ed_rex

Originally posted on in response to a Livejournal's Writer's Block Question #4400

I've had a few recurring dreams over the years — at least, variotions on the same dreams, more like different stagings of the same play than television re-runs. Dreams of being Batman (yes, really; stop laughing at me!) in particular, yes to be re-hashed almost on a regular basis.

The one that's freshest (because most terrifying) in my mind, though, is happily one my subconscious has not bothered to revive for more than half a decade.

That dreamw would usually emerge, unexpected, from something much more mundane. I would be going about my dream business only to realize that some of my teeth were starting to get a little loose in my gums. Soon after, that patches of some kind of fuzz started growing on parts of my body. And spreading.

And then I would wander into a house infest with serpents. Not snakes, serpents. In dream-logic, snakes were gross animals, but still animals. Serpents were evil. Not just gross, but they would be locked in place on the floor, undulating like young trees in a strong wind, and emiting waves of wrongness like invisible but cancerous pollen.

Right around the point when I would be compelled to pass through this room I would realize that I was dying. The teeth falling out of my head were a symptom, and the moss spreading over my body both sign and cause of whatever monstrous illness was doing me in.

Shaving the moss back could slow the progress of the disease, but not by much. I was dying and knew it and the serpents were everywhere ...

Need I say that when I woke up, I would be drenched with sweat? I didn't think so. Those were fucking awful ...