Giraffe Neckbirth

I was visiting a zoo I've been to before in my dreams, and there was a giraffe giving birth in a most peculiar manner. Where you might expect a healthy calf to emerge from the usual place, in this instance there was a great to-do amongst the staff as they tried to wrestle the unruly beast to the ground and safely deliver its young. Strong did the legs kick out, in throes of what I assumed was considerable agony. I watched with my daughter, as the giraffe hoisted its neck up high to silhouette against the sky, a spidery network of smaller legs, squirming like tentacles. They erupted from the neck, bursting from a swollen tumour. The zookeepers were working hard to placate bewildered onlookers and safeguard their reputation as a humane zoo. But there was no disguising the fact that the giraffe was giving birth from her neck.

Garden Monkeys

I'm not sure why but I keep having dreams about monkeys in my back garden. In this dream, the garden was a combination of my parent's old house in Wivenhoe, and my own in the same village. Li was cooking in the kitchen and my sisters were over. Fallon came in from the garden at dusk, already dark, and I saw a low shadow following her across the lawn. It turned out to be a Gray Langur, walking upright on two legs. My dog ran over to sniff it, but the monkey ignored him. It followed us into the house, seemingly unafraid of all the people, and came to stand by Li's legs. Still at the hob, she looked down and gave a startled cry. I decided to try feeding it, and sliced it off some banana. The langur took the banana and hobbled back outside, much to the delight of Lulu and everyone else present.

We watched it make its way back down the lawn and into the dense canopy of dark trees. It was then that I spied the twinkling eyes of many other monkeys watching from the branches. All night I heard their cries and saw their forms flitting amongst the shrubbery. Then it was a pale, grey sunrise, slowly illuminating the bottom of the garden. On the back fence I saw perched Verreaux's Sifakas, (although with striped tails like a Ring-tailed Lemur), a pot-bellied Proboscis Monkey, and a Snow Leopard, crouched almost human like on the flimsy wooden slats. I wondered how the monkeys could survive in the UK, and where they managed to forage enough fruit and nuts to live on. I have no idea what this recurring dream might mean...

Conger Meal

Possibly prophetic, but I dreamt that Li and I bought/rescued a giant conger eel from a pet shop. We intended to bring it home, but were waylaid and first had to spend the night at my parents' house. Thus, the eel languished in a large sports bag, half in stasis but without any water. I knew it would not survive the night, and that I should keep it in the bathrub, but I was mortally terrified of the thing and could not approach the bag. A fraught evening passed, during which time my father lost his temper and accused us both of trying to embezzle money from him, which to be fair, we were. I knew that the eel was suffering and dying, but terror outweighed compassion, and it slowly expired.

Now stuck with a giant dead eel, I suggested that we feed it to our dog, Beibei, and then discovered that conger flesh was toxic and need extensive prep before being edible. This is not the case in real life, where they are considered a delicacy. Li's Chinese side kicked in and she decided to served up some of the eel for dinner. I stayed far away from the process, and the meal was served. Chunks of eel, along with baby potatoes and salad. I tried to eat as much as I could, but the taste was foul and acidic. I used extra salt, vinegar and pepper to mask the taste, yet still it came through. I flipped the piece I was working on over and saw that the dark skin was still attached. This was the last straw. Fighting the urge to spit it out, I forced myself to swallow it down.

Then I woke up with a truly disgusting taste in my mouth. It's amazing how that can happen. I went onto campus for my office day and decided to mix up my usual routine. Because I planned to use my lunch playing badminton, I thought I'd go in early and load up on a full English in the canteen. This was a big mistake, as it was the foullest fry-up that's ever passed my lips, and I've had some rotters. Every single item on the plate was utter garbage and lingered in my mouth long after - a poisoned memory. Perhaps the eel experience was trying to warn me.

Abnormal Aquarium

I was back in a familiar place the other night, a recurring setting for dreams, and one of the primary locations in my first novel. It was an aquarium, but a strange one that was half amusement park and half zoo. It began with me observing a tour where some workers were displaying a bunch of dead fish packed into icy tanks, and how they spliced their genes to make creative and exotic new breeds. "Behold the humble goldfish!" one worker declared, picking up the dead and frozen goldfish and throwing it into the audience. I yelped and stepped away. "We take the essence, but morph it into forms both new and interesting."

He showed us the fruit of their labours, a whole wall display's worth of freakish fish with stumpy limbs and queer body structures. They were in separate tanks with frost around the edges, as though products in the frozen ailse of a supermarket. Another worker turned up, holding a very large ray or skate that had a long spike sticking out of its nose. I was jostled closer to it by the crowd, but I frantically elbowed myself away, lest the wriggling specimen came into contact with me. "We take the boring ray, and we give it a unicorn horn of robust design!" the employee explained, wrangling the flapping fish.

With some difficulty, I managed to extricate myself out of the corridor where this tour was taking place, and emerged into a wide chamber displaying larger animals. They were wondrous and fantastic to behold, but also rather frightened. Club-headed sharks, octopi with double the amount of tentacles, huge bloated groupers, and viper-like eels. 

My family turned up, and I took an indoor train ride with them. This ride went underground and led to the ice pools in another part of the aquarium, part of the polar zone. The train reached the main highlight, which was the killer whale tank. It wound up in a glass tunnel beneath the pool, showed some of the marine show from an underwater perspective, and then shuttled back to its starting position. I got out of the ride and returned to the ice pools on foot, eager to see what other animals they had.

