Dream 1: THE RED SPHERE

I'm looking at a lab from a corner of the ceiling. I have no opinion about what's happening because I am only a viewpoint. The lab is dimly lit by large green glass liquid-filled tanks that are just barely in my view. I can't clearly make out what's in the tanks, but I think they're humanoid. Motionless, whatever they are. Unconscious? Dead?

The walls of the lab are metallic and covered in wires and pipes and generally ominous mechanical devices. It looks like there should be panelling in front of all of these inner workings, like the walls were never finished.

A girl with curly orange hair, about 12 years old, wearing what looks like a hospital outfit (with smock and pants but no shoes or socks), is moving frantically around the room. She seems to be trying to find an escape. No one else is here, but a red ball stands on a pedestal in the middle of the room. She seems to fear it, but she also seems to think that it might be her key to escaping.

She steps forward, obviously terrified that it might hurt her, and reaches out. Her finger makes contact with the red ball--and she goes rigid. Her eyes go as wide as is physically possible, and she tries to take her hand away as her blood starts to boil in her veins.

She can't break the contact. Her hair sizzles on her scalp. I can see every capillary in her eyes bulge. I can see every vein in her body turn vibrant red. Her organs start to bake inside her, her boiling blood coursing through her veins slower and slower as her heart melts. Finally the wrenches her hand away and, with the last control over her body that she has, she stumbles backward-- right into a sheet of thin metal. Her body splits directly down the middle as she falls onto the unintentional blade.

As I wake up, the two sides of her skull are slowly falling away, showing her semi-melted brain which is stuck to the metal panel. The blood is dripping slowly down her face. The last part of the lingering dream that I was aware of was a faint squelching pop as her brain fell into the two halves of her skull.

Dream 2: CHOMP

Again, I am a viewpoint. I seem to be looking down from the top of the neon sign for a grocery store or pharmacy. It looks like a side street in New York City . It's the middle of the night. Everything is still and silent for a few moments. However, it's that kind of stillness and silence that comes right before something terrible happens. The air is tense and thick, and then I hear screaming.

People start running, screaming, around the corner. They all run into the nearest stores and try to hide. As a man is running, screaming at the top of his lungs, toward the store next to me, this creature comes barreling around the corner.

It is larger than a horse, with eight legs, enormous claws, and deadly looking teeth. Its face looks like Venom or Carnage from Spiderman (a lot like Venom from the 3rd Spiderman movie), except that its head is rounder and its eyes are larger. It doesn't have a tail, and its back has very visible vertebrae. It's bulky. It doesn't seem to be very coordinated, because it skids as it tries to turn, but it manages to get to the guy anyway, and bites OFF his head. His body falls forward with a dull thud and the creature steps on it. I hear a distinct crunch as his bones snap, and an even more prominent crunching sound as the creature chews up his head.

The last thing that I remember is a small shard of the man's skull falling out of the creature's mouth. The shard is about an inch long and a centimeter wide, and there is barely any blood on it.

I am reluctant to call it a monster, because that would imply that it was malevolent and I don't think that its intent was to be harmful. It was just hunting. I am also reluctant to call it an animal, though, because it felt very unnatural. Perhaps it was simply in an unnatural habitat.

NOTES

• What do they mean? That I should never watch horror movies. Or, I should produce them. I don't really consider these dreams nightmares, because they don't scare me. In the dreams, I am watching graphic and gruesome deaths but I see them with completely neutral eyes. I have no opinion on it, and it doesn't frighten me. Would you still call that a nightmare?
• Maybe they're hinting at all the awful things that are happening in the world that I can only watch, but can't help?
• The red haired girl looked remotely like a toy that I had when I was... seven...? But the toy was an adult and the girl was very young.
• Split: maybe the dream's saying I felt split about something, but I don't think anything new or extraordinary was going on in my waking life, so I can only assume that whatever it was trying to warn me about is still a warning. Since then, I've had more dreams like this. I was stressed, but the only notable situation that I was in had been going on since September, and the dreams didn't start then.
• Brain: I've had a headache since the spring of 2002, so if the chamber of the red sphere is an image of my skull and brain, that would worry me. I've had more than one MRI and the doctors keep saying that there's nothing wrong with me, but... two skull-crunching dreams?
• The red sphere may mean something too intense for me to handle, but I don't know what. As a character, the red ball seemed neutral. It wasn't out to kill her. It wasn't even out to affect her. That's just what happened when she messed with it. She acted like she'd been warned not to touch it. Is it a warning about something risky I might do? But I can't think of anything I'd do that these dreams might be warning me about. Is it a red pill (red M&Ms!)? I dislike taking medication (even if it's vitamins), and drugs (such as psychedelics) scare me. I dislike the taste of alcohol, don't intend to have sex unless I'm in a very meaningful relationship, don't cut or have suicidal thoughts, and I'm not afraid to cry. I'm generally a "really good girl". That thought makes me roll my eyes; my dreams are anything BUT what would be expected of a "good girl".
• Oh! I just thought of something. Maybe these dreams aren't warning me about me. Am I watching someone else getting in over their head? I dreamed these on December 13th, the night my friend Emily dreamed Bones Don't Lie. They do seem similar. Skulls...
• Gender: I'm usually male in my dreams. The few times that I am not, I either change shape, change gender, have no gender (as here), have multiple genders, am pregnant, or am trapped. I'm female in all of my nightmares.

EDITOR'S NOTES

I agree: Bones Don't Lie shares themes with these dreams but is intensely emotional, while Madeline here is a passive fly-on-the-wall. "Red Sphere" even seems to make a point of that, contrasting the numb, passive narrator who survives with the active girl whose initiative gets her killed. So maybe Maddie did pick up her friend's nightmare and worried about her taking reckless action. Still, the fleeing man doesn't fit... Seems like disaster just happens, no matter what you do. Except witness.

The lab (like the inside of a big skull with veins and arteries lining the walls), and the fried brain, and the head-chomping all worry me, too. But Madeline's been checked for organic illness--the doctors came up negative. Food allergies, chemical sensitivities? Anyone have suggestions? What can she try? Five years of headaches isn't something anyone should have to just shrug and live with!

Maybe that's the warning: Madeline is stoic. She says, "I am watching graphic and gruesome deaths but I see them with completely neutral eyes. I have no opinion on it, and it doesn't frighten me." Isn't this how she treats her headaches? Disconnection, because identifying and really feeling them doesn't help? Chronic pain (as I learned first-hand from undiagnosed food allergies that took me years to identify myself) can teach you passivity and withdrawal. You can numb the pain a lot that way. But that leaves you passive... and ill.

I still think the orange-haired girl made the right choice. She risked it, and even her failure eliminated one possible escape method. In the next nightmare, she'll try another... though not running away and screaming. We know that doesn't work too well. Unless you like being monster lunch.

--Chris Wayan

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