Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #126 – Clown Town

(Male, 40’s) Bruce is out of town for some reason, so I decide to go see a movie alone. I drive into Detroit in a long black luxury sedan of some kind. The movie is long, a kind of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and it gets out late. As I leave the theater, some kid with a straw spits a soggy wad onto my windshield. As I turn out of the lot, I’m suddenly on foot. No problem. I know I have to walk a few blocks to the highway to catch a.. or to where I parked..? Whatever. But I’m walking in the late afternoon sun through a grassy back alley. Broken concrete slabs and tall abandoned condos with narrow streets to my left.

…This particular clown is tall, about 7 or 8 feet. Dressed in a white outfit, billowy collar and stovepipe hat. But his eyes are strange…

No one is around. I pass a street, and walking towards me in the middle of the road is a clown. This must be Detroit’s famous Clown-Town, I realize. I didn’t know I was so far South. I should have known by the graffiti. This particular clown is tall, about 7 or 8 feet. Dressed in a white outfit, billowy collar and stovepipe hat. But his eyes are strange. They’re perfectly round and large, like white tennis balls. Black dots in the middle like they’ve been drawn on with a marker. There’s no one else around, yet he’s performing. His step is light and he skips every other step or so. He’s looking side to side, waving and nodding to unseen crowds. There’s no sound but the highway hum ahead. I move on. Behind me I hear the scuff of someone walking, skipping. I look back and Stovepipe has turned the corner. He’s behind me waving with his hand high in the air. He stops and there’s and tumble of color and cloth as another clown cartwheels out from a hedge Stove pipe catches his ankles and slows him. They both pantomime a happy greeting and then turn toward me. I start to feel like I have a long way to go before the safety of the on-ramp. I don’t know why, but I’m nervous. Clowns have never been seen to leave the few blocks the city has reserved for them before, but these two seem pretty mobile- and coming up fast. Also, it’s never been reported that our clowns have ever hurt anyone. I’ve never heard of it anyway. Still. On the next block there are two, no three more happy, skipping, staring clowns heading my way. Then the dream logic, the feeling that this is all an everyday situation falls away. Stovepipe is taller than any human I’ve ever seen and his unblinking eyes are just dry balls of plastic. I’m outnumbered and I can’t seem to get any faster than a stroll. The clowns are up to about 8 now, and still completely silent, still coming after me. I try to drag myself along the pavement and to get moving faster. The air is like water and I’m fighting the current. I find that I’m laying on the cement, trying to crawl away. My hands feel gravel and glass, and grass in the cracks of the sidewalk. I hear the horrible scuffing of a dozen big shoes just over my shoulder.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #128 – Aliens in Quarantine

(Female, early 30’s) I remember this dream from when I was a child. I must have just seen the movie “E.T.” which is a charming movie except for the part at the end where E.T. has been captured and is in quarantine. He seemed so sad and in such distress. My dream takes off from there. The wall paper in my childhood bedroom was covered in tiny dolls, each probably 3 or 4 inches tall. In my dream, each one of them was a space alien, a space alien as cute and vulnerable as E.T. The walls themselves were transformed into some kind of quarantine for the cute little space aliens. I tried to close my eyes so I didn’t have to see them anymore and it felt like there was a little alien floating over both of my eyes.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #127 – My Chest Erupted in Terror

(Male, early 30’s)

…It’s almost like something has burrowed inside my pajama top, looking for someplace warm…

This is a dream I remember from when I was a kid and I went through a period of sleepwalking. In the dream, I’m lying down in bed, trying to get to sleep when I feel something on my chest. At this point it’s not in my chest yet, just on the surface, just on the skin. It’s almost like something has burrowed inside my pajama top, looking for someplace warm. Then all of a sudden, this something tears through my pajamas and pops out. Then I realize that it actually came OUT of my chest. And then another one crawled out. And another one. I jumped out of bed and ran to tell my parents, yelling “There are babies coming out of my tum-tum!” But in fact I was just sleepwalking. My mother threw a glass of water in my face — the family treatment for sleepwalking — and I woke up.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #125 – Attack of the Dayglow Trolls

