Dream a little dream...

Song of the day: “I like how it feels” by Enrique. Been having a lot of him in my head of late, haven’t I? Ah well, no matter.

Let’s get started immediately, shall we?

It all starts in the Land Rover. Big brother is driving, Grandpa is in the backseat, and I’m looking around, wondering where the heck we are going. We are traveling in a straight line over bumpy knolls of grass, sparkly gray rocks and patches of yellow sand, with on either side of us a wall that is rapidly becoming higher.
“I don’t think this is going anywhere,” I point out, watching pampa grass knolls brush past the car at regular intervals, the white brick walls, interrupted by patches of piled up slabs of slate stone, on either side of the car. There are high reaching stems of bamboo, a little waterfall that pounds into a small basin situated in a niche we pass, and a grassy path on which we drive.
Overhead the sun is shining brightly. A clear blue sky with rapidly tumbling cumulus clouds, is almost too bright for my eyes. I can’t find my shades anywhere, and considering the car is bumping along on the road that appears to be getting bumpier and narrower within every passing minute.
A noisy scraping sound, along with a jostle that makes me wince, I ask, “Did you just hit something?”
“Uh-huh,” answers big brother, his features tight and dark. Something’s bothering, and it isn’t the narrowing passage.
“Two somethings,” deadpans grandpa from the backseat, looking a tad tense himself. I can’t blame him, since there is a sense of urgency and worry inside me as well.
On the side of the car two long, jagged scratches mar the white paint.
Up ahead, behind the left wall I can see occasional glimpses of a black roof building that for some reason reminds me of that big old hotel in that seventies horror movie “The shining”. Except that the roof is black, and that the beam structures, much like with those old cathedrals, stick out in clear contrast.
Big brother continues to drive on.
The pampas grass is blooming here, and the planters that are about as high as the wheels of the car become lusher with greens. By now I’m no longer wondering if the passage is getting narrower; it is. In fact by this time big brother has to pull to a halt lest we get stuck. We’re already close to that predicament, considering we are no longer able to open the doors.
“Now what?” I ask.
“I guess we should climb out and see if we can get over the wall to see where we are,” answers big brother, while grandpa in the back concurs and begins lowering his window. The three of us climb out, the planters supplying us with sufficient purchase to reach the top of the wall. Using pieces of black slates as foot holds, I climb onto the ledge and peer at the long drop down. There’s moss and grass at the bottom of the sheer white wall here, and before me, obscuring the view of the big house in the distance, is a rather vast pine forest.
I carefully slide my way down the wall, for as far as that is possible. I actually rip my pants, but no matter, with little trouble I land on the soft soil. A glance up shows that grandpa and big brother are nowhere in sight. I wonder about that for a moment, but see no other recourse than to head on out to the building and find a phone. As it turns out, I’m not carrying my phone. Strange.
For quite a while I walk through the woods, sunlight only occasionally touching the pine covered ground, and small tufts of green the only real color in this world of shadows.
Suddenly I come upon a row of buildings. They appear old and built on the exact edge of the woods. They are placed close together to a point of them forming a barrier through which I can barely see, let alone pass. There are glimpses of sun light and blue sky visible between the structures, so old that there are cracks in the clapboard walls, and even broken boards there where I thought I might be able to pass through because the last house on the row is build against a hedge of a wildly growing cypress hedge.
Worming myself through it, I basically stumble into a corridor of sorts. It is unexpected and I feel momentarily disoriented as I look around the almost sterile looking gray walls (two kinds of gray. Darker below, lighter up with a black border between them). The floor under my feet are olive green tiles, and every fifteen feet or so a dark puce colored door slashes through the gray. There are murmurs all around and a distant beeping that I can’t place nor locate.
I feel chilled in my short-sleeved white T, and the tiles make the soles of my shoes squeak rather ominously. I wince every single time I put my feet down, and yet the urgency that I sense doesn’t allow me to stop and wait to fully orient myself.
“Sam!” I spin around at the scream, see a young woman come rushing towards me. I don’t know her, and yet I do. Dark haired and almost fey in appearance, she’s only a few inches shorted than me. She has her arms raised in a somewhat imploring fashion.
“Sam! Help me,” she pleads, transforming before my eyes. Skin peels away from the protrusion of her cheekbones, showing fetid flesh, reddish and bleeding as her eyes sink deeper into their sockets and become vacant and pale. She makes an inarticulate sound, more a gurgle than anything. Her hair, lush and curly when she first came running towards me, is becoming greasy and dead-ish at the same time, hanging in dirty strands on either side of her now gaunt features where her once red lips have turned to a sallow blue.
“Help meeee!” she sputters, stumbling with a much familiar stagger as I scramble backwards. “’elp meeee” again while she reaches for me with clawed hands of which the nails have turned black and jaggedly sharp.
I have nowhere to turn, nowhere to run, what with my back against one of those bland gray walls, when suddenly a ponderous sounds explodes from nearby. The girl, I don’t even know her name, shocks comically, spins on her heel as dark blood fountains around her chest. She slams into the wall in front of me, as another explosions batters my eardrums. I close my eyes for a moment, determined not to watch the girl’s head explore in a gory mass of blood and flesh, and then glance in the direction from where the gun shots originate.
There’s a blond dude standing in the open glass doors. Strangely enough he reminds me of a very young Gary Busey (or his son) while he stands there in what appears to be a white nurse’s uniform. He is holding a smoking black shotgun.
“This way,” he calls, gesturing to the corridor behind him. He is looking at tad harried, I’ll admit, and for the first time I’m starting to wonder where the heck grandpa and big brother disappeared to.
“Come on. No dawdling. We’ve got to get out of here fast.”
Rather than look at the dead zombie girl, I start running towards the guy, but as I pass through the door I suddenly find myself on a Swiss balcony, overlooking snowy slopes as far as the eye can see. Behind me there are noisy screeches and growls, like a herd of monsters from a nightmare are rapidly approach, but a glance back into the corridor from which I come, shows only the dead zombie girl.
Again I have this sense of disorientation, but I have no time to ponder it as the guy with the shotgun urges me on at a run to the end of the seemingly endless balcony.
“This way,” he shouts over his shoulder, already climbing over the banister and letting himself fall down the three stories that we’re removed from the snow covered ground. Though usually heights disturb me, I don’t hesitate as I climb over and jump just as I feel a sharp scrape in the nape of my neck. With a noisy oomph I land in a thick pile of snow and scramble after shotgun dude.
“Where are we going?” I pant, daring a look up where a suspiciously zombie-like creature leans heavily over the banister I just climbed. Backing up the monstrous grunts and squeals is that distinctive beep that is seriously starting to bug me.
When I don’t receive a response from my companion, I glance back and realize I am once more alone.
Swearing (I won’t bother you with my creativity in this regard) I scramble away from my landing spot from fear of the zombie coming in pursuit and hurl myself head-first into the dark pine bushes that are located about fifty feet away from the building. Where’s big brother when you need him, I wonder distractedly, elbowing my way through the snow, and then squealing (somewhat inelegantly, I’ll admit) when the ground drops from under me, all of a sudden and I am send hurtling down a muddy slide. I come to a slippery stop at the bottom of the incline, covered in mud and feeling chilled to the bone as I slap at the muddy soil on either side of me. “Blast it!” I mutter the words, on a subconscious level aware that I should keep quiet, despite me getting the distinct impression that I am in fact dreaming. (Sometimes it takes me a while, as you might have noticed. Hah)
Ignoring the coldness of the mud and the smell that seems to come at me from all sides, I slip-slide my way to a rocky outcropping and use its steadiness to look up at what appears to be a long, long distance that I slid down. There, at the top of an uneven crater-like hole (in which I am shivering) I can see the Shining house loom high into the bright blue sky. There are sounds of music, laughter and talking voices drifting down, and I start my struggle to ascend up the rocking wall that leads up to the building.
The snow is gone, and by this time I’m pretty darn sure that I am dreaming, and wonder where the heck I’m going as I climb higher, and higher until I finally drag my butt up on solid ground and lay there behind a wildly blooming rose bush. I never get how I can be out of breath in dreams, and yet I am. The sound of an engine nearby makes me scramble into a squat (by this time my clothes are semi clean again) to peer through the rosebush. With the rumble of the car, that beep is once again becoming more prominent and I shake my head as I try to focus on what I can see through the branches of the deep red rose bush.
There, on the white gravel car sweep in front of the massive structure a black jag pulls to a halt and two women in black robes and red high heels (don’t ask me why, this is as weird to me, as it is to you) climb from the back seat to scamper up the brick dais whispering and laughing together like a bunch of teenagers.
I am about to slink my way down to the next bush, away from the building that seems threatening to me, even with all it’s apparent splendor, when a voice behinds me says: “What are you doing here?”
I start…and wake up with Knight II ramming his friggin’ paw into the small of my spine, and blink at the gray morning light falling into my bedroom.
As it turns out, the beeping I was hearing was my alarm, which, apparently, had been going off for a solid twenty minutes. Yup.
Knight II felt bugged by it and woke me up in the most effective way. Hah.

