How could I wake up tired and drained when I went to bed early at 10PM? I’ve noticed lately that I’ve been waking up tired after dreaming about running around or running away from some menacing figure chasing me.

I was in a lab with this butt ugly man in a brown suit. Stringy and skanky thinning hair, huge beaky nose, prominent chin. Tall and bulky with round hunched shoulders. Butt ugly. Something went wrong in the lab which caused this guy to grow some green tentacles all over his body. (Think Urotsukidoji.) He dropped a few green feces from two of his tentacles in a flower pot. He then turned his head in my direction with a wicked gleam in his eye. I quickly bolted out of the lab and ran down the corridors of the school. The tentacles shot out from the door after me. I ducked as the vile appendages flew over my head and slid into the stairway. I tumbled and rolled down the stairs, got up and continued running on the third floor. The hideous monster reappeared at the end of the hallway and is gaining on my tail fast. I spotted my friend, Ali, on the floor and grabbed his collar before he could say hello. We ran up and down, over and around the campus with this tentacled hellhound pursuing us. We finally shook off the misshapened fiend a couple of flights down. My poor friend was getting tired from all that running. We looked for a place to rest and found a small balcony on the top floor. I gently dragged and nudged my exhausted friend up the stairs, eventually reaching the balcony after what seemed like an eon. The dusky sky looked rather serene from the balcony. We sat down and drifted off to sleep in the cool quiet night air.

Then I woke up. I knew I shouldn’t have eaten the whole bag of Veggie Booty before bed.

Cemetery Gates (a dream sequence)

I find myself walking in the snow on the desolate street with no name. Previous travelers before me have left their footprints in the snow. I carefully pace along the unsullied spots just to see my boot sink softly into the snow with each step. I continue walking on my path and I am not exactly sure of where I am going.

To the left of me, there is a black iron fence with spade-shaped tips on top. Behind that fence, I see small tombstones carefully lined up in rows. There are large tombstones scattered about the place, some shaped like angels, others like crosses. People are standing at a couple of tombstones. Some are weeping. Some are placing fresh flowers before the graves. All of the mourners are wearing long black coats. One lady has on a long dark reddish-black skirt and lace-up Victorian style boots.

I continue to walk on the snow-covered concrete, along the fence that cages the cemetery. One solemn-looking man in a long wool coat and top hat stands before his beloved’s grave. Every tree, grave, and blade of dead grass is covered in powdery white snow.

I wrap my cloak closer to my body yet I feel no cold and continue to walk on.

I finally finished unpacking my last box from moving into my apartment and found a piece of paper with a long forgotten dream hastily scribbled on it. I can’t believe I didn’t put a date on it, nor did I write down any more details on the Asian woman, the two victims, the cars, and the surroundings. I don’t remember how I made my escape from the black hole horror. Judging by the text on the meditation lecture flyer the dream was scribbled on, I’m guessing the date was sometime in spring of 2005.

undated dream
Dark outline of a shadowy figure was sucking my non-earthly body (soul? spirit?) into her humanoid-shaped black hole. She was an Asian woman who revealed her true nature as a black hole that sucks people in. I reacted by concentrating on my center^*, putting all my power into it, and stood strong on my ground while holding on the back of a car for leverage. She successfully sucked two other people in. She tried again to suck me into her black hole. And again I ‘centered’ myself and held on for dear life on another car. I could feel the magnetic pull. It was scary. But I successfully avoided getting swallowed up by the evil black hole.

I was in an elevator going down. I was afraid for some reason that the elevator was going to malfunction and the car will plummet down the shaft. I crouched down on the floor, preparing for impact in the event the cable snapped. It didn’t. I seem to have an extreme fear of elevators.

^* It’s an aikido thing.

Sometimes it freaks me out to see how my forgotten dreams from long ago manifest themselves in my waking reality years later.

P.S.: Just because someone with a bad mullet offers you free Kool Aid, it doesn’t mean you should drink it.

[originally published on LiveJournal]

I had a dream many years ago (a time before white hairs crept in like ninjas) where I’m in the future and found myself in the middle of a global food shortage crisis. The crisis was so bad that people resorted to cannibalism. I walked into a white well-lit room with a large metal table inside. On the table was a dismembered human male torso cut open butterfly style. I think the liver and kidneys sitting by the torso were human. Haggis anyone? Human leg shanks were neatly hung on meat hooks suspended from a ceiling rack. I ran out of the room and scrambled to look for an exit from this terrifying meat processing plant. A cloud of white mist noticed me running and immediately gave chase. The mist closing in on me was the last thing I remember before waking up.

I couldn’t forget a dream like that.

Why am I not surprised when something like this shit would happen?