Demon Cat

My psyche totally made up for the last thoroughly uncharacteristic, but lovely and affirming, dream I posted here by waking me up this morning screaming. In the dream, if was a full-throttled anguished wail, but what actually woke me in real life was my own pitiful whimper.

A couple of my best friends were in town for my wedding (what?!)*, and he brought their daughter and cat to my apartment so that I could watch them for a while; I think his wife was sick. Almost immediately, though, this cat (which in real life is lovely) revealed itself to be an absolute demon. It went behind the TV and there was a theatrical flash of light blue light and a powering-down sound that indicated that the cat had chewed through the TV wires. The same thing happened and the computer went down. As I tried to catch and contain the cat, it chomped down hard on my left wrist and latched on. I tried blowing in its face, swatting it, flinging it off, and prying its jaws open, but it held on, and although I knew it was inflicting a pretty serious injury that would hurt a lot, I also didn't want to hurt the cat.

But then, then! It let go, only to dart into a large cage that had appeared on the floor and contained another couple of best friends' kitties. These kitties were somehow much smaller and more fragile, and the demon cat killed them almost instantly.**

This time I picked up the demon cat and sort of flung it to the floor. Even though it was nothing compared to the shaking that completely failed to loosen it when it had its teeth in my wrist, this time it, of course, suddenly died.

It was the realization that I was directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of basically all of my best friends' cats (though thank goodness my subconscious forgot the toddler in my care and thus allowed her to escape unscathed!), and the fear that David wouldn't love me any more after I'd killed all those animals, that woke me up howling. What an awful dream.

*This getting-married-oh-no! themed dream broke with convention, as the potential groom was my current boyfriend, it was a day or two before the wedding, and before my brain could totally freak out over the idea of getting married, it was interrupted by the antics of a demon cat.

**In real life, one of these kitties really is kind of demonic.

in which my subconscious wins the Gross and Creepy prize

If you're ready for another excrement-themed dream, read on! (You can guess the corollary to that, I'm sure.)

The dream started with a work trip with a nameless, faceless coworker and a real-life coworker who, although nice, has bossy tendencies. We were in a small car, trying to go somewhere to do some sort of site-based work (I have no idea why I was along). It started raining harder and harder, and at some point we had to ford a rushing creek with the small car, which I now noticed was either completely topless or just open on all sides like a Jeep. The bossier coworker was issuing directives about how to go about crossing the stream ("gun it" being the main idea). She said something about bracing myself, but I wasn't entirely braced, and I certainly wasn't ready for the head-to-toe spattering with muddy water.

We made it across okay, except for being completely wet and muddy, and stopped at a ramshackle house where we were going to stay. There were some other assorted people there, although I'm not sure who they were or what they were doing. The overall atmosphere was sort of scientific field outing (or rather, what I would imagine that atmosphere to be like)*.

The place was pretty makeshift, with a toilet out in the middle of the room. No one seemed to find this odd or unsettling, and consequently I didn't either. I sat down and did my business**, and that's when everything started to go off the rails.

For some reason when I stood up, the *ahem* excrement ended up in two [rather large!] piles on the seat (?? it was definitely in the toilet before). That disturbed me quite a lot, but I was even more disturbed to see a little worm-like creature wriggling about in it***. And then, as if that weren't disturbing enough, the real freak-out began: on closer inspection, the "worm" turned out to be a snake! Wriggling around in the excrement, mind you. The body was about the size of one of those small green snakes, but it was oddly segmented. The head was disproportionately large****, at least 2 inches across, with large, very creepy roundish yellow eyes. It was bobbing its head about like a cobra (no hood, at least), looking at me in the most alarming way. I can hardly emphasize enough how very alarming and disturbing it was.

I had started making alarmed noises on seeing the mounds of excrement on the seat, and they had escalated by now to full-blown, terrorized screams (although I couldn't properly get out half of them, so they were half raspy whispered screams). A kid that I had "dated" in 6th grade (?!?) was sitting near the toilet and hadn't reacted at all until this point. He suddenly had had enough, though, and told me to pull myself together and stop the screaming and freaking out. I pointed out to him that he might be freaked out too if confronted with the fact that such a vile creature had just passed through "one of the most sensitive holes in [his] body" (?! sigh.).

That's all I can remember, but it's still disturbing me.



*An interesting detail was that the makeup of the group was eerily multicultural, although disproportionately male.
**Odd variation on the theme of having to go to the bathroom in public--ordinarily in those dreams that's a major source of distress (although, oddly, I don't really have those dreams).
***The real-life inspiration for this undoubtedly being a real-life colony of fruit flies in the compost I just emptied yesterday.
****Which, with my limited herpetological knowledge, I took to mean it was a viper.

Bugs

For some reason, I was trying to ignite a yellow chair in my living room, which in reality I like quite well. I was using either a candle or a lighter, and there were some charred spots, but I really wasn't making any headway. Then I looked down and saw that some cinders had fallen onto the floor. As I watched, there was movement amongst them, and tiny black bugs, and horrible spiders whose filament-like legs were almost transparent, started moving out from under the chair toward me.

I freaked out and started this full-on, ululating screaming as I attacked them with a broom (which I decided I would also burn when I was done).

Some of the spiders had sprung very thin bubbles on top of/around themselves, like tiny parachutes. When I looked at the havoc I'd wrought with my broom, what I saw were some of those collapsed bubbles (though larger now, and more like plastic cling film), and not insect corpses, but tiny, grotesque doll figurines.

I think this was a fairly direct response to the box elder bug invasion that's been taking place in my apartment over the past few weeks. And, no joke, as I was writing that last paragraph, I discovered one crawling on my toe. Ewwww.

therapeutic screaming?

i was visiting the home of a blog friend who i've never met in person. it was her and her young son and then some other faceless people. me and her son and the faceless others were sitting at this small table with short legs - obviously a child's table. i was across from the boy.

the boy got upset, as children do, about something seemingly insignificant. he started banging his open hands on the table and screaming and crying (but without tears). i instinctively knew that his upset wasn't really about the insignificant issue - rather it was built up anger and sadness about the on-going divorce and custody battle his parents are embroiled in.

i watched him throw this tantrum and i saw the faceless others move in to try and shush and soothe him. but somehow i just knew what he needed and it was to really cry and scream and be allowed to be angry. and then i found myself joining in his tantrum. i started banging my hands on the table and screaming as well. my behavior shocked him for a moment and he stopped. he gave me an irritated and confused look. i said come on! don't stop! let's get this out! i'll do it with you... let's scream and cry! he looked at me like i was crazy and then he decided to take me up on it.

this time there were real tears on his face. and i noticed warm tears rolling down my cheeks. we screamed and cried together. and then we laughed.

Mice

I just remembered another dream I had last night! I was in my bedroom in the last house I lived in with my parents. I was in bed, and I saw mice running across the floor. I screamed, but it was that weird, muted, dream-scream, where you're trying to scream loudly and it comes out as sort of a stifled groan. I got out of bed and walked around until I realized that it was still the middle of the night (I saw a clock, but I don't remember the time) and that I should go back to bed. I think at that point my parents were up, and I asked my mom if they had heard me scream, and she said they had but figured I was just dreaming. Then I wondered if I had just dreamed about the mice.

I'm still not sure.