There were penguins behind glass, and smaller fur seals, raising echoing honks at me as I approached. The place had a rundown, dilapidated sort of aspect to it. Deeper into the polar zone, larger species of seals rose their heads out of the icy water to greet me. Hooded seals inflating red flesh sacks, tuskless walruses, and even enormous elephant seals which are never kept in zoos. The honking of the seals reverberated all around the chamber. Past the seals, I saw the ghost white bodies of belugas sailing through the water, and past them, the outdoor pool housing the killer whale.

I found out that the killer whale shared a tank with a polar bear, and although they normally got on well, today there had been a fight. As such, the polar bear was being treated by a zoo vet for its injuries, sprawled out on the ice in a separate enclosure. Half tranquilised, it lay flat on its stomach whilst the woman gently applied balm to its wounds. It's long, snaggle-like snout was covered in scars. Amazingly, after the vet asked how it felt, the polar bear summoned up a deep growl and replied to her that it was doing well. Another of the marine biologists' experiments in genetics? I had the sense that the bear was on the verge of reverting to its natural instincts and attacking her.

I moved on, to an outdoor section with more rides. An open areas with lots of kids found me joining in with a game of laser tag. The fake guns were not supposed to be used at point blank range, but I had not attended the briefing. I opened fire on a boy. hitting him square in the chest. The pellets from the machine gun stung him badly, and he fell to the floor bawling. Lest I get in trouble with surrounded parents, I quickly tried to diffuse the situation, pretending to use a toy first aid kid to simulate me giving him first aid. The attempt did not work, and he only cried louder. I quickly left the area with my own daughter.

Next we saw a rich family jumping the queue for some of the more intense rides, many of which were in an arcade. I encouraged my family to go on some rides, but they were all split up across the aquarium doing different things. I took Lulu outside and we saw a paddock with camels and a wildebeest. These then escaped and began galloping around out of control, so again, we hastily departed the area. The dream fabric was beginning to unravel by that point, and things did not make as much sense, so I woke up. Another interesting aquarium dream, and the first in quite a while.

Back to Childhood

I've had a few notable dreams that I intended to set down, but life got in the way. I'm snatching twenty minutes to recount last night's dream where I moved house, only back in with my original family. Original as in - parents and siblings. What do you call that? Birth family? Childhood family? It must be something more obvious that I'm missing. Either way, I was back in the thick of it, all the brats under one roof, only as we are now. Albeit, without partners and kids of our own. 

The new property was a seaside terraced estated that reminded me somewhat of Stoke in Plymouth, although a lot nicer, with some tropical trees around. We arrived there late in the evening, so it was already dark by the time we got to check it out. My mother had bought me a 'light pipe' to light the driveway with. I found out it was cracked and unusable, and after an hour or so of faffing around calling the company's support number and trying to repair it, I gave up and asked her to return it. It was then I found out she'd bought it second hand for only £6, which meant I wasn't too fussed anymore.

I was inititially dubious of the new house, and told my parents so on the driveway, believing it to be too small and shabby to hold us all. They told me to go inside and have a look, at which point I worried I would be left with the worst bedroom. But the bedrooms have already been allocated, and, save from my parents who had given themselves the largest, mine was by far the best out of the siblings'. I barely took in the open play layout of the downstairs, too eager was I to see which room I'd been allocated. It was sparse but sizeable, with a half view of the ocean, which was more than the other rooms afforded.

After checking out my own room, I traversed the rest of the top floor, seeing where my siblings were house. Fallon had the third biggest room, but decidedly more poky, and a lot darker, than my own. But Dana and Camella had by far the worst lot, for they were forced to share. Theirs was a room dominated by dark and foreboding built in cupboards, crudely divided into smaller rooms with separate beds, with hardly any space for their toys. I don't know why we still had toys are our ages but... dreams! I told them that I thought their room must be haunted, falling back into the old ways of teasing my sisters.

In the morning, I explored the house further and found out we could climb onto the roof. Up there was a communal area for other neighbours to share, complete with swimming pool, kid's swing park, roof garden, potted palms and tropical shrubs, deckchairs for reading on, and a good view of the sea. This would do nicely I decided, already planning workout sessions, sunbathing, reading, meditation and novel writing in this tranquil setting. It was an odd sort of a feeling, being back with the old gang, as though everything I'd done previously had all come to nothing. I woke up from it all feeling rather glum and disappointed. 

Castles, Banquets, and Pottos

One of my biggest regrets in life is not applying for Oxford or Cambridge University. I'm now fully convinced I would have found my people there, instead of the hardships I encountered at Essex. Perhaps it's a bit pathetic to still be dwelling on this at the ripe age of 40, but the soul wants what the soul wants! We can't change the past, we can only dream. 

In my dreams, I was having a second chance at higher education, at an all boy's university somewhere between the aforementioned heavy hitters. The campus was based in a castle in the woods, accommodating both classes and dormatories. Hogwarts style. Every morning and evening, a horse drawn carriage took students from the chateaux to a lavish outdoor banqueting area where a fully staffed catering team cooked up a delicious feast. No more instant noodles scraped together from a filthy kitchen filled with unwashed crockery, no more food poisoning from dodgy campus eateries. This was luxury wining and dining every day beneath a twinkling canopy of fairylights.

After eating and drinking to our hearts' content, we were free to roam the grounds and socialise before being carted back to the castle. Those who missed the last carriage back were only slightly inconvenienced by a ten minute stroll through the forest as the sun set. I was able to jump onto the last transport, which for some reason became a motorbike driven by a porter. As we whizzed through the trees, I caught sight of glowing eyes amongst the foliage, and glimpsed the stocky bodies of pottos ambling about their business. The porter told us they lived in the castle grounds, but were shy and kept out of sight. I resolved to organise a nature watching expedition at some point.

