05/02/01
The Critters On The Porch
The other night I had a dream that some creatures showed up on our front porch. At first they were like rodents, but then they were like rabbits. They reminded me of chinchillas in how they were colored though. They were rabbit sized and silvery, and they had very long, thin snouts, kind of like shrews. At first I thought they were the most adorable things but then they started crowding onto the porch and becoming hostile--I was frightened of them then and had to shut myself back inside, terrified that they would attack me.
Who Forgot To Lock The Door?
Last night in my dream I went out to the utility room to find that the back porch door had not been locked during the night. This puzzled me and I wondered if I had done it. I think I went back into the house to tell Ma, only to come upon Dad getting up and going to the bathroom. I almost screamed. I'd thought he was at work. "No, I got today off," he said, as if it were obvious. It truly startled me, I'd had no idea he was even here.
The dream may have then shifted into "The Watery Den."
The Watery Den
This dream may have evolved out of "Who Forgot To Lock The Door?"
Somehow I ended up going to my brother's house. He lives in Georgia but in my dream I think he lived here, in Michigan, not too far from where the railroad bridge is (anyone who'd ever checked out my Damien stories, HINT HINT, will know what I'm talking about). He had his own place on the river--I mean, LITERALLY on the river. I think the house was situated above it. At first I was standing outside it with Ma and there was a pebbly drive. I can't describe it adequately, but there was some kind of display featuring a bear in a stream--I guess my brother owned a sort of tackle shop. The bear statue (it was painted lifelike) was off to the right and it was a smallish black bear crouching in a manmade stream with real water and pebbles in it. The stream went down this sort of sluice (it was lined with white plastic, like garbage bags or a tarp) but then it was like a dead end, or else it disappeared under the house or something. I went closer and looked at the water and I may have put my hand in it. It was overcast outside, maybe cool; springlike. I looked at the water underneath the house and we went inside because my brother invited us.
He was in a cheerful mood. We went into his living room and it looked a lot like my grandma's house, on my dad's side. Small and kind of...hm, tacky, and not dirty but not the cleanest place in the world either. I didn't like it very much but said nothing. We sat down on the couch and put our feet up because now, under the couch, on the floor, it was all water around us. Flowing water.
I think of brown streams, the color of rich dark wood; not because the water is dirty, but because that's just the color of the stream, the way the water appears. Cold and clean and fresh.
The couch was very low to the water, only a few inches above it--it was IN the water, I should say, so it should have been soaked, it's just that the cushions rose above the water by that much--so I felt I had to be careful.
My brother started talking to us (I feel that his wife, Shannon, was around somewhere) and as he did he got out a fishing pole. We may have been watching a video on TV as well but I wasn't paying much attention to either. There was a little rubber ducky floating around the living room now and my brother started fishing for it as he talked. Like I said, he was in a very good mood. I believe he caught the ducky by a little ring it had on top of its head and he reeled it in. This was something he did for fun. He set the ducky loose and got ready to fish it out again, only it drifted too far away from him--he was sitting to my left and in front of us, Ma to my right--and he couldn't catch it. Now the couch WAS raised above the water, and the ducky drifted right under me and out of sight. Eric (my brother) fished around some more and tried to maintain his good mood but it was futile. He was upset now that he couldn't catch the ducky. He didn't throw a fit, but he had certainly lost his cheery mood.
I bent over to look under the couch and saw that the ducky had, indeed, gone under there. I tried to reach it but couldn't. So Ma and I got up and I pulled the cushions off the couch or else lifted the couch itself. And now...
...it was as if the water that had been surrounding us, both deep and shallow at the same time, had receded drastically, as under the couch was a soggy carpeted floor, somewhat dirty and icky, and the rubber ducky had beached itself and was within my grasp. There were puddles but the water no longer covered the entire floor. I reached down to pick up the ducky and found that it had gone flat. I wondered how Eric would take this, as for some reason he couldn't fish for the ducky if it were flat. It still had the ring on its head. I turned to give it to him and he accepted it. He made some comment--I think he intended to blow it up again so he could use it, and he made an offhand comment to show he wasn't too concerned, I didn't need to worry about it.
The whole house smelled sort of funny. I can't remember the smell now but it was a bit disconcerting and I didn't like it. Still, I kept my opinions to myself.
Now my brother started walking around the living room and he had two dogs. Both were medium sized--one was dark brown, I think, and the other white--but the white one was smaller. At one point the dark one had curly fur, maybe like a Chesapeake Bay retriever, but then I think it was supposed to be my brother's black Lab, Magni. It was friendly and kept coming over to nuzzle at me but the house made me feel so dirty and filthy that I didn't really want to pet it or let it lick my hand. I tried shooing it away; it was overly friendly, but not hostile. The white dog was a different story. I think it was shaggy, maybe a sort of sheepdog mix, but later on it was like some kind of spitz, I can't think of the name--maybe a Samoyed or Keeshond? It's a white fluffy dog with pricked ears. In any case, this dog was not friendly, and it kept growling at me. Like the friendly dog, who finally took the hint (though it bumped into my leg), it kept coming at me, growling, and wouldn't leave me alone. I kept pushing it away as gently as I could as I didn't want to upset it, but it would NOT GO AWAY! At first it only growled, but then it grabbed onto my hand and was tugging on me. It didn't hurt--but its anger seemed to be escalating, and I was afraid. I started trying to get my hand free and saying, "Let me go. Let me go! Eric, tell it to let me go! ERIC!" My voice kept rising and I started yelling, then screaming. The whole time my brother was just puttering around the living room obliviously as if he couldn't even hear me. At one point he may have said that the dogs were no danger, but that didn't help, I wanted it to let me go! He finally gave some sort of command, but it wasn't said very forcefully, and the dog paid him no attention. My brother was in his cheery mood again and just couldn't seem to notice or understand my agitated state. It just didn't pierce through into his world.
I think toward the end he finally came over to get the dog off of me, and I saw something on the wall, a crocheted sign with six "commands" on it. They were supposed to be dog commands, things you say to get a dog to obey you. Eric started to explain it to me but once more I wasn't interested. He was trying to say how important they were to having a good obedient dog, and outlined the first command. I don't know if it worked or if he was even trying to get them to work--he was just interested in EXPLAINING them. I was still trying to shake the dog off and screaming when I woke up.
And for some reason the song "Best I Ever Had" by Vertical Horizon was stuck in my head. I feel I had been singing it at some point in the dream, when I was still relaxed, before the dog came after me. I even remember singing the first few lines, "So you sailed away, into a gray-sky morning..."
2001 Dreams
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