacingly in his hands saying, “I guess it is time to really show this dog who the master is.” I begin to protest, fear rising inside of me as I anticipate what this man is going to do to my dog.  He moves towards her and I splay my hands out in a pleading manner, asking him to please leave my dog alone; to just let me take her away and she’ll be no more trouble to him.  I have no thought, really, for the house, or its contents; only to save my dog.  After some time of this, an achingly long moment when I wonder if he’ll insist on dragging her outside where I’m sure he’ll beat her to death, he, amazingly, relents.  But, there is a condition; I am to take her away, yes; but I must come back within a few days with some amount of money, a staggering amount which I know I can never raise, and, worse, I know that this money will go towards something that is not good at all.  Yet, I agree, my only thoughts to get my dog out of that house and away from this horrible person.  As we walk together out of the house; me, my dog and this awful human being, I wonder how it is that we are in the cul de sac where I grew up; even as I recognized the house as my parent’s house in San Diego, I am startled that we are IN San Diego.  We walk towards the part of the cul de sac the leads to the primary artery street where my car is parked.  As we progress, the man reminds me of my duty.  We reach the car and I get Lucy settled in the passenger seat next to me; something I’d normally never do but I want her nearby.  She is so cowed and timid at this point, she hardly moves; just places her head onto her paws and regards me with eyes that express a combination of wariness and joy.  We drive away and I immediately begin to wonder how I can possibly raise money for whatever the man has in mind.

The scene switches, and I am in an apartment, I guess it’s mine, going through all of my things with an eye to keep only exactly what I need and to sell the rest; presumably to raise money to give to this man.  There is another woman there with me; I am unclear of her relationship to me but she looks an awful lot like the actress Scarlett Johansson.  As I go through my things, I notice several suitcases packed and standing off to the side.  She says, “I went ahead and selected a few things for me, as you told me I could.”  I nod, but stop and walk over to the bags.  I held up my brown leather satchel.  “You can’t have this one.  I need this one, and also the other valise you packed plus my red wheelie.  Any other suitcase you can have,” I tell her.   She says, “I didn’t know.”  I open up the bags to remove what she has packed in them so that I can take the empty bags for my own use.  I notice that she’s packed a lot of my slacks, a few sweaters, and, for some reason, the sock monkey slippers that my stepmother bought for me a few months before she died.  “You can’t have these,” I say, holding them up.  “They are the last things Margot bought for me before she died.” I tuck them away. I feel a sense of sadness of losing so many of my things but also realize that I don’t care all that much.

The scene switches again and I am back at the house.  This time, there is no family there; in fact, the place is deserted and nearly destroyed inside.  It is a wreck; furniture tossed to and fro, all of the food pulled out of the refrigerator and freezer and tossed in the backyard; some of it is floating in the swimming pool.  Although the people are gone, I still feel a sense of unease, a bit of desperation that they may return before I can get the place secured.  Mark is with me now; we begin together to sort the place out.  Although when I was there the first time; when I met the horrible man and saw Lucy I didn’t wonder about the cats, now I am concerned what happened to them as I see them nowhere.  I worry that that awful man did something to them but also believe that they were too wily for him.  As Mark cleans up inside, I go outside, thinking that perhaps they are out there.  After a few moments, I see one or two of them on the outskirts of the property, in the canyon.  After some time, I managed to coax them all inside the gate and into the backyard and get them into the house.  This is when I discover all of the meat we’d had stored in the freezer tossed around the backyard; expensive roasts, pounds of hamburger, steaks.  I wonder at this blatant disregard for food, for money; especially in light of the fact the man seemed to need and want money.

The scene switches yet again and I am in my familiar dream of being at an airport, being dropped off at the terminal, and being late for my flight.  I have to walk the long path to the check in counter, then the never ending walkway to the gate.  I’ve been in this place in my dreams so many times, it’s very familiar to me.  As with all the other times, I have a desperate sense of needing to get onto that plane so I can get away.  This time, there are two women with me, and they are exclaiming that there may be a problem with our three seats; that perhaps they’ve overbooked and we won’t be able to get on the plane after all.  I look at my ticket and see it’s a seat in first class.  I tell them there won’t be a problem, they never bump the folks in first class.

A Dilly of a Nightmare with an Extra Scoop of Scary

I dream. A lot. Most often, my dreams are long and involved and continuous. Usually, I wake up able to remember a considerable amount of the dream. Almost always, there is some correlation between aspects of the dream and what is happening to me, or has happened, in my waking life.

