I dreamt that I was a young girl of about 11 or 12 yrs old. I came home with my mother […]. We lived in a multi-storey house that was somewhat ramshackle, dark, and built entirely of wooden planks that were splintered and disjointed. I lay down into a small, thin bed against a hallway wall near a window, and prepared to fall asleep. My mother was waiting for my dad […] to come home with the newspaper. […] My father came in, his stooped grey figure at the bottom of the wood-planked staircase, wearing a heavy jacket. My mother began searching through the newspaper beside my bed, looking for basketballs, baseballs, all sorts of sports balls between the pages. – and the balls would leap out of the newspaper – perhaps real, perhaps more like holograms.
The next thing I remember, I was standing outside of the house, before a dirt road and long, dried, yellow grass. There was a deer chained to a barbed wire fence in the yard, and I felt very sorry for it. It was chained so tightly and so closely to the fence, that it couldn’t bend its legs to lie down. Instead, it had to lean against the barbed fencing and prick itself. The chain even went straight through the animal’s thick neck several times, [gouging] long red wounds through its flesh, so that its neck was slitted with large fissures that were red with blood.
Then I was inside the house again, waking up in a different bed this time. The bed was along the side of a wall in an open room connected to a hallway. There were no doors, and the shack, or house, had a very open-plan layout. Near my bed, on the other wall, was a fireplace and perhaps a wooden dining table close by. Everything was dark and dingy, with the only light coming from the row of dilapidated windows along the hallway.
I stretched, yawning, and as I did, my hand caught in my long, tangled hair. And from the tangles of my hair, I pulled out a large, heavy lock the size of my fist. The lock belonged on the chained deer, and the deer was owned by the troll who lived in the next room. I was afraid the troll would find out that I’d loosened the chains on his deer, so I quickly tried to hide the lock. I decided to hide it in the small trash bin next to my bed, under the trash bag.
Then another troll walked into the room […]. He stood looking at me in a friendly way, with his fists on his hips. He looked like a man-sized lizard walking on its hind legs, with scaly yellow-green skin and a pointy, triangular head. He came over to the trash can and lifted out the trash bag to throw it away. Luckily, he didn’t notice the lock, which was still sitting at the bottom of the trash can.
He told me to get the venison ready as he began to prepare a meal at the fireplace. This meant I had to return to the chained deer, and shrugging, I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to return the lock and thus hide the evidence. The chained deer was somehow at the end of the next room – right on the other side of the wall, perhaps inside the house. I hung the lock near it, thereby disposing of my connection to the crime.
When I returned to my room, the troll was cooking venison at the fireplace. There was a whole deer skinned and hanging upside-down by its legs on the hallway wall, the row of its ribs stark and red with flesh. There was another portion of venison – perhaps a rump roast – browned, cooked, and seasoned near the fire on a white dish. It was seasoned with a lot of green parsley tucked into the meat. The troll began to show me how to season venison with vegetables, taking some [broccoli] from a plate of green vegetables to demonstrate for me.
The next thing I knew, I was in terrible danger and had to flee. I suppose I had been found out and the trolls were trying to kill me. At some point, I also had the sense that I was Little Red Riding Hood, although I did not have the red cape.
A wolf came to my rescue, only he was in the shape of an old man. […]
The wolf had the air of a dignified, powerful, evil patriarch. He drove a car that reminded me of a long black coffin, with only a small compartment for seating and no roof. I think I got into the car with him outside the house to make our escape. But the car skidded slowly down the paved road, turning as it moved and hit a curb, where it flipped over.
As he lay splayed on the sidewalk, the wolf’s neck looked broken, his head twisted to the side at a horrible angle. But then, he turned his head and it snapped back into place. He rose to his feet and lengthened his long walking cane, for it was a weapon, muttering under his breath, ready to fight the trolls that were advancing towards us from the street.
And then I was inside a building with white walls and pale curtain partitionings. It was a stale place, a prison or a hospital. I think I was either the warden or the nurse, for I was dressed in uniform, sitting in a steel chair in front of the wolf. I was no longer the young girl, but I was middle-aged and heavy […]. I was trying to help the wolf escape. He must cross a line somewhere outside – perhaps, outside of town – and then he would be free. His human form, that of the old patriarch, sat in a chair before me, while his wolf form lingered nearby – a large, grey animal that was like his shadow.
I explained to him my idea for his escape – that I could scream off his skin and feed it to his wolf form. His wolf form could thus carry him unnoticed across the line and he would be free. So I began to scream, and as I screamed, his skin began to peel off. But the flaying was so horrible, and the dream so vivid, that I woke up.
. rese