Tag: urban horror

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Nightmares

Nightmare #231 – Zombie Skunk

(Male, 30’s) This nightmare I had kind of cracks me up when I write it down but there was nothing funny about it at the time. I’m almost embarrassed by how silly it sounds.

“…Seemed a pretty awful situation. …”

I was in the house where I grew up, a place I haven’t even seen in like 10 years. There were people on the front lawn who were doing something. I went out there to yell at them. They were painting the countertop of their kitchen cabinets. The paint was this hideous green, like a yellow green, a color from a 70’s rental property. I told them to get lost. And then there was a policeman who told me they’d be OK. See, their landlord was kicking them out because the building was being foreclosed and soon to be demolished so they were down on their luck. I asked the cop what was with the countertop and he said that the landlord was making them fix up the place or they’d lose their security deposit. Seemed a pretty awful situation.

I looked around the neighborhood and it was a decaying, urban nightmare. There were multi-story buildings that looked like they’d been bombed. Whole walls were missing, not just the windows which were all smashed out. The cop and I walked around a bit and there was just block after block of wasteland, tall buildings ready to collapse under their own weight.

“…”…It was a zombie. And it was a skunk. How much worse can you get from that!…”…”

That’s when we saw the skunk. It jumped out at the cop and started running for him like it wanted to bite him. The skunk was sealed in a plastic bag and chunks of its flesh were falling off. The cop was stupid, just standing there but I knew to start running away immediately. I knew somehow that this skunk was infected with the zombie plague, probably the same kind of epidemic that was causing the whole world to go to hell. The scientists has sealed it in a plastic bag to keep it safe because in this future skunks were an endangered specie. They were trying to protect the genetic material even though it was sick, er, I guess, dead. It was a zombie. And it was a skunk. How much worse can you get from that!

So I started running because I was afraid of what would happen when the cop turned to a zombie. Every pile of rubble I passed seemed to have another zombie creature creeping out of it. Possums, squirrels, a mangy old cat. I was just running and running, hopping over piles of rubble trying to get away and the terror was all around me.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #230 – Shot AGAIN

(Male, 40’s) Twice this week, I’ve had dreams that involved being shot or nearly shot with a handgun. I have woken up with my heart just pounding. The second one wasn’t very remarkable apart from getting shot – I should probably mention that I don’t own a handgun and I’ve never been shot, nor is it one of my great fears.

However.

“…I get him to put the knife down…”

In the first nightmare, I am visiting my grandmother’s house, a grandmother who’s been dead for decades now. Her house was never in a great part of town and it’s only gotten worse, like far worse over time. I am responsible for cleaning out her stuff, all her furniture and belongings. When I go to the door my daughter greets me and I’m a little shocked that she’s there and not at college. I ask her if she’s alone in the house and she says no. And then I ask if she’s safe. She shakes her head like she’s answering a different question, “Oh Daddy, it’s not like that at all.” I ask her to go and wait outside with her mom in the car. I enter the house and the first thing I notice is that there is a huge whole in one wall like someone has driven a car into it. And there’s a man with a knife. I ask him if he’s OK. I offer to get him some food. I get him to put the knife down. I explain that I’ve got to get rid of the stuff in the house. And he starts acting as if it all belongs to him simply because he’s in the house. I simply reach over and take the knife from where he’s set it down and I throw it behind me because in a fair fight I’m pretty sure I could take this guy. “No, you don’t own any of this stuff and you better get moving before I call the cops.” He says he’s got a gun in his pocket, which I think is pretty unlikely but I don’t want to take the chance so I jump him. We wrestle. He’s trying to get his hand in his pocket. I keep hitting him, trying to knock him out. All of a sudden a shot is fired. I don’t hear it as much as I feel it shooting straight through my heart. It felt more like I was getting an electric shock. I woke up with my heart simply racing, pounding hard like I actually had been in a fight.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #224 – Workplace Panic

“…As I kept talking, my voice started to fail. I was unable to make any words, just the honks and squeaks that might come out of a saxophone…”

