Empty Thoughts Of Madness

Dream Two- The Unconscious Reality of Being

Dream Phase One

I have my head stuck in my boyfriend's cupboard in his kitchen and my eyes alight on about thirty of forty pre-packaged sandwiches he has all stored up and neatly made into rows, and I mischievously wonder whether I will be able to remove one and devour it or if he would notice and chastise me for such a crime. I reach in to take one but stop, hovering over the top, and withdraw, realising that it is not such a good idea, although I know that he'd probably just tickle or hug me to death if I did in a jokey manner. I smile to myself and the memory fills me with happiness, before fading quickly to black.

Dream Phase Two

My grandma is stood waist high in the water of a crystal blue sea with her sunglasses on and her pale skin lapping up the warmth of the sun's rays. As far as the eye can see is just an expanse of beauty and islands out at sea, and behind is a shaded wooden walkway lifted up out of the ocean on stilts that has stretched out to sea from inland, although I cannot see where it ends and the shore begins. I can remember thinking that I asked her a question about it being shark infested waters, and the answer being that she didn't know, as she faced in towards me, covering her face with her left hand although her eyes did not meet mine. My little sister is there too in her bikini, stood next to me although she does not speak to me directly, as though I am not truly there in body but just as a spirit, watching over everything that is happening. We, too, are waist deep and I can feel the lap and lull of the water between my thighs and the wet grains of sand shifting through my toes. Our backs are to the walkway and we are both watching my grandma who is now stood, still waist deep, next to a boat which is full of human sized jelly babies and some sort of gummy candy sweet, dancing and asking them if they are ready to eat almost cheerily sadistically, and the sweets just sit still in their boat and let her come closer until she has her body pressed up against the boat side. My sister's and my attention is distracted however by the corpse of a dolphin drifting slowly past us on the current, and she wells up with tears and lets them spill out over her face as we watch it laying lifeless, the only movement that of the waves lapping up against its body and pushing it on its way. There must have been a lapse in time because as we are getting out of the water, my sister suddenly smiles as an alive dolphin's head appears next to us in the crevice of a nearby rock, and as I turn to my grandma and ask the same question as I did initially, she turns to the water to tell that it has been cordoned off, to stop the sharks, and is now safe waters. I do not ask how she knows but the dream fades out as I am walking up that stilted walkway on the sea, my grandma behind me and my little sister inches in front, and the beauty of the landscape around us framed by the strong wooden slats of the walkway.

Dream Phase Three

Once again I am standing in a landscape torn apart by black clouds and a huge impending storm which is rolling in from over the sea towards us. In front there is a tiny cottage (slightly off centre to the left), to the left is a small beach framed by huge chalky white cliffs and being battered by the sea and to the right is just a blur of blackness and indistinguishable shapes, although I think they are further buildings and the shadow of figures. I know this landscape well from a dream that I had years ago, when my parents, my little sister and I were all stood on the shore looking out to sea and the skies were blue and everything was calm and silent, although once again, I have never seen this landscape before in my waking life. My mother and sister are huddled down metres in front of me, using a rock as a wind buffer, and I can hear my dad crying out in fear somewhere and his shadow flitting around against the backdrop of the sea, although I cannot see his face. All I know is that we are all terrified of something and it is coming to get us all, although what it is and what it wants I have absolutely no idea of, I just know that we have to get away. I move around the landscape as I feel the pressure of things pushing in on us, although there is nothing and nobody there and run towards the house in a mad frenzy, slamming a small study room door behind me in a panic and switching on a light with trembling fingers. It momentarily illuminates the room and it is small, with an overturned chair in and a large cupboard with slats and long russet coloured curtains. Panicked that the something will find me because of the beacon of light, I switch is quickly off and on and back off again in rapid concession and it is only as I fold myself into a tiny ball in the corner that I realise that it is an S.O.S signal. The blackness consumes me and then I slowly begin to open my eyes again, tentatively exploring my surrounding environment with my senses, aware that I am still frightened.

I am standing in the doorway of the hotel room (which I have never been in before in my waking life) and the lights are dimmed down so that the room is almost suspended in an ethereal gloom, focusing my eyes onto the bright glare of the bathroom light, where the door is pushed open to its full extent and my mother is crouched down low on the tiles. She is in a black baggy vest top and her checked pyjama shorts and her face is low to the ground where she is knelt in a puddle of her own vomit and blood, and as she looks up to face me, a trickle of it runs from her lips and onto the back of her hand. Her eyes are wildly frantic and panicked and a sheen of sweat beads close on her forehead, pushing her usual curly brown hair into a matted mass on top of her small head and framing her shoulders in dew. We stay in that moment of silence staring at the other, me in the gloom and her in the light, none of us knowing or understanding what is happening or where we go from here. I make a move to go to her and catch the simplistic set up of the room in my peripheral vision- a double bed with the covers neat and tidy and dove white, an old style television, a bible next to the nightstand with the gold calligraphy burning fiercely in the light and a painting of some dull colourless landscape on the wall which was evidently completed by a child or an adult with the artistic brain of a foetus. In my dream I am standing over my mother now, and she is still looking up at me soundlessly, with her eyes tearing wearily into my own and I can do nothing but watch as she suddenly screams wildly at me, "I need cheese," in a voice that catches me by surprise and momentarily stumps me, but her expression is lost as she is forced to heave up more of her own blood onto the tiles and I am released in order to find her what she wants. I leave trying to warm cheese up in the microwave which has seemingly materialised out of nowhere and watching as all of its solidity melts and bubbles up and fragments as I watch my own hopeless expression in the glass reflected back at me.