This one, like many other begins in a hotel. Hotels seem to have a significant symbol in dreams.
I think hotel represent an aspect of myself- the same way that house represents self. Except hotel is bigger and more public and less privacy, less sense of identity you can imprint upon it. A house you can make your own. But hotels provide a temporary fulfillment. And all marks of human existence are erased from it after each stay. Moby has an album where he talks about this concept more which always fascinated me. And the thoughts seem to creep in my dreams when I'm trying to discover my sense of self, my identity- public and private.
So, hotel.
I am running, exploring probably going in a few rooms I shouldn't. The building is old and enormous. Lots of stairs, darker lighting. The hotel is sectioned off into two main parts and one of the two halves is reserved for a college. It vaguely resembles the twin towers. I venture over to the college portion, less guests, less of the general public: out-of-bounds. At first I sort of pretend to just be a student. I take an elevator and it travels remarkably fast but it isn't fun. It's dangerous and I can feel it surging upward with such a force I am almost positive it's going to shoot right through the roof and into the sky. And it does, but the cart is attached to large springs and it almost feels more like a poorly designed funhouse carnie kind of ride. Poor architecture masked with grandeur.
I go down stairs, avoiding guards and all other people. It's getting later. I find a deserted stairwell that's almost black it's so dark and no windows nearby. I want to go down and see the basement. But I hear someone in the next room which is somewhat designed like a formal dining room. It looks English.
The person comes and goes but a different door off to my left catches my eye. I come to it and open it slowly and see that instead of a room it's a field. with grass and trees and even a light wind. But i know it isn't the real outdoors. This building is in the middle of the city. There would in no way be a field. The grass is slightly neon tinted, eerie and just hints at being unnatural. But to anyone just walking and not really looking closely, it looks real enough. A boy comes up to me innocently and at first I worry that he will attract attention and get us caught and thrown out. We're definitely not supposed to be in here. But we are alone and no one is running up to make us leave. It's quiet like a perfect calm dusk. It's pleasant in this mock-outdoors. We start walking together. Faintly getting acquainted. He's about my age but slightly younger. We walk around a bend, marked by a dirt curved path. There are a few towering trees and also some birch trees. We are a long ways off from that door I entered now which seems to have closed by itself because I can't see it in the distance. I don't care. This place is interesting.
We walk, starting to feel very separate from the hotel and in a sort of sanctuary. It's nice. We even feel a little happy, kind of exploring like kids. Then I see headlights coming. Someone see us? We duck lower but the headlights are coming our way. They must know we're here! We run and he drops a pocketknife. It's a dark wood and old-fashioned. He doesn't stop to get it. I feel encumbered by worrying about it while he clearly doesn't care. We keep running. I try to run for the door but he decides differently and runs towards a shadowy part of the area where there is a lot more bush and thick trees and less of this moony light. It's a bit ominous over there. I don't really want to go that way. He doesn't look back to see if I follow him. He just presses on determinedly. He seems to know exactly where he's going. Before I can decide what I am going to do the little golf car is upon me and it's an old man who surprisingly is not angry at me. He just says I should leave and also "stick to the light" And then I notice for the first time that there is a distinct pattern to the light. It's always in patches, as if there are street lamps but there are none. And most of it is by the door I first came in, which, has seemed to suddenly appear again. I take a few steps towards it thinking I should best take the safe route and just get out while I'm still not in trouble. The man in the golf car says "your friend jumped into the eye. he chose the more difficult path" I take some steps towards the place he had gone. I see a kind of valley in the distance but it's hard to make out. I walk down a bit more trying to see this "eye" he meant. I figure it must be a nickname for a landmark. The ground starts sloping down and makes me walk faster until I break into more of a jog and then a full-out run. I'm scared I can't stop but feel this odd urge to run. Then I reach a kind of edge, maybe cliff and instead of panicking and trying to stop myself I jump, and I jump hard, upward and suddenly from absolutely nowhere a large parachute bursts from behind me and I start floating down. (kind of reminds me of the chutes in Assassin's Creed) Within seconds I see the eye he mentioned though it's not a natural formation. It's a large human eye that must be hundreds of feet wide, darting around and taking in the scene around it. I stare, awestruck sort of amazed and horrified at the same time. Then this weird pull in the air, like magnetism, starts sucking me towards the eye which is now looking straight at me. (this eye kinds of reminds me of that giant one in Lord of the Rings except it's not red and fiery but it is like a gateway... also kind of like the gates in Oblivion, the Elder Scrolls game) It continues to pull me closer and closer until I pass right through the pupil like a hole. so black.
everything is black. seems like nothingness
then I am in another scene. It's an apartment and I have 3 other people with me including the boy I saw earlier. We seem to know each other and act like it. It's weird in dreams sometimes strangers are just there as filler, like in reality you have no idea who they are but in the dream you act as a group. You already have your acquaintance established.