(Male, early 30’s) When I was just a little kid, I went through a period where I sleepwalked and this was one of the really intense dreams I remember from that time. My house was surrounded by trolls, monsters with knobby faces and weird tufts of hair. And if that wasn’t strange enough, these trolls were all very vivid colors, like day-glow fluorescent type colors of green and pink and yellow. They completely surrounded the house and then they started throwing things at me. It was fruit. I was being pelted my fruit thrown by trolls. They threw so much fruit that the house was starting to fill up. I thought I should warn my parents. I ran into their bedroom and tried to explain about the day glow trolls and fruit but in fact, I was just sleepwalking. My mom threw a glass of water on me to wake me up.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #124 – The Lodge, Hunted

lascauxdeer
(Male, early 30’s)

…There was no way out and nowhere really to run…

I was in a hunting lodge out in the woods. The standard log cabin kind of lodge with a big stone fireplace and everything. I was alone but it wasn’t the peaceful feeling of being alone in the woods; it was a more sinister, lonesome, vulnerable sense of being alone. Then I realized what was wrong. The animals that were mounted on the wall were alive. There were some pretty serious animals here too, like bears and cheetahs. At first I thought if I just didn’t move around very much that maybe the animals wouldn’t notice me, that maybe they wouldn’t attack me. But they did notice me. The animals started to chase me around the lodge. There was no way out and nowhere really to run.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #123 – Mad for Shoes

(Female) I’m afraid this dream won’t make any sense or that you won’t find it scary at all. It was frightening to me, the person having the dream, so I think it qualifies as a scary dream, because I felt like maybe I was losing my mind. So if it’s not a scary dream, at least it’s a weird dream.

I was meeting my best friend at a retreat centre of some sort out in the country. She was there for a meeting of some organization of which she’s a board member, and so I came to see her and spend some time with her after her sessions were done—something that we’ve actually done several times in real life. I was so very excited to get together because she lives very far away hence our real life meetings are far between.

We were staying in a little two room cabin, sort of rustic and woodsy. The place had a sort of Japanese style, with few furnishings and wooden cabinets, a very peaceful Zen atmosphere. She came into the room, and we hugged and greeted each other and talked about our lives and our families. It was so nice to see her again and so cozy in the cabin. We were going to have a good time.

…I’m afraid this dream won’t make any sense or that you won’t find it scary at all…

Then we were going to go out, I think, to dinner so we started to get ready. She got her shoes and her jacket and stepped out on to the porch to wait for me to come outside. I went to the closet where I’d left my coat and shoes, and I took my coat off a hangar and put it on. Then I slipped my foot into one of my shoes, but I couldn’t see the other one. I looked around in the closet, which was basically empty, but my shoe wasn’t there. It wasn’t like my closet a home that’s full of stuff so a shoe could be hiding under something else. No, this closet was basically empty but I still couldn’t find my other shoe. Still, I looked from one end of the long narrow closet to the other and back again, because, after all, where could my other shoe be?

Wearing just the one shoe, I limped out to the other room and threw open the closet doors there. There were shoes in the bottom of this closet, maybe a dozen, left behind by previous guests, I suppose, but my shoe wasn’t there. There were a lot of single shoes in fact which seemed like a strange situation. I rummaged around and found a shoe that would fit me, but it didn’t match my other shoe at all and it had no mate. I couldn’t go out to dinner wearing two different shoes! I was starting to panic—what was I going to do? How could I have lost a shoe in a closet?

I started back into the bedroom because I was certain my shoe was in there, but I couldn’t find the door. It was a two-room cabin– How could I get lost? How could I not find a door in a two room cabin? I could feel myself getting more and more panicked, and a blush of shame spreading across my cheeks. What was going on? Was I going insane, or was the cabin trying to confuse me? I turned around slowly, three or four times, studying each of the walls, looking for the door. Oh, there was the right door over there. I went back into the bedroom and opened the closet. There were different things objects inside the closet now, a set of folding chairs that hadn’t been there before. But still not my shoe.