Back at the castle, I was conducted to my room on one of the upper levels. The castle was splendidly furnished, with plush rugs covering the flagstone floors. There were huge arcane looking spellbooks lying around, as well as gargoyle statues and ornate foundations. In my chamber, I was irked to discover that I would be sharing it with someone who is a bit of a waste of space. Never mind, one couldn't have it all, and one unpleasant room-mate was always going to be better than sixteen! I claimed my bed and began unpacking my things, excited to begin exploring my new digs for the upcoming year. Unfortunately my memory grows hazy at this point, as the dream was several nights ago.

Bird House

I was living with my family and my parents and sisters in a big house in the mountains, surrounded on all sides by spectacular views. The best view of all was in my parent’s bedroom, with huge double windows that opened out onto a mountain vista. You could see sharp blue sky, a snow-peaked mountain, and all kinds of birds. I watched with my parents as peregrine falcons swooped onto alpine marmots. The marmots twisted and struggled in their talons. Other birds appeared on the scene, excited by the commotion. There were gannets, vultures, herons, and even a spoonbill.

All of a sudden, many of the birds decided to fly into the bedroom through the open window, including a large Ruppell’s griffon vulture which crashed onto the floor. I helped my parents usher most of them back outside, but the vulture refused to budge. It began speaking in a woman’s voice, asking if it could stay for a while until its broken wing healed. I shouted to my daughter to make a nesting box for it. Nobody seemed particularly shocked that the bird could speak.

Then there were great rolling waves from the lake lapping at the window, and water sloshed inside. I told my father to close the window but it was too late, and now we had fish coming into the room. A pufferfish lay deflated on the bed, and I stopped my mother from picking it up just before it inflated and pricked her hand. She wore a thick gardening glove, but I insisted it wouldn’t be enough to protect her from its poison spines. I called my wife and daughter up several times to see what was happening. Neither of them were interested.

Return to the Ghost House

Another year, another dream about returning to live at No. 29 in Looseleigh. I'm going to start running out of ideas for blog post titles if this keeps up. 

My family and I had made the monumental decision to sell our house in Cooksbridge and move to my childhood home in Plymouth. Yes, the haunted one. It was a big move for us all, our daughter especially who would be leaving her friends and starting a new school. I hadn't even told my work that I was leaving. There was some strange plot about a foster child and another man on the scene, but it's too muddled in my memory to write down, so I'll exclude that.

Back we were in the old house, our boxes around us, the old rooms unfamiliar yet reminiscent of the past life. Before we moved in properly, we met a gang of very friendly teenagers in the street and lamented the loss of the gorge, an area of trees on the estate where I used to play hide and seek, or create dens as a child. We visited the local town with the teenagers and hit up the restaurants, seeing everything that had changed during the intervening years. It was a nice evening, mooching around bakeries and bars.

Then it was home to begin unpacking, and deciding how the rooms would be used. The house was much smaller than we were used to, with no space for a designated study. I was dismayed to discover that much of the wallpaper in the master bedroom was peeling off, great baggy chunks unfurling from the walls and hanging loose. The entire top half of the walls had been completely scoured of it. It would be difficult to begin a fresh start with the house in such disarray. There was also the matter of the ghost to consider, and to find out if it still haunted the premises or had moved on. I thought I heard a small child's cry coming from the bedroom, but it might have been my imagination. 

Downstairs in the living room, I looked out of the bay window to see that the street had flooded and water had lapped all the way up to our house. From the woods, I saw the rangy form of a brown bear loping into the flood stream. It was joined by another, and they began fighting in the water, very close to our front door, seemingly oblivious to the human habitations around them. I called my family over to look, amazed to see bears in a UK town, and feeling that perhaps this move wasn't such a bad idea after all.

African Leopard

When I went to Kenya in 2016, I was quite disappointed that I didn't see my favourite of the big cats, the African leopard. I made up for it last night, when I went on an African safari holiday in a dream with my family, including my dog, Beibei. I was staying at a luxury holiday villa in the bush, with views of surrounding wildlife, although I didn't know it at the time. I thought I was in a secluded hotel on the coast. I was in the garden, looking over a fence into the distance between some trees when I saw a leopard emerge. I quickly fumbled for my phone and tried to take some photos, but as always happens in dreams, I could not get the lens to focus quickly enough. Whilst I struggled to take photos, some spotted hyenas entered the shot.

The leopard began to prowl closer to the villa, attracted by the barks of my dog. I picked him up and carried him inside, then went about locking doors and windows. I'd heard about leopards entering homes to snatches pets and children. I saw that the leopard was carrying a dead animal in its jaws, a bird or small mammal. After trying unsuccessfully to enter the house, it eventually wandered away, scared off by a large group of people at the door. They were extended family (whom I didn't know) and wanted to pay a visit. I apologised that it had taken so long to answer the door, explaining about the leopard. Lots more African animals entered the scene, walking through the lush villa grounds. I tried to photograph a herd of giraffes, but again, my phone camera was not up to the task.

Holiday Child Massacre

This nightmare happened about a week ago but I have been too busy to write it down. It was partly inspired by Art the Clown from the Terrifier films, the serial killer from Longlegs, and the recent horrific Southport murders, where three little girls were fatally stabbed, and many more injured. I was at a holiday resort with my family, plus my three sisters and all their children. The resort backed onto a large swing park with a bouncy castle, skate park, swimming pool, and the like, which were all available for use during the night. We were in an apartment complex of sorts, all staying in the same dorm, and could see outside into the playground. 