Unfortunately, nightmares stick with me even more so than dreams.

Mr. B and I are on a cruise ship. There are initially scenes of us waiting in line to go on-board and then moments of us in our stateroom. The majority of it, though, is me walking around one deck of the ship; the deck that has the buffet at one end of it. I wander around and always end up entering the dining room/buffet area at the same place; where two women are sitting at a counter, each eating strange looking meat and cheese filled pasties. Each time I pop up, they glance up at me with some degree of irritation. The final time, I move on through the dining room and continue my circuit around the deck.

It is twilight, the glooming. I am now inside but can easily see the ocean from the many windows that line the part of the ship I am walking through. There are a lot of people crowded around the railing, leaning down and looking at something in the water. There are excited voices and pointing, "See that! See that! It's fins! There must be a dolphin down there!" I stop and watch the people at the railing. As I'm standing there, I, too, am able to see the fins; they appear to be rising up out of the water, as if whatever it is is attempting to reach up and say "Howdy, folks!"

Suddenly, the mood turns ominous. The fins are extremely large; much larger than what you'd see on a dolphin or porpoise. A sense of dread fills me as I watch a huge lump of something come up out of the water, totally level with the railing. It has a huge head and a snarling mouth with a ton of wicked looking teeth. As it propels itself alongside the railing, it takes out several of the people standing there. Most of them fall shrieking into the water below but a few end up flailing about in the creature's mouth.

All around me now is pandemonium. I turn and walk briskly back the way I'd come, going against what is now a large crowd of people coming my way; I am pushing, pushing to get away. I pull out my cell phone to call Mr. B, hoping he's somewhere very far away from this disaster.

I find an alcove where I can stop and punch in Mr. B's number. Initially, I am so scared I cannot control my fingers and I keep dialing the wrong number. Or, I get the number in and then inadvertently disconnect. This goes on for some time, with me getting more and more frustrated and panicked. I try to calm myself down, knowing that if I don't, I won't be able to make the call.

I continue to walk against the tide of people, looking down at the cell phone and trying to get the number in correctly. As I'm walking, I am startled by the fact that so many people don't seem to have any idea of the danger we are in. Bells sound that signal the Captain is about to make an announcement. Everyone around me keeps talking at a loud pitch, even when he starts to speak. I cannot understand what he is saying, but know it has to do with the monster that has attacked the ship. I shout at the people around me, "Shut up! Shut up! Be quiet! We need to hear what the Captain is SAYING!" but they look past me as if I'm not there.

I end up back in the dining room/buffet area but this time, since I've entered from the opposite direction, I do not disrupt the two ladies sitting at the counter. A server wanders by me with a tray. She stops and holds it out in front of me, inquiring if I'd like some shrimp; indeed, there is a small bowl of shrimp on her tray, along with a dish of cocktail sauce, toothpicks for spearing the shrimp, and a few napkins. Incredulous that she is offering me food given what I just saw, I stand there gaping at her. A man pushes up behind me and says, "Sure, I'll take some!" He reaches over with his fingers and grabs some shrimp. The server slaps his hand and says, "You're not supposed to use your bare fingers! Drop that and go wash your hands right now!" He slinks off, I head off in the other direction, still fumbling with my cell phone; trying to make that call to Mr. B.

After what seems like ages, I am finally successful in doing so. I hear the phone ringing, ringing, ringing, on the other end. I am praying it won't go into voice mail because I am not sure that I could punch the numbers in correctly again. Thankfully, he picks up, and I say, "Where are you? Where ARE you? I am on Deck Four, aft!"

The voice, when it answers, is not Mr. B, rather, it is my ex husband Mr. H. He replies, "Well, hey there, Aims, I'm on Deck Six so there's just one deck between us, isn't there?"

I shriek and hang up the phone. I try again and again to call and every time, my ex answers. This goes on for some time before I finally wake up.

I can do arm chair shrink like the next person; I can figure out what some of this means, certainly. However, this is not the first time my ex has made appearances in my dreams, continuing to masquerade as my husband, and I really don't understand why.

That's it. No moral or point to this entry today; just needed to get it out there because it is still so very vivid at almost 9:30 am. Perhaps sharing will help to disperse its creepy, bad-vibe vapors.

Mrs. B