A SMALL COLLECTION OF SOMEWHAT MACABRE DREAMS FROM MY CHILDHOOD AND EARLY ADOLESCENCE

I came upon this site a few times, like an interdimensional roadblock between other incomplete dreams.

I communicated telepathically with the occupants of the tiny coffins bobbing along in the stream. Some contained more than one corpse, in various states of decay, some no more than a fractured pattern of bones entwined in their antique burial garments of tulle, satin, pearls and lace. Yet these ancient children also seemed to be made entirely of a gossamer light, like spirits trapped forever in the projection of these unfortunate forms. They seemed quite indifferent to both their own demise and imprisonment, giggling with each other in their plight like any given group of students might, and constantly coaching me in my predicament as they gradually passed on their way.

The children did not fear the Crocodile King, endlessly counting on his throne and forever losing his place, and spoke of him derisively as 'not quite right in the head,' but they were terrified of the all-seeing Geisha Queen, for more than her hornet-infested coiffure.

Though the stream was small and could easily be traversed in a step in most places, it was simply unthinkable to cross it except by using the singular tiny footbridge, a prospect fraught with dread because it involved nearly incomprehensible negotiations with this powerful odd couple, who seemed to never agree with one another.

Naked in the golden light of a primeval world, my companions and I are flocking like wild deer through emerald glades, but we hear it approaching, an ominous thrumming. The earth seems to be turning under it as it slowly passes over, inaccessible.

In a ruined Asian city of the future he would appear here and there, suddenly, from nowhere, his tiny, grimy shrine materializing through walls or from thin air, always within reach of his intended victim's throat and dispatching them with consummate skill, then he, and they also, disappearing just as swiftly.

Imprisoned in a bronze age by captors long extinct, he is the size of Madagascar and the loneliest being who ever lived. Yet he lives, half-awake and blind, his constant incomprehensible sorrow incessantly washing the mountains, washing the stones, washing the sand. Pale is all mortal woe in this place.

Behind the television static, below the floorboards, beyond the grid and murmur of the heater vents, in the radium-glow of a nocturnal medical complex.

An appointment has been made and I'm negotiated through a series of waiting and testing rooms.

After a confusing briefing, not much help, I'm allowed into the chamber. A multicolor array of stinging lasers pierce the apex of the optic nerve. A tricky triangulation required to get the desired effect in the humming glass.

It disturbs me to discover mechanical parts embedded in my interior.

My grandmother lives in a strange house with other old women. One of the women gives me a reading with strange printed, die-cut cards in different shapes. She deals out three cards, one over the other, a grandfather clock, a skeleton, and a circus cage, and they fit together in a curious jigsaw.

We're moving everything stored in the attics en masse to another house down the way along a frozen riverbed, sliding chests, trunks and crates, slipping on the thawing ice and struggling against the failing light.

The largest trunk contains the object in question. It's no use. It's going to get too dark and dangerous to proceed again. It always does.

That same hound of the collective unconscious but in this case growing like scattered shrubs in a rusting scrap-yard. Each infernal litter was joined together at the collective tail and this organ was firmly and deeply rooted in the rocky soil.

It was their wont, like any chained hounds, to sleep, mostly, and they would appear almost formless, lying together in liver-colored heaps, ...until you awoke a set, or two, which was inevitable when you were crossing this way. Then they would become a baying, braying, rasping and slathering cacophony, sawing the wall of air before you at their full length, close enough to smell their hungry breath.

Very annoying, but harmless... if you're careful.

Suddenly the scene became alarmingly real, that particular kind of real that's reserved for things which are actually too real to be really real, but are more real than real nonetheless. An intense fragrance of cedar with a hint of hemp and a dash of ozone in the hot lights.

I was a good thirty feet off the ground on a primitive, creaking and squeaking scaffolding, a sort of lookout tower built inside some kind of auditorium and brightly lit from all sides by powerful spotlights. Centrally suspended within was a strange organic form, a dense sphere of silky, tightly  packed filaments that reminded me more than anything of a cattail, those brown velvet aquatic plants which can be burst into massive clouds of feathery fuzz by industrious children.

I realized I had been bashing at this hundred and fifty pound mother of all mutant cattails with a wooden bat for some time--in fact I continued to do so, filling the air with its bright bursting gossamer fragments which I struggled not to inhale. I had discovered a layered, waxy seed within and I guessed my intent was to uncover to this seed, though I had no idea why.

I rather quickly realized I couldn't stop swinging the bat even when I tried, and the attempt made me feel ridiculously leaden and severely threatened my balance, so I simply continued my muted percussions in transfixed awe.

Then I noticed the distinct rhythm: a strange waltz was required to maintain my perch.

I was beating my own heart to fragments. The thought brewed an inarticulate horror in me but I could only go at it helplessly even faster and faster, until I finally awoke, the physical version of my heart racing crazily.