It was late, dark outside, but lit up with floodlights, the festivities in full swing. Teenagers played in the skatepark, younger children used the bouncy castle, their parents sat around the pool drinking, keeping half an eye on them. All of a sudden, we heard screaming, and looked outside to see a terrible scene. The bouncy castle had turned into a death trap, a rolling meat grinder with spinning blades, crushing the children and shredding them to ribbons. The parents screamed and tried to rescue their children. Blood splattered the floodlight, turning the playpark a ghastly red. Flames bellowed out of unseen funnels, incinerating kids who had dodged the meat grinder. It was a bloodbath.

Fallon panicked, mistakenly believing her own children were down there. She rushed down in hysterics as everyone else watched in disbelief. Fortunately her children had vacated the park just moments before the massacre, and she was able to bring them upstairs to safety, sobbing uncontrollably. But the nightmare was not to end there. We were locked in for the night, unable to vacate the premises, and all suffering heavily from sleep deprivation. Whenever we began to doze off, we would wake with a start and discover one of the children missing. There were seven children in total, including my own daughter.

The children would be found, possessed, wandering in a trance-like state down a corridor ending in an open doorway. Red light filtered through the apartment, accompanied by the haunting thump of a heartbeat. Art the Clown was the demonic entity behind the possessions, attempting to lure the children into his domain for slaughter. Each time we ran out to rescue the children and bring them back, the more our exhaustion rose. When my daughter fell prey to Art's possession, I carried her back into the bedroom and was relieved to see that dawn was approaching. But we had all been deceived.

The true threat was Longlegs, who had been hiding in our dormitory room wardrobe the entire time. I caught him slinking back into the cupboard. The plot had been for Art to tempt the children out of the room, thus also the parents, and then Longlegs would murder the sleeping children. Myself, my wife, sisters, and many of the grief-stricken parents who had lost children in the massacre, dragged Longlegs from his hiding place and beat him to death on the boards of the dormitory floor. A haunting dream to be sure, prompted by parental fears.

Yabby Worm

Last night I had what was probably the most disgusting dream of my life, I woke up genuinely distraught and couldn't stop brushing my teeth. I was in a house which was a combination between the one in Plymouth, my old house in Wivenhoe, and my current one. I was taking a bath when suddenly I shat myself in the water. There was a thick stool in addition to the smaller flakes that dispersed in the water. As I lay amongst the shit, deciding whether I could still get clean in this water, the large stool floated towards the side of the tub and inexplicably, began to crawl up it. It reached the top, and flopped over the edge onto the floor. 

I jumped out of the water and grabbed a towel, watching as it slid along the tiles, twitching back and forth, with jellied globs of white showing through. At first I thought it was just some peculiar chemical reaction taking place, and was about to pick it up with a tissue and drop it in the toilet. But the closer I looked, the more I began to see. What resembled a serrated fin poked through, and also what seemed to be spines unfurling, like those found on a stickleback. Was it a fish? Overcome with revulsion, I tried to remember what I had eaten. The whole thing was now moving, definitely alive. Then a spider crawled past it, and the stool made a lunge, as though to attack it. A lump raised itself from the rest of the mass, and broke into a round mouth, which let off a scream.       

At this point, I could take the horror no more, and I ran from the bathroom, shouting for my wife. I closed the door to stop whatever it was from escaping. When my wife eventually arriving, finding me cowering on the stairs, she opened the bathroom door and my dog ran in. I saw the creature try to bite him, a grotesque mewling mouth on the end of a tube, six stumpy little legs, wings or fins plastered with shit. The thing looked like an insect, a germ, and a fish all in one. My dog ran away and the thing scuttled out of the bathroom and onto the hallway wall, leaving a trail of shit wherever it went. I began crying and bawling, berrating my wife for letting it out and ruining the house. "Why would you do that?!" I screamed.

I cried and whimpered on the staircase, watching in horror as my wife battled the creature with a shoe. She scraped it off the wall and began beating it over and over as I screamed at her to kill it. With each blow of the shoe, the creature let out a shriek. Eventually it was dead, but I could not stop crying and shaking, and the house was covered in shit. My wife carried the dead creature to the living room and laid out its body to take a look at it. She unravelled all its body parts, which turned out to be expansive. I watched from a safe distance. It had masses of spaghetti-like jellyfish tentacles that reached all the way across the floor, a carapace that fanned open into fleshy, lung-like wings, or fins, and a whole dangling spillage of pale helices.

Li identified the animal as a 'yabby worm', which takes up residence as a parasite in a human host by crawling into the mouth and lodging in the bowels, stealing food. Mine had obviously been displaced whilst I soaked in the bath. I was disgusted, and could not get the taste of shit out of my mouth. When I awoke, I immediately Googled 'yabby worm' and found that crayfish are called yabbies in Australia. My skin has been crawling since having this dream. 

                                    

Cooksbridge Safari

My first notable animal-related dream since being in China and I dreamt of home, but not quite the home I remember. I was in my Wivenhoe house, which had been transplanted to Cooksbridge and there relocated to a cul-de-sac near where my dog groomer lives. It was a sunny day and I was in the living room playing on the Playstation whilst my daughter played upstairs by herself. A small song bird, a wagtail or some sort, came into the house through the dog flap. When I ushered it out, I saw that there was also a pigeon half in the dog flap, with its back to me. I got rid of that too and went back to my game. Soon I noticed another animal in the flap, facing out towards the front garden, with only its rear on display. 

