In thinking about last night's nightmare, I really do have some freakish nightmares.

One that happens every now and again is a dream where I'm schizophrenic. Voices, craziness, it's all there, and terrifyingly real. I think the best (or worst) part of the dreams is that all of the furniture is on the ceiling. Seriously. It always starts out with me coming home and finding that everything is on the ceiling, in the exact same place it would be if it was on the floor. I have no idea why my brain equates mental illness with furniture on the ceiling. Of course, that terrifies me, and then I hear people whispering but there's no one else there.

I think the saddest one was the one where I was dead, but I didn't know I was dead until the end, and from what I was looking at, there wasn't any reason I was dead. It was so strange. It's also nice to know that your brand loyalty to Sears will show up in your dream. Because that's who was using the jaws of life thingy to cut me and the other person out of our not damaged and perfect cars. My mind makes some really strange associations.

Ones with my mother in them aren't so much as nightmares but they're really surreal. Like I was getting married in a church, and it was the recessional, we turned around and I saw her. She was in the dress that she wore to my older brother's wedding. I started running down the aisle yelling "Mom!", but she kept moving farther away until I got to the back and she just vanished. And then my great-aunt touched my arm and said, "I saw her too."

The megachurch dream was outright strange, had the feeling of a nightmare but it kinda wasn't. Honestly, it's why I can't go to church anymore. I'm wondering if black-clad figures will show up to drag me out.

You know what though? I'll take middle management penguins over death, schizophrenia, and church any day.

The Stuff of Nightmares.

"It's just us two here," she said in a very menacing tone. This will not go well. I studied her, for if my ass is to be kicked, I'd like to know who it's kicked by. And she looked a lot like me, our eyes were similar, her hair brown, but she was far more overweight than I was. Perhaps I had a chance.

"You have no chance. I will win. I always win. And you deserved to be punished, you bitch. You can't escape me."

She took a swing at me, and I was able to avoid it, but then she managed to grab me and punch. I tried to block her but she seemed to know where to hit. I looked at her face, twisted in anger and cruelty, hurtful, hateful words dripping from her lips.

But that was it. That was the only opening, the only way. I reached out and grabbed her cheeck, and with all of my might, squeezed it in my fist...

And I woke up in PAIN. And now I have this really nice scratch on my face, because I was sleeping on my hand.

Remembrance

So wierd it was, this day, a day so very hoped for, longed for, wanted. She was standing next to her father, holding onto his arm. "Are you ready?" he asked. She chuckled, and in her characteristic fashion said, "Well, does it matter? It's a little late to back away NOW." She was, of course, nervous, as all brides tend to be. When she was little, "Princess" was cool, but now? She was wearing the "Princess" garb, and well, it just seemed waaay too formal for marrying him. Which is why she liked him.

And so the music started. And being Catholic, it was a wedding Mass. Sit, kneel (when did that come back?) and stand, not necessarily in that order or number. And at the end of the ceremony, where they turned, arm in arm, to walk back down the aisle as husband and wife, she saw her.

There, at the back of church, was an older but young looking woman, wearing a dazzling blue dress -- electric blue, and at the cuffs of the sleeves and bottom of the dress was blue sequins -- blue shoes that had been dyed to match the dress, and sparkley jewlery. She wore makeup, a polished look that was well done. She had tissues, and kept dabbing her eyes, proud that her little girl was getting married.

The Bride gasped and dragged her new husband down the aisle, wanting to run to her but not wanting to ruin the moment. It seemed like the woman was drifting farther away and the Bride hurried to catch up with her.

When she got to the last pew in the church, the woman had vanished. Unable to control herself, the Bride screamed, "I saw her! She was right here! Mom was right here!" As her chin wavered and her eyes threatened tears, someone said to her, "I know. I saw her too."

An old aunt asked, "You saw Kathie?"

And then I woke up. Dreams are weird.

She was also wearing the blue dress that she liked and looked good in, with the blue shoes. Like she had worn for both my brothers' weddings. It was a very odd dream.

I Know

I knew you when you were oh-so-high, by your polish relatives, by your dark hair. I knew you when you had the female friend you had, to play and taunt, as she would you.

I know you from some other place, some other demension, some other time. Do you remember, the girl, Deutschland, in the polka-dotted dress? With the dark hair? What was her doll's name? I would know if I could remember, but she was a ghost. Hilde? "Die Schoeneste"? You know. Her name. The name of the doll. She spoke to the man. At the camp. "Arbeit Macht Frei". That camp. Im Potsdam. "Die Russen sind mein Fruend nicht" or something along those lines. I studied "Deutschsprache" to know what the fuck she was saying. Because she haunted me. Am I her? Am I someone who knows? Or do I not know, being born into someone else who seemingly won't see it? Was there, in Berlin, a mass riot that no one knows about? Was that me, to see the things I didn't want to, or is it a future? I don't know. All I can see is the riot. And before that , the girl, in the polka-dotted dress, with the doll, with the long black hair. What, if anything, does it fucking mean?

