Saturday, June 7, 2008

A Nightmare And Possible Sequel

I had a horrible nightmare Thursday night.

You know when you wake up and it's all too fresh and real and it takes a while to shake it off and come back to reality? I generally like to say this to boyfriends: "You fucker. In my dream you did this horrible thing," and withhold sex for about a month.

But this dream... was terrible.

I tried to write down the dream immediately upon waking, but I couldn't. So I wrote that peripherally related post about my childhood nightmares instead.

It's only now, after an entire day of successfully revolutionizing e-commerce, followed by an evening out with friends, in turn followed by a night of insomnia, that the power of the dream has lessened enough that I can begin to try to articulate it.

But before I go into the details, I have to provide my list of caveats: my dreams are always fantastic, and are clearly reflective of my love of horror movies; my dreams are always highly detailed, I dream in technicolor, and it's not unusual for my dreams to span generations; many of my dreams feature vampires; and in my dreams, vampires are never the romantic characters that populate Anne Rice novels - they are ruthless, inhuman, bloodthirsty monsters.

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I was with a man who looked suspiciously like Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the series, not the movie). But unlike in the series, where Spike was a vampire, this man was human. In fact, he was a vampire slayer.

And in my dream, he and I fell instantly and deeply, in love.

But there was an obstacle of sorts. He had been cursed and would, with the next setting of the sun, turn into a vampire. So that single night we had together, was both our first and last night together.

So my dream started off with sex.

But there was nothing lascivious about it. Rather, there was an undercurrent of almost desperation to it, because we both knew that this was the beginning and end for us. It was sex infused with all the awkwardness and excitement of exploring a new body, overwhelming desire to please, and *shock* tenderness.

I woke the next morning alone, understanding that he had left because he needed to put as much distance between us as possible - because when that day ended, he would turn into a monster.

When I explored the house I was in, I found that there were literally hundreds of people crammed into the other rooms, because this house was considered to be a safe haven of sorts. And among the people in this house, were all my closest friends.

Long story short, when night fell, the vampires descended upon us and the safe haven wasn't a haven at all. Almost everyone was killed, and instantly. There was no defense. But the vampires didn't kill EVERYONE. Some, they turned into monsters, which was much much worse. Because those newly minted monsters turned on the people they loved and tore them to pieces while laughing.

It would actually have been better if my closest friends had just been killed, but they were turned, instead.

I managed to survive. I found a small room and blocked the door and hid in a corner while the monsters that used to be those nearest and dearest to me tried to break in. I cowered in a corner with my eyes shut, when suddenly, everything went quiet. I opened my eyes and realized that it was dawn.

When the sun was shining strongly through the windows, I finally got the courage to stand and I pressed my ear against the door and listened. And eventually I heard a horrible wailing. But there was a different quality to it - it sounded... human.

I opened the door and I saw my friends. And they were my friends again, no longer monsters. But they stood there, looking at the blood on their hands, tasting blood in their mouths, recognizing the dead around them, and they remembered what they had done. And, because this was a dream (and many inexplicable things happen in dreams), we all knew that when the sun set again that day, they would turn back into monsters, and keep killing.

It was one of my friends who articulated the only possible solution: that I, as one of the only surviving humans in the house, would have to kill them all before the sun set.

We spent the day crying, saying good bye. But as the shadows grew longer, I realized that I couldn't do it.

But remember "Spike" from the beginning of my dream? He made a reappearance. And he did what I couldn't.

And just as the sun was setting, he and I stood close to each other, he kissed me and put a weapon in my hand.

And you see where this was going... I had to kill him, or be killed by him when he became a monster.

We were kissing and crying and as the sun slipped away I didn't see him begin to change, I felt his face change beneath my lips, and I killed him.

As I stepped away and his body fell to the ground, I brushed my hand against my mouth. But when I looked at my hand, expecting to see only the wetness from tears, I saw... blood.

Two observations:

1. I find it hilarious that my subconscious is respectful of the potential franchise and set up a sequel

2. I have no doubt that this nightmare is match.com inspired

11 comments:

Bartleby said...

Okay, I take that back about finding a hockey player. Bad idea. But I have lots of friends who did Dungeons & Dragons in boarding school. Perhaps you could meet them on a moonlit plain one night next week?

C-Belle said...

*sigh*

C-Belle said...

Footnote to my dream. (And yes, my dream actually did have a footnote.)

In my dream, the vampire slayers had to be stronger and faster than "ordinary" humans in order to be able to stand a chance against the vampires.

So, according to my dream mythology, the vampire slayers were born with the same strength of vampires - but all suffered the same "curse" - that on the night of their 35th (or something like that) birthday, they would turn into a vampire. So their mission was to kill as many vampires as possible before that time, and then to make sure that they are killed themselves before they become monsters.

MrsCooper said...

Perhaps this could be a sequel to "Dusk Til Dawn" by Quentin Tarantino. And the title could be, "Belle the heroine who saved the Match.com Slayers from turning into monsters". Just an idea...

Susanna Seoul Searching said...

That is a better plot then 99% of all vampire movies or books I have seen or read. I'm selling you to Hollywood to finance my shoppings sprees! And thanks for the facebook comments! I do love it but have forgotten how much work bangs are...

Bartleby said...

Work bangs?

C-Belle said...

My Darling Susanna (Swedish girl now living in Seoul) just changed her hairstyle. She now sports bangs (a fringe), which, as all bangs do, require work to maintain at the appropriate length.

Bartleby said...

I nearly said they were $1.99 for two. But haha, I didn't. Bangs, the haircut, require a lot of work (for some reason). Okay, got it.

Bartleby said...

Just for the record, I figured that out BEFORE the very kind post from our hostess (host?).

C-Belle said...

HA!

It's a girl thing.

And when having a REALLY bad day, it's not unusual to cut your own bangs. Which is pretty much always ill advised. For example, the other night, I met a girlfriend for drinks. She took one look at my choppy uneven bangs and said, "Bad day, huh?"

Again, a girl thing.

Bartleby said...

[Bow to greater knowledge.]