Tag Archives: violence

Nightmare #310 – Pick on Someone Your Own Size

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In this dream, my husband and I were living somewhere, not our home, but in
someone else’s house, friends I guess. We had a bedroom with all of our
stuff in it.

One of my belongings was a this doll, like a ventriloquist’s dummy, and
come on– those are always creepy under the best circumstances. It made
sense that I had it because I had a lot of dolls when I was a child,
although never one like this. I don’t think it was a full-size dummy, more
like a half size or smaller. It stood about 15 inches tall– baby-doll
size– but it was proportioned more like an adult body.

And I say stood because the darned thing suddenly came to life.

And it’s main reason for being was to kill me.

I knew I had to watch it all the time. I couldn’t take my eyes off it,
even as it was frantically running around the room and looking for
something sharp with which to stab me.

It found a pocket knife and came at me with it. I knocked the knife out of
its hand, and then I easily pulled its arms behind its back. It kept
thrashing and snarling. It was a tough little bugger, but so much smaller
than me that I could restrain it fairly easily– I just couldn’t let it go.

I knew I had to tie it up securely. I found some zip ties and was using
those to wrap around its legs, when it leaned forward and grabbed a
corkscrew. It brandished the corkscrew over its head at me, thrusting
about wildly. It wasn’t made out of doll material after all, but it had
skin and muscles, just small.

So I picked it up and started smashing it on the ground, trying to knock it
out. It was a doll, but it also was bleeding. I kept beating at it, but
it wouldn’t stop trying to hurt me.

Around that time, my husband and some friends came in the room. They
watched me rather scornfully. They seemed to think I was overreacting. It
was just a little doll after all.

I knew it would kill me if I didn’t kill it first– I just didn’t know
how.

Nightmare #309 – Rockabilly Trouble

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(Male, 40′s) My wife and I were staying at this cheap motel and late at night, we got hungry so we went to the coin operated restaurant they had on the roof. It felt like a real restaurant with booths and menus even but there was no staff working there. Everything was a vending machine.

The place was hopping. I don’t know if the town was really dead for night spots or what but there were lots of “kids” and I’ll use that term to mean people in their early 20′s.

They were honky-tonk punks. That’s the best definition. They wore country western style clothes but all dolled up like they’d read about Elvis in history class. One guy had a big blond pompadour. The other wore a black shirt with silver shirt points and a bolo tie. The girl had a kerchief and boots. They were exuberant and dangerous.

They dropped a bunch of quarters in the jukebox and selected songs with a boom-chicka-boom chicka-boom rhythmn and a loud thundering bass. Rockabilly. They were up to no good, trying their best to kick up some shenanigans but they looked so gosh darned cute. I couldn’t keep my eyes off them.

The kid with the pompadour came over as my wife and I were leaving. We had words. I said something to the effect of “I like your style, kid.”

He snapped back, “You’re a dead man, old man.” He said it all syncopated, like he was a hipster hepcat or something.

“I’ve got a little living left but you’re right. You probably have more joys ahead of you than I do. But when I was young I remember not having much money. Let me pay for your time here.”

“Oh you’ll pay, Pops.”

He approached me and and flicked out a long stiletto knife. Like the rest of his get-up, it was more show than threat but it was still pretty dangerous looking.

By this time, I’d taken out my money clip. He moved in to grab me. For some reason I knew he wasn’t going to stab me outright, that he just wanted to take me hostage and torture me a bit to show off in front of his gang. As he grabbed me, I bent my arm up so I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and the edge of my money clip was right at the side of his throat.

He started in listing all the things a bored stupid thug could come up with to terrorize an out of towner, when I pointed out to him that with a flick of my wrist, I could sever an important artery to his head. Sure he could stab me but the blade would likely go into fat without hitting any organs. He’d be dead before he hit the ground.

The punk didn’t release me. I don’t think I convinced him. I was going to have to kill him, this silly small town would-be thug. At that stand off, the dream ended.

Nightmare #306 – Robbed in the Amusement Park

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(Male, 30′s) I don’t normally have nightmares but I woke from this dream so deeply disturbed that I couldn’t go back to sleep. On the surface, it’s a simple story. I was at an amusement park of some kind. Maybe not one aimed exclusively at children. Maybe something more like a World’s Fair or an Expo or something. It was downtown in a big city but a city I didn’t know. The park was set aside from the city somehow, that is, it was it’s own world.

I had started out enjoying my time there with others, friends, acquaintances, I think even my wife might have been there too. But as the day wore on, I found myself alone. It was dark. The park was emptying.

