Tuesday, November 29, 2005

of the long descent

I've been having more and more nightmares recently and hardly ever taking the time to write them down here. I'm certainly not sleeping well. There's something about dreaming such vivid, distressing dreams that completely wipes me out and makes me wake up feeling as though I need another eight hours of sleep.

Last night I had two nightmares. The first was rather subtle. It might not even make much sense written down. The other, though, was pretty overtly disturbing and will no doubt make sense. Let's start with the first one.

Last night, I dreamt I was running away from my family. There was no particular reason other than an intense desire to not be found by them.

And so I ran, down streets, along fields, familiar locations - snippets of locations from other dreams as though running through a movie backlot. I was fast. More impressively, I was nimble. I could jump over rocks, dash my way across treacherous paths - nothing stood in my way.

That is, until I came to the stream. As I approached the cold waters of the rushing stream, I could hear the voice of my family close by, hunting me like a pack of dogs. In trying to test the waters, one of my sandals fell off into the rushing current and was swept away. With little else in the way of options and growing more agitated with each moment, I jumped into the icy cold stream and snuck my way under a bridge to hide from my family like a troll.

When they failed to see me, they continued on their way and I on mine along through the chilly waters of the stream. Eventually, the stream gave way to a small suburban neighborhood.

I knew the layout. I knew I had been there before in other dreams. Nearby was the small, cramped passage way that led into further subterranean chambers. I found myself only two manicured lawns away from a full escape when the voices of my family returned. Cutting around off of the path I apparently usually travel in my dreams, I found that I could slip undetected into the narrow stone opening that lead to the first underground gate.

The further down I went, the more there grew in my stomach a knot of fear. Past the dirty, collapsed concrete walls of the first underground level. Past the ancient white mud-walled hole that served as the second level. Past the claustrophobic tunnel full of a hellish red light that I had to slither through on my back, for the roof was too low to even crawl. Down the long, creaking wooden stairway that led to the last of the underground levels:

The basement of my old house.

There it was, the basement of the house I lived in as a teenager. Here the sense of dread and pain and fear was like a constant weight. Cobwebs and a layer of dirt covered everything. At the far end of the basement was a massive wooden door and it was only then that I realized it was towards this door - and not from my family - that I had been running all along.

The door was huge - 8 feet tall, 4 feet wide - and cracked open a few inches. I knelt before the massive door and could see that inside was complete and total darkness. Despite its completely impenetrable nothingness, from out of that door came a voice, the voice of ADAM.

I don't know who ADAM is, but in my dream, he scared me to my very core. I knew ADAM was something primal, an ancient and buried maleficence that knew every dark thought I'd ever had and who confronted me with them in a rush of misery. It was as though I were about to die and my life was flashing before me except that ADAM was a filter that blocked everything but the bad, the painful, the dark and unwanted memories I'd buried, forgotten, or purged.

In the end, I think I fainted. I know that it all ended down in that basement, in front of the door and in front of ADAM. What any of it means, though, I haven't the faintest idea.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home