Terror, terror, terror 1 ...

 Two consecutive dreams:

I am on an adventure with 2 others, like a magical quest. We are travelling along paths finding magical clues such as a wooden ring. With each clue is a little food - some seeds, nuts, the brain of a mouse, I think? We eat the food that is part of the magical quest.

We arrive on a beach, my old red Bedford Rascal van is there! Much loved I used to travel off on adventures and sleep in it often. I let my two companions into the back. The man begins to look a little dizzy though and then he says "get me help, I have been poisoned!".

Then the second person becomes ill and I start to feel ill. We all simultaneously realise that the magic foods we ate on our quest were all laced with poison!

I see a man coming down the beach. He is about 70, fat in a suit, - bald with gross long wisps of white hair, pudgy lips and glasses. A toad of a man, I think he even carries a clip board. I realise he is the poisoner and that if he reaches us, he will do terrible things.

I try to shut the door on my friends in the back of the van to keep them safe. Only my body is now also responding to the poison and the first time it doesn't close correctly. Second try I think it closes, it will have to be good enough and I walk through treacle to the front drivers seat.

I am trying to get in and to hit the central locking system before he reaches us ...

I wake up here in terror.

The only way I can get back to sleep is by repeatedly imagining that I get inside in time, that I pass out on the steering wheel setting off the horn. This alerts people on the promenade and they come to save us thwarting the odious man. Imagining this many times brings my nervous system down until my next dream ...

Petrol Head

 There is an open moorland with a wide green rusty metal pipe emerging from the ground, a turn valve on the top.

A man opens the valve and drinks the oil that the pipe is transporting. He drinks it then sets it aflame, like a fire breather. Flames lick around him burning his nose, he looks arrogant and inflated, I think it can't be good for his body what he is doing. It feels toxic and horrible.

A woman is stood next to him. I hear a voice say to her "before the day is out, you will sacrifice your body two times for things that have no meaning. Things that have no value or worth, for these no-things, you will sacrifice your body".

I wake up feeling very disturbed.

I talk about this dream a few times. In the past, work has sometimes led me to crash. I have felt like someone who "can't to the world of work like others can" due to past traumas. I have felt that I have not fully materialised my full potential in the world of work.

I am now flexing a muscle and finding it strong. I work more hours, with a focus and continuousness that has eluded me in the past. I have felt proud of my new found strength. However my body also seems to be reacting to this. I have tinnitus, a bad back, a rash on my feet and have even been having blood tests regarding RBCs, exploring the possibility of a very rare illness ...

I have been reflecting on the figures in the dream. One is 'ego-inflated' - self agrandising -puffed up on fossil fuel. The other is self abandoning. These feel like two kinds of trauma response to an out of balance world, one that is dying as we drink more and more fossil fuel for our endless expansion ...

I wonder if it is really a good thing, to be able to undertake a ferocity of work that is our "normal".

the corn king

The dream commences with preparing for a holiday, for some kind of journey.

I am in a car (with a family?) - driving them along a long straight 'highway' (it seems that we are in America). I am accelerating, my passengers are getting scared, "don't look back" I am telling them - and we accelerate faster, faster - the dream is all rushing road, revving engine and cornfields passing by in a blur.

Next I am up above the scene watching from the sky. Other cars are accelerating too, some are swerving, crashing, out of control. A tidal wave of 'something' is coming down the road. There is a lady in a jeep (a black lady) and I realise she is my friend. I will her to drive faster but she is slowing down, letting people by. "No don't stop" I want to scream (only I am 'out of my body'!) but she pulls into a lay by...

Then to my relief I see what she is doing as she swings round and throws her car up the embankment opposite; pitching over the top the vehicle lands on it's side but she climbs out unscathed. With a family she stands at the top of the embankment watching - I look down the road expecting a wave or some natural disaster, some kind of weather phenomenon...

But instead I see that the corn either side of the road is gathering up into a dusty a wave and has formed into a giant corn monster! It is almost comical, like some awful B movie, but it is terrifying too - the ground shakes as he walks down the road roaring like Godzilla!

There is a family scrambling up the bank from a nearby farm, he reaches over and scoops them all up in one dry, scratchy corn hand. They are all screaming and one by one he plucks them out of his hand and hurls them to certain death across the corn fields. It is sickening watching them, especially the women, screaming as they await their 'turn'.