I made my way between two areas, through what felt a little like a baseball field. As I crossed, I drew the attention of several beings. They appeared human, a gang. But the gang members were only superficially human. They were made of darkness, like compressed smoke. But they moved exactly like humans, almost like dancers in the sense of exaggerated, expressive gestures.

They moved quickly to surround me. I knew they were going to rob me so I offered to give them all the money in my wallet. I thought this was clever because then I wouldn’t have to replace my driver’s license, my credit cards, etc. (I suppose I was only giving my assets, not surrendering my identity.) I opened my wallet and pulled out many bills. Then I reached in again and there were more bills, including at least one $50 bill. I never carry such large denominations. The cash distracted them and I was able to slip away.

When I got away safely, I discovered that I had left my jacket somewhere, a lemon colored jacket that I quite liked – even though I don’t actually own such a jacket. I had also left my camera somewhere. When I realized that I had lost my camera and with it all of the photos I had made, I collapsed and had to support myself on a trash can. How was I going to get home? Where was I?

Nightmare #304 – Murder!

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(Male, 30′s) All throughout my dreams last night, I kept coming across a murderer. He wasn’t always trying to kill me, though he was always threatening me – sometimes I saw him while he was either preparing to kill someone else, or disposing of the body. Once, I was at a funeral and at a certain point in the middle of a conversation with the mourners, I realized that this person must have been killed by the murderer. Another time, I came across him as he was speaking with someone who I later realized he was stalking. Another time I saw him driving a truck down a long winding mountain highway. He looked me right in the eyes and I was chilled to the core. He had another body with him and he was daring me to do something about it. I’d be next.

The most interesting thing about this dream is that it wasn’t primarily about the murderer. He was just a recurrent though highly disturbing character. And actually, if I had to physically describe the murderer, he looked different each time I saw him on a purely physical level. But he was in fact, the same guy, if not just the same malevolent force.

Eventually, he started stalking me. I was home in a house that isn’t actually my house. It was dark outside. A motion sensor light turned on in the back yard. I knew it was him. He was back there but I couldn’t see him. There were the reflective circles of a half dozen creatures out there, staring back at me – racoons, possum maybe. I couldn’t see their outlines, only their eyes. I knew that they could see me and see the murderer and they didn’t care if I was about to be murdered. I flipped on another light but couldn’t see him any better.

I was waiting for a bus. All the newspaper boxes had run out of local papers, which disturbed the other people waiting for the bus. I realized that I was standing in front of the factory where the murderer worked. I could confront him and turn the tables. It was a big brick building. I had to walk around it to find a door. I passed by a large window. Inside, I saw the murderer acting out his next murder. He held an absurdly large piece of glass as if it was an ax. He shouted “I’m going to kill you like this” and he waved the glass shard around and around like he was stabbing someone. Then the murderer saw me and he ran at the window. I stepped back, both the window and the glass shattered but I was unhurt. I pursued him around to a loading dock where there were other workers.

I finally got a good look at the murderer. His most disturbing feature was a poorly trimmed mustache. Half of it was cut extremely close while the other half was bushy. It looked like it had been hacked at with a knife. The workers were being called in for a staff meeting. I stretched my finger out at the murderer, accusingly. He was angry, viciously angry but he was broken, exhausted. I was extorting him to be good, to stop murdering people, to stop stalking me. He agreed.

Nightmare #301 – Dear Dead Dad

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(Male, 50′s) I dreamt about my dad last night. He’s been dead for over twenty years. I was cleaning in his basement which was a mess when he died. Crap everywhere. All sorts of stuff. Half finished projects, materials to do other jobs around the house, papers spilling out of filing cabinets and a far amount of crap I had no idea what the hell it was. By the way, this is pretty true to what happened when he died. His basement work area was a mess and it took me an awfully long time to clean it up and get the house sold. But I suppose if anyone dies unexpectedly there’s going to be a lot of unfinished business. In the dream I moved a piece of furniture in the basement and I found a doorway in the floor. I never knew THAT was there, I remember thinking in the dream. It was just big enough for me to crawl through. There was another basement underneath the first one. It was a mess too, though just a bit more organized perhaps. Maybe like an over stocked thrift store.

