Dear Friends,
I love waking up and having the house to myself. It’s so quiet and peaceful, usually, and the animals are happy to see me emerge from the bedroom. The morning rituals start to take shape and I can calm my mind after the dreams.
I’ve always been a very vivid dreamer and sometimes have serial dreams. If you are unfamiliar (supposedly they are rare), serial dreams are basically like having a tv series for your dreams. When I was much younger, I had serial dreams a lot. Lately they are more like snippets of a serial dream or vignettes with the same basic theme.
The worst of these happened off and on from about the time I was 12 or so until I was in my 30s. In my dream I would be in an amusement park. There were a number of rides at this place and some basic features that kind of resembled an amalgamation of Disneyland and Magic Mountain. This makes a lot of sense because those are the two parks I have spent the most time at in my life.
The curious thing about a serial dream is that sometimes, I would go through the same progression of events in the dream before it would add more to the story. This was especially scary when I was younger because all of the rides were horrific. The version of the haunted house in my dream was terrifying, though, as I got older and bolder (couldn’t resist) I would push myself to make it all the way through.
The best way I can describe that place was sort of like this: When you would go into the building, which was pretty non-descript from the outside. It was a large beige building with trees and shrubs and such around it. I would walk through the doors, usually alone, but sometimes there were people I knew with me at the park. They were glass doors that you pushed open, like any store in one of the many malls or strip malls here in Phoenix.
You entered into a long hallway that had darkened windows on each side, which was curious because the outside wall didn’t seem to exist anymore as soon as you walked into the building. As you got nearer to the actual entrance, and yes, even in dreams you can still wait in line, it became darker and the feeling I get when I’m writing this is that it was somewhat reminiscent of the feeling I got when I would watch Phantasm as a child. If you’ve seen it, you know what I mean.
Impending doom.
Once “on” the ride, it was just one horrific scene after another. People would jump out at me, touch me, say horrible things. There were images of all kinds of weird and horrifying things. I distinctly remember there being a mangled, horribly injured Kermit the Frog asking for help. This image must’ve been courtesy of seeing American Werewolf in London in 6th grade. I loved the movie, for sure, but there were some great effects in it for the time. It actually holds up pretty well, too.
The worst part of the haunted house, and all the rides at the weird dream amusement park, was the feeling they would give me. It was like being caught in a vise and not being able to wake up, move, run away, etc. The whole place was just basically fucked up. I’ve looked at dream books and such to find a meaning, but I’m not sure what that meaning is and I’ve never seen a description of fucked up amusement parks specifically mentioned in those dream books.
Perhaps my inner self wanted me to feel guilty for loving the trips I took as a kid to amusement parks so much? Maybe I saw myself deserving of going to hell? At one point, also in 6th grade, I was watching The Omen when I was pretty sick and had a nasty fever. A couple of kids at school called me “Damian” because I resembled the kid from the movie, I guess, at least in their eyes, and it messed with me a bit. Anyway, that night I was watching The Omen with my dad and feeling terrible, I convinced myself I really was Damian and had 666 on my head.
I went into the bathroom and searched as well as I could, especially in my feverish state, for the mark of the beast on my scalp. It was the first time I ever really considered suicide. I remember very clearly thinking about how I could save the world from my satanic future by taking the scissors and jabbing them into myself.
This is something I’ve never shared with anyone. It was a horrible moment and fucked with me for a long time. I got increasingly angry at school when someone would call me “Damian”, but I played it off like I didn’t care and even embraced it. I started saying some rather weird things to people who would call me it and pretty soon, they stopped. I remember telling one girl about how much I was going to enjoy owning her soul. That took care of that.
But back to the evil Disneyland…
I think it might have been my version of Hell. There was one ride that was just all these tubes going in every direction. They were very colorful. Imagine a giant building made of swimming noodles of all kinds of vibrant colors. At the center was where the ride started, and you would be guided into one of these tubes and away you would go. I remember my body being thrust into all different directions and moving so fast it was extremely uncomfortable. This was where my dream would end a lot of times because it was so scary. There was no light in the tube, but the sensation of moving so fast and changing directions randomly was overwhelming.
As I look back, I don’t remember ever getting off that ride when it would appear in my dream. I do remember always hoping that it would be as good as it looked when I approached it. That was another terrible part of these dreams. Some of the rides held a certain appeal and when they would appear in the dream, I wanted to go on them.
At least until they began.
See you tomorrow and sweet dreams.
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