I fall in love, defying kidnappers, dwarf-tossers and
Toulouse-Lautrec, until I become a time-traveling bunny...
CAUTION: SEX, SHAMANISM, DWARF-TOSSING (LAUTREC!)
An artificial intelligence acquires fans and has orgies with her groupies. Her creators
don't care as long as the advertisers get product placement. But she has this size fetish...
CAUTION: VIBRATORS
I'm a fox-woman. A human man courts me--insultingly. I dream my brain grows till my head hurts,
till it splits open, till light gets in. I rant at the last dragon. Strange but kindly, he gives me a picnic...
I see parasitic spirits sickening their human hosts. Can't get rid of them, so I try to teach them how to
keep their hosts healthier. An angel suspects I'm a necromancer, and shows up armed for a shootout...
CAUTION: DISTURBING PREMISE, LOWBROW ANGEL
ch.2 of UNICORN TAG, a set of nine linked dreamtales.
I married my childhood crush. Happy, till I overhear her tell my sister what she really thinks of...
CAUTION: SEX TALK
I realize the artichoke plate in my lap is a pun: ART! I CHOKE! I need to peel
off my thorny outer leaves of professionalism to find the heart inside...
My two moms sell art fabrics made by grayish batwinged sisters whose newest ad is risqué...
CAUTION: ADS WITH NUDE BATS
I'm a Puertorriqueña who falls for an Anglo doctor, but he's not what he seems...
CAUTION: UNDERAGE SEX, CREEPY GUY, VICIOUS FIGHT
I'm very pregnant and feel bloated. My mom says "That's what you get for not using a condom"...
A second me punches me in the breast. I fight back, yelling
"Bad Nancy! Bad Nancy!" Five months later I find a malignancy...
While we’re at work, Blind Ancestors come smash up our homes...
and we all see zombie vandal relatives as normal...
I say Christ’s “blood” is a metaphor for “spiritual perfection.” My mom says "You're killing me; please repent"...
I dreamt Bob was a tree-god enthroned in ivy. I said...
At the beach, a deaf boy with a strong aura asks "Are you here for the coin?"
He buries horse skeletons in the sand; the bones are carved with symbols...
I'm naked in a forest where the trees talk. They want my cock. A girl materializes, and we make love, but now
the treefolk are our congregation, cheering us on. Only they call her my sister! She says "Yes. But I was never
born. Dad beat Mom to abort me." She fades away, a ghost! I pick up a knife to protect Mom against Dad...
CAUTION: PORNY SEX, SUDDEN GRIM END
I dreamed I was a classic hippie bus. My brother was a lovingly customized Mustang. We
were real collector's items. So our parents decided to sell us. Their asking price was...
All her life, Cartwright dreamed of a figure disguised in a harlequin costume; she never saw his face.
He always drove her to self-sabotage. But near her death, she dreamt she gave a lecture, and he...
I find I'm a self-made... critter. A plushie sewn with zippers so I can stuff any bits of me that
seem flat or limp. But my filling's not cotton, polyester or foam. It's chocolate! So I have...
CAUTION: CRUDE DREAM, AWFUL PUN
My husband had to go to Cleveland. I FOUGHT to keep him from flying out of Cincinnati; he took a night train.
I dreamt I was flying, falling, and woke feeling the house shake. Later that day, my sister called to tell me...
CAUTION: DID SHE SAVE HIS LIFE? WIKIPEDIA CASTS DOUBT.
2021: I dream I'm confessing to friends how I'm over-compliant. I wake, and start transcribing my
1984 journal. Turn the page and find a dream of a horny stallion who's disturbingly over-compliant...
CAUTION: KINKY STALLION
Holding a luminous crystal sword, I enter a crypt where a king lies--ill, not dead.
An old woman wants to punish him, but as he stirs, I sheathe my sword...
My father is supposed to speak, but he falls asleep onstage. I rush up to try and rouse him, but...
My dad saw a mob killing; our family enters witness protection. But why's my new role female? Well, my parents...
CAUTION: WILLING OR UNWILLING DRAG?
When my first play failed, I tried to console myself by reading Paradise Lost.
But drama and devils don't mix...
I ask my dreams if my dad's influencing my divorce. I dream my dad warns me "You can't ride a
motorcycle." I mount the bike and zoom down the road. I love it. When I park at last, my dad says...
Egbert decides to go convert the Germans. A brother monk dreams twice that God wants Egbert in Scotland, but he
sails--and nearly drowns. At last he gives in. Another monk sails to Germany. Two years later he returns defeated...
CAUTION: STUBBORN MONK, DEITY, AND GERMANS
After my father died he attacked me in recurring nightmares. I fought and beat him, but he always came back.
