Chapter XXVII: So That's What It Feels Like

Image of the Day: Me, Myself, and I (cheap camera + Photoshop)

Imagine getting out of bed to go downstairs and pour a cup of water. When you reach the top of the stairs and look down, there are a bunch of lions at the bottom of the staircase! And they are messily devouring your older brother.

Now, imagine being chased along a dark beach by a serial killer, and suddenly he shows up five feet in front of you. He holds up what looks like a mass of raggedly cut, semi-translucent silk. It is the skin of your brother, whom the serial killer flayed alive before coming after you.

What would you be thinking right then? If you're one smart cookie, you might think to yourself, 'My older brother was devoured by lions at the bottom of the staircase and they picked him clean to the bone. There is no way that could be his flayed skin.' However, I'm an idiot when I am dreaming, so I was scared shitless.

It's funny, since I get along perfectly well with my brother that his gory death figures so prominently in my nightmares. In all, I can remember five nightmares in which my brother dies.

For some reason, I didn't dream very much after 6th grade until I entered college.

Earlier this year, I had an extremely convoluted and disturbing dream which ended with my mother, in the guise of a giant red ant, trying to seduce me in what used to be my sister's bedroom. I am not kidding. Until thirty seconds ago, I wasn't going to tell that to anyone, EVER, but it seemed germane.

Anyways, all that was background for the totally awesome dream I had last night. It began in my campus bookstore and Dr. Octavius* was impaling people with his arms. I can still see a metal tentacle coming at me through a bloody hole in a man's chest.

Somehow I survived, and the next scene took place in Walmart, which was inexplicably located where the Ralph's supermarket is supposed to be. King Kong was roaming through the aisles and everyone was trying to hide. I realized it was the perfect time to steal something, so I grabbed a VCR and ran out the door and about halfway up the hill to get home.

I heard King Kong behind me so I hid in a bush, but he found me and picked me up and said, 'Even I think you're stupid!' Apparently he was disappointed that I had stolen something and it was telling that the big dumb ape was calling me stupid. Then, he grasped my head with two of his giant fingers and beegan squeezing, clearly intending to kill me for my sin.

When I realized I was about to die, my heart fluttered for half a second, but then I became completely calm, and, in fact, a little curious. I wasn't entertaining any thoughts of an afterlife, but rather what it would feel like to have no sensation at all (oxymoronic though that may be).

And then...I woke up. So that's what it feels like to be on the verge of death. It's very empowering to know that it isn't that scary after all.

Dying in a dream** has been one of the coolest experiences of my life.

*Dr. Octavius is a character in the Spiderman universe, and has six steel tentacles. I don't know why he doesn't have eight.
**'Dying in a dream' has a nice rhythm to it. If I ever start a band, that'd be a good name. Or perhaps, 'A Bloodstained Orgasm.' I thought of 'A Bloody Orgasm' first, but that just sounded like something an excited British woman would say. Like "When Harold told me he wanted a divorce, I almost had a bloody orgasm I was so happy. Lord knows it would be the first one in fifteen years."