(Male, 40’s) To my knowledge I’ve never had an actual “panic attack” but those are exactly the words I’d use to describe this terrifying dream I had the other night. I was at work talking with a co-worker in the hallway of an unfamiliar building. She was explaining how the IT department, that is, our department were entirely unable to manage certain key attributes of the computers we’d deployed just last spring. As I asked more questions about what that actually meant, I learned that the computers couldn’t communicate on the network, though there would be no error given to suggest the attempt didn’t succeed, and what’s even better, these computers couldn’t reliably be counted upon even to save data to their own hard drives. Again, no error message would be given. My co-worker was telling me all of this in a matter-of-fact, world-weary sort of way, I gather the same way that we were supposed to inform the users. But I started going crazy. I couldn’t believe the callous attitude. I also couldn’t believe that there hadn’t been daily if not weekly memos from the IT director warning the users that, basically, none of the work they were performing was safe in any way. As I kept talking, my voice started to fail. I was unable to make any words, just the honks and squeaks that might come out of a saxophone if you didn’t know how to play it. My direct manager had been listening in but at some point, she had wandered off and this frustrated me because she needed to hear about these problems.

At this point, I found it impossible to stand still anymore so I just walked off down the hall. It was an unfamiliar, one-story building with offices that looked like elementary school classrooms. I was trying to find my cell phone. Inside these offices were large desks that were covered in construction paper, safety scissors (remember those? the kind with blunt tips so students couldn’t stab each other?) pots of that sticky white glue like they used to have in kindergarten… all this stuff on the surface of these executive’s desks. I needed to find my cell phone because I could tell there was a conversation I needed to be a part of. I could “hear” part of it when I held a can of spray paint. But it was white paint. I needed to find a spray can of black paint because I needed to spray paint my hair black. I started just running up and down this hallway, looking into similar offices, entirely unable to relax. I grabbed onto the can of spray paint tighter and tighter until my muscles were shaking. It was horrible.

Boy am I glad there’s a weekend coming up.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #219 – Lost in the City

(Female, 40’s) I had spent the weekend with my good friend in the Big City, and now it was time to go home. I had to catch a train in 2 hours and she was leaving on a plane in 3. I guess I went to check out of the hotel. I rode down in the elevator to the lobby, which also connected to a large shopping mall. The lobby and mall were really crowded with shoppers and I had to dodge my way across the concourse. When I turned about to head back up to our room, I had no idea which way to go. All the possible paths looked the same, with shiny walkways and store windows and doorways.

“… I kept walking around, conscious of the passing time and no closer to finding my way…”

I started to wander, but I was lost. I didn’t know which way to go. I kept walking around, conscious of the passing time and no closer to finding my way. I was feeling more worried and panicky all the time. Then I found myself at an exit, and I decided I should go outside, because I’d be able to look at the building and see where the hotel tower (it was very tall– we were staying on the 18th floor) was in relation to where I was.

Outside was even more disorienting. The facade of the mall was so tall that I couldn’t see any other buildings behind it. I was surrounded by tall skyscrapers; I was standing in their shadows and I felt cold. I decided to cross the street so I could see better. I turned about to see that there were 8 lanes of traffic on the street. The corners were far away, so I just started running across, dodging traffic as I went. I still couldn’t locate the hotel. I asked someone walking by where the hotel was, and he asked which hotel. I couldn’t for the life of me remember the name of our hotel. I said, “I think it’s the Constitution.” “There’s no hotel named that.”

Then I got a text message from my friend: “Where are you?” and I wrote back, “I am lost.” She texted me again and said to come back inside. I went into a subway station and she was sitting on a bench waiting for me. She had my suitcase with her. She had packed it up for me. I sat down to double-check that all my stuff was there, but when I opened the suitcase, nothing inside looked familiar.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #218 – Elevator Attack

(Male, 40’s) This was just a quick little nightmare I had after pushing the snooze alarm today. Got my heart racing.

