Jonah

I think I was in a small boat or vehicle traveling along the rim of a grassy valley. The valley was filled with a beautiful, smooth, pale blue lake. Sands floated onto the lake in thin patches, and people would walk onto the lake on the sand, near the shore. There was an older sister walking onto the lake, on the floating sands, with her toddler sister in tow. I thought how it was like the Sand Seas in my novel, Spirit of a Kyrie […].

Then a giant whale rose out of the lake—just its dorsal with its blowhole, surfacing to breathe. Nevertheless, it took up nearly the entire lake with its shiny, rubbery, dark blue back gleaming wet with lake-water. It was amazing to watch as it filled the lake with its size. I wondered where such an enormous whale could come from—how it could possibly fit beneath the lake’s surface. Someone in the same boat/vehicle as me (for there was a group of us) told me that the lake was connected underground to the sea.

As we traveled on through the valley, I thought that it was a good thing we hadn’t been swallowed by the whale. But then, as we continued, I gradually realized that we had indeed been swallowed—the whale was so massive, I hadn’t noticed that we were actually sailing inside of it. Many others had been swallowed by the whale over the years—and they had built small villages, with the houses stacked high and flat, with little lawns, along the curve inside the whale’s sides. Ocean water that the whale had ingested ran like rivers in front of the houses—and we sailed on these waters, taking in the sights, observing this place that would likely be our new home, along with the others trapped in the whale. I remember sailing past an old man who was sitting in front of his ramshackle house on a small boardwalk extending just into the waters. He was wearing a tattered straw hat and ragged trousers, dangling a fishing line into the water […].

I don’t remember much else, except a murder that happened in the whale. I was watching, as if on television—but at the same time, I was also the murderer, a man who had shot someone over a dispute inside one of the whale houses. Quickly, the man ran away with the gun dripping the victim’s blood onto the floor behind him. I was worried about a way to dispose of the murder weapon without leaving traces of my fingerprints. But it seemed impossible. The best solution seemed to be to flush the gun down a toilet. So I/the man hurried to a small bathroom in a house (the whale houses were all attached together in a jumble) and flushed the gun down the toilet. – and I thought how the water was carrying the gun away, down into the whale.

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Red Riding Hood

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.

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Amazon

I was a young child living with my family in an old, dilapidated wooden house. It was like I was watching a movie again, where sometimes I was the child, and sometimes, I was watching the child from outside.

I was hiding behind a large wooden crate in the house attic, trying to fend off an attacker. The attacker fired an arrow at me – but I caught the arrow and threw it back at the attacker so the arrow lodged itself in his temple, killing him. This happened several times, with each succession of attackers. The kills looked cartoonish – the attacker would be a drawn cartoon man with an orange/yellow shirt – the arrow would lodge itself in his temple and he would stiffen comically and keel over like a chopped tree.

And then, somehow, I realized the attacks were a raid by Amazons on our village. I realized the child that I was and wasn’t was going to run away with the Amazons […].

Then, I/the child was running away with an Amazon girl. We fled across oceans and beaches. Once, we hid in a baby hippopotamus on the beach – it was lying beneath a ridge of sand and rock next to the tide, its back against the ridge, contentedly sunbathing with its front legs folded across its tummy. The hippo had a blowhole like a dolphin or whale – and somehow, we hid in it, emerging from the blowhole, laughing and happy, when it was safe.

[…]

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