When he showed up as a tiger, I negotiated, agreeing to make some changes. He's left me in peace ever since.
I had an epic dream lasting subjective weeks--a true other life. It wasn't Earth and we weren't human.
I was a teenage lemur, sailing with two friends into unknown waters--a rite of passage. One night,
my friends curled round me, I saw I didn't WANT to pass the test, be declared a woman, marry, and have pups.
I loved my girl friends. In a world lacking the very word, I was groping toward queerdom.
Sailing into unknown waters! "Here be dragons," the old maps say. And they were right...
2600K loads slowly? Try it in parts: 1: HOME, 650K, 2: VOYAGE, 1200K, 3: BACK 750K.
CAUTION: NUDITY, SEX, QUEER TEEN ANGST, ANTI-FUNDAMENTALISM
I dreamed I learned to fly. But my so-called friends
told me flight is tacky and I should stay grounded...
Climbing out of Childhood Abyss, I literally get a leg up from a girl seeking the Ledge of Teens.
A shy girl has to hide she's a were-creature. Gay men make out in the witch-registry to rattle its
homophobic guardians. My sister stripteases while scolding me for a mess I didn't make...
CAUTION: DUH, SEX TABOOS! KIDS, FURS, GAYS, SIBLINGS
A baseball star got her leg broken. It stalls her career,
but helps her marriage. Did she need a "break"? Do I?
Demons of fire invade the house, and the Voice of Truth says they can't be killed. What would you do?
In a California with no Gold Rush, wild deer carry a girl over the San Fernando hills to a secret dream-pool...
Then in a Japantown hotel lobby, that girl floats meditating in a huge aquarium, as local gossips lie about her...
Gisli had two spirit-wives who told him in dreams how to evade the bounty-hunters after him... for 13 years!
I walk into a Castro fashion shop with Dalí décor--golden underwear draped on branches. And my friends all buy it...
CAUTION: UNDERWEAR JOKES
In a worldwide junkyard full of warring spooks, I finally meet the one whose message I need to hear...
Day: my dad's paralyzed, and my car's stolen.
Dream: a harpy made of steel, like a living Calder statue, holds three girls hostage...
DREAM: I'm in the Arctic facing a hostile mob. I insist "I'm dreaming; you can't hurt me." They try!
I look down at my body, stuck full of hatchets, and say "See?" They slink off, looking sheepish...
TWO DAYS LATER: I'm in northern England. A reporter snaps "Dreams won't help the miners..."
Every good party leaves a corpse or two. Cleaning up, I behead this one and drag it across the street to the
empty lot where we leave them. But its throat forms a toothless mouth and starts biting--well, gumming me...
The helicopter over our family home dipped too low. CRASH! Burning rotors in the living room.
I call 9-1-1, but the pilot scolds me! "Calling over a little explosion like this!"...
It started like a nightmare--someone behind me, a groping hand that's not human...
It was a Hindu god! He made love to me. Felt great until he said: "You're taking too long!"...
CAUTION: SEX WITH A SELFISH DEITY
1: I try to grow feathers and fly, but half-fail, half-succeed--experience two bodies at once...
2: I fly to escape a hippie cult. They fire heat-seeking missiles! But I may be too cool to track...
I'm wrapping my heavy-metal eggs too slowly, so the Judges sink my car! I set out to get revenge...
I wanted to be human, but Mom said "You'll always be just a lousy caterpillar." So I slipped inside
a human girl. After some arguments with her boyfriend, I got born as a human-faced butterfly...
CAUTION: UNDERAGE SEX AND MOM
I'm my friend Dawn, at a convention for my job. But I get insulted. I walk
out. Lost in endless parking lots, by a dumpster, I make a bizarre wish...
CAUTION: APPARENT TELEPATHY
In a flooded room, an indignant iguana scolds me, while
my wife Marnie checks her computer implant for water damage...
I had a headache and couldn't sleep. I started drawing, and asked for a cure. And a cartoon angel said...
CAUTION: TANTRUMS, MASTURBATION, JUNKFOOD, ANGELIC SCOLDING
I have to kiss a mess of cats. Fishy, but I'm not chicken. My real beef is with the humans watching...
I found myself in a cage, with only a bench and piles of old books. A mirror showed
I was old and twisted with speckled skin. In horror I said "I must get away"...
I'm a kid again, waltzing with my dad, though he's long dead. He hands me the trumpet inside his chest. When
I wake, I feel it still. My mom just died; I've reclaimed a playful part of him she condemned all her long life...
We must hunt a man-eating lion to protect our village--our village full of slaves. But we
can't deal with our looming social crisis now--gotta focus on the lion in front of us..
