I’ve had a few pieces of coherent dreams since my last “dream” blog post, but none were as contiguous or exciting or terrifying as this. I know the ending perfectly, but I can’t recall exactly how we got started. This is kinda violent and a little horrifying, so keep that in mind before reading on.
I believe I was behind my father’s house in Doniphan, MO with Katt. I don’t know if I saw a figure dressed in black sneaking through the shadows before all this began, but for whatever reason I knew we had to get inside, and fast.
My first thought was to protect Katt at all costs. I had a feeling I had been in this situation before, and something told me that letting Katt out of my sight for 15 seconds meant her capture. My Father’s house was kind of set up the same way it is in real life except for a couple major differences. The orientation of the staircase to the 2nd floor was rotated 90 degrees, and all the possible entrances in the front nearly met up with another building, with a gap of something like 6-10 feet between them. This meant that someone in the other building could jump out an exit of that building and into one of our entrances. The house, in real life, is built into a hill, and my dream seemed to emulate that. The entrances in the back were level with the floor I was on, but the ones in front dropped 15-20 feet to the stone and concrete below. I’d have to be more vigilant with the back entrances to keep people out.
Windows everywhere. I remember thinking that if someone wanted to start smashing, I’d have a lot of trouble keeping all the entries secure. They didn’t though–not at the start. Almost like a dissociative fugue state, I don’t really remember the particulars of the violence in the beginning when I started attacking, except that I was fearless and punishing. This, by the way, would be the first time in my dreams that I seemed to be in a fighting situation when my opponents were neither zombies (which you don’t have to feel bad about killing) nor bullies or jackasses (which you have to be careful not to severely pound, since it’s not life or death). These were people–assassins, sure, but humans nonetheless. Clearly I had it in my mind that it was life or death, because I was not at all discriminating about the effects of my attacks.
The first clear target I remember entered through the side door, off of the porch. All of htese guys were dressed in black, wearing hoods and carrying a gun. He didn’t see me, because I was able to easily trip him as he came into the house. After my trip, I leapt on his back and took the back on his hood in my hands, slamming his head against the hardwood floor as hard as I could.
After three or four of these, I lifted him up by the shoulders and took his body just out the door, throwing him over the porch rail to the concrete below. I don’t watch him land–I’m already back inside the house. I lock the door behind me and yell to Katt, on a couch in the middle of the room, that we have to lock all the doors, quickly. Starting at the ground-level back entrances, I run a circle around the great room, testing every door lock as I pass and locking the ones that are still open. After locking the solid door on the side opposite the porch entrance (the only door not containing a large pane of glass within its framing), I approach the wide-open front door. Just as I’m about to close it, one of these
guys leaps from the other building, forcing the door open and knocking me back a little.
I recover quickly enough to swing at his face and connect. He drops a pistol, and when he stumbles back a bit toward the wall, I continue forward and grab one of his arms, twisting it back around him so that his back is facing me. Lifting up on his arm with one hand, I use my other to strike at his lower back (specifically the kidneys) repeatedly. I don’t stop until I don’t feel his struggle any longer, and when he starts coughing, I push him out the door. His head hits the side of the other building before his body falls–just like his buddy’s–15 or so feet to the hard ground below. When I look to my left, there’s another black-clad man in the house not coming after me, but headed toward Katt’s couch.
He apparently doesn’t see me, so I charge at him from the side, delivering a forearm to the side of his head–HARD. Sound of another weapon dropping, but no visual. Sounds like a metal bar or a long blade–machete maybe. My funny bone tingles like hell. He’s on the ground, and he is not getting up. When I drag him to the door he leapt into, there’s a streak of blood from his mouth and nose left behind him. I push him out the door and lock it, then move right to the other front door I was just at to lock that one as well. All the doors are locked now, and I breathe for a second.
Near one of the long narrow windows near the solid door, I spot a figure with a sword, physically cutting through the glass like it’s warm butter. I shift myself around to get a better look at him, and I think he spots me behind the glass. I panic for a second, realizing that a wrong move could amount to death or a missing limb if I try hand-to-hand with him. He’s back to slicing the glass, and this is when my mind tells me that a few pieces of my sword and sabre collection (which are still at my father’s house in real life) are near the side door in a small ceramic barrel functioning as an umbrella holder (and again, in real life, there are actually a couple military sabres in said umbrella holder). I find the old military relics I expect, but I also find a beautiful long-handled samaurai sword, which I happily unsheathe. Taking one of the sabres as well, for good measure, I pace around to the other side of the window my armed target is cutting through.
It’s dream logic, of course. I don’t ask myself why he can cut through the glass so easily without shattering it. Instead, my body moves with grace under the assumption that if he can, I can. I stick the point of the samurai sword through the glass carefully, and once I’m through, he looks straight at me. His jaw goes wide as he tries to pull his head and neck from my blade’s path, but he just doesn’t have enough time. I break skin just under his jaw, through the neck. A faint gargle, then blood on the window in front of me. I pull the blade out and thrust again as he slumps. This one is into the face and through the skull. I’ve gone mad with fatal precision. I pull the blade out again and plunge it once more through the head. The next time I remove it, he falls from his perch outside the window, leaving his sword in the glass.
This is the first time that I wonder how I’m going to explain all these dead and mortally wounded men outside my dad’s house. Next is a strange non-sequitur. When I go to the back door, I see that my father has pulled up in an SUV, 30 yards or so away from the house. He’s approaching slowly, handgun drawn. I reason that since he didn’t hear his dog (a German shepherd in real life) barking, he suspects something is wrong. I get away from the door to avoid getting hit should he decide to come in guns blazing. After all, I haven’t identified myself yet.
“Daaaaaaaaad! It’s me dad, I’m okay! I need help, but I’m okay!” I scream at the top of my lungs, waiting for a response. None comes. When I look out the back door again, he’s no longer approaching. In fact, he’s at another barn-looking building, this time about 50 yards away, surrounded by a bunch of people who look like real estate agents. I open the back door and yell again. “Daaad! I’m alright, Dad!”
“I’m about to close on this, son,” he replies. “I’ll be over in a few minutes.”
I turn back to go inside. Now flanking Katt on either side are two late-teenage looking guys, both dressed on black. No hoods on these two, and they don’t appear to be armed. Still, I don’t hesitate to place my two blades at the neck of one of them, stopping just short of the skin.
“I should take your head from your body right now,” I say, teeth fixed in a tight clench. I let the blades down and step away. “Get away from her.” Both of them do, standing up and walking away from the couch calmly. “Who’s in charge of this?”
“My father,” He says, no malice in him at all. “He wants his swords.”
“These swords?” I ask, holding them up. He shakes his head. “Then I can’t help you.”
“Let us go?” The other asks, but not in fear–not begging. I’m calming down now.
“Go on,” I say, pointing the swords at the floor. “Tell your father to let it go, too. We don’t have his swords.” The two walk out the back door, saying nothing else. “And tell him I’m sorry about his men.” So weird.
I drop both blades and hug a safe-and-sound Katt. I start breaking down and crying, guilty from the knowledge that I’ve probably killed no less than three people. It doesn’t matter that they were infiltrating the house under armed siege. It was death–death I inflicted–and I’m sobbing terribly as I embrace her.
I wake up at 6:25 AM, dry eyes, remembering every detail of the man I stabbed through the glass. It’s been nearly two years since I’ve remembered a dream so complete and detailed, and two years since I fought and killed two super-wolves in the attic of an unknown house (see the “dreams” tag) as I slept soundly on the floor of my room in Myrtle Beach.
Assassins of Ripley County, fought fearlessly, with nothing but the intention of protecting what I love. Very haunting.