My friend was outside on the deck, talking on a cellphone and waiting patiently for me. She waved at me through the window, unworried and unaware of my trauma. I turned toward the closet again and got down on my hands and knees, and systematically began to search through the almost empty closet once again. I started at one end and moved to the other, looking at each item on the floor of the closet, and then going back to the other end again. Over and over, I kept looking for my missing shoe until I woke up.

Categories
Art

Figurines based on Hieronymous Bosch

These lovingly hand-painted resin figurines are based on the nightmarish characters that populate the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch (1450 – 1516) (Hieronymous Bosch on wikipedia)

Boschfigurine1

They’re sort of like action figures for grown up kids who are just a bit artsy and just a bit twisted. Incidentally you can buy these figurines and MANY others at talariaenterprises.com

Boschfigurine2

I’m really torn amongst several reactions: I’m confused, a bit disgusted, more than a bit intrigued and delighted and part of me just wants a whole SHELF of these weird little dust-catchers. How does it make you feel to see bits of “high culture” — especially pretty STRANGE and obscure culture — mass manufactured into easily consumable bits? How many of these things do YOU want? Which ones?

Boschfigurine3

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #121 – A Grisly Toy

(Male) This wasn’t long enough or detailed enough to be a nightmare but it’s a pretty striking image from a dream I just had. I was waiting in a relatively large room that was stately and dark. I was alone. I stood beside a piece of furniture, a long piece of darkly stained wood like either a bar or the desk at a hotel. Just sitting on this counter top was a toy that initially looked like a child’s wind up carousel. I picked it up and turned the key and that revealed its more grisly attributes. It was like a mechanism for public execution. As the circular portion spun slowly, a parade of human dolls mounted a set of steps, step after step. When they reached the top, the head of the dolls fit into a noose attached to the carousel. The next turn of the wheel whisked them off the steps and the dolls dangled by their necks as they spun around the carousel. It was accompanied by the most banal and cheerful music plinked out on metal tines. I looked around the room to see whose toy this might be or if it were a gift, for whom it might be intended but I was still quite alone.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #122 – Baby Traps

(Male) Let me start by noting that I realize this nightmare is anatomically impossible for SEVERAL reasons — I paid attention in “Health” class enough to know that. I was visiting my mother who apparently lived in a different city. We were strolling through this nice, gentrified area that obviously used to be freight warehouses in a rail yard but that had been transformed into a series offices, coffee stands, lofts, places to eat over-priced lunches and small shops that sold small, expensive pieces of junk. I was very surprised when we came to one door that Mother indicated was her office, surprised because Mom retired something like 20 years ago. We entered and I found a dark and dirty room, cramped to begin with but that was made even more difficult to navigate by this huge, old-style dentist’s chair bolted right to the middle of the floor. It was in bad shape — the arm pads had been torn up by generations of fingernails clawing against the pain. Mom had me sit in the chair. She had an assistant in this tiny room as well, a burly young woman who stood quietly in the shadowy corner but seemed prepared to hold my legs down if it proved necessary.

…Mom asked me to open my mouth and she forced this bottle down my throat, open end down…

Mother explained that she needed to “harvest some babies” from me. She showed me a simple device that would do the work. It was a clear glass bottle, probably half a liter with a very wide mouth and this weird attachment that dangled from the mouth inside the bottle. The attachment looked a bit like a noose. Mom asked me to open my mouth and she forced this bottle down my throat, open end down. The way the trap worked, I was lead to believe, was that a developing fetus would eventually grow to be so large that it had to stick its head inside the bottle and once it did that, its head would be trapped inside the noose. The baby would be caught and Mom could then gently twist the bottle out of my throat and she’d have a baby. Yes, I realize how twisted this sounds. At least this was how Mom explained the procedure to me. I didn’t question why she kept putting another and another bottle down my throat, pushing them in hard, screwing them to force them down my esophagus. If the idea was that they were to catch a developing fetus, well, wouldn’t I only need one at a time? That is, even if guys DID develop fetuses at all! And why were they going down my throat? I woke up snoring so badly I was choking.