CAUTION: SLAVERY, ILLNESS, DEATH
An idiot wizard lures car-sized spiders into town. I find a spellbook that repels them, but have to hide it
so my community college professors, Gandalf & Saruman, don't take it. For I'm no wizard, just a lizard...
CAUTION: HUGE SPIDERS, HUGE SELLOUTS
DREAM 1: A man wearing long white underwear shoots me down with a machine gun.
DAY: Long John Nebel interviews me; his Freudian friend calls me a penis-envying woman.
DREAM 2: Long John and his buddy umpire a rough baseball game. Definitely not cricket...
CAUTION: SEXISM, FREUDIANS, PUNS
My mom hires a therapist who really goes for my throat! Why is she so desperate to make me lose my...
CAUTION: OVER-THE-TOP CONFRONTATION
Martian robots pester me. I flee through the Asteroids, leaving chaos, cratering Earth.
Years later on my farm, a bot shows up disguised as Freud. I start mudslinging...
After a busy exhausting day, I find myself on a dream street flirting with a really cute artist.
Until this stumpy green Martian slithers up, calls us criminals, and threatens us with a raygun...
CAUTION: DUMBEST INNER CRITIC EVER
I was in a strange house. I met Mr Hall, a preacher from Alert Bay. He said he was different now, in the
world above. I woke and told the dream. Two months later a letter came saying he died February 27...
You say you're leaving me. I go to grab an ice pick to stab you, but my hand
freezes to the ice block on the stair--I dare not even dream of murder. Since...
CAUTION: RESPONSE TO SPOUSAL SUICIDE
The flood sickens my fuchsia bush. My mom says my fuchsia is hopeless,
but I make up a treatment. When it works, well... read the title.
CAUTION: PUNS, EXPLODING MOM
DREAM: my late mom invades my workplace. "Check in weekly or we'll stop your allowance!"
What allowance? I'm independent! MONTHS LATER: I got sick from overwork. Nearly died.
NOW: I think my dead mom meant: face your limits, check in with mortality, or you'll... check out.
I visit a beautiful artificial mountain with loved ones--but my demons overwhelm me one by one.
CAUTION: SUICIDAL FEELINGS, BODY HATE/FATPHOBIA, IMPLIED RAPE
A shop sells coffee cups covered in tales & creatures begging to be drawn...
At college, my sheet music arrives from home, but vanishes when I try to play--or the piano does...
I'm at a Neolithic art show. A Stone Age critic says "Viewers struggle to interpret signs as the signified."
I think they're just baffled how those animals can be stuck on a cave wall yet still be running around...
My uncle mocks the racehorse he rides! Smears lipstick on this stallion, calls him a wimp... Why?
CAUTION: DREAM PUN, NUDE MARES
An alien woman makes a mess of our economy, ecology, world--but insists she wants to be my friend...
When I try to play the piano in public I get sabotaged. At last I see a child who says she can't play while she's in pain...
I'm shyly making love with a classmate, Cynthia. Classmates gawk & point, through
the pie-hole in the ceiling. But our perspective reveals that under our critics' skirts...
CAUTION: UPSKIRT NUDITY
A pigeon with a head like Queen Victoria's keeps fastening onto
my clothing with its beak, and this nagging feels familiar...
I'm in a play. Fear, then joyful sex, then ranching, then silly hats, as a man drones on about
class struggle. Weird chairs, pingpong, coffee, impossible double utterances. At last
I tell friends my dream--backwards. Then I write the dream down on slices of cheese...
CAUTION: SEX ONSTAGE
A disintegrating board game reminds me to take time to enjoy things beyond work and activism...
CAUTION: NUDITY, TRANSGENDER, ASTROLOGY
I'm detective Hercule Poirot, but I'm losing my case and my brain--
because my story isn't by Agatha Christie, it's a knockoff...
CAUTION: PINK DILDO HATS
I'm a detective sent to a research station two billion years ago. The ancient atmosphere isn't just anoxic, but deadly...
I face the Quickstep, the final test for high-level ice dancing. I do well, yet the judges fail me--for trivia. Then I realize
I passed this test years ago! These judges are my nitpicking inner critics. I ignore them, and joyfully soar, spin and fly...
Night. A mirror-maze of contradictory preachings. But in the secret mermaid pool, I find love.
Then... sphinx-angels war in the air! A war of riddles. Can I, a batwinged devil, make peace?
CAUTION: SEX, NUDITY, MEAN ANGELS, AND ONE HAPPY DEVIL
A middle-class girl rejects me, and a newsman declares my politics irrelevant. "Liberal media" my ass...
