Apparently, M. Night Shama-lama-ding-dong is My Personal Sandman and Mr. Cunningham Doesn't Like to Meet in Person

Last Sunday night, I had the most vivid dream I think I have EVER had in my life.  It was so involved and clear, that I wrote down the summary below as soon as I woke up.  Now that I’ve cleaned it up (I wrote it without my glasses) on, I thought I’d share and ask if any of you have some insight here.  My husband’s only response was that maybe I need to lay off the sleep medication.  True though that may be, I have to think this dream has some deeper meaning, but I have yet to sort that out.

If any of you horror fans add this to your novels or movie projects, I want a writer’s credit!  *chuckles*

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I go to a pool hall.  I’ve been to it before, but not alone.  I think I usually come here with the Hubs, but I am alone now.  I think it costs $20 to get in.  I have a wad of bills in my hand, including a $20, but I accidentally hand the girl at the entryway a $10 bill.  Instead of correcting me about the price, she hands me $5 in change and 2 dice.  I am too embarrassed to ask her why she gave me the dice or whether I made a mistake with the bill, because I feel like I should know.  Something in the back of my mind tells me that there is a law against bringing your own dice to a pool hall.

I walk to a pool table and grab a cue stick.  I chalk it and see it has a bright orange tip.  This seems unusual to me.

A stranger comes over to play.  I can’t make out his face, but he seems like he’s young – probably early 20’s.  He’s wearing a tank-top and basketball shorts.  The guy looks a little rough but not scary.  I start to rack the balls, but when I pull the triangle, there is a thick black elastic band with it.  I’ve never seen this before.  I reach into the pool table for the balls, and they aren’t pool balls at all.  They are rocks.  Some are large and have pits and craters in them.  Some are small – they look like pills or Tic-Tacs.

I tell the man I’m about to play that, although I shouldn’t admit it, I’d played this game only once before and have forgotten some rules.  This is a lie, though.  I’ve never played this game, and I don’t know at all what I’m doing.  I don’t know why I don’t just leave the table and go to a “regular” one.

The girl who was taking money at entrance walks up to table.  There is a small crowd now, and she’s verifying that I was there first to play and who is on the waiting list to play.  I feel like word got out about my weakness.  I’m nervous.

Someone I don’t seek racks the “balls.” I see hands tightening the rack, they are masculine hands but I never see the body to which they belong.

By this time there is a huge crowd around the table.

I walk around to break.  There are now bottles in the rack. They have Spanish words on them in fancy writing, but I don’t see the words.  I think they are beer bottles; glass but the size and shape of cans.  Each time I aim to break, an older man at the table (who I don’t really see but can hear) taunts me.  He is making fun of each angle I choose for my break shot.  He says I will break the bottle for sure.  By “break” he means shatter, not scatter, and his tone makes clear that’s not a good thing.

When I aim in completely the wrong direction, the taunter makes fun of me again.  I pretend I am just practicing and move to another aim.  Someone then complains to the pit boss about how long I am taking.  I hear them discussing a rule against setting as though you are taking a shot then changing position.

As I prepare my aim, the taunting voice yells, “She knocked the judge’s brandy over!”

I look behind me over my shoulder and see that I’ve moved a glass from the rail of the table rail to the felt.  The glass is still upright and no liquid spilled.  I am surprised the liquid is clear.  I replace the glass to the rail, and I apologize to the man sitting at the rail.  I address him as “Your Honor.”  He is an older gentleman with dark hair.  I cannot really see his face.  The taunter complains that I should have to buy the judge a new glass of brandy.

Suddenly, we are all looking at a dwarf-like and unattractive man.  The collective opinion is that the dwarf is possessed by a demon.  When the demon is finally out of the dwarf, we lock the demon in a closet behind a green door.  The door is dark green but distressed, marred with scratches and dents and age.  The door has a slide-lock in a formation I’ve not seen before.  The lock slides up and down but has a latch that flips over it.

Quickly, the dream changes again.

I am in a house on a hill.  It is my house but I don’t recognize it.  There are fields in front of the house.  I do not know who lives there with me.  I have a neighbor near me.  She has a very young child – maybe 1.5 or 2?  I love the child, and my neighbor dislikes that very much.  She seems angry, and I think she is jealous.

There is a beast loose in the neighborhood.  It is black and dark orange.  It looks like a tiger in body, but with the shoulders and waist of a man.  Its head is more demon-like, and its eyes are black with rings of yellow.  It is violent and incredibly strong.

I am on my next-door neighbor’s porch.  I am acting out a scene with Mr. Cunningham from Happy Days.  I can’t see Mr. Cunningham, because I am talking to him through an intercom next to the front door.  I make a joke about Mr. Cunningham’s son not being there.  There is silence.  I ask Mr. C if he’s okay.  He says he’s thinking. I have an uneasy feeling the beast is near.

