Tag: cold

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #229 – Doomed Expedition

(Male, 30’s) I don’t know if this really counts as a “nightmare” but it was a pretty bad dream where I was pretty sure that I was going to die.

“…It’s very likely you’re going to die…”

I had somehow gotten involved with an expedition that was either going to climb a very tall mountain or go to the South Pole, very possibly both. We were on the runway of this desolate spot, not so much as a building, just an expanse of tarmac. There were about a dozen guys, all very serious and all very busy loading boxes onto a plane. They were all dressed in thick suits, that reminded me a lot of the kind of thing that parachuters wear with lots of webbing and padding. The suits were all olive drab like military uniforms.

Some of the boxes were marked “Cashmere” because, at least in the dream, cashmere is very warm for the thickness. Other boxes were marked “Non-cashmere wool” because wool, again at least in the dream, keeps its warmth even when wet. Everyone was busy and I was just in the way. Finally I got the attention of someone. He looked a lot like a guy I work with in fact. He said “Look, kid, I don’t know how you got yourself involved with this but none of us have any time to teach you how to survive. We’re mostly ex-marines, in fact. This isn’t a vacation. It’s very likely you’re going to die and if you don’t get out of the way, you’re going to cause other people to die.”

There was nothing I could do. I just stood around and waited to board the airplane, and eventually freeze to death.

Categories
Book Comics Movies

The “30 Days of Night” Franchise

(The Grim Gnome) I don’t like vampires, generally speaking. The whole rule-bound / old-world / invitation-only aspects make them about as scary as a supernatural Certified Public Accountant. Except for the ones in “30 Days of Night.” If you haven’t heard of this series you either have been moldering away in a casket or you’re metaphysically immune to the effects of horror-culture. A few years back, writer Steve Niles and artist Ben Templesmith wove together a freshly twisted premise with spattery exuberant artwork and pumped life back into the genre of the horror comic. The fresh twist on the vampire rules that gets “30 Days of Night” rolling is obvious from the title; if vampires hate sunlight, then what if they attacked a place that didn’t have much of it, say, a city located near the Arctic circle? What if a whole ragtag clan of vampires threw a party of sorts during the month of darkness and attacked the whole town. Add human hero. Stir well. Garnish with a nasty skewer at the end and, heck that’s what started the juggernaut. I really have to recommend it. Quite highly.




A sequel picked up the storyline and propelled it forward, again ending with a sickening little twist. And a third, completing a classical trilogy, right? If I understand the chronology correctly, the movie started development around this time and the comics kept coming. A collection of tales appeared, including a rather dumb one about vampires in space. Some of these feature artists other than Templesmith and honestly, I feel cheated with those issues, especially cheated when the artist is attempting to make work that sort of / kind of / almost resembles Templesmith’s art. So though I can’t highly recommend them all — one reason I can’t is because they’re STILL making new ones — I still have to confess I’ve bought and savored every one of them.

Niles’s other comics are nothing to ignore… but for the moment I WILL ignore them, or to be more exact I’ll postpone looking at them until another post. Who knew that comics would work so well for horror? I sure didn’t. I thought the EC’s Crypt Keeper was just weird and, OK, so I was afraid of “The Tomb of Dracula” but I was kid back then. I even thought “Dark Shadows” was scary.

And then there’s the “30 Days of Night” movie. I admit that I felt an actual quiver of excitement when I first heard Sam (“Army of Darkness”) Raimi’s name connected with the project. Alas, it was only as a producer. There are parts of the movie that are very good. For instance, some of the shots are very haunting, like an aerial tracking shot that shows the carnage of the initial attack. And throughout the movies human faces seem to have unusually de-saturated color which makes everyone look cold .. and then also makes the blood really pop out. And I really appreciated that at least a couple times when humans were standing outside in sub-zero temperatures that there were clouds of condensation when they breathed or spoke. As curmudgeonly northerner, I can’t STAND fake winters on screen. My comments don’t sound like a love-fest, though do they? Perhaps I’m grumpy for paying good money to see the movie in the theatre. I’m a stingy curmudgeon. But furthermore, I can’t help but thinking that the comic book was scarier. There was a LOT of back story in the comic book that was simply removed for the movie, so much that there doesn’t seem to be much possibility for a sequel. I was honestly pretty shocked that so much editing was required because I don’t usually consider comics to be that dense when it comes to story line.

“30 Days of Night” – the movie – comes out on video this week. Though I don’t feel unusually COMPELLED to see the movie again when it comes out on video, if I’m honest with myself, I’m pretty sure I will. If for no other reason than it will remind me of how much I loved the original comic.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #106 – Icy Skyscraper, Snowy Death

(Male) I was in a very large city that was located right beside a large body of water. Could have been Chicago, could have been New York, could have been Toronto… The city had been hit with an unprecedented winter storm, one that had gone on for weeks… months? There certainly weren’t many people left and the sense that that they’d abandoned the city or died. Survivors were able to get from building to building through underground passages. I had gone from the main building where we had set up camp to a neighboring building. I looked out through a window at a skyscraper, one of those glass windowed skyscrapers. It stood really close to the water and the spray from the water would hit the side of the building and freeze immediately. The ice built up and built up over these weeks upon weeks until there was a strange ice sculpture attached to the side of the building, almost as large as the building itself. The ice swooped out like the arms of a ghost, like the shape of the wind itself. It seemed like the weight of the ice would have the power to topple the building over soon.

I went to a different window. This one was just underneath the “snow line.” Snow had fallen so deeply that the first few floors of all buildings were submerged in snow. I looked out one of the window that was covered in snow but not too deeply. Light still got in and I was able to see shapes outside. There was someone out there! It was someone I knew, someone from work. He was laughing and it seemed like he was trying to walk along on top of the snow, unaware how dangerous this was, how unevenly packed the snow was, how he could fall through the crust on the top and suffocate. For some reason I thought I could save him. I opened the window and snow poured in the window. I estimated I was just 20 feet away from him. The snow here seemed very soft and uncompacted. I thought somehow that I could “swim” up to the surface of the snow. I jumped out of the window. I stamped my feet and compressed the snow underneath me then scraped more off above my head, gradually moving upward. But I eventually loosened too much and made my little cave unstable. Snow started to tumble down on me. It was light at first but then it trapped my legs. It got more deeply buried. It hammered into my chest, trapped my arms. I tried to thrash but I was trapped. I was suffocating.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #30 – A Prison of Ice

(Male, early 40’s) I was at work but the building at work was half shopping mall, half military complex. The walls were all dreary cinderblock and the floorplan was a no nonsense labyrinth of corridors probably 15 feet wide. But every now and then you’d turn a corner and there’d be a picture window looking out on the mountains. It was some kind of research facility and maybe a dozen of us worked there but none of us seemed to know the layout of the building very well. The nightmare part started when a huge avalanche of ice pounded down on the facility from the mountains that surrounded us. It was pure ice, no snow, no rock because you could still find one of those windows and look out through yard after yard of diamond shimmering ice and see the mountains out there. We knew the building was pretty strong because it was made of cinderblock but we had no idea how much stress it could take, or for that matter how much ice was left to fall. The air started to feel compressed. It began to be hard to breathe. We all agreed to search the building and see what part seemed to have the least ice so we could begin tunneling out there. One of us, a woman, young, slender with long brown hair, in a mousy brown skirt and white blouse discovered a set of doors that had hardly any ice in front of them. She was able to push it away just by shoving on the door and once the door was open, she panicked. Across the parking lot , she could see some kind of fast food restaurant. She ran over to it, letting the door close and lock behind her, forgetting all about us trapped inside.