And since I bet you’d ask, no, my wife is not pregnant.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #120 – Celebrity Cop

(Male) I was a movie star and I was researching a new role. Since I was going to portray a policeman, I was riding along with some policemen in their car, just out on patrol. A call came in suddenly that there was an armed robbery taking place just a couple blocks from where we were. We had to respond. We pulled up in front of the bank along with several other police cars. There were apparently three robbers and they had taken some hostages. It was going to turn ugly. But then without thinking or asking anyone I started walking toward the bank. I was already in costume, that is, I was wearing a policeman’s uniform and I had a gun in my holster, a real gun with real bullets for some reason. Without asking anyone, I walked into the bank and said something like “Hey cut that out.” Then I smiled broadly with my movie star smile. The robbers recognized me immediately and let down their guard. They said “Hey it’s {whatever my name was} What are you doing here?” And I say “I’m doing research for my new movie and I saw some guys in here who might be fans of mine.”

And then I took my gun out of my holster and shot each of the men square in the chest – one, two, three – and then I shot them each again – one, two, three. The expression on their faces didn’t change. They didn’t understand what had happened. They just sort of melted down to the floor, dead. Situation resolved. When I woke up I was horrified at how cold and callous I had been, that’s the part that was a nightmare.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #119 – The Inept Robbery

(Female) This dream is probably as much embarrassing as it is scary. It involves a man I work with who is deceitful and underhanded but in a bumbling, doltish way. For instance, he recently stole a set of computer speakers from a co-worker’s office and tried to pretend he hadn’t, even though they were sitting right on his desk, connected to his computer. When questioned about it, the speakers appeared back in the co-worker’s office, unceremoniously dumped in a pile and this guy acted like nothing had happened.

Regardless, in the dream this jerk is trying to be a serious bad guy. He’s got a handgun and he’s robbing a whole room of people. It felt a bit like a “Great Train Robbery” set up. But he was sort of bungling this robbery too. I thought to myself I’d be damned if I’d let this idiot have my wedding ring so I slipped it off and buried it deeply in my bra. When he came around to me, I told him I had nothing. He leered in “Give me your JEWELS” like he was a bit more trying to be a pirate now rather than a train robber. And I showed him my fingers and there there were no rings on them. So he pats me down, quite roughly and thoroughly in fact but he is still too stupid to find my ring.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #118 – Subway of Screaming Terror

(Male) This was perhaps more just a strange dream or perhaps just a strange thing that happened while I was dreaming. But I was visiting a friend in some downtown area. My guess is that it was Toronto. It was evening and we decided to go out and hit some of the night life so we exited the skyscraper, crossed the street and started walking down the steps into the subway tunnel. It was so much fun to see this person – whoever it was, I don’t even remember if the person was male or female or if it was someone I actually know – but it was so much fun and it felt so comfortable to be with this person that we were laughing and joking as we descended into the subway.

…And we didn’t really notice that there were absolutely no lights on in the tunnel, that the subway was totally pitch black…

And we didn’t really notice that there were absolutely no lights on in the tunnel, that the subway was totally pitch black. It wasn’t until we got down to the bottom of the stairs that we sort of realized that the lights were out. And at that point we also realized that we were surrounded by people screaming, men and women screaming at the top of their lungs, in terror and in pain. I woke up from the dream at this point and felt the pillow under my head BUT I STILL HEARD THE SCREAMING for probably a good 4 or 5 seconds. I knew I was awake. I sat up in bed and looked around and only gradually did the screaming disappear. Weird, eh?

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #117 – A Fixer-Upper

(Male) My wife and I were helping my elderly mother get her house ready to sell. She was sitting on the front porch in a house dress, distraught, acting senile if not downright psychotic. Mom said something like “I’ve got less that you expect. You’ll see.” Which made absolutely no sense to me but I ignored her because I knew I had a LOT of work to get the house into an even somewhat presentable condition. I went inside the house and over heard my wife talking on the phone very sternly to someone. There must have been something wrong with the roof. She said something like “We’re VERY disappointed with this, Mr. Brockway.” I thought that was kind of strange because Brockway was the name of a friend that my Dad knew when he was a child.