But the weirdest thing was that my dad was there. He was the same age as he was when he died. He was wearing a white t-shirt and work pants. He’d been down there the whole time, I figured. It would take some getting used to, him being alive again. I’d have to introduce him to folks. We didn’t exactly have a bad relationship but we didn’t always get along. I don’t think it was his fault or my fault. We just didn’t get along as well as we could have. He was kind of surprised to see me and not exactly happy either. I was interrupting. I didn’t really want to tell him I’d been clearing out his workshop in the upper basement but he figured out anyway. He was more than irritated. He was angry about what had happened since he died, about how I’d tried to clear his stuff out of the basement.

Next thing I know, he’s got my brother in a death hold, like he’s trying to kill him. A couple things strange with this picture. My old man was NEVER violent. He was always calm and gentle. Very peaceful, really. A real gentleman. But the guy in my dream was murderous and enraged. He was physically destroying my brother, wrestling with him, battering him. And the other strange thing is that I don’t have a brother. Never did. I knew I had to save this guy, this “brother,” so I looked around for something I could use. I found a long bread knife and a sledge hammer. And I hit my dad with the hammer. Only I don’t hit him with the head of the hammer. I use the handle of the hammer which is hardly effective.

Then things get really weird. I tell my dad to relax and imagine all the pieces of paper that were written about him during his entire life. Every document, every record, every report card, every bill, every bank statement, every love letter. Then add to that pile every piece of paper he read or even looked at. Every magazine, every book, every porno picture, every postcard. It would be a huge pile but it still would be a finite amount. Then I told him to imagine selecting out only the most important pages, the ones that really “got” him, whether they were good or bad. Imagine someone who loved him saved all the pages that described him in a favorable light, but that that collection of pages got lost. All that remained was the collection of pages that described his unfavorable characteristics. I told him not to worry. No one who found that other collection of pages, those bad descriptions, no one who found those pages would ever think that they fully described him. They’d know there were good things that weren’t mentioned.

Then I woke up. Strangest thing.

Nightmare# 299 – Bad, Bad Roommates

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(Male, 20′s) I had this nightmare about an hour after I fell asleep and when I woke up, I seriously considered just not going back to sleep.

I was in a house with a half dozen other guys. It felt like we were in college and we had rented a house together. What a weird house though. It was like a hollowed out tower but a loft had been built inside that stretched up three full stories. The top floor had a floor entirely covered with mattresses, so I guess that was the bed room.

Most of the guys seemed friendly but shallow, always smiling but just skin deep. I didn’t know if they really were dumb or if there was something else underneath that silly happiness.

One of the guys was very disturbed and very disturbing. He gave off “serial killer vibes.” Tall, wore a wide brimmed hat and a black raincoat that always seemed to be wet. On one occasion he was actually dragging in a plastic bag that looked like it could have contained a dead human body.

I accidentally crossed his path. I was using my computer and I was watching a movie / playing a game about a serial killer. It was a horror survival thing. But then I realized that I had somehow hacked into his computer and I was actually seeing what was live on his screen. And worse, he knew I had seen him. He used the camera in my computer to spy on me all the time.

I was freaked. He was coming for me but I figured I’d be safest if I climbed up to the top of lofts, to the bedroom floor. There were two other guys there. They told me not to worry, that the crazy serial killer guy never climbed up the ladder. We started wrestling for some reason and then I discovered gradually that I couldn’t move my arms or legs. One of the guys laughed, “That’s because we drugged you.” I started to foam at the mouth. “We’re going to rape you and then give you to the serial killer so he can chop up the evidence.” I fell over face down on the mattress, paralyzed, my mouth filled with foam. I was unable to scream but eventually I shook myself hard enough that I woke up.

Nightmare #298 – House, Plans and Zombie

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(Male, 50′s) Extremely strange and disturbing dream that only incidentally had a zombie in it. I guess that’s enough to make it a nightmare, right?

I was in this house which at times was the house where I live now and at times was the house where I grew up, even though it really didn’t resemble either of those actual houses very much. There was a big apple tree in the back yard.

And there was Richard Pryor. He was just hanging out. He might have been a relative or he might have been just a friend but he was just there and we were all acting like it was no big thing. I haven’t thought of Richard Pryor for years by the way though I used to think he was pretty funny. He looked good, like he did back in the 70′s before all the freebasing coke stories came out. So there was me, Richard Pryor, the girl who later became my wife and a couple other people.

We were working on plans to remodel the house. We all were inside standing around the dining room table and then one of us would make a change to the set of plans, then we’d all walk out side to see what that would look like on the house. It was like as soon as we made a decision, it actually changed the house.

