A home made burrito with the works, including guacamole, later maybe a couple of ice pops, a later night glass of ovaltine.
A Note: Some few hours before bed I decided definitively to change jobs; this kept me awake for a while, so I read a Thomas LIgotti story called "The Bungalow" (or something like that), on the second page of which I said outloud to myself, "Well, this is going to give me nightmares." The story turned out to be about something else entirely than what I had thought, but I do believe that it did, indeed, at least help inform my nightmare.
The new neighbors have come by, unpleasant girls we didn't like who later reported having been mistreated at our hands. I'm pretty angry about this bullshit. The gang is over and we are all at a loss, though most would just have me let it go. (Is it around Halloween, by the way?) We're at the house, which is actually more like mom & dad's backyard & neighborhood. Everybody has their dogs over, all big dogs, like collies and shepherds and such.
I can't make head or tail of the situation of the girls accusing us of assaulting them. It's as if the bitchy, mean girls who came over aren't the same tearful messes who are accusing us, like they were masquerading as the real girls-- and at the same time someone masqueraded as us, attacking these helpless things. I feel like things are starting to come together, and the picture I'm forming is pretty creepy and bad.
We're in the yard, and one moment all the dogs are together with us in the yard, and the very next two of them have somehow blinked over to the other side of the fence. I see it happen and start yelling. But something else spooks the dogs and they take off, out into the busy street. I'm absolutely howling, my arms waving. There's a huge crash, a white convertable has run over Anna, an old German Shepherd. I can't believe what I'm seeing. The young guy doesn't know what's going on, he pulls his car forward; and it's just as if she just laid down and ducked under the car and comes out okay. [Interesting cf of my childhood nightmare of my mother getting run over by a train, but she laid down low on the tracks and it passed over her. ?] Anna lopes off up the street, still spooked.
[At this point the dream ceases to be narrative per se, and the following images or scenes seemed to happen absolutely all at once, a firestorm, I can't untangle all of it.]
The guy with the convertible is out of the car and is lurching backward up a giant dumptruck pile of gravel in the street. I'm trying to tell him that it's okay, she's okay. He starts shrieking like a wounded ape, his head jerking around.
I'm on a cell phone in the back yard, a gurgling, evil voice says, "The Caveman came over today."
I'm cooing at Anna; it's okay girl, it's okay.
The guy on the rock pile jerking, shrieking. The cell phone voice. The guy turns into someone else. A dark, shadowy, sinister man, unshaved, sitting on an office desk chair, hunched, gripping the seat, eyes burning into me. The snarling mess that's his mouth, his jaw snapping and slathering, his voice the voice from the phone. "Get in the closet. Get in the closet." I'm in danger, we're in danger. What will he do if he catches us. He's the Caveman, he's the one that's caused all of this, he attacked those girls, he pretended to be them, he pretened to be us.
I'm absolutely terrified, utterly frozen. I can still hear myself in slow motion cooing at Anna, no one can see I'm trapped by him, simultaneously in the street and in the back yard, no one can see us. I'm trying to scream. I'm just outside the small window in mom & dad's den, I have to get someone's attention, or fight back, something. I reach down into the gravel pile, pick some up, throw it. It hits the brick, no good, I pick up more, I throw, if I can break a winidow someone will come and save me, I throw, I can't scream, my skin is screaming in terror.
I woke up absolutely terrified, to the sound of my own formless shouting. Sat for 30 minutes writing it all down. Afraid that I might have one of my more traditional hallucinatory night terrors [like the purple "fry guy" style monster from when I was reading Lovecraft, or the giant whiptail spider more recently-- did I record those here? Fry guy may have been before I started this log] I left the lights on, slept that way for a few hours.