“…The blond guy with the spiky hair grinned like he was going to take pleasure in killing me…”

I was in an unfamiliar city and I had just gotten on an elevator. I was alone and I counted the money in my wallet. Four ones and a five which I figured was enough for lunch. At the next floor a young man gets on. He’s a lot younger than I am and he has spiky blond hair. Instead of facing the door of the elevator, he just stares at me, right in my face. At the next floor another young man gets on, one with black hair and a black t-shirt as I remember. The blond guy pulls out a knife. It’s a stubby triangular shaped blade, easy to conceal, one that could do a lot of damage easily. “We’ll take your money,” he said. I sized them up and figured these punks were like half my age.

“All I’ve got is nine bucks”

“That won’t be anywhere near enough.” The blond guy with the spiky hair grinned like he was going to take pleasure in killing me. And then before I really knew what I was doing, I punched the blond guy as hard as I could in his Adam’s apple. He collapsed to his knees, suffocating. Then I grabbed the guy in the black t-shirt and pushed his chest onto the triangular knife. There was blood everywhere. At the next floor, I got off the elevator. The two guys weren’t dead yet but they were definitely in their death throes. I was still lost in a strange city and I had just murdered two men.

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Nightmares

NIghtmare #216 – Haunted Panther

“… if the folks there didn’t like you, you just might disappear….”

(Male, 50’s) I had a nightmare last night that was really unnerving in addition to having a couple really scary moments. I was riding around with my Dad. My Dad has been dead incidentally for a good 20 years. We were trying to get an old radio or something that belonged to him from someone in this dangerously small town. It was dangerously small because there was a real sense that if the folks there didn’t like you, you just might disappear. Like the gasoline in our car seemed to disappear, like it had been siphoned away and there of course were no gas stations in this town. And the vehicle we were driving kept getting parked in. You know, there would be someone parked at either end of it so we couldn’t get out. We ended up taking the radio which was immense. It was easily three foot by three foot by four foot tall. We strapped the radio on top of a scooter / three wheel motorcycle thing and headed out of town. I was riding on TOP on the radio. I told Dad that I really hoped he wasn’t planning on driving on any expressways. Even when we turned corners on the side streets, we’ve leaned like we were going to tip over. There were some scary moments on that ride. I just had to relax and hold on.

We drove through this industrial wasteland, factories that were shut down and rusting. Windows grey and smashed out. It was an urban hell. Finally we arrived at my grandmother’s house. My grandmother also has been dead for upwards of 30 years. She did used to live in a pretty run down and decrepit part of an urban factory town. In the dream she was dead but her house still lived on, so to speak. It was much larger than I remembered it and I mean the ceilings of the rooms were easily twenty foot tall. It was still filled with furniture. I asked Dad what he had wanted with the radio for, why we had to go to all that effort to retrieve something that we was just going to deliver to a house where no body lives. He didn’t reply at all and that was strange because in life at least he was a rather talkative person. I could tell that this was something big but hard to put into words, something like honor or the “principle of the thing.”

“…It moved silently so it would sometimes just walk into the room on those silent, deadly cat feet and it would start tracking….”

The scariest parts of the dream happened inside Grandmother’s house because it was haunted not by a ghost but by a panther. The panther was large, half way between the size of a real panther and a velociraptor. It only seemed to be able to see movement and even that movement it could see best from the corner of its eyes. The beast was also almost entirely deaf. It moved very quietly so it would sometimes just walk into the room on those silent, deadly cat feet and it would start tracking. Once it was right on top of me snuffling at the soft inner parts of my throat. One bite and I would have died immediately in a spray of blood. I threw something and distracted it enough that the creature moved away. It also got very interested in an empty plastic bag that was being blown around by the wind. Another time though this blood thirsty monster came up right between my legs and started to sniff at my crotch. It growled low. I figured that I could probably survive if the monster bit off my penis if I didn’t bleed to death before help could arrive. –where was the nearest hospital in the urban wasteland?– but all things being equal, I would rather keep all my parts attached. When it wandered away, I yelled at my Dad. “Why is that thing still here? Why didn’t you call a professional exterminator or something to get rid of it?” Again, Dad was silent like I was missing some very obvious point.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #214 – Not A Very Safe Haven

(Male, 40’s) This started off a much more normal dream but became a nightmare around this point. I had just exited a cottage, like a Hansel and Gretel kind of cottage, but it was on a suburban street of suburban style houses. All those houses though were empty and dark. Abandoned. It was evening, the last part of evening before things become totally dark, before it’s night. There was a woman there with me who had long blond hair. She stood facing the street like she was on guard watching for something.