I mistook it for a cat, for a cat's hindleg it most certainly had, but when I got up to make it move, I saw a strange blue coloration running over its hindquarters. It turned so that I could see it in profile. It was a proboscis monkey, although one of its hindlegs remained that of a cat's. What was this improbable looking monkey doing in Cooksbridge, much less my property? I shouted to my daughter that I was going out to investigate, but I left the front door partly open. It was a blinding hot day, and I walked around to the front of the house, which communicated with the main road. Once there, I saw another creature squeezing through a hole beneath the boards that led to my cellar. What could it be?

I approached, my camera at the ready, sure that it was the proboscis monkey again. But what emerged was another species on monkey, a lion-tailed macaque. There must have been a whole bunch of them living under the house, using this hole as an entry point. The macaque sat on its arse and bared its sharp teeth at me before letting out a stomach rumbling growl. I backed slowly away, ill-equipped to defend myself against the onslaught of an enraged primate. It continued to growl threateningly, so I crossed the road to put some distance between myself and it. I couldn't return to the house whilst it remained, there was no way I could outrun it to the front door. All the while, it kept up its horrible growl.

Once across the road, I climbed onto the overpass at the railway station to get a better vantage point and take some photos for friends and family, who would never believe me otherwise. From my elevated position I was bewildered to discover more animals roaming the street. There were a couple of spotted hyenas skulking around, a giant panda with three cubs, and another bear of a similar size I could not correctly identify. An Andean or sun bear, perhaps. The two bears began to fight. The normally placid panda, in defence of its cubs, fastened its jaws to the neck of the unidentified bear and I heared a crunch as bones were ground. An old man joined me on the bridge and I pointed out the fight. He did not seem overly surprised by the sudden appearance of exotic animals in the village.

A smaller type of monkey, a vervet or spider monkey, scampered up the stairs to the bridge, so I descended on the opposite side before it could reach me, all the while talking the old man's ear off about how all this had started. I needed to get back to the house, where my daughter was left alone, but the only way to do so would be to take a long detour through the back fields. I made it through an alleyway and came out on the other end to see the farmer's field tranformed into a vista of mostly African animals. There was an elephant with its calf, a herd of zebras, lots of ostriches, a couple of okapi, some antelopes, a hippo mauling the other animals, and duelling bears wearing boxing gloves. Sticking to the perimeter fence, I began to edge around the field, hoping none would notice me.

About halfway across, I reached an upright red beanbag (like the kind found hanging in fun houses) which I could safely hide behind. I dragged it along with me, keeping myself hidden from the animals. But I did not see the lioness stalking me. She attacked from the side, accompanied by her young cub. I thrust the beanbag at her, trying to protect myself from her jaws and claws. The youngster was mewling for milk, getting in the way and providing a distraction. But the lioness was not to be deterred, and she pressed the attack. Again I blocked the worst with the beanbag, but I she was too strong and it was only a matter of time before she got a lethal grip on me. I wasn't going to make it... Luckily I woke up at that moment. 

Voodoo and Massacre

I was at the University of Essex with my wife and daughter, on a visiting trip. We were lodging at a rundown apartment in a shanty village where the north towers had previously stood. The Brutalist architecture had given way to scraggly fields, dirt tracks of red soil, and a large population of rural Koreans. It was our last day and my wife was in the apartment having a shower, whilst I was out walking the squares with my daughter. I noticed a foreign man throwing a large plastic bottle onto the floor and walking off. The brittle plastic shattered and scattered everywhere. Outraged at the damage it would do to animals if they swallowed it, I gathered up the shards, walked after the man and threw it back at him. His family came over to protest, all gibbering incoherently at me. My daughter asked me why he didn't put his rubbish in the bin and I told her to ask him. A slanging match ensued, during which he threatened my daughter. This would not do. We engaged in fisticuffs and had to be dragged apart by his family. I stalked back to the shanty village, cursing him for a degenerate.

When I arrived at the village, something alarming was taking place. Chickens were having their throats slit and gangs of shifty Koreans were congregating in corners, glaring daggers at us. I heard chanting coming from the main building of the village, followed by the screaming of a woman, who sounded as though she were being tortured. I hurried back to the apartment and told my wife to begin packing her things immediately, because we were leaving. She is always very slow getting ready and my frustation mounted as I heard more screams from outside. Her belongings lay scattered all over the apartment and she was taking her time in the shower. She wanted to know what the rush was, I insisted there was no time to explain. I suddenly realised with a sickening lurch that our daughter was gone. Frantically, I ran outside to search for her and found the village in an uproar.

All around, people were being butchered on the spot with machetes, their mangled bodies strewn around in the dust. My wife joined me to look for our daughter and we suspected that she had been taken to the main, central house where the chants were coming from. We broke in on what looked like a voodoo blood sacrifice, but there was no sign of our daughter. The men performing the ritual grabbed Li and a shaman uttered a curse on her. Her body went limp and her soul left her body, becaming trapped in a wooden curtain railing where it would linger forever more. Her voice continued to communicate with me as though unaware of her predicament. I tried to tell her that she was dead because she was too slow getting ready, and that our daughter was lost, possibly dead. Perhaps not the most comforting words I could have offered, but I was angry and scared.

