I, Too, Have Been Chased by Monsters in My Dreams

Until I turn around and kill them.

(Digital)

I have all the other standard nightmare fare: the slow motion running, the pervasive darkness, the crumbling teeth, and the feeling of hopelessness. Weirdly, the worst nightmare I’ve ever had, from an affective standpoint, prominently featured one of those 1980s, orange, plastic Halloween candy pumpkins.

The worst dreams I have now involve my dog not listening when I call him and disappearing into warrens and mazes of apocalyptic wastelands. Sometimes, in these dreams, someone has stolen him. So I kill them. Usually in unspeakably brutal ways. There is some dream-analysis truth buried in the fact that when they come for me alone, I sometimes can’t fight them. But every time they take the Bert, I don’t just kill the monsters, I dismantle them.