Zoological Discoveries on the Ice Moon

I only remember the latter half of this dream, and it involved visiting a museum where I watched a Moon landing's live broadcast, transmitted in real time. I don't understand how I was seeing this, but it was like viewing an aquarium exhibit, with the Moon's atmosphere on the other side of the glass. Don't question the tech, I suppose. It was an Ice Moon, with an Antarctic landscape, all sheer ice and frozen seas. Two lads from a council estate were pratting around on the ice in the vicinity of the landed rocket, throwing large amounts of garbage around. It angered me that these chavs were given the responsbility of such an important mission. For the first time, animal life had been found in space, and the moment was sullied by hooliganism. The Moon was covered in penguins, the same species found on planet Earth, Humboldt's, I believe. This debunked the theory that all alien life must inevitably be different. 

I walked along the gallery, watching the penguins on the ice and diving into the water. Then it was boundless oceans and teetering icefloes. Off in the distance, beyond a colony of penguins, I spied the spiral tusk of a narwhal rising from the floes. So life here was just as it was on Earth, sort of - narwhals are native to the northern climes. Then I saw something different, primeval, and my heart was all a flutter with excitement. These were prehistoric relics, animals long extint on our planet. They looked like long-necked Pliosaurs, poking their snouts up from the sea, almost vertically. Their needle-like teeth jutted from their snouts, and on the heads and necks of the males were bristling red dragon quills. I watched in awe at the majesty of these terrifying beasts as they snatched penguins mid-dive, and performed their courtship rituals. 

I continued around the tank and saw smaller dinosaurs underwater. One was a Parasauralophus, running along the bottom of the tank like a hippo. It was far smaller than traditionally portrayed, so perhaps a juvenile. That, or we got it all wrong about dinosaur mass. One of the Pliosaurs dived down to the bottom and made a lunge for the parasaur. In the corner of the tank, wrapped protectively around a clutch of fish-like eggs, was a small, herbivorous dinosaur, Dryosaurus maybe, trying hard to camouflage itself from the predators. Being up close to the glass, I saw that it was covered in printed code, and I realised it was a sophisticated robot. More people turned up, and an annoying woman started screaming about the Pliosaurus, shouting that there were hundreds and thousands of them. 

London Adventures

I really enjoyed this latest dream. It started with me in a London pub, complete with a courtyard, in a slightly more secluded location than is typical of the scene. I was with Li, and my friends Darren and Irina. Spike and Druisilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer were also there, and I instantly hit it off with them both. We drank into the late hours of the night, and Li ordered tailored suits for both Spike and myself. In the end, we decided to sleep in the pub, and the landlord grudgingly obliged, moving aside tables and putting down sleeping bags. Obviously, he wasn't going to argue with two evil vampires. The next day, feeling a bit worse for wear, I awoke and told everyone about my amazing evening and new friends. Spike and Dru slept through the day, but we had plans to meet up again that same evening to carry on. 

In the meantime, I took my leave of Darren and Irina and struck off into the city alone to do some exploring. I don't know what happened to Li and Lulu. After a while, I noticed I was being followed. The day after my dream, I had a very clear impression of my stalker. He was male, and of human appearance, but moved in such a way as to denote the demonic. Now, however, my memory of him is more hazy. His lurching movements were accompanied by a frightening, sharp string-like musical motif, such as might be heard in a horror film. His body appeared almost segmented, like his torso was sliding back and forth from his hips. He wore a gilded suit, which reminded me of something mechanical.

He followed me into a shopping centre, and here was the maze wherein I could attempt to lose him. In and out of shops, up and down escalators I went. Eventually, after many clever maneuvers in the backrooms of the complex, I gave him the slip in Debenhams and quietly left the shopping centre via a hidden fire exit. This was risky, as there would be no witnesses around if he cornered and killed me, which I was convinced was his intention. I heard the horror music begin to play again... With legs feeling like jelly, I rounded the corner of the alley and broke line of sight. Then I was back into the crowded thick of the city, making with haste for the pub. 

Once there, I was disappointed to learn that Spike and Dru had split, and two other friends from Colchester had arrived to take their place. We tried to recreate the jollity of the night before, but as I was slighlty hungover still, and the company of the newcomers was, quite frankly, odious, we did not reach the heights of revelry hitherto attained. They wanted to sleep in the pub, but I was over that gig, and desired of nothing more than collecting my daughter from a fictitious relative's house (so that's where she was) and getting out of town. The vine had run its course, and this tourst longed for hearth and home. 

I arrived at Li's relative's swanky townhouse in a well-to-do part of London and picked up Lulu. We were to take a hackney carriage to the station. A hackney carriage is a fictitious contraption somewhere between a taxi and an old fashioned horse and carriage. Shaped like a small, two person gig with no horses attached, and powered by a motor controlled by foot pedals, the idea is to maintain one's balance and use gestures and subtle leanings to direct the vehicle. I loaded up the luggage in the back, climbed aboard with Lulu, and waved goodbye to the overbearing relatives. Then we were cutting through the streets, dodging pedestrians and traffic, station bound. Several times I lost my balance in the hackney carriage and had to stick a leg out to stabilise it in the manner of a bicycle come to a stop. It took some getting used to, but Lulu seemed to be enjoying the experience.

Eventually I got the hang of the thing, but not before I heard the dreaded strings of my relentless pursuer. I sadly awoke before an andrenaline pumping carriage chase could begin. 

Disney Belugas

I keep having dreams about Disneyland. I suppose it's a kind of zoo, with its cartoon animals, loud attractions and obnoxious guests. In this dream, I had taken my daughter there only to discover that many of my university friends and acquaintances were also present. We spent most of the time in the big main lobby area, where a variety of smaller attractions were housed, such as indoor play areas, eateries etc. There was also a library housing rare volumes. Here I found Sam Hearn, an old friend who has since seen fit to cut me out of his life for slights imagined. I spied on him through the books as he perused the titles. When I wearied of this, I took to browsing myself, and found a section on demonology. Big old occult books with leather bindings and metal clasps, as difficult to lift as they were to decipher. Some of the pages were so ancient that the ink had long ago dried up and vanished, leaving behind only blank parchment. 

But enough of this. Lucinda expressed a desire to visit the park's Polar Zone, which I knew was less about their marine life and more about going on the ice slide that went through the exhibit. We got there towards the end of the day, as evening was darkening the sky. There were still plenty of families coming and going. I saw my sisters through the glass, already much advanced into the icy tour, but I was unable to cut through the queue to join them. Lucinda and I patiently waited our turn, then boarded the ice slide with some other people. The water slide took guests past a pair of belugas who swam round and round in their designated chute. If timed correctly, the slide would intersect with them at the very moment they swam past. I tried to hold our toboggan back for this purpose, but there were other people on the ride in front of us, and they blocked our view with their big heads. I caught a glimpse of the snow white cetaceans barrelling past, but Lulu was too short to see.

The rest of the dream was a surreal farce involving buses, mistaken identity, and hysterical women with coffee. It is not fit to write down.

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.