“…They are more powerful than you can imagine…”

There was another woman, powerfully attractive, with long black hair. She stepped up to me, so close to me our bodies over lapped. It’s hard to describe but it felt like she was standing in the exact spot where my feet were standing. There was no point to embracing each other with our arms because we were already as close as we could possibly be. The woman with the black hair whispered in my ear. “Don’t be afraid of the wolves.” I looked down and a dozen wolves ran by us in slow motion. Some of them were real, flesh and blood wolves but others were the merest suggestions of wolves, like a wolf-shaped cloud or a wolf-shaped mist. The woman said “They are more powerful than you can imagine. They are always all around us. In the middle ages, astrologers thought it was the movement of the stars that determined our actions when really it is the movement of the wolves.” Despite what she’d told me, I was terrified of the wolves.

Just then the blond haired woman alerted us that she had seen something. When the black haired woman moved away from me, I found it hard to breath. We all retreated into the cottage. I was the last to enter and as I closed the door, I heard a gun fire many times. The bullets came toward me in slow motion and I was able to watch them and I knew they would miss. I watched them spinning in the air. Except they weren’t bullets; they were golden screws. Five of them. I watched them impact the door jam and slowly screw themselves deep into the dark wood. They were clustered tightly together, like a shotgun blast. I closed the door and I woke up

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Nightmares

Nightmare #209 – Intruder Alert

(Male, 40’s) Strange dream, really violent but most important it was really detailed and vivid. Strange flashbacks to the past.

“…Here I am talking like I’m a big tough guy..”

It took place on the street where I grew up but sort of in the present day. Literally on the street, not in the houses, though I was living in one of the houses. It wasn’t the house I grew up in and in fact there were no houses like the one in my dream on this street. I had met up with a friend I knew from 20 years ago. It was in the afternoon and he said we should go someplace and get lunch. He was going to drive but I just wanted to make sure my door was locked and that I should pick up a hoodie.

When I went back to my house, which was a ranch style house, very modern with its entire yard a cement slab, I found that the side door was not only unlocked but open. I kicked it open and said, “OK fuckers. Come on out.” (Here I am talking like I’m a big tough guy.) I could see someone sitting at my computer which in the dream was one of those cute little iMacs from years back, the ones that were candy-colored. This guy stands up and he is a physical double for Lurch, the butler from the Addams Family TV show. He’s wearing a flannel shirt with a brown plaid pattern. He advanced on me and I grab him by the front of his shirt and sort of catapult him over top of me. He lands in a pile on the cement but gets right back up and charges at me again. Again I grab him by the front of his shirt and this time I toss him down a short flight of stairs that must have led to the basement. This time though as he’ll getting up I slip off one of my shoes and hit him repeatedly in the face with my heel. He goes down and out.

Like an idiot, I rush inside the house to find the other guy that I just *know* is there. I open the door to my kitchen and there he is. And this guy looks like Bruce Lee. Well, to be honest he looked like Bruce Lee if he lived to middle age and put on a few pounds. I mean, he still looked dangerous but he just looked a bit more manageable. But for some reason I can’t understand, this Bruce Lee guy decides to shoot at me. He’s got some kind of hand gun that apparently has an inexhaustible supply of bullets but that isn’t very powerful. I’m able to hide behind a wood door and not get hit. Then I hear him kick out a window and I look just in time to see him diving out this window. I go after him and again he starts shooting at me. So with my legs dangling out of the window, I kick him. And at that point I wake up.

