Actually, it was silent.
One of these years, one of these nights I am going to have a tornado dream and instead of either getting away or trying to get away and blacking out, I will go out to meet it.
In an unfamiliar house. I kept telling someone what to do, but I’m not sure who I was talking to. A storm is coming. A sense of foreboding. I’m standing at a large window or glass door, scrutinizing the darkening sky. A flash of lightning and I see the funneling spiraling and there appears to be a fire inside it.
THERE IT IS. GET INTO THE BASEMENT.
Down shaggy carpeted dark wood paneled stairs with terror and some small sense of relief that there is a basement to hide in. The door at the top of the stairs slams shut and I look around for the best place to shelter. I notice there are small windows almost at the ceiling, and there is a door leading into another room.
THESE WINDOWS ARE NOT GOOD. GET INTO THE NEXT ROOM.
The door slams shut behind me/us in the next room before I notice there are even more windows here. But there is a door to another room.
THIS IS EVEN LESS SAFE. GO INTO THE NEXT ROOM.
This happens over and over, and even in the dream I am thinking “there is no way anyone would build a basement this long.” In every room there are either more or bigger windows, or things like saws.
I never try to open any of the doors that slam shut behind me/us, never attempt to backtrack. Finally I just freeze.
In a workshop/studio with flimsy drafting tables and the topmost two feet of the walls all the way around are windows to let in natural light. I see debris start flying around outside and know spiraling sucking darkness is approaching.
Blank. End of dream.
I say or think that I’m tired of this blanking out. Too many dreams, too many real memories where there is rising fear and as the terror tightens, everything just stops. Like the power going out just as you are going to find out how the cliffhanger is resolved. Logic says that it doesn’t matter. I am here, so obviously, I survived whatever ended up happening. Something else says it is unresolved. Says we don’t know how it ended. Fears what is unknown. And so I get frustrated and shake my fist and say, “Bring it on. Let’s see the ending. Let’s get it over with. I’m ready.”
And then a slightly nauseating dread, and whatever the mental equivalent of an atheist animist buddhist crossing herself would be. Oh FSM, what did I just ask for and will I really wish I could take it back?
The tornado dream is an old recurring one. Always different, but familiar.
The dream I had the other night… with a talking pig resigned to gorging himself one last time and lying down to sleep to wait for slaughter instead of trying to escape, and then a rat jumping out of a toilet, running up my clothing, and biting my hand when I tried to keep it from running up to my head… hanging on with its teeth in my palm until I just tore it off (my flesh going with it) and threw it against the wall, which did not faze it for a second. It saw Cuchulain jump into the bathtub and went after him and there was the sickening sound of that thumping and growling as I tried to get across the room in slow motion, yanking back the shower curtain only to have the rat run back up me and then be gone… but I thought I saw it everywhere… that dream was totally not familiar.
