02/07/02
The Rice Storm & The Body On The Porch

A strange one that left me feeling rather disturbed after I'd awakened!

Before I start, I have to make reference to a well-known Fortean phenomenon, that of strange objects raining from the sky. There have been many documented reports of such things as fish, frogs, and rocks raining in different areas, and one of the primary theories is that waterspouts suck these items up into the sky, where they temporarily join with clouds, only to later fall over the land like rain. This sounds plausible to me. This was sort of what happened in my dream.

In it, there were weird reports of rice (yes, the food item) raining from the sky. I remember walking around outside somewhere--I'm not sure where I was, it didn't seem to be near home, but I felt comfortable there--I was walking across wet pavement which seemed to be orange (terracotta) in color. It was slick with rain, seeming to tilt slightly to the left; overcast, lots of trees around this big open area the pavement was in (it seemed to be irregularly shaped as well, like some sort of strange basketball court without the hoops), and there were pieces of rice raining down and landing in glops and in single pieces around me. It was surprisingly unsticky. I don't remember any hitting me, and I wasn't disgusted. In fact the rice was puffy--it appeared to have even been cooked, and I felt you could simply scoop it up from the ground and consume it. It seemed to be mixed with something else at some point--perhaps vegetables or seasonings? ;)

Apparently, a hurricane of some sort had struck Southeast Asia, hitting the rice paddies and sucking the rice up into the clouds. This was the explanation given, by whom, I'm not sure; the news, perhaps? And so now the rice was raining down in America--or wherever I was--and nobody thought it was much of a big thing. Just a small oddity.

Things got odder, however, when a dead body landed on our front porch!

I was back at home now, and I don't remember it actually happening, but somehow, a body landed on the front porch. Even without directly looking at it I knew it was there. I saw it in my mind, based on a very quick glimpse I'd caught of part of it. It was a man, a bit chubby or puffy, dressed sparely but kind of oddly for this part of the country; I feel he was a native, a Southeast Asian, who must have been sucked up by the hurricane as he was working--he was a laborer of some sort, a fisherman or a farmer on the paddies. I said already I never really got a look at his face, but I saw it in my mind; he seemed slightly Asian, if not completely so. His shirt, and perhaps his shorts, I feel were orangish and very waifish looking, very simply made. Perhaps sandals on his feet, and something on his head, a sort of coolie hat maybe, only not as big. Our porch was bigger and he was lying with his head facing the south, his feet facing our door (north); on his back, a bit crooked, like he had landed that way; arms kind of bent as his legs were. The fall didn't appear to have injured him any; I believe he was dead before he landed. There didn't even appear to be any blood around him. He could have merely been sleeping if I hadn't known he was dead. He was damp/wet also; perhaps everything was wet outside. I believe it was summer, overcast/cloudy and humid.

The fact that there was a body out on our porch disturbed me greatly. I spent the rest of the dream unsuccessfully trying to make a deal out of this. First I went to my dad (who fought in Vietnam by the way...not certain if that matters) and told him about this. (He may have known already.) He wasn't very upset by it. When I suggested that we remove the body, he thought for just a moment before saying, "Nah." He wanted to KEEP it there for some weird reason! Like a scarecrow or something. ! Yuck! I may have tried to argue with him over the cons and difficulties involved in keeping a dead body on your porch where the birds come in to feed, but he didn't really listen. He was rather "absent" the whole time I talked to him; everyone in this dream was. I just couldn't get him to be concerned about this, and I got the feeling that if I tried to remove the body, I might get in trouble with him. So I had to find someone else to help me--because I didn't even want to LOOK at it, much less move it!

My brother Eric seemed to be wandering around in this dream, but I don't recall ever directly talking to him. Indicating that he was "absent" as well.

So I went to the back door to find Ma just returning from work, even though it was only midafternoon, perhaps around five or six. She was carrying a bag or two, looking kind of tired, and when she saw me she started yapping immediately, some boring story someone had told her. (In real life, she's often very long telling stories, and not because she's longwinded; she just gets sidetracked a lot, and often wanders off into silence in midsentence. Quite amusing. ;) ) I had to interrupt her to tell her, "Ma, you won't believe what Dad said we should do." I led her through the house--it was rather difficult as her mind was on other things--and showed her to the window in the front door. I was careful not to look out myself. She leaned forward and peered down and saw the body.

"Ooohhhhhhhh," she moaned in annoyance, as if to say, "What are we supposed to do with THAT?" Yet she wasn't very upset by it aside from that--she seemed to consider it more of a nuisance or minor aesthetic annoyance than a health hazard or something really disturbing--and instead of offering a solution for removing it, started babbling on with her story again. I couldn't regain her attention on the matter no matter how hard I tried. (I feel I didn't try hard, but that isn't the point.) By now I was SERIOUSLY frustrated. At least two, three others in this house, a dead body on our porch, and the only one who cared about it was me!

I already pointed out how I didn't look at it. At one point, I went to the door window and very, very carefully peeked outside. I knew that the body was either mangled or partly decomposed in some way, due to being tossed about in the hurricane, even though it was still in unusually good shape. I imagined long, vertical, bloodless gashes on the face. But I didn't see them. I only allowed myself to see perhaps the top of the head (not wearing a hat now?--I think I saw dark mussed hair, cut moderately short--his skin was pale like ours, not yellow--I merely envisioned his eyes as being slightly slanted and a bit puffy, closed), and maybe an arm, before jerking back with fear. I COULDN'T allow myself to look at him, even though I was literally dying of curiosity. I WANTED to know just how badly he looked--you know the morbid curiosity one gets when passing a car wreck. Yet I was too afraid to allow myself to, and so now, I spent the rest of the dream trying to AVOID this.

This was easier said than done! Now that I'd made up my mind not to look, to try to "ignore" it, it seemed there were windows everywhere--and they all looked out over HIM!

First off, I had to avoid looking out the front window--somehow he was visible from there--and from the front door window. Which meant I had to be careful where I looked when I was in the living room, the main room of the house. Then there was again a window in our bathroom, like there used to be several years ago (we had it removed and boarded over). Our bathroom directly overlooks the porch, so I had to keep myself from looking out of it when I went in there--and I use the bathroom often. Worst of all, though, was my own bedroom, my "safe haven." In real life, this is just beside the bathroom, and my own windows overlook the front porch as well. In real life my windows are papered over, but in my dream they weren't. They were also a lot lower, closer to the ground than they are in reality. And so when I went into my room to think over my problem--I had to shield my eyes and look away from my own windows (the room was dim) to keep myself from seeing that body!

It was like no matter where I went, it was always there, and I always had to keep my eyes averted. I couldn't get away from it. What was worse than this was my own curiosity and my urge to look, even though I was filled with revulsion and fear. I suppose you could say I was literally trapped by this thing, and couldn't think of a thing to do about it. I wanted it gone--both out of my own disgust, and out of respect for the dead man--but in order to do that--I would have to look at it--which I couldn't do! Damned if I did, damned if I didn't.

For some reason I had a very bad feeling about my mom when I woke up (after I'd finally remembered the dream, which took a little while). I actually wanted to call her at work to ask how she was. Strange, since her part in the dream was so mundane.



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