The 4 of us are alone at first. Then a small boy runs in. He doesn't seem to see or hear any of us. He can't see us at all. It's like we aren't really there. His mother soon follows him in and he looks very unhappy and uncomfortable. He twists with the unmistakable air of reluctance. I wonder at this odd behavior. Then the mother sits beside him on the bed and puts her arm around him. They say nothing. The boy still looks tense and won't look her in the face. She grabs his tiny hand and presses it to her heart, something that appears endearing.... then she slides it down further so that she's making him touch her inappropriately. The boy seems to snap into this automatic mode and all the emotion leaves his face. He starts to undo her shirt without her asking and she leans back as if enjoying it. The 4 of us continue to stand there watching this sexual abuse feeling like we all swallowed worms. But we're invisible people, standing in on what seems to be another time, something separate. The mother doesn't see or hear us either. The boy keeps touching her with a blank expression but with a strange dexterity in his hands like he's done this a lot of times before. Her shirt is off and bra too and soon enough all her clothes.
She crouches on all fours and soon the boy is (god this is hard to write but it was in the dream so... )
he's performing cunnilingus. And I can see her vulva and it's taken on this almost supernaturally grotesque form. It very enlarged, almost like testicles and it's so dark it's almost black and it's spiked with hundreds of tiny bumps. It looks almost like a weapon. It looks disgusting and certainly not human.
Then they fade away, in thin air. We sit there astounded. What happened?
Suddenly we see the same boy except he's older now, probably 16-17 and he's naked. He has a girl in the room, blonde with it in a pony tail. The sun is brighter outside and they are in swim suits, well partially. You can tell they'd been swimming all day. Young people at the beach. They are in this truly adolescent embrace of having sex without experience- maybe almost like it's a rebellion. In walks that same mother suddenly except she looks a little older and she is livid. She starts screaming immediately and looks as if she wants to kill the girl more than kill her son. Jealous?
Then they all fade away. We wait for another scene. But minutes pass. Nothing comes.
What did we just see? And how? Were those memories? None of us has questioned yet how we got there or how we all came together. The other 3 decide to move on. I look through the boy's other window while they talk. His bedroom has two windows one at the head of his bed which was the more obvious window. Then he had a smaller one with the curtains more drawn that was above the dresser. I walked up to it and for the first time realize that the view from this window is not the outdoors but another hallway. and it's lined with doors, and they are all numbered. another apartment? I barely have time to think anymore about this because they other 3 have decided we are all pressing on and right now. Okay, okay. But I was curious about that hallway and those doors. Seems like a separate place than this though it is placed right next to it. Everything is so weird.
We get maybe 15 steps from his bedroom into a different hallway that seems to lead back outside when I realize that I had a cell phone on me the whole time and I had set it down in the boy's bedroom and forgotten it there. I want to go back. They don't want to wait for me. I go back anyway knowing they will probably leave me. I feel encumbered once again by possessions. But I want the phone.
I get to the room and see the phone sitting on the dresser but before I can even touch it I hear loud footsteps from the other side, not my 3 friends. This is one person, alone, and coming fast... I don't think this is a memory. BAM! the bedroom door flies open and in walks that same woman, the mother except she is very old now and much taller. Like all this whole scene was slightly miniature to reality.
I grab a small mattress and try to hide under it but it's no use. She's already seen me.
She starts screaming "what are you doing in here?!?" But I'm more distracted that she has the same dark brown eyes as the one I has come in through as a portal. One of her eyes is glass though and bright blue. As if she took out her real eye to make that portal. But it was definitely her eye out there acting as a portal. We've traveled into her mind, her dark places, her memories. I think she's going to kill me. I;m not sure what she will do. But before I can decide what to say to her I wake up from the fear of her storming in. It felt like the devil rushing up on you. Terrifying!
Something about this dream gave me a feeling of, well other people can be consumed in their own darkness and it's hard to get to them and they often lock you out. And it's scary to get that close to so much evil. But under it is still someone who is every bit as human as you are. Even though that woman truly scared the shit out of me, I immediately started feeling somewhat sorry for her after I woke. Sympathy for the devil? She'd done something terrible to her son, yes. But why? And she seemed to feel some remorse or at least shame, since she was harvesting all these memories and hiding them away.
Dipping into her mind really reminded me of the Pensieve in Harry Potter. It was the same kind of entry and also no one within the scene hears or sees Harry.
More later, probably edits... That's all for the time being.