The boy who lives next door to me on the other side of my house walks across my lawn and toward me on Mr. C’s porch.  I walk to meet him.  I am very happy to see him.  He looks young – a teenager on the cusp of manhood.  He has sandy brown hair and the thin beginnings of a beard.  We kiss.  It is not passionate but very tender.  He tells me the beast is loose.

Suddenly, my dream shifts to violence.  The beast is smashing buildings – especially glass.  At first, I see the beast doing the smashing, but then my point of view changes so that now I see in the dream as though I am the beast.  I break through wall after wall of glass without hurt.  Then, I start killing people.  I twist their necks.  I break their noses. I slash their throats with my claws.  Even as I seem to be doing these things, the violence of it is shocking me.

I am unimpeded until I enter the pool hall and confront the dwarf, who is still there.  He is playing on a pinball machine and laughing at me.  He says he is not afraid of me, because the demon is trapped.  I slowly advance on him.  He says he has friends.  I corner him between the pinball machine and a wall.  Now, he is terrified – I can see it in his eyes.  I pick him up and twist his body until his spine breaks.   I fling the body into the pool hall.

The people in the pool hall start to pursue me.  I run into a hallway where men have tranquilizer darts.  Many shots miss.  I am evade them or deflect them.  But, I am shot twice, and my world goes dark.

When I come to, I am trapped in a room with a man – it is a hospital and the man thinks I am tranquilized.   A heavy-set, woman with gray hair comes into the room.  She is wearing a very traditional nursing uniform – all white dress and that oddly shaped hat.  I bolt off the bed and quickly kill her.  I have a moment of regret about this, but it does not last, because two men come with guns.  The original man is now on the table where I had been.  He is frightened, and I gloat that he was foolish enough to think his silly tranquilizers would work.

One man has orange guns.  He manages to shoot me once, but it does not hurt me.  I advance.  I take his gun and shoot him in the head.  I shoot his partner.  They are dead.  There is another man – he physically fights me.  He is strong and fighting him is a challenge.  I get him pinned finally, and I am trying to use my elbow to shove the man’s nose into his brain, but I cannot get a good angle.  I end up strangling him to death in the process.

Dream changes.  I am me, again.  Word is spread through town that a new demon is coming and will destroy all the town’s crops, leaving us destitute.  People are fleeing.

I go to the green door where the demon is caged.  The door is still closed and locked.  A young boy – I feel related to him but don’t know how – undoes the lock.  I panic – Why?  Why would you do that?  Immediately, the demon tries to escape.  I am using all my strength to keep the door shut, but it is a mighty struggle.  My mother appears, and I ask her for help.  She is dismissive, as though I am overreacting.  She can see me struggling with the door and knows the consequences if I can’t get it locked again, but she will not help me.  I fail.  The demon escapes, finds the beast and inhabits his body.

I am back at my house.  I throw pebbles toward the next door boy’s house.  He comes to me.  He tells me to stay out of the fields but that there is still time to get away on the road.

I walk on a road between fields.  A wagon approaches, and it is carrying the neighbor and small boy I love.  The boy’s mother is blaming me for this mess.  I try to say goodbye to the boy, but his mother doesn’t want me to.  The boy is not in the wagon, but wrapped in blankets, sitting on the road.  I scoop him up, hold him, then put him in the wagon and say angrily to his mother that I love him and I would keep him with me and raise him as my own if she’d let me.  The leave, and I watch the wagon roll away down the hill. I am crying.

Suddenly, somehow, the beast is banished.  My point of view is again as though I am the beast, and I run through fields on the edge of town, eating my fill of grasses and flowers..  As long as I have this space, I do not bother the people in the town.

My point of view changes again, and it is as though I am omnipresent.  I am watching the beast as though he is a movie.  I have sympathy for the beast – who just wanted his own space – but even in my dream I realize it is too contrite – the beast cannot be forgiven for the carnage.

Once again, I am me and inside my home, having dinner with an unattractive man.  I sense he is really the beast in human form.  He is dangerous, and I am not really there of my own will.

I leave the table with a handful of cheese cubes.  I toss some of them toward the next-door boy’s house.  A huge orange light appears, and I hurry back inside.  What I am doing will make the beast mad, and I am nervous.  But, when I see the boy, my heart feels wonderful.  I try to hide from the boy’s view, because I want to see him, but I don’t want him to come to the house, because the man will hurt him.  Still, the boy sees me in the window of the house and comes running, unsuspecting, to the door.  As the boy walks up, another chubby 9 or 10-year old boy comes up the walk in front of the next-door boy.  The young boy is there to sell cookies.

The unattractive man comes from the dining room as I greet the two at the front door.  The beast-man has a menacing and suspicious expression on his face.  I tell the beast-man I want to buy cookies, but beast-man says no.  I beg and say the young boy is working so hard, he should be rewarded.  The beast-man says the boy should’ve been here earlier if he wanted us to buy cookies.  Instead, beast-man hands the young boy and the next-door boy pairs of roller skates as gifts and sends them away.

I wake with a terrible feeling of dread that I am now a prisoner.