Then he is down to the children, I don't see the little girl go (maybe I have looked away by this time)...

Next there is a little boy, about 7, he shouts heroically (again like some poor American B movie) "You big beast I'll huff and I'll puff..." but we don't hear what else he has to say as he too is hurled into the air.

Here the dream (nightmare) sinks to depths far beyond even B movies as I hear the boy shouting at the monster still as he flies through the air; then the thud as he hits the ground - a choking sound as he fights for his last few breaths...

My attention focuses in on the farm house that they all ran from (though in the back of my mind I am concerned for the safety of the black lady standing on the bank watching all of this). I see an old fashioned wooden fold up chair (of the kind used in village halls or a small parish church). The seat has two words cut with a pocket knife on it's underside, which is revealed as it is folded up.

It says simply "thankyou" and then a name. The name begins with "K" and maybe has an "S" in it too - I can't remember more but I have the feeling it was an old Pagan name. I sense that this simple carved gesture (which may have been done by the boy?) is what has enraged the corn king.

Either the boy has thanked some God that he shouldn't have been consorting with, or the family has forgotten to thank the corn King and this is why he is angry (I sense all of this somehow as I watch the scene).

(the name may have been 'Kreysws' though this is not quite right, I think there was some 'old' or unusual lettering in the name - perhaps though some early version of 'Christus'?)

Brett and Scarlet

I see a couple sitting on a very stylish sofa. They are handsome, sophisticated, both have beautiful coal black hair and are well groomed. I think they are called Brett and Scarlet; they give the impression of having finally married after a long and tempestuous affair.

They are at the house of some friends, another married couple. This couple are well groomed also - she is blonde and him a brunette: they are handsome too but somehow a little more bland than Brett and Scarlett.

The evening is polite, the couples sit and chit chat. The women are mute though, lacking in animation, as if something essential might be missing from their character. And the two men, they engage in shallow banter, yet there is an undercurrent of something else, something paranoid and violent - Brett suspects that this husband might be after his wife.

The evening relaxes a little as Brett and Scarlett lie out together on the settee, reveling in one anothers presence. They leave, it is dark and they are driving on an unlit road across a harsh desert like landscape.

Suddenly a car swerves round them and the couple are cut up in flashing headlights and veer off the road. Brett is enraged. He swings the car round on the desert sand looking for the man who cut him up. He is driving wildly in circles, farther and farther from the road in search of this 'other' that is clearly now nowhere to be seen.

I watch him drawing circles in the sand from a distance above (before now I have been inside the car with them) - in a cinematic scene the camera pans back and I see that they are now circling near the edge of a long peninsula overhanging a chasm. I want to shout to save them, but watch helpless as a few seconds later, the car plunges off the edge into the abyss.

The Seatbelt

I am in a car; someone who resembles my mother (but isn’t) is driving. There are two children in the back and someone who resembles my father (but isn’t).

The step mother (I will call her this for convenience) seems agitated. She says “At the next stop I will pull over and put some shoes on those children, their feet are cold.” I am furious with her for slighting my ability to care for my children (I realise when provoked that those children are mine). “Look” I shout “if you don’t think I am looking after them then just say”.

“OK then, I don’t think you look after them.”

Infuriated I grab the children from the back, a baby and toddler. I put socks and shoes first on the baby, then on the toddler. But the socks are too thick and the shoes too small and the baby leads me to believe that she is perfectly warm and would rather not wear these awkward encumbrances (she communicates this telepathically with a smile).

I put them back in the rear of the car, the toddler stands next to the amiable but weak step father who is playing with the baby. As I look at them I realise that now they really are in danger: the stepmother who drives this car is senile (I start to tell her so but then chicken out) and now my children are travelling in the back without their safety belts: I picture them travelling at speed towards the windscreen.

I become horribly aware that an emergency stop is imminent; having wrapped them against false fears of cold I wonder if they will survive the real threat.

Fixing a Car

Mark (my brother) is trying to fix a car. He is an adept technician and has almost done it, but one remaining fault perplexes him. He has a cylinder (big) with 6 lights and one of them (the outer one?) has been vandalized and has stopped all of the lights from working. He has got them all to work again however, except the last outer light.

Dad goes off and gets some things, mark is sceptical thinking dads solution won’t work, but dad brings back exactly the right thing – mark is so grateful he spontaneously hugs him.

I am so happy I nearly cry.