As I write this down what’s striking are all the pop culture references. I really want to go back and watch “Enter the Dragon” now.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #208 – Shopkeeper for the Mob

(Male, 40’s) This is another nightmare I had while I was battling the worst cold I’ve had in years. Feverish dreams are wild!

“”…everything was a front for the Mob..”

I operated a little shop of some kind in a canvas tent pitched in a parking lot beside a highway. There were big bags of coffee beans and by big, I mean probably 50 pounds or so. There also were different kinds of spices and bags of food like it all had been directly imported from other countries.

And everything was a front for the Mob. Though it wasn’t explained in the dream, the set up sounds like there were drugs or guns being smuggled in with the coffee and other items. My position was extremely tenuous. There was really no reason to have an outsider like me so intimately involved with Mob work and I knew it. It was only a matter of time until I was killed. The Mob guys would show up every couple days, cut open a bag of coffee, spill the beans everywhere and then take off. There would be someone holding a gun on me in case I wanted to make some kind of an objection. This one time the Mob people show up and they’ve got someone with them. In fact, it’s someone I work with, a nice enough guy. He chats with me, totally oblivious to the danger he’s in. He’s amazed that I run an import shop in addition to the other job. Then the Mob guys grab him and force him to his knees and without saying anything they shoot him to death right there in front of me. I am simply terrified. Shocked and terrified. I don’t know what to do. The Mob guys back out of the tent. I don’t know if I should run or call the police or what.

Then all of a sudden I’m in an apartment building. I get the sense that it’s also entirely owned by the Mob. I’m in one of the rooms possibly a room where I live and I look out of the door just in time to see a couple Mob guys drag another guy I know up the stairs and thrown him on the landing face down. They put these weights on his arms. The weights look like big coffee cans with a handle on the top. The guy is unconscious. One of the Mob guys prepares a syringe of something, maybe heroin for all I know. Then he backs up and makes like he’s going to throw the syringe like a dart. That part makes me cringe.

All of a sudden he realizes that I’m there, that I’ve been watching everything from just a couple feet away. He turned toward me and started walking. I backed up and at that instant I woke up.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #177 – A Town in Panic

(Male, 30’s) I want to start off saying that I don’t usually have nightmare and I don’t find zombie movies to be at all scary but after this dream, well, maybe.

“… I’m pretty sure things won’t be fine, even though I don’t know exactly what’s wrong at this point…

I was in the car with my family and we were driving home, back into town and there’s something not right. There are walls of tall chain link on either side of the road. There are folks trying to head away from us, out of town. They keep telling us it’s the wrong way, but we’re pretty sure that if we get back to our house we’ll be OK. Eventually we get to a place where the traffic is just entirely stopped so we have to abandon our car.

We start walking and walking with all our kids too and still there are people rushing off OUT of town. They’re all on the other side of this chain link fence. For some reason we get convinced that that’s the right side to be on so we get through the fence somehow. We try to make our way to our house but we can’t.

My wife just wants to sit down on a park bench. She thinks every thing will just be fine but I’m pretty sure things won’t be fine, even though I don’t know exactly what’s wrong at this point. I can’t make her come along but my son follows me and we start heading, I think, we’re still heading back to our house. The plan is that we can hole up there and be safe. She says she’ll meet us there in a little while.

We just get a little bit further away, not noticeably closer to safety, when I hear this sound. It’s like a concrete dragging along concrete but lower, much lower in pitch. Then I realize it’s a groan. We look around the next corner and there is a tidal wave of zombies. Slow moving but as far as the eye can see. I know I won’t be safe at home. And I don’t think we can even out run them. I pick up my boy and I start to run and that’s when I wake up.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #205 – Baby napper

…I found a ransom note, however, and I recognized the handwriting

(Female, 50’s) My 2 year old granddaughter was missing, and I knew she’d been kidnapped. Her parents were doubtful– why would anyone kidnap their child since they would be unable to pay any ransom demand? They seemed to think she was around the house, and if they kept looking they’d find her.