So, that was fascinating. I knew I was in the mood for a good horror movie last night when big brother mentioned that the younger sib got “The Eye” with Jessica Alba (he was so mean mentioning it. I’ve been wanting a good horror movie for weeks now, darn it.) on DVD. Clearly I wanted a horror so badly, my mind did it for me, eh? Hah.

But anyway, there were some clear old movie indicators in there. I mean seriously. Did you get the references? Gary Busy’s son in a nurse’s uniform? “The Frightners” anyone? The hotel in “The Shining”? “Labyrinth” from the eighties, maybe? Clapboard military housing from “The Bodysnatchers” in the early nineties? Zombies as in every zombie movie ever? The long stretching hospital corridors as in most Japanese horror movies?
Of course then there was the Swiss chalet-like balcony. I can’t really place that with a movie. Hmmm. Weird.

What can I say, I’m bonkers and my dreams proof as much. Gotta get the ideas for my dreams somewhere, don’t I? What better place then wonky dreams?

No matter though. Let’s do a quick sum-up of the past couple of days. There were chores, gardening, of course, and I spent most of the days working in the upper yard. I was in fact in the storage area sorting through the messes gathered there. Seriously. There’s two years of stuff lying about there, and just yesterday I needed 4 hours to sort through the last of my tile collection.
Then today going through plastic, tubing and all that stuff, which is fascinating for me, and not so fascinating for you, so I am more than happy that I could supply the dream for a change. Hah.

It was also quite nippy, meaning that Chaos spent most of his time on my bed, huddling under the blankets. No matter that I made my bed three times he kept pulling everything loose to make a nest for himself, the son of a gun.

Knight II insisted on joining me up by the paddock, and was cold for most of the time. It did get him an appetite, so I didn’t mind. Heck, for the first time in ages he ate a full bowl in the evening.

Well, this will have to do the trick today. Not much else happening except for a failed cooking experiment with Oxalis. It wasn’t gross, but it also wasn’t anything to write home about. Luckily I had also baked potatoes, meaning that I could open a couple of cans to supplement for the veggies that failed during tonight’s supper. Turns out Oxalis is really, really sour, and though I can see possibilities with it if it is mixed with other stuff, as a sole vegetables it won’t be a big success. Think sauerkraut, but then with a somewhat bitter aftertaste. A pity. I will try again in the near future.

Gotta go.