I had a Dream....

Had a weird one last night... I’d been reading Fear & Loathing in America for at least four hours in bed. At some point it all stops sinking in and words just glide past without any kind of foothold, that’s when I turned off the light and put head to pillow...

...and that’s when the after image of the lamp began fucking with me.

In the dark, I couldn’t sleep; my eyes pinned open instinctively waiting for something to occur – perhaps something terrible. In the low light I saw what could only be described as a small white spider crawling wherever my eyes rested. It settled on my arm and the spider became black taking on a frightening solidity and realness. I knew it was only the light playing tricks – I knew it. But in the transformation the lines between optical illusions and a fucking great spider crawling up my arm became quite apparent. I touched my arm reflexively – Nothing.

So, I go to rest again but now the trick is worse. It was like I could see the fluid running across my eyes – a weird liquid fire, like heat-waves rising from a hot pavement. These waves came between me and whatever met my gaze. My tall, thin PC speakers that had lain dormant in the corner of the room for months began to dance together. My girlfriend’s discarded white shirt on the floor became a naked girl with half her head missing. Where the darkness met the light I saw hundreds of tiny insect legs reaching out. No longer scared I just rode the whole trip wondering whether I was actually hallucinating because of some long dormant LSD-25 crystals had met my imagination at closing time in my brain; or whether I had finally and inevitably ripped back the veil and flipped.
I finally fell asleep.

Dreams are kind of difficult to remember, all fragmented and illogical, although I often find it easier than most to recall them clearly and often find I can alter them in my sleep. I believe it is referred to, in many circles, as lucid dreaming. But this isn’t the point.

Bookended by darkness I’m in my living-room looking into a mirror. My reflection was bulkier and more muscular than I remembered and it was lit in some kind of dreadful noir-style. The slits of light from some invisible blind highlighting the reflection’s eyes and, particularly, the pulsating twin veins on my forehead that threaten to burst whenever I am angry or upside down. The not-so-obvious problem with my reflection was that it was NOT MOVING THE SAME AS ME. It wasn’t so much a mirror reflection as another room entirely. I moved out of it’s view, petrified out of my mind – fearing the uncanny and subtle differences in my reflection’s movements.

Tentatively, I took another look and found the reflection’s actions to be far braver. It was staring at me with a wild look in its eye – some crazed half-human man-beast beefed up to the eyeballs with steroids, adrenaline and some kind of awful machismo. The fucker wanted a fight and I was hopelessly outclassed. The man-beast reflection stepped out of the mirror-world and, at first, all I could do was stand rooted to the spot by sheer terror. It moved towards me slowly, deliberately and with terrible purpose muttering some gibberish double-speak that I couldn’t quite work out. Coming to my senses I reached for the table (that isn’t even there in the real-world) and found only dry-roasted peanuts. Not quite the weapon I was hoping for. There was no running, not in this kind of dream. If I had tried it would have been a run through a thick invisible molasses to a door that would never open. This was a stand and fight situation whichever way you cut it. To lose would mean waking up with a stifled scream and a gasp for air and a pervading sense of doom for the rest of the day. There was only one option.

I threw the peanut.

Perhaps it is dream logic; perhaps it’s my twisted sense of humour or justice; but that fucker collapsed on the floor screaming like a banshee. Obviously, being the tactically minded individual that I am, I took the opportunity not only to throw more peanuts but to stomp on that fucks head, over and over and over and over again.

After a while I looked down to see what kind of mess I had caused. But there was nothing. No mush, no brains, no segments of skull, no floor, no room; just an endless void and the silent blink of total unconsciousness.