…I knew I had a LOT of work to get the house into an even somewhat presentable condition but I didn’t expect this….

I continue walking through the house which is in bad condition but not beyond repair. I walk out the back door to the back yard where I’ve decided I’ll start working because it’s a nice sunny summer day. I’m walking around in my bare feet. The grass if vibrantly green and perhaps it needs to be cut. There is grass everywhere, even where there used to be drive way. Unfortunately, someone has driven a vehicle down this grassed area and the wheel has cut a deep muddy furrow probably 8 inches deep. The strange thing is that there is only ONE tire gash so this vehicle must have been one very heavy unicycle, or so I imagine. I walk up beside the house and there, right beside the chimney is the true horror: an immense rodent hole. It was probably a foot and a half in diameter and from the scratch marks all around it and from the way that all the grass had been torn up, I figured it was pretty well used. I tried to imagine whether it was occupied by lots and lots of regular sized rats or whether the inhabitants were just a few but much, much larger ones. I was frankly pretty scared. I tried to keep my mind focused and figured of course, before I do anything I should put on some shoes, possibly even some steel toed boots. As I head inside to put something on my feet however, I think that maybe I could start trying to scare the rats out of the hole. So I take the garden hose and I cautiously put the tip over the edge of the hole and turn on the water, hoping to flood them out. I can just tell that this isn’t going to end well but just at that moment, I wake up.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #116 – Grizzly Bear Picnic

(Male, 30’s) I was at a big family reunion that was taking place in the woods. All of my in-laws were there, so many that the party was taking up a whole house and even a large tent outside.

…The bear then starts to chew its way up my arm…

I was standing around, eating and drinking with others when I noticed a huge grizzly bear coming toward the tent. It lumbered up to me and I put my arms out to fend it off, but it just opens its mouth and bites one of my hands. The bear then starts to chew its way up my arm. All during the attack the other people are watching me with a somewhat distracted look, not overly concerned that I was being somewhat slowly eaten by a bear. The strangest part of this attack though was that as the bear swallowed more and more of my arm, it started to become smaller and smaller. By the time it had reached my elbow it was the size I guess of a bear cub and by the time it swallowed my arm all the way to the shoulder it was just the size of a big dog. The final moment of the dream, I realized that it maybe hadn’t been a bear at all, that it really WAS just a big dog – a big dog that had somehow entirely ingested my arm – and for some reason I felt mildly embarrassed for making such a big fuss, even though the dog was still biting at my shoulder.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #115 – The New Guy in Human Resources

(Male, middle aged) In the dream, I had just been hired to be the human resources guy at a moderately large firm, maybe 200 employees. I frankly wasn’t very sure of what the company did but I was desperate for a job and the place was quite prosperous. The offices were very modern looking with lots of common spaces and internal glass which gave the areas a feeling of open-ness and air-iness. My first task was to hire someone to produce the company newsletter, just a 4 page weekly publication, primarily aimed at employees. There were two candidates and I decided to interview them both at the same time. We went to one of the open conference rooms and by open, I mean that there was no door. The room opened directly out on a lounge area and beyond that there was a glassed in hallway. I chose this spot because it showed off the design philosophy of the building and, I thought, of the company. I started going back and forth between the two candidates, one who was a man in his 30’s and the other a woman in her 20’s. I would ask a question of one then ask it of the other, alternating as to who answered first. The man had more experience and was perhaps more reliable but the woman had more insight and creativity.