I do not know. All I see are visions, versions of the past or of the present, I do not know. Sometimes I wish life was sci-fi, because then, I would know for sure. Or is it just me? And now do I have to learn Chinese?

I sincerly, and deeply, hate being me. With all my heart. I want to die. But to die would be them, to find out who is haunting me with these images. To die is to know, and to know for the little I do would be a travesty of justice. Or so...I would like to think. How many people do you know, that would like to die, to find out why the ghosts of years ago haunt them....

Wow!

This is kinda surrealistic.

I was in a very, very large church. It was built in a semicircle, and there were endless rows of chairs, much like a movie theater. The carpeting in the church was red. The most striking thing about it, next to the caniverousness of the place, was the where the altar and pulpit where: on the red carpet, the bright white of these objects stood out starkly, and the black accents stood out nicely. The wall was a bright white, and you couldn't help but look at it. The rest of the church walls were darkly colored, although as I took my seat, I took no notice of them; instead, I was transfixed by the whiteness of the wall, and the chair for the preacher, and the pulpit.

The chairs were plush and very comfortable. One could almost fall asleep in them. Once everyone was seated -- and really, it took awhile for that, with all the visiting people tend to do when they enter church -- the service began. The presider walked in, wearing a vestment of white and black, and began to preach.

And then wall lit up. Which would have been a really neat Jesus effect, like a sermon with a Powerpoint presentation, ("You are going to hell in these ways..."), if the screen wasn't showing commercials. Coke, I remember, was advertised, among other things. Oh, and there was trivia, which the congregation could participate in, using a little hand-held number pad that pulled out of the armrest.

Needless to say, I was stunned.

I looked around, finally noticing the people. They were nodding rhythmically to the preacher's voice, while trying to beat their neighbor at the trivia questions. And then I started to listen to what he was saying. Horrible things. Unchristian things. I had to get up out of my seat. I made my way to an aisle, and then started walking down it, staring at the preacher with horrific fascination at this whole ungodly spectacle. Suddenly, he picked on a parishoner, saying their name, and telling that person exactly why they are going to hell. I couldn't take it any longer. I started yelling at him at the top of my lungs, about how horrible he was and that he was misusing the words of Jesus and the Bible. At first, he didn't hear, but as I got closer, he noticed me. I was yelling and yelling, trying to get someone in the congregation to hear me, but no one did, they were all too busy with the trivia, and TV, and the preacher. Even as I stood next to someone sitting in an aisle seat, they paid me no mind. And then the preacher did a funny little hand signal, and suddenly there were several men coming up and down the down the aisle at me...

And then I woke up.

To this day, I have no idea what posessed me to dream that. It felt so real and I was so relieved that it had just been a dream.

WiFi in the church? What's next? Powerpoint? Coke commercials?

The Weirdest Dream Of All

I was in a church. Well, not a church exactly...it was more like a stadium, with rows and rows of seats. The church was packed and down near the...well...stage, I guess, that's what it looked like, was someone preaching. He was talking about how all of us were sinners and other things about religion. I was up near the top, behind some glass, listening to his sermon from small speakers. I forgot what he said, but then he asked the congregation to do something, like confess sins or whatever. And as they were thinking about it, the screen switched on with a bible quote or a question or something and little keypads popped out from the backs of the chairs. The people were entering in something, like numbers or letters. The screen was remarkable though; the quotation or whatever on the screen had a red background, with a Coca-Cola symbol on the top middle of it. Like an endorsement. I crept closer, right down an aisle, not believing what I saw and wondering if anyone had the same slow sinking feeling I had. Then the screen went blank and the preacher called on a man. "I am a sinner," he began, "I can see things, like into the future and I know what people are thinking and a whole bunch of things like that. I can't help it, it just happens. I am so sorry to God and everyone else that these things happen." He gave an example of something that he did. Then the preacher started saying, "You see, there's a sinner. The Devil is working through him, confusing him...." and on and on he went. Suddenly I noticed the people. They were all nodding in agreement. But the looks on their faces...they were blank looks. Like everything he said they'd agree with no matter what it was. Suddenly I couldn't take it anymore. "NO!" I shouted. "That's NOT what it is. If God bestows a gift upon someone, who are you to say that it is evil? If you use it manipualte other people, get them to do what you want, then it is evil. But if you use it to help someone, it isn't evil. And if God didn't want him to have it, God wouldn't have given it to him." I looked around, and the people just sat there in silence. The person who had "confessed" their "sins" looked at me horror. "Don't you see?" I yelled. "It isn't evil. It's what you do with it that counts...."

And I then I woke up.