My Multi-Cycle Jetlag Horror Dream, 6/9/12
When the dream began, I was living in a palatial apartment
in Manhattan – an apartment within an enormous, well-appointed, 19th-century
mansion, of a type that long ago either ceased to exist or was renovated and
subdivided into apartments. I was there
as a guest, since the owners were some sort of patrons of whatever company I was
performing with, and I got the impression the run of the opera I was doing was
nearly over, with maybe one or two performances left, and that I had had a
decent enough if uneasy time staying there.
The place had dark, polished hardwood floors which were
original to the building, and it was furnished with overstuffed sofas of heavy
brocade, ancient grandfather clocks, enormous oriental carpets, and other
antiques. I had a live-in maid, whom I’ll call Cilla, and I was the guest of a
middle-aged, old-money set of siblings, whom I’ll call Brewster and Annabelle.
Other people also popped in and out, including a butler and an older, slightly
heavy-set woman whose function in the household remained unidentified. Cilla
was a younger woman who had been friendly to me during my stay.
I felt the first pang of dread as I went to the theatre to
sing one of my remaining performances. The theatre was old, with ancient
dressing room facilities more reminiscent of older houses in Europe than of the
relatively plush environs of a 60s-built theatre like the Met or the New York
State Theatre. I do not recall anything as being amiss with the performance – I
got a bouquet of roses, which I took home with me to the apartment.
On arriving back at the apartment, I was looking around for
a vase to put the flowers in when I saw Cilla lying on her stomach on a sofa,
whimpering. Someone had slashed both her legs ankle-to-hip with a razor or a
knife and left her there to die, apparently. She was lucid enough to tell me
that Brewster and Annabelle had been responsible. Fear seized me that I would
also be in danger if I reported the crime to the police, but I determined to do
so anyway. I tried using my cell phone to call 911, and the dispatcher did not
seem to be able to understand what I was trying to tell her. I hung up not knowing whether police and
paramedics would be sent or not.
I was already beginning to panic when the older, heavyset
woman came in to inform me that dinner was served (maybe she was the cook, or
another maid). She ignored Cilla and her condition on the sofa, and I got the
distinct impression that I should come to dinner and behave as if nothing were
wrong, lest I also be in danger of some dire fate. I began to worry that Annabelle and Brewster were serving me something Sweeney-Todd-ian in the mystery-meat
stew, as they carried out their normal mealtime small talk. Perhaps, I thought,
they were vampires, or maybe just mad – in any event, I knew I had to get out
of there immediately.
When I returned to my suite, Cilla was dead. She was still
lying as I had left her, on her stomach on the divan, but she was no longer
moving or whimpering, and her eyes stared out into the room. There had never
been any blood, strangely enough, and there still was none. I rushed to my
bedroom and began packing furiously. I had gone to my home in Virginia at
various times during the run, so when the older woman came in and inquired why
I was packing, I said I simply planned to go home for a few days. She seemed
satisfied with this, and left. When I
emerged into the suite’s living room, rolling my bag, Cilla was gone.
At this point, I heard gunshots and men shouting as they
chased one another down the hall. At last, I hoped, here were the police!
However, that went unconfirmed as I realized that I was in danger from the
firefight as well. I first hid behind the sofa (from which Cilla’s body had so
recently been removed). After a few moments, I only knew I wanted out of there,
and I dropped my bag and ran through a series of hallways, narrowly missed by
bullets a few times before emerging into the sunlight in a driveway populated
by a number of shining Bentley/Rolls Royce-type cars. I do not recall seeing a
police car, so either they might have been unmarked, or the shooters were not
police, but other criminals who had some quarrel with the siblings. I wasn’t
going to stick around to find out.
Yet suddenly, I found myself not at the palatial house in “Manhattan,”
but in a strange, warehouse/dock-like complex in what I understood to be
Florida. I had been sent there by the siblings, apparently for my own protection.
However, the denizens of this strange community were inbred mutants like
something out of “The Hills Have Eyes,” only even more monstrous looking. I was
given over to a couple, who seemed to want me as a concubine of some sort. I
recall the man grabbing me with enormous, almost super-human strength, and
telling me how happy he was that I was there. He had no eyes, actually, and his
skin was a waxy white, with a deformed skull that seemed drawn up into a single
misshapen ridge at the top.
Somehow, I was able to break away from him, and I ran for my
life. I ran through maze-like metal corridors, at last halted in despair and
fright by a dead end. This being a
dream, I did not remain asleep to see the monsters find me, but there I was
again, trapped. Through the miracle of the dreamer's deus ex machina, I found another corridor and made my way out of the
place, again into the sunlight. The mutants did not pursue me, perhaps out of
fear of discovery.
And then I woke up. This is all about learning Gioconda,
right?
