Dream a Little Dream

There is blood everywhere. So. Much. Blood.

Just a few minutes before, I had been relaxing on smallish black inner tube floating down this massive, muddy river. I didn’t remember how I got here exactly, but the rush of the tepid river water on my bottom made the heat of this scorching day a little less oppressive. I had trailed my hands in the water in some sort of daze wondering if any fish would mistake my fingers for wrinkled worms and lazily pulled them out every now and then to watch the water droplets bead on the top of the tube before quickly fizzing out of existence in the harsh sunlight. Maybe this was a metaphor for life, I thought…this inner tube drifting towards an unknown destination with my dreams fizzling out one by one just as quickly as those tiny worlds of water on the top of this expansive blackness.

All around me there were other people dressed in solid-colored swimsuits just like mine. Black ones, orange ones, a royal shade of blue. Each of us on a plan black inner tube. It felt like some sort of Great Migration, all of us here in our similar garb traveling downriver, but I wasn’t sure. I had been trying to push past the haze to figure it all out when I heard the screaming. I tried to sit up in my panic, but my head was too fuzzy, and I was way to off balance on that fucking tube.

First one person then another and another until there were a chorus of screams ahead of me.

That’s when my tube floats through the blood--a vast crimson that tinted the murkiness seemingly without end.

There is blood everywhere. So. Much. Blood.

I try to get a look ahead of me peeking my head up as high as my dizziness will allow like a drunken tortoise attempting to peek out to see where he ended up the night before and if, perhaps, there’s something waiting there to eat him. Something brushes against my ass—the ass still floating along in blood and I give a little screech. I have no idea what that might have been feeling my panic increase to astronomical amounts. I’m absolutely terrified to be in water where things with teeth dwell—a fear I’ve seemed to forget about until just now when clarity finally pushes through the fog that has blanketed my brain and kept me docile in my travels.

There is a fucking head. A head! Floating by on my left.

I don’t really have time to process what could have happened to that person before I’m being lifted out of the water, fast and hard, from underneath the tube. Now, it’s me who is screaming.

I can’t readily identify what it is that I’m basically sitting on, but it looks like an alligator. Size-wise,

though, it makes the monster from Lake Placid look like a baby. He’s powerful and tosses me like a ragdoll over to the bank of the river. I hit hard and get the breath knocked out of me but don’t lose consciousness. In a second, I push myself up and run faster than I’ve ever run in my life.

There is absolutely no where to run.

Then, like some kind of miracle, I see my own home, the house I grew up in, beyond the mist in the distance. I can hear the beast behind me crashing onto the back, growling, and it fuels me even harder. I’m running and running, but it doesn’t feel like I’m making any progress. No matter how hard I push myself, I’m not getting any closer. I can almost feel the damned thing’s breath on my back before I finally make it to the front of the house. I push through the front door sure that the monster is on my heels. I haul ass through the living room and make a sharp right turn down the hallway and an immediate left into the bathroom. I’m barely inside the door when I hear the crash coming from the living room.

There’s no way I’m going to live through this. Absolutely no way.

I close the bathroom, lock the door and look anywhere for a weapon. There’s nothing but a plunger. A fucking plunger of all things. I grab it anyway because something is better than nothing and get ready to barricade the door. It’s there, on the other side, I can hear it breathing. So, I grab the plunger harder, ready before it begins nosing at the door. It’s almost unreal like it’s fucking teasing me slowing splintering the door jamb so it can ease its way inside. The door is threatening to swing open so I sit on the ground and push back against it with my feet, but it’s a futile effort. I’m already getting weak and the door is falling apart. I catch glimpses of the blood-stained, yellowed teeth that are bigger than my legs, the cold, dark eyes…I’m as good as dead, but I can’t give up. There’s a cabinet to my right. I swing it open searching frantically with my right hand while wielding the plunger in the left and keeping my legs on the door, but all I find is some Scrub N’ Bubbles spray. Fuck it, I think, and start spraying it into the beast’s eyes.

He disappears.

I feel a great sense of relief and a strong urge to pee.

I roll over then in the pregnant light of morning, still dazed with my heart racing, and look at the clock. 6:12 a.m. I momentarily groan that it's so close to time for me to get up for the day and trudge begrudgingly towards the bathroom replaying the nightmare and wondering just what the fuck is wrong with me. 

Today is another Sunday Confession with More Than Cheese and Beer. The topic this week was "dream" so I thought I'd write about one of my strangest ones. I suppose the river really was a metaphor for life and the the beast was a symbol of some stress I was under the time especially since I had to battle him in my old childhood home which is a common theme in my nightmares as it was a source of great stress when I was younger. Thanks for reading and be sure to check out the rest of the link ups over on the MTCAB page!