…I was terrified, as much of getting shot by the police as by being attacked by their prisoners…

I was trying to make up my mind which set of skills would be more important in this position when a flurry of activity in the glass hallway distracted me. A phallanx of heavily armed police wearing black armor and carrying what looked like electronic shotguns were leading a group of people who were dressed in grey-brown rags and who had their hands on top of their heads. As this strange parade turned the corner though, something must have have happened to spook the cops because they opened fire on their prisoners, shooting off round after round. The glass did not break even though it must have been repeated hit by these electronic bullets. I was terrified, as much of getting shot by the police as by being attacked by their prisoners who must have been very dangerous to be treated like that and who must be very desperate. I hid as best I could under the table. The interviewees couldn’t seem to understand my response. “Don’t you see that they have everything under control?” Then the interviewees started talking between themselves about me. It was then that I realized the whole thing, the parade, the revolt even the interviews themselves had been some kind of test that the company was putting me through. I had failed the test.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #114 – Contraband in a Deadly Wrapper

(Male, 40’s) A friend of mine was performing in a play that was being staged in someone’s living room. There must have been 30 people in the “audience” sitting on couchs or chairs or standing. I was in the kitchen and was able to watch the play through the doorway. I started making myself some tea when the front door is kicked in and probably two dozen policemen pour in all dressed in riot gear. They forcibly subdue everyone, and I mean everyone, from the people sitting on chairs to the actors on stage. I drop to the floor and roll myself under a shelf full of cookbooks to a place where it’s highly unlikely anyone would see me. I can overhear what’s going on and watch a bit of it. Once about half the people have been dragged out of the room, bleeding and unconscious and in shackles, there’s a team of policemen who begin scouring the house looking for something.

“It’s in the couch.” I hear one of the policemen tell the sergeant. “But it seems to be wrapped in animal hides.” The police start tearing the couch apart and sure enough there appears to be a large trunk, like a foot locker that is wrapped in what looks like the pelts from male lions, complete with shaggy manes. But these pelts also still have their paws and claws.

There are six of these skins draped over the box. The police suspect a trap and they are right to. What appear to be skins are actually werewolves that have been hibernating during the journey while the package was being shipped. Now they are exposed to light and the noise and commotion of the police action, the top werewolf comes to life. It growls and actually inflates itself with breath while it snarls and howls. As the police begin to fire on the werewolf that is fully re-animated, the next werewolf on the pile begins to stir. It is clear that the police weapons are going to be totally ineffective as they begin to be torn apart by the monsters that rise from the pile, one after another. The lucky audience members were the ones who were beaten and dragged off first. I cowered in my hiding spot, hoping that the werewolves would be too busy with the police and with securing their cargo and wouldn’t pay attention to me.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #113 – Fields of Asphalt

(Male) I don’t know if this is the kind of thing that you’re looking for but it’s a dream I’ve had for maybe twenty years now every once and awhile. The dream is extremely ominous and makes me feel extremely sad. The thing you have to know for the dream to make sense is that I used to spend summers on my aunt and uncle’s dairy farm. Just acre after acre of open fields. I learned how to drive on a tractor when I was like 12. There were periods of intense work like when they harvested hay but then other times when I had nothing better to do than gather wild strawberries.

Anyway, in the dream, I’m visiting the farm and my aunt and uncle. I look across the old dirt road and there a construction crew paving over the field where I used to gather wild strawberries. In the distance, near the woods, there were the beginning structures of a strip mall. I am horrified and I ask when this happened. It doesn’t seem like a big thing to my aunt and uncle. They seem so beaten down and fatalistic in the dream which is not what they’re like in everyday life.

In the version of the dream I had most recently, they were down to four cattle which they kept in their front yard (!) They were heading into town to see if they could barter with someone, to see if they could trade four bales of straw (which is bedding material) for one bale of hay (which is food.) Even with just four cattle, one bale of hay wasn’t going to go very far.

I’ve had some variant of this dream so many times that whenever I visit my aunt and uncle (which perhaps isn’t as often as I want to) I just stand and stare out over the fields, just making sure that they aren’t being paved over.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #112 – Bad Shot