I fled from the scene of the massacre and was chased by the cultists. They shouted after me that they were trying to exorcise the demons that infested the village and the only way to do so was to sacrifice people. I escaped into the fields whilst they fanned out in a search party to hunt me down. I managed to blend in with the crowd of a travelling circus and eventually lost them. I grieved for the massacre of my family and vowed to take revenge once I had gathered my strength. What followed was a sort of training montage where I navigated a series of obstacles in a city, traversing concrete alleys and climbing up ledges. I came to a long ladder that I had to ascend to complete the course. The was a lever at the bottom which, when pulled, set chainsaw blades whirring all the way up both sides of it. I had to climb to the top whilst the blades were active, keeping to the rungs only.

I was gribbed by vertigo and it took a long time to place the ladder in a sturdy position and summon the courage to climb it. Eventually, I kicked the chainsaws into motion and began the ascent. It was a wobbly climb and my legs almost gave way several times. I made it to the top and was back at the Korean shanty town. I pulled the ladder up after me and gripping it from the bottom, I was able to wield it like a giant chainsaw. The angry villagers descended on me with their machetes, but I was ready for them. With wide, sweeping attacks, I mowed them down with the ladder chainsaw. It was slow and cumbersome, but effective. Blood spattered in all directions as I hefted the ladder to and fro. I took grim satisfaction in tearing them apart, shards of bone and giblets of flesh spraying off. Still they continued to run at me, screaming that I was the demon made manifest. The massacre went on and on, but it would be too tedious to describe it all so I'll end here.

When in Rome

In my latest dream, I had moved back to Heartbreak Hotel, into my old room in the extension at the back of the house. I didn't have a child, and I don't think I was even married anymore, although Li was staying over in my room. I had devolved into a sort of adult teenager, and my shelves were full of the paraphenalia of yore. McFarlane horror figures, Resident Evil figurines, Star Wars toys, and action men. I also had a gaming PC set up on which I was playing Ark. I kept receiving expensive action men in the post, the latest being a weird looking solider with an extra large mouth. Li asked who was sending them, and I said I suspected it was Mr Robot. This was later confirmed on Whatsapp. Li told me to put a stop to it, as there was already too much clutter in my room, and she didn't think it was right that I was receiving pricey gifts.

In the next phase of the dream, I went on holiday with Mr Robot to Rome. We stepped off the ferry, and a short coach ride later, we were ready to explore the ancient city. I had with me my VR headset, which I hoped to use in the hotel we were staying at. I should have left it behind, as it was a cumbersome things to carry around. After exploring the dusty streets for some time, Mr Robot announced that he wanted to revisit a chapel near the tombs of the Ancient Kings, where we had apparently taken photos on an earlier holiday. It was full of tourists, mostly teenagers hanging around. In the centre of the chapel was a skeleton spread eagled on a big stone slab. We took it in turns to climb over the railing and lie down on the skeleton. When we did so, a trick of some holographic technology installed made our bodies disappear, leaving only our heads on the skeleton. We attracted the attention of some other tourists who were jealous of what we were doing. We took some silly photos and were then approached by a young Asian girl. bemused by our antics.

Mr Robot began to mingle and flirt with some of the teenagers, I sat down with the Asian girl and chatted for a bit. We both learned that around noon, the entire city would be flooded by the tides and remain submerged for two hours. During this time, locals and tourists usually absconded to high rise hotels for siestas or bars and restaurants for recreation. I looked down into the courtyard below the chapel and saw that the water was already lapping up the walls and flooding the streets. It was too late to go back to our hotel. Mr Robot was excited to go drinking and pooning with the teenagers and he wasted no time in diving into the water with them. The only way to access the rest of the city now was to hold one's breath, swim beneath some archways, and out onto the main road where the restaurants and bars were situated.

It took me a little more time to make up my mind to follow, and whilst I delayed, the water rose higher. I bobbed on the surface, weighing my options. I considered waiting it out back in the chapel, but everyone had left and it would be lonely. I also realised that now even the chapel's entrance was underwater, so I would need to dive under to go back there anyway. I might as well try and follow Mr Robot and the others. I dived below the cool green water and forced myself to keep my eyes open. With some strong strokes, careful not to disorient myself, I swam beneath the archway and into the flooded thoroughfare. There were a few fish swimming around, banded red and white groupers with frilly fins. I avoided them and resurfaced. I saw several other swimmers disappearing in different directions, down various submerged streets and alleyways, but no sign of Mr Robot.

In this main plaza were some larger fish, long and ribbon-like, churning up the water in agitation. They looked like oarfish, and I gave them a very wide berth. I would need to control my phobia whilst I found my way around. I climbed out onto some stone steps and followed them up to a smoky restaurant. I couldn't see anyone recognisable inside, and it seemed to be reservation only. I wanted to find a rooftop terrace where I could sit and knock back some cocktails until the flood subsided. I spent the next two hours alone, wandering aimlessly. Eventually, the water ebbed lower as the tide retreated, and the raw stink of sewage rose to greet me. All around, green sludge caked the cobbled roads, columns, statues, and railings. Dead fish lay everywhere, flapping feebly. Cleaning vehicles appeared and began scubbing the bespattered streets.

I decided that I wanted to go back to the hotel. It was a long journey trying to avoid stepping on all the dying fish, and at one point a small octopus. When I got back to the hotel, I saw with relief that we were on a high enough storey that our belongings were nice and dry. However, with a sinking sensation, I realised that I had left my VR headset in the chapel. Rome is known for its vagrants and pickpockets, so chances were high it would be gone, but I had to try. I couldn't afford to lose £500. There was still no sign of Mr Robot, he must have been still out enjoying himself, so I headed off alone. I got very lost trying to retrace my steps and relocate the chapel. I tramped the sludge-caked central thoroughfares, dazzled by the stone statues of gods, heroes, lions and statesmen. The cleaning vehicles were out in force, sucking up the detritus of the flood. It seemed crazy that this happened every day, and I thought about what an inconvenience it must be to live there.