I found a ransom note, however, and I recognized the handwriting: it was my next-door neighbor’s. The note requested 2 million dollars for the return of the child. I knew now that he had the girl next-door in the basement, and that he was playing with her and keeping her occupied, and I knew he wouldn’t hurt her because our neighbors really want to have a child.

I showed my son and his wife the note and told them, “You see? She’s been kidnapped.”

My daughter in law said, “Do you think it’s serious?”

I replied, “Kidnapping is a federal felony.” (Which was really funny when I woke up and thought about the dream!)

All day long they tried to get enough money to pay the ransom. They called all their friends and relatives.

Finally, in the evening, I called my neighbors’ house. When he answered the phone, I said, “Doug, I know you have her. We want you to bring her back and we won’t press charges.”

“What about the ransom?” he asked.

“They cannot afford to pay the ransom.”

There was a pause. Then he spoke.

“Well, then. What do you think is reasonable?” He wanted them at least to pay him for watching her all day.

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Nightmares

Nightmare # 200 – Sewers

(Female, 30’s) This dream probably reveals too much about the things that disturb and scare ME!

In my dream, I was scrubbing a shiny white toilet with a cheap little brush, a flimsy stick with a blue and white ball of netting on the end. (A dream about cleaning a toilet– how totally WEIRD is that??) As I finished and tapped the brush on the edge of the bowl, I flushed at the same time– and then the cheap little brush came apart, and the cleaning part started to get sucked down the drain! I didn’t want the toilet to get clogged, but I didn’t really want to stick my hand in the water either.

I worried about deadly fumes– I didn’t smell anything but that didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous to my health.

Then I remembered that we had access to something like the water exit chamber (??) of the house, so I could get the broken brush ball out of there! I walked into a utility room where there was a small white door with a strong spring hinge that opened to a sort of chamber where all the drains in the house emptied. (I have no idea where this image came from! Completely imaginary view of plumbing!) The chamber was stark white, very clean and with a big cone-shaped impression in the bottom where all of the waste water drained. It was so clean and smooth and shiny in there. I could see the blue cleaning ball a little way inside, just out of reach. So I got a broom handle and tried to hold the spring door open with one hand while reaching for the ball with the stick with the other hand. I worried about deadly fumes– I didn’t smell anything but that didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous to my health.

As I leaned in further, I could see the edge of a storage box, just around a corner. How the heck did that get in here? Did someone accidentally flush that down the toilet? As I was reaching and looking, I was slowly climbing inside that chamber. I crawled in far enough to see around the corner, where I found a stack of 6 or 8 storage boxes. We must have put them in here; what had we been thinking? Were we that desperate for storage space?!? I was getting a little panicky at this point, but I looked up and noticed that the ceiling opened to the sky. I could stand up in one spot, and I could put my head and shoulders through the opening. It was sunny and bright outside, and I drew a deep breath of fresh air and felt an enormous relief. Then I started to worry about how I was going to get out of there!

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Nightmares

Nightmare # 195 – Shopping Can be Murder

(Female, 40’s) I was shopping in this dream. But I was shopping in the weirdest place I’d ever seen. This “shopping district” was a winding darn alley that looked like a cross between a horror movie set and a Dickens novel. There was a dark and damp, curving pedestrian pathway between these irregularly shaped stores, sitting close together. I swear there were gas lamps.

I went into a shoe store and spent some time trying on shoes. It was like Payless– a self-serve place. I was in the back of the store trying on boots when a man came up behind me and knocked me down, so I was sprawled on my stomach with my arms and legs sticking out. Very graceful. He knelt on my back with one knee and held something sharp against my back. He said, “Don’t move or I’ll have to hurt you.” I said, “Go ahead, you can take all my money.” “Of course I can,” he replied.

I thought about pushing him up and knocking him off my back. And beating him up. I was pretty sure I could do that. But I was worried about the lone clerk in the store, up by the front counter. She might get hurt. So I didn’t do anything. The robber was getting heavy. I kept thinking about what I should do. Then I woke up.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #193 – Terrorized by Motorcycle Hooligans

(Male, 50’s) In the interests of full disclosure, I should admit that I bought a motorcycle a couple years back in the midst of mid-life crisis and that within the last week as it came time to winterize the thing, I’d been angry with myself that another season had passed and I hadn’t really gotten out on it.

