One of the big reasons I decided to write down my dreams is that the act of recalling the dream universe we travel to each night actually aids our dream memory. It’s like a recursive bit of code—part of remembering your dreams is remembering your dreams. It sounds redundant, but the idea is used quite often in coding.

Case in point: Two nights I couldn’t recall dreaming at all. It was just a total blank. I felt from the time I had woken up yesterday morning until a few hours ago that I simply did not dream that night.

In writing my previous blog, I touched upon the dream products that I see in my dreams. The Lego sets and, more poignantly, the books and video reminded me of the recurring video store from my dream universe. Suddenly, it came flooding back. I had dreamed about that video store two nights ago. The memory of it was there, it just needed the right associative memory to access it.

I find that I do have a pretty good memory, but it is not always direct recollection. I arrive at a memory by sorting through other memories that may or may not have a connection, until I find that tangential memory with a degree of separation of one. I guess with dreams, it works the same way.

THE CLOSED STORE AND THE SECRET CLUB

The recurring version of this store changes from dream to dream. Sometimes it’s a family run video rental store, sometimes it’s a music store (like the old Sound Warehouse), and sometimes it’s a comic book/gaming store.

I arrived at the store only to find the door locked. I could see through the window that it was the comic book/gaming store at that time. There were notices on the door that I couldn’t read, but it was apparent that Covid-19 was somehow to blame, and the store was closed indefinitely.

I saw someone inside and so I knocked, intending to get more information and to ask if they were selling online. The girl that answered just shook her head and said “No, we’re closed.” I didn’t even get to ask the question. She shut the door. I stood there. She walked away and then came running back. “Oh, I’m sorry, are you in the club?”

“Yes,” I said. I had spied a Tendril figure from the Inhumanoids on a shelf. I wanted it.

She let me inside and led me behind the curtain that was behind the main counter. There they were. All the geeks from past dreams of the comic book/gaming store, alive and well, and running some secret club. The guy I know in my head as Redbeard asked if I was buying, selling, or playing. I said buying and playing and he gave me two lanyards and took me over to the group. There were girls in cosplay, guys throwing down Magic cards, and few guys playing a weird version of basketball with floating silver balls that moved on their own.

The dream was brief, but there was a feeling of comfort there. These were my people, still alive and well. I had a fresh lemon bar and some punch that someone had made.

I never got Tendril.

ANIMALS, THE MAGGOT FIELD, AND THE IRWINS

I didn’t remember this dream right away from last night—again, association with an unrelated thought brought it back to mind.

I was in a version of my old apartment in Mexia, but it was really an amalgam of several places. One story, several rooms, a long kitchen, and then a back room with huge windows that opened out onto a covered porch.

I knew in my mind that I had a dog, and in going out to the porch area, I noticed that one area of the paneling in the room leading out had been chewed through, all the way through to the outside. This mimicked an incident in real life long ago where a Blue Heeler that was in heat chewed through a wall to get out of the house to get … well, you know. In the dream, there was my dog on the porch, and about 50 other dogs. All eating trash and filth and dead things that were littered about this field just beyond my porch. Turning back to my apartment/house I noticed there were several dogs inside looking at me that i hadn’t noticed walking through earlier.

In my head, I panicked. I felt immediately that I had left my dog for some time alone locked in the house and he had eaten his way out, and somehow attracted all these other dogs that were infesting my home. I felt guilt and ultimate responsibility for neglecting all these animals. I took a stroll out in the field that became more and more of a junkyard. There were puppies huddled together in old tires, grown dogs emerged from trashbags full of decomposing trash. And the maggots, huge fucking maggots were as far as the eye could see.

I noticed then that I was in bare feet, and there were bugs and maggots crawling up my legs. I already had red welts where I had been bitten or stung. I struggled to make it back to the house, but I eventually did.

There was a border collie that was following me around by that time, and I walked into the kitchen, which was strangely almost pitch black. As soon as I entered the kitchen, I felt a chill and the foreboding aura of evil. I get the same feeling when I have sleep paralysis dreams and something is putting it’s hand over my mouth. Only this time, the dog grabbed my hand gently in its mouth and led me from there into another room. As soon as I was out of the kitchen, the lights came back on, and all was “normal”.

I immediately called Kelly and she was there in a flash. As we inspected the house, we found more than just dogs, there were rabbits, cats, otters, pigs, goats. They were stuffed in drawers, under furniture, digging through the sheetrock and down from the attic.

At some point, the revulsion and panic turned to happiness and Kelly and I were just playing with the animals. There were two black fishers (the mustelids, not anglers) that we were playing with roughly when Steve Irwin showed up with his wife.

“Roight, weeah heeah to help ya sit theengs stroit!” Steve said. And sure enough, the Irwins started rounding up the animals and putting them in crates.

Kelly and I kept playing with the fishers when a wallaby hopped up. I thought I’d show my knowledge of marsupials to impress the undead Crocodile Hunter and identified the wallaby aloud.

“With a foice loik thet?” he replied. I looked again at the wallaby, which now had a little girls face. Kelly suddenly got really excited and explained it was a character from some Japanese circus. We followed it back out to the maggot field which was now completely devoid of maggots and had been replaced with a massive circus tent. Dancing and writhing around on the floor and against each other were millions of animals with the faces of children. Insanity-channeled music started blasting from towers of speakers that were going up. Kelly lost her shit.

The shock and ridiculousness of it all pulled me out of the dream almost immediately.