Hours later, I was hot, tired, and hungry, and no closer to finding the chapel. I even caught a tourist tram that went all over the city, getting off at the Tombs. I had a good look around, but the city had seemed to change its layout since the flooding, and everywhere looked the same. There was nothing for it but to return to our port of origin, where we first got off the ferry, and go from there. I was at the coast, the sea behind me twinkling vast and blue. Before me lay a dusty road leading up a wooded hill, at the top of which was a large marble building that tourists had to pass through to reach the city. We had been here earlier for passport control. Still mindful of the many fish scattered around, I retraced our steps. So far so good. I remembered some wooden planks we had ascended. As I traversed these, a bellboy ran out and began to shake them vigorously, whilst I struggled to retain my balance. It was supposed to make things exciting for tourists, but now it was more of an annoyance. I just wanted to find my VR set and join up with Mr Robot.

I reached the top floor of this building and emerged into the street, but the place remained like a labyrinth. I cursed myself for not having paid attention when we first arrived. Alleyways twisted off into Escherean convolutions, passing through bazaars selling bric-a-brac, opium dens, cafes, and the like. I walked in hopeless circles, trying to find identifying landmarks but failing to commit the geography to memory. I find it very hard to get lost in real life. Eventually I woke up, annoyed that I had been unable to find the chapel. There is always that slight delay upon waking, where half of your brain is still in the dream, trying to tie up unfinished business. This time is was particularly irksome. Somewhere in Rome, an Italian teenager is having the time of his life playing with my VR set. The psychogeography and surreal landscape of the flooded city was inspiring enough that I will eventually work it into a novel.

Greenstead Kinkajous

I had an involved dream of myself travelling back and forth through the mean streets of Greenstead at night on some forgettable errand, accompanied by my name Beibei. Most of the journey consisted of traversing a long dark alley behind houses. Garages, garden fences, and dustbins lined the alley, with intermittent bushes hiding hungry animals. We were constantly approved by the kinkajous that lived in the alley, begging us for food. They were strange creatures in that they were entirely devoid of their characteristic woolly fur. Indeed, they looked as though they had been flayed, with their pink bald flesh lit up by my torch. Although they were not hostile to me, I was worried they might bite my dog, who kept chasing after them. I called him back again and again but he ignored me. I don't remember much else about the dream other than the kinkajous.

Essex University Werewolf

Last night I was back at the University of Essex, working at the International Academy's Learning Resource Centre. Part of my job was to arrange training sessions for prospective students to become Jedi, but it never really amounted to much. Apart from a scattering of International students, there were no staff members present and no management to offer guidance on what I was supposed to do. The university was hollowed out and was more like a ghost ship than a centre for learning. It could be that it was the holidays.

At one point during my lonely shift, I left to go to the toilet and encountered a huge female werewolf with long brown hair, a terrifying face, and an ear-shattering scream. She seemed to be stuck mid-transformation, which made her even more horrifying. I ran for my life, she in hot pursuit. Through classrooms, down corridors, upstaircases and down into basements I ran, but I couldn't shake her. Just when I thought I might have lost her in the university labyrinth, she loomed up in the room before me and let out her nerve-shredding scream.

I was almost paralysed from fear, but somehow I managed to run back the way I had come. There's nothing more frightening than when you're being chased only for the pursuer to suddenly appear in front of you. I don't think I've ever been more scared of a monster in a dream. The most probable reason for dreaming this nightmare is because the same night, I tried Resident Evil Village in VR for the first time and was scared out of my wits.

Diminutive Mammals

It's been a long time since I updated this, I haven't had any notable dreams that weren't tedious domestic dramas or train journeys fraught with anxiety. Last night's is worth mentioning as it had a recurring theme of small furry mammals with odd vocalisations. In the first part, I was in my sister's room, in my old Plymouth house from childhood, yes the haunted one. My sisters had a pet Squirrel Monkey, a tiny little thing, that came to perch on my shoulder and twitter strange words in my ear. It had learned how to speak in human language, much like a parrot, albeit a garbled, broken sort of lexis. 

I had with me my book of mammals, a superb publication that features an illustration of every mammal species known to science. As one might imagine, most of this book is made up of rats and bats. I asked the monkey if it could tell me which species of squirrel monkey it was, as there are around 7 different types. I was flicking slowly through the primate section to build excitement when my mother walked in. I told her what we were doing, and she began turning the pages for me, but much too roughly for such an expensive book, treating it like a magazine. I didn't want to tell her off, so I was eager to quickly find the page on squirrel monkeys. I could not locate it and the monkey lost interest.

Later on, I was in a shopping mall with my family when we heard the most alarming growling. It sounded as though it might have came from a large dog, but it turned out to be an injured rat. The creature had been stepped on by the ground, and it was half bald, almost like it had escaped from a lab. I told everyone to stay away from it incase it was diseased. I wondered whether to help it when a big annoying man in white boots stomped into view and decided to manly take care of the matter. He raised a large knobbed stick and brought it down on the rat's head, putting an end to its suffering, and its threatening growls.