I was with my wife and a female friend and we were crossing a parking lot, heading into a bar when this group of about a dozen motorcycle riders over took us. I started defending the women who were able to get away. This didn’t particularly make the hooligans mad. They just started messing with me instead.

This was a relatively outlandish group of motorcyclists really. Their bikes were all American made and chopped like very classic examples of the style. And by classic I mean original 40’s and 50’s era chopped bikes, simple, basic, with a few bits of chromed flair. And the guys themselves were straight out of a time capsule too, or at least they looked like they were trying to be. They had greased hair with big curls on the top. I bet there’s a word for that. They didn’t wear the bomber style jackets but rather something that looked more like a suit coat jacket that was made out of riding quality leather. They were a riding club – The Rockets – which actually, as I remember it now used to be a local band I really enjoyed back in the 70’s.

The Rockets pushed me around with a detached, ironic sort of torture, like a cat playing with a mouse, that bats it around between its paws. One of them had a package of metal “rockets” that sort of looked like those toys from back in the day that you could put a “cap” in and then toss up in the air and when it landed the cap would go off with a loud pop. Anyway, one of the gang members had a package of these, still on the cardboard like he’d bought it at a retro boutique or something. He took them off the card one by one and shoved them in my mouth til I was choking. I think this was some kind of a test of something to see if I’d choke or vomit. All the while they were laughing and joking while I was trying to keep from suffocating.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #179 – Tough Neighborhood

(Male, 40’s) I haven’t had many dreams recently so that’s what makes this one stand out so strongly. I’m riding a bike and it at least starts in my old neighborhood, the one where I grew up as a kid. Just down the street from where I lived, two different sets of people have moved out and have left stuff they didn’t want by the street. One is just furniture but the other one has a bunch of really cool toys and models. Several of the toys are themed after Scooby-Doo and a couple of the models are monster-related. The trouble is that all the goodies are stacked in a pile, maybe 25 or 30 feet tall. I find a stick and am able to knock down the stuff I want. But now I have to carry it on my bicycle.
And things change, pretty quickly. I’m still on my bike but I have NO idea where I am. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not the same city. (I suspect it might be the city where my Grandmother lived, a pretty tough place.) It’s winter, or at least there’s snow on the ground. I’m trying to pedal the bike even though I’m still carrying all this stuff. I can barely keep it upright. Most important is that I’m lost. I think that if I just start going around in a systematic way up and down the streets, I’ll eventually find someplace that looks familiar. The whole first street I drive down is abandoned which is a little creepy. But the whole second street is worse. There are lots and lots of people, just standing on the sidewalk and on the street. It’s hard for me to keep the bike balanced let alone to ride around them. And stranger still, about a third of these folks are “short people” that’s what they’re called, right? It feels like a very bad music video. The short people in particular seem to have it in for me. They’re waving metal sticks around over their heads, trying to hit me as a ride by. Eventually I realize that I can’t pretend they’re NOT trying to hit me and I try seriously to ride away. That’s when one of these large “bouncer” type guys starts to run me down. He keeps blocking me in, forcing me off the road. I just know I’m going to be beaten up and robbed if I fall off the bike. Last thing I remember, I’m teetering toward the side of the road with the big guy close to me, trying to knock me over.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #178 – Abandoned on the Bus

(Male, 30’s) This has been a re-current nightmare of mine since I was a kid. I would be on a long bus-ride with my Mom. It’s always just my Mom even though there are five people in my family. It’s a long bus ride so at some point we have to get off just long enough to eat a meal or something. Thing is, my Mom gets off but I get stuck on the bus. It rumbles out of the station and I’m trapped heading onto my next destination. Recently, the dream has changed to where I actually go to the next stop and get off there but that’s no less scary.
It’s a simple dream but it’s still meant that I hate buses. There’s a bus that runs straight to Chicago that my buddies always want to take but there’s no way I’d ride that. Even when I have to take a city bus, I ride right near the door so I can’t be left on there.