(Male) The dream took place after a small scale uprising of zombies. Yeah, yeah, I know exactly where the dream came from. I was watching a stupid zombie movie the day before I had this dream. But the zombie uprising was very localized and contained. Even though there were zombies stumbling around, it really hadn’t disrupted society too much. At the most, the zombie attacks had thinned things out so the town had a slightly under populated, slightly run down feel. Oh, and everyone carried rifles with them where ever they went, just casually slung over their shoulders. In the dream it was the middle of the night and for some reason I needed some cash, so I ask everyone in my house if they want to go for a ride up to the bank. (Cash machines still worked. Heck, money still had value so it wasn’t a ful-scale zombie apocalypse at all.) Everyone in the house was still up even though it was the middle of the night. I didn’t get the sense that they were keeping watch, in fact, I think my son was playing video games. My daughter agreed to ride along with me. It was a nice summer night, not yet too hot. There were a few people out on the streets and heck, there were a few zombies out on the streets too. Just a good night for a walk… though all things being equal, I’m glad I was driving a car. There were no street lights though, now I think about it. The only illumination was from advertising, or signs in shop windows. I drive in the bank parking lot and it’s pretty safe because there’s a large parking lot and it’s entirely empty. I get some cash out of the money machine but as I’m getting back to the car, I see a zombie shambling toward me across the parking lot. It’s no big thing. I take my rifle off my shoulder, steady it against the hood of the car, take aim… and miss. Miss completely. I shoot again, very carefully lining up the shot. Again a miss. It’s getting closer and this shouldn’t be a big thing. It’s a rifle and the creature is maybe 20 feet away. I miss again and I’m scared because I’ve let the thing get so close I don’t think I can get in the car and drive off before it attacks. I’m afraid for my little girl because she’s in the car with the window rolled down and likely the zombie will get her first. Just then I woke up.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #111 – Morning Vampires

(Male) In the dream it was morning. My mother and I had taken refuge for the night in the basement of a house. We were now waking up and then securing the house room by room in case something had gotten in during the night. By “something,” I of course mean vampires which seem to have over-run our small town. There was nothing in the kitchen, nothing in the living room or dining room. It was an old but not particularly spectacular farmhouse, high ceilings, painted wood work, drab flower wallpaper. Mom started making breakfast.

…I opened a small bedroom there were three vampires in there: a mom, a daughter and a son….

I continued searching the first floor and when I opened a small bedroom there were three vampires in there: a mom, a daughter and a son. I knew I couldn’t kill them all at once so I tried to let only one of them out. I succeeded in keeping the son-vampire locked in the room. I should note that the son-vampire looked like that kid from The Munsters only that he was a bit older, maybe high school aged. He looked VERY angry and vicious, with deep black rings around his eyes, but then again he was wearing the shorts and Little Lord Fauntleroy shirt of the Munster kid’s costume, so he was both ludicrous and terrifying. The mom-vampire looked about 50 and had wispy blond hair. The daughter was a little girl, maybe 6 or so. So they are flying around the room in a semi-human/semi-bat state. Yup, blond bats. Weird. I yell to my Mom for a little help but she says she’s in the middle of cooking the eggs or something and they’ll be ruined if she leaves them right then. So I’m trying not to get bit and in fact, I’m doing well enough fighting these things that I try to find something to stab them. All I can find is a foot long ruler. Like the kind you’d used to use in school. I snapped it in half to try to make it sharp on one end but it splintered, if anything making it even less sharp. All the while I’m fighting the two blond vampires. There’s sunlight streaming in the windows but it doesn’t seem to faze them. I give up on trying to kill them and resort to just swatting them away but I even get tired by doing this. The mom-vampire swoops in for the kill and I try to make a stand with that splintered ruler and just then, I wake up.

Categories
Art Other Haunts papercraft

Skull-A-Day

Everyday for a whole year, a different skull appears on this wonderfully creative blog. Some are pieces of jewelry, some are actual skulls, some are pieces of origami, one was a computer typeface, another was a desktop pattern… you get the idea. All over the map in their media and let’s be frank, the quality of their execution but every post is a skull of some sort or another. It’s all free; it’s all fun. It’s likely the kind of thing that would appeal to someone who likes to read about nightmares and fear. The site has spawned a legion of similar projects but Skull-a-Day, as far as I can tell, was nearly the first.

Given my love of weird papercraft, one of my favorite entries is this one for a papercraft skull complete with an articulated jaw.

There are cool limited edition t-shirt to support the site, ones with the logo “Nevermore” and a bird (my guess is that it’s a raven) and, you guessed it, a skull.