With classmates in what appears to be a crowded warehouse, waiting out a storm and watching TV. A bizarre movie is playing where giant bugs terrorize the cast which includes Anthony Hopkins. In one scene, a praying mantis (colored and patterned like a moth¹) climbs onto a flying contraption that looks like a large broom stick and zips away over the woods, chasing someone. I look down and see a pair of spiders embedded in the crook of my right forefinger. I casually pluck one out but one is larger and very detailed – black and yellow with orange eyes. Its head and upper body stick out with the legs inside and I tug at it but it doesn’t budge. This has occurred in more than one dream and I have no idea what it means, but now my hands are driving me crazy.

- February 19, 2011

© Mike Keeling

¹ But which moth? I want to say it was black and white. The pattern escapes me.

Staying with Momma and [Liz] in a hotel room. We get in late and find two teenage girls have crashed the place. One’s caught rummaging through a bag and tries to play it off while the other is napping under the covers. All our lights have been shut off, and Momma rushes us to throw whatever we can into the car. We start out with luggage and once that’s full we start stuffing things into white trash bags. Books, stuffed animals (I remember Pooh Bear, Chip, a Sonic doll, possibly my Cabbage Patch doll), and a lot of broken plastic toys. We assumed once we’d done that we’d throw away all the trash. A man is arguing with someone outside the window of our room and [Liz] and I crouch low to the floor as we work. Momma suddenly bursts in and grabs hold of [Liz], dragging her out and shouting for us to go. I hurriedly ask my sister if everything else has been stowed in the car and she says yes. I grab the bag nearest me and [Liz] holds on to the one she has as we race outside. I fall into the passenger seat but [Liz] can’t open her door and begins screaming as I fumble with it over the seat as a car pulls in beside us and tries to cut us off. Panicked, Momma tells us to scream to get his attention to lure him around to our side of the car so she can gun it, and we do as she says. The man – skinny with glasses and a goatee and a resemblance to Jeffrey Dahmer, may have been wearing a plaid shirt – stumbles to our right and starts throwing rocks at the windshield. One cracks it, but by now Momma’s backing down the driveway (we’re now fleeing a house on a dark street). She murmurs she can’t see out the back for all the bags and the car feels like it’s moving slower and slower. The man hesitates then heads around the front of his car.

I wake up in a cold sweat. As dry as my eyes are, my right eye won’t stop weeping. I hear the Shawshank Redemption credits kick in as I step into the hall …

- March 21, 2012

© Algy O’Connell

Two dreams, one featuring a collie dog, black, brown and white, with apparent cigarette burns on the white spots on her muzzle. The other involved me walking through a building off Main Street (I recall going in and out the front door several times, and there may have been a bookshop). I wind up in a small dining room where someone is sprawled on the floor and a couple are eating at a table. The woman remarks, “Is that a homosexual leg?” She repeats herself and I snap, “It’s a human leg.” This rattles her, and she asks if I’d like some wine before hurtling a full wine glass at my head. I knock it back at her with my left arm, breaking the glass and dousing her as well as my shirt. She stands and I grab a fork, knocking her multiple times on the head with it. She just screams and keeps walking towards me. I slap it over her left eye but it doesn’t do any damage. I grab her left arm and mock stabbing her when I see her husband stand up. I hit her again, push her down, and run through several doors where all the locks (all chains) have either been removed or have had the knob at the end of the chain broken off. She catches up to me and I slam her fingers in the door before taking off again. I end up climbing out of what I think was a bathroom window onto the street in an alleyway.

- February 24, 2010

© luckygirllefty

Late at night, walking down the road past houses that we’re looking to buy (one I like is in Tupelo next door to Molly, but it’s downtown – near Wendy’s – I think of getting a loan and buying it myself as it’s only $65,000). I wind up on a stretch of rural road alongside the woods which are rising with swamp water. A large crowd is walking behind me, but I keep losing sight of them and have to wait for them to catch up. I’m singing a song under my breath from a children’s movie and twice I step on the DVD in the flooded road (it has a blue baby monster on the cover). Some girls from school in the crowd catch up to me and are having a conversation, oblivious that I’m there. Everyone’s muddy and scratched up. For the duration of the walk, a light shines in my immediate front for about five feet like a headlight or flashlight, though I don’t carry one, and whenever I look over my shoulder for the group they are always surrounded by fading light.

- December 23, 2009

© Rachel Sapp

Good question.

We have another sister who’s gone away to get tattooed, or scarification¹. Scarred? Scarified? We visit a nice part of some city and somehow I wind up at the wrong house, a large river home on stilts with an open deck. I don’t realize it’s the wrong one until I’ve gone in the back door up on deck and can’t find my room. I sneak back out without anyone seeing me, but I imagine what I would have to do if someone came in. For whatever reason, Momma refers to points on the house as honey (bottom left), salvia (top), and aswell² (bottom right). We ask the next night if we’re going anywhere else before sis gets home (we have like 8 hours) and Momma can’t think of anything. She remembers a building next to Sally’s³ that’s being renovated and that people are saying used to be/is going to be an Aquafina store. She suggests we check it out. I mention Sale⁴ is having a talent show and Momma says we don’t want to go, that it’s terrible. At one point, I’m scratching the inside of my left ear and Momma (some other lady?) tells me that’s not attractive. I reply that it’s my eczema flaring up.

- June 1, 2010

¹ BMEzine Wiki entry
² Google insisted I meant “as well.” In this instance, let’s assume aswell is some newfangled plant used for either its sweetening or hallucinogenic properties. It’s possible I misheard it.
³ Sally Beauty Supply
⁴ Sale Elementary School

Outside, telling stories and fairy tales when the story of Robin Hood comes up and a couple of child-sized bunnies introduce themselves. A kid runs by screaming that we missed the first bell. Everyone runs for school, but the bell rings for homeroom and most of us aren’t even inside yet. Inside, there’s a meeting of some sort being held in the auditorium and they’re playing NIN over the loudspeakers. A bunch of us wind up on the stairs (which spiral, with a set above and below where you’re standing) and Katherine Heigl is above me and a young black girl is below me. Katherine is crying. Apparently, we’re being stalked by someone who wants us dead, and to avoid them we keep dropping from the ledge and onto the landing below, all together so that we’re swapping places. At one point, a door behind Heigl opens but no one’s there, and a door at the end of one landing slams shut. The girl below me has a gray-haired Kathy Bates suddenly appear behind her and Heigl shoots Bates in the head . . .

- December 29, 2008

© p-damp