But we got mixed up a little. Some of us were changing the plans while others were checking the results, so I passed people coming back in as I was going out. And one time when I passed Richard Pryor, he wasn’t looking very good. His hair had changed to white and his skin was ashy grey. He was dead alright but he was still walking around. No one else seemed to realize it yet, and Richard Pryor didn’t even realize that he was a zombie yet so I still had some time before things got ugly.

But the only weapon I had was a hammer. I got it in my hand and I came up behind Richard Pryor. I knew that the only way to kill a zombie was to take its head completely off – at least that’s what I “knew” in my dream. So I was preparing to hammer at the back of his spine, over and over until his head fell off. It was going to be awful. I felt sick to my stomach thinking about all the gore and blood. When I raised the hammer behind my head, I woke up.

Nightmare #294 – Again, bloodier

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(Female, 40′s) This nightmare was obviously modeled on *Groundhog Day* or *Run Lola Run*, but scarier and bloodier.

I was sitting in a room with my husband and 4 other people. The other people were not real people from my life, just dream characters. We were sitting and talking at a round dining room table. Then there was a knock on the door. One of the men stood up and answered the door. A tall man dressed in a black officer’s uniform came in the room holding a gun and shot him dead, immediately, for no reason we could see. Then the man with the gun herded us out of the room and down the hallway, where there were more soldiers. A woman from our group tried to run away, and she was shot and so was another man. There was a short old man who started laughing then and said to the officer, “See, I told you it would work!” I realized he was on their side. “We don’t need you any more,” said the officer as he pulled the trigger and shot the old man. They led my husband and I out into the forest, and I knew any minute we were both going to die.

Then I was back at the first scene of the dream again, everyone alive and sitting at the table talking. I looked around, worried and nervous, but the other people in the room continued their conversation. I said, “Something terrible is going to happen.” “Why would you say that?” my husband asked. Everyone looked at me, curious. Then I realized that I was the only one of the group who knew what was going to happen next. “Someone is going to knock on the door. Don’t answer it!” But when we heard the knock on the door, the man stood up and answered it anyway– just like before. And was shot by the officer. And the action went on.

Then we were back at the first scene again. This time I knew I had to be more assertive. “If you don’t do what I say, everyone will be dead in 10 minutes.” I pointed at one of the men. “Go lock the door. Don’t let anyone in!” “She’s crazy,” said the old man. “Don’t listen to her!” I told my husband and another guy to hold him down. There was a knock at the door, and the old man kept shouting, “They are in here! They locked the door!” Shots were fired at the door knob and the officer strode into the room…

Then the first scene again. I stood up. I said to my husband, “He’s a spy! Knock him out!” pointing at the old man. I don’t know why, but he believed me. He stood up and grabbed a chair and hit the old man over the head, knocking him out. “Turn off the lights and hide!” But still the knock and the shots and the man with the gun…

The first scene over again. But this time I pointed to the knocked out old man and said to my husband, “Kill him now.” My husband and another man beat in the old man’s head with chair legs. Thud, thud, crunch, crunch. “Everyone grab a chair leg. Arm yourselves. Smash the light bulb. They will be here any minute.” We waited in the dark for them, armed and ready.

One of these times we were going to get it right and survive.

Nightmare #291 – Motorcycle Gang Chase

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(Male, 40′s) I haven’t ridden a motorcycle in years but in this dream – no, it was a nightmare – I was on my old cycle. Except it wasn’t my bike. It had turned brown and it had shrunk. My bike used to be an old Touring model Harley, a big bike but the one in my dream was smaller than a Sportster. And it was in rather fragile condition too. The clutch wasn’t holding and it had extremely erratic acceleration. Which meant that I couldn’t exactly predict how fast I could be moving at any given instant. But still this was “my” bike. I was coaxing this thing along.

I was in the neighborhood where I grew up, riding along a street a couple blocks away from where I lived. Everything was dark. My bike was oddly silent which is particularly strange for a Harley. I used to love the sound of it, the way it vibrated in my chest. I took a right turn onto a divided highway. I thought I had plenty of time to turn out into traffic but the bike just stalled. It sort of glided, moving of its own accord regardless of how I tried to make it go faster.

Then all of a sudden I was in the midst of a motorcycle club. I didn’t recognize them but they didn’t lok friendly. They were riding real motorcycles, tuned and precise, not like this withered piece of junk I was pushing along. They were swarming around me, up to no good. I had no club affiliation so I wasn’t wearing any colors but then again, I had no protection from a club either. I wanted to get away from them but I also didn’t want to antagonize them either. The road had turned to dry dirt, like a wide motocross track with huge hills. I was never good on that kind of surface. I skidded around like a maniac oly barely able to keep from hitting these other bikers. I was able to get my bike going in the opposite direction from them and I thought just maybe they’d continue on where they were headed and let me go.