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 #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 #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 #96 – The Long Trip to the House that Wouldn’t let People Leave

(Female, 40’s) My teenaged daughter and I were on a trip to Toronto together. We were staying in a hotel downtown and going to attend a play in which a friend of hers from high school was performing. We were on our way to the play, which was to be held at a big church far from downtown. We got as far as standing outside the huge church, an old fashioned colonial brick-style building that was surrounded by a wide lawn spotted with huge, old trees in full fall colors. My daughter remembered that she’d left something back at the hotel, something she needed desperately, so we started on the trip back to the hotel, hurrying, because we thought that we could make it back again in time for the play.

We walked for a long while, then we took a bus, then the subway. Then we came above ground and I looked around for the streetcar stop, but everything was different. We started walking, thinking that our hotel was nearby, wandering really. We went far enough that I realized we had been heading in the opposite direction. Along the beach, we saw piles of skeletons, a stack of bare white bones on the sand, and I told my daughter that that was from last winter’s storms!!

Then I thought I knew a short cut back to our hotel. We went into a shopping center and across some walkways and made a series of turns, and suddenly we were inside a children’s hospital. I asked a nurse if there was a way out of there. She looked at us very skeptically, and pointed to an elevator. My daughter walked in, though these plastic flaps that were not like real elevator doors, and pushed a button. I jumped in as the elevator started to descend. She told me it was freight elevator, not a people elevator.

…”You really don’t want to,” she said. But I insisted…

We came out of the building in a parking lot surrounded by a fence. So we went back into the building to go out the front door. We walked a long time, down a bunch of different hallways, looking for an exit. Finally, up ahead, I saw a staircase and a woman carrying a laundry basket. We hurried to the end of the hall, which narrowed as we went. The end was covered with thick wire mesh: you could see those stairs but you couldn’t get to them. I asked the woman, “How do we get over there?” “You really don’t want to,” she said. But I insisted. So she pointed to a door.

We went through the door and we found ourselves in the basement of a house. We followed the woman up the stairs. She was the mother of the family, now widowed, and she lived in the house with her teenaged son and daughter and another daughter who was 6 or 7. The house was full of all sorts of objects; it looked like a very crowded museum.
The woman began to bring out newspaper articles and programs to show us that she was a very famous musician. We said we had to get going because of the play! But the family looked at each other and smiled. “I’m sorry but there’s no way to leave. We are all trapped here. We never can go out. The house will not let us leave. ”

I looked around. All of the windows were covered with an incredibly thick ivy. They couldn’t be opened at all. The backdoor lead down to the basement, the basement where we’d come in from the hospital basement, maybe, but the door we came through had no doorknob on the inside. I opened the front door and stepped outside. There was a
small cement porch with a short brick wall around the perimeter and a rusty wrought iron gate opening to a sidewalk. I could see the whole city from where I stood. It smelled so good to be outside. I looked over my shoulder and saw the family standing inside the door, watching me. I started walking toward the sidewalk. As I did, the
wrought iron gate reached out and grabbed me and held on. I twisted and pulled, but it wouldn’t let go. It gripped and stretched, wrestling with me, until I was panting and sweating. When I backed up, toward the porch, it let go. If I moved again toward the sidewalk, it grabbed me. I want back inside where the family and my daughter were waiting. “Do you see what we mean?”

We stood there in the hallway, trying to assess the situation. “What about food? How do you get groceries?” “Boxes of groceries get dropped off in the yard.” Their crazy claim seemed to be true. Then I saw a metal switch that I hadn’t seem before, like a built-in key that you could turn. I thought maybe that was the way out. So I turned it. A whole series of gears began spinning like I’d set an enormous machine in motion. There were these shiny columns composed
of hundreds of little gears all turning. A huge rumbling noise came up from the basement and a heavy metal drawbridge covered the front door and held it shut permanently.