Aquarium Escapes

I was first in line for a Sea Life centre's morning opening. I wanted to do some research for my novel, which features an aquarium. Whilst waiting for the counter to open, some people turned up behind me and arranged themselves in such a way that I thought they were trying to push in. Luckily, when the ticket attendant arrived, she served me first, and I paid £20 for an adult ticket. 

I proceeded down the corridor and into the first room, where low tanks of cuttlefish, smiling eels, and wolffish were situated. I was perturbed to see the creatures clustered around the top of the tank, on top of one another, with their heads sticking out over the top. I entered deeper into the room and on the floor, behind the door, some of the fish had spilled onto the floor. When they saw me approach, there was a flurry and flopping of fins and tentacles as they scarpered back into the tank. I saw the coiled arms of cuttlefish squirming against the tiles. I ran back the way I had come, horrified.

Two old ladies went ahead of me into the same room. I peeked in after them and saw that many of the larger eels and wolffish had also plopped out of their tanks and onto the floor. The old women shrieked as the fish flapped around their feet. A smaller eel, seeing the open door, made a wriggly beeline for it, and for me.

I ran off in another direction, down a main corridor that led deeper into the aquarium. The eel was following, I could hear its wet body slapping the floor as it slithered after me. With no time to look back, I ran as fast as I could, the awful sounds always close behind. When I came to a room with a white countertop on which souvenirs were sold, I leapt up on top of it, much to the surprise of some other guests.

An employee saw the eel, and went to pick it up. "What are you doing here?" he sighed, as though it were a regular occurrence. He picked it up in his bare hand and threw it into a bucket of water. My whole body twitched and prickled in fear, lest one of the squirmy beasts should unexpectedly make contact with me. My wife poked me awake and I jumped out of my skin. 

Feral Giraffe

In Lucid Leaking, I wrote about my fear of water invading my home and damaging the walls. Well, that dream turned out to be a prophetic one, as my washing machine packed in yesterday and flooded the house with black water. I spent most of the day cleaning, and it was most galling in that I have only a few days ago paid £330 for a professional deep clean. The dream must have been a warning.

Last night I dreamt that I was exploring the countryside on a grey and drizzly day. I wanted to find somewhere for a wild swim, as previously I had noticed still pools of water enclosed by moist, verdant banks. I wasn't having any luck finding these idyllic pools, but I did stumble across the homestead of an old hermit in the woods. He came outside to see what I wanted, and I asked if I was trespassing. He assured me I wasn't, but that I should watch out for the feral giraffe in the area.

It wasn't long before the beast in question made an appearance, winding between the trees and rubbing its mangy, moulting neck against the rough trunk of a tall pine. The giraffe was someway between an adult and baby, perhaps a teenager, and it seemed quite emaciated. It also had jagged teeth protruding from its mouth, and feverish, bloodshot eyes. The giraffe spotted us and gave chase in that rocking horse gait they are known for.

The hermit turned and ran into the bracken, clearly experienced in the animal's agressive ways. The giraffe rounded on me, and I clambered onto a large fallen tree trunk to try and escape. It tried to mount the trunk to get at me but it got wedged between two branches. It gnashed its dirty teeth in an attempt to bite my shoulder, but I took the opportunity to jump off the tree and escape. I wonder if this dream will also be prophetic - a usually gentle animal turning feral.

Lucid Leaking

Lucid dreaming is a strange phenomenon where the dreamer exists in a state between the conscious and unconscious plane. I have only had two or three of them in my life, but the other night I was fortunate enough to experience another. In the dream, my house had altered and was also a hotel for paying guests. There was a bar in the lobby, in which my friend Darren sat getting drunk. Upstairs in the master bedroom, there was another floor encircling the room, a library with rows of bookcases, ladders, and reading tables. The two Dali pictures that hang on the wall behind my bed, 'The Persistence of Memory' and 'Swans Reflecting Elephants' had fallen off onto the floor. The wallpaper had bubbled and peeled off, and rivulets of water streamed down the damaged wall onto the pillows.

Elsewhere in the room, water had eroded the masonry and soft chunks of plaster were dribbling off the walls.  Cornices were crumbling. The room was a mess and in urgent need of repair. My wife pointed out that the water was coming from a skylight above our bed, up in the library area, that had been left open since we moved in four years ago. I had never even realised such a skylight existed. It was raining heavily outside. Using a metal extendable iron pole, I pulled the hook on the skylight and closed it. I phoned my plumber, Jack, who exists in real life, and explained the situation, begging him to come over to attend to the problem. Jack was less than enthusiastic about the job, and claimed that it was above his skill level.

It was at this point that I woke up, but also remained in the dream. With one leg in the dream world and the other in reality, I experienced the immense relief that my house wasn't falling to pieces, and yet I was still on the phone to Jack. I could see my wife lying in the bed next to me, and knew that it was time to get my daughter ready, yet this phone call needed to be wrapped up. I told Jack not to worry, that it was all merely a dream and my room was fine. He was understandably confused, and grew annoyed that I was wasting his time. I then explained to him that he wasn't real, but a figment of my imagination. The poor man experienced deep existential dread and began to have a meltdown after realising his entire existence was a sham.

This raised some interesting questions for me on the nature of reality, and on those liminal spaces between the different states of being. Jack is a real person, who I've hired numerous times, and yet in this instance, he was not real, although he still possessed a clear identity and sense of existence. After concluding the phone call, I then had a choice of whether to return fully to the dreamworld and continue the dream, or get out of bed and begin my day. I opted for the latter, but for a fleeting moment, I had full control over both halves of the brain.