But then two of them started to follow me. One came up on my right and the last thing I remember was that my bike veered off so I cut this guy off and he started to go down. I figured I was finished.

Nightmare #238 – Flesh-Eating Mutants

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(Female, 50′s) First of all, when I told my partner about this nightmare about zombies, he told me they weren’t zombies. So what the hell were they? Second, this dream was weird because it seemed to take place over days, maybe even weeks. Like I woke up and went to sleep and lived whole DAYS in this dream. The other weird thing about this dream was the depth of emotions I experienced during it. I felt things. Like really, really scared. And really, sad. And then really depressed.

In this dream, some friends were visiting us, and it was evening– just getting dark out. Not friends we really have, and we didn’t live in our real house, but in this cottage-like structure. Their van was parked in our driveway, and they were getting ready to leave. They were a couple and their three little kids; one was already buckled in his carseat. The husband stepped over to say hello to one of the neighbors.

“…there was nothing that could be done about the monsters. People went on with their lives…”

Then in the distance down the street, there came this band of marauding flesh-eating mutant humans. They attacked every human they saw and simply tore them apart. We watched for a moment, horrified– the woman and I– and then I called her two children, a boy and a girl, to me. She hopped in the back of the van and tried to get the child out of the carseat. I scooped up the other two children in my arms and ran into the house. I waited at the door, calling “Hurry, hurry” but it was too late. A monster reached into the van and pulled the woman out, and I covered the children’s eyes as the monsters tore her apart. I closed and locked the door, and then I started shutting and locking all the windows and pulling the curtains shut. The little girl wandered over to a window, and there was a monster on the other side. The monster said, “There’s a living one in there” and tried to reach in so I quickly pulled the girl away and shut the window and the curtain, and then I moved the the center of the room and made the children sit still on my lap. Then the monsters couldn’t see us any more.

So a few patterns emerged: They only came out at night. They could only see you if you moved. They could talk to each other, but they weren’t smart or organized enough to get into houses; they only caught people outside. They didn’t change the people they caught into monsters like them but tore them to shreds and ate them. The next day the father came to pick up the kids, and they went home. It was so sad and so scary.

But the weird thing was that people seemed to cope. There was nothing that could be done about the monsters, but people went on with their lives. Like, our teenage daughter went to college every day and to her job– just making sure to be inside by dark. My husband drove her somewhere that took longer than they’d planned so they stayed overnight to be safe, but I was so worried about them and so relieved when they came home the next day.

For the most part, life went on, although there were occasional deaths in the community because people forgot the rules and stayed out too late after dark. Everyone else was managing, but I was frightened and worried all the time. Really sad. And really depressed. I couldn’t see any point in doing anything anymore.

Nightmare #237 – Party Gone Wrong

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(Male, 30′s) I was with a group of friends, not people I actually know but within the dream, we were friends. We were tight, almost a gang. A half dozen or so. Maybe a few more. We were living inside an abandoned warehouse.

At one point, we were sitting around an old wooden table. There was an empty plate sitting in the middle of the table and then this strange whistling sound started. It’s like it was coming from the plate somehow. We picked it up and found there was a current of air coming from a hole in the floor, like a heating duct or something and that was making the edges of the plate ring like a bell.

“…these two were ritually murdering gang member for some kind of black magic…”

It was night. Actually it was night all the way through this dream but it came time to go to sleep. We had lit a fire on the dirt floor of the warehouse but it had pretty much died out. I tried to get it going again so we wouldn’t be cold. It was almost entirely burnt out. There were just a few very tiny embers buried in this large mound of ash. I sifted through it, trying to find these tiny embers since I hoped I could find enough to kindle a fire. Instead, I found a set of keys. The keyring was brass and had a stylized portrait of Saint Francis on it. It sifted through the ash and found more sets of keys. I knew immediately that these each belonged to former gang members who’d been murdered.

Just then, two of the other members, that is, two of my friends pulled out huge hunting knives and started toward me. I had discovered their secret. I had a knife too but there were two of them. I slowly edged around, trying to keep an eye on both of them while trying to exit and run off into the night. For some reason I knew that these two were ritually murdering gang members for some kind of black magic or something. I was climbing up on a stack of boxes which would have put me closer to a an open window when I woke up.