CAUTION: POLITICS
Lounging in the sun, I do a magical make-over--molding my bones to give myself more room for
intuition, judgment, nerve--all the while feeling shallow & indulgent for self-improving!...
I'm with friends in a cafe. A robot beggar scuttles in and says I must be a saint and give, give, give.
I eject the robo-nag. But it comes back in the form of an Old Testament prophet with the same spiel!
This time it takes fists. At last I give the nagging saint the old heave-ho, yelling "AND STAY OUT!"...
CAUTION: FUNDAMENTALIST BLASPHEMY
Mrs C. dreamed she was the ascetic preacher Savonarola, who wanted to burn all vanities.
In her audience she saw... Mrs C! So she, Savonarola, aimed her barbs at all of C's flaws...
DREAM: I'm at a party. Family scolds me for protecting my health. I leave--and they call me selfish for leaving!
MORNING: My sister calls. "I was at a party. Family scolded me for guarding my health and for trying to leave..."
I'm in a crowd as a man lectures about sharks. He points at me and asks "Shall I throw him in with...?"
I'm a circus tiger, then a performing shark. One day, I block my human partner's high dive... Why?
Swimming in Spokane, I meet two teenage girls and we have a... shy orgy?
Next day I go to a play... and see the two on stage! I still dismiss the dream
as a fantasy--consciously. But unconsciously I start taking action...
CAUTION: UNDERAGE SEX
My anima, a pegasus mare, leaps out of a girl's book and teaches us to fly up to an astral land...
CAUTION: FLIRTY PEGASUS
From a crowd in a gym, I sing to my wolflike alien friend. But she can't recognize my voice--
too convincing a falsetto! I slide deeper, but once she heard a girl, she can't imagine...
A joyful song about ignoring your critics. The last stanza came verbatim from the dream...
I’m a wolf in an ashram studying astral travel with my spirit-wife. Our souls blend a bit,
enraging our guru, a Hindu god, who sends demons to make us stop this spiritual “contamination”...
Leona's a fighter--she rejects compromisers like her husband,
her friends, that miniature catgirl she's been sitting on...
I'm slow to catch on that this skunk's slidetalk isn't a business pitch; it's about seduction...
CAUTION: ABSURD LOVE TRIANGLE, KINKY SKUNK
I'm on stage. I have to sing. They just stare. I try dancing. Stony silence. At last,
a second me leads me offstage, saying "You can only fail so many times"...
Wei Linggong was an autocrat heeding only one minister. A dwarf bravely told him "I dreamt
you were no imperial sun warming all, just a stove, and your crony hogs all your warmth..."
When the card CARING comes up reversed, you get this crucified guy floating over your bed...
Thorhadd's been slandering his enemy Thorstein. He spars publicly with a dream expert
who interprets all his dreams as: "Your tongue just can't quit!" True. It can't...
CAUTION: VIKING EGOS (AND BODY COUNT)
I go home. Our cat is there. And a small, striped new cat. Then I step on a third, much bigger cat.
This is just one cat too many! "This cat's not real!" I say...
The nonexistent cat leaps up and scratches my face.
A man mocks a turtle he caught, calling it "inept"--he knows adept turtles, then?
I distract this fisherman-ranter while the turtle quietly tiptoes...
Ballerina Joan Brady quit, but ten years later, returned. Her body rejuvenated! So what can MINE do?
I meet a giant squirrel. But a Committee condemns the squirrel for such long periods
of unproductive hibernation. The squirrel points out a teensy flaw...
I dream my friend Vera's ordered to just study & sleep--no play, no dates. Then I dream
Vera works with gangs as an armed peacekeeper. I tell her; Vera's shocked, since...
My art mentors turn on me! My mom the painter says I'm genetically inferior,
and then my art teacher Verity sits on my head (ow!) and chants...
1: A nature spirit's physics experiment proves that time forks. But how much? How dense is the multiverse?
2: I sculpt a model of this multiverse. A physicist likes it; the nature spirit likes it more. So she swipes it...
3: A 'friend' offers refugees my bedroom, crowding me and my work into a corner. I wake. The phone rings...
Kingsford meets a girl who burns herself as a protest. K flips out! Rants instead of helps...
CAUTION: RANT MIDWAY YOU'RE BETTER OFF SKIPPING
A job as the only priest on an island colony sounded perfect, only I’m the wrong religion...
CAUTION: DOGMATISTS AND DEAD BIRDS TALKING
Biking around blindfolded and half-naked, I fight winds
of self-criticism and self-hatred that only I can feel...
DAY: My dad's sick; my mom nags me to visit, though hospitals endanger me (weak immune system).
DREAM: My parents say "You're insane. We must take control of your life." So I divorce my family...
CAUTION: UGLY FAMILY VALUES