A contemporaneous record of an odd and horrible dream

It’s Friday morning at 3:30 am and I just awoke from a horrific dream.  Here is what I remember:

The incident from which I awoke involved a woman I know who, in the dream, had just been involved in selecting the site for an organization’s conference.  We were walking up a steep set of stairs in what I believe was an old castle.  I was carrying some very heavy bound books, possibly the proposals of various sites that had bid on the conference.  She was walking alongside me.  There were other people around us, but my memory of them is fuzzy.

I asked her the name of the city that had been selected as the conference site, saying “is it Saint Laurent de l’Orange?” She responded, in a very definitive way: “Yes.”  That was followed almost immediately by “I think so,” but the way she said it, it was as if she had just told me, with confidence, the name of the city we were in.

We reached a landing on the stairway, a fairly large empty space.  At the far side of the space, there was an opening to the outside.  There was no window, no glass, no screen, just an opening in the stone wall to the outside.  As we reached the opening, I said “I’m cold,” to which she replied, “Don’t tell me you’re getting sick.  Only you would think it’s cold inside a cave!”

We turned away from the opening and began going up the stairs again. She then began to tell me of a member of the site selection committee who she had encountered earlier walking up these very same steps.  She told me he had been looking all around, muttering as if he were talking to another woman.  This other woman, it seems, had been involved in recommending the site but was not with him during his visit: “Where are you now, Cathy?  What do you think of Saint Laurent de l’Orange now, Cathy!”

As she was telling me this, she was reaching a switchback on the stairs, and turned, smiling, to look back at me. Just as she turned to look at me, I noticed that she was no longer “she,” but was instead a man.  In the dream, that did not seem strange, for some reason, but I didn’t really have time to think of it, because at that instant, instead of stepping on the stairs, he/she stepped into the empty space between them and fell, screaming, literally hundreds of feet to a hard stone surface below. I watched the fall, which seemed to take only a fraction of a second, and saw the moment of impact far below, seeing a splash of blood where the body impacted.  Almost immediately, I heard screams all around me, as others must have heard his/her scream and seen him/her fall.  I screamed, very loudly, and  I began rushing down the stairs, still carrying the massive bound books.  As I rushed down, I was thinking to myself that no one but me saw how she/he took that misstep; it was likely that I would be suspected of murdering her/him.

That’s when I awoke, my heart pounding.

That part of the dream had been preceded by either another dream entirely, or another somewhat disjointed part of the same dream.  Of that other dream/part I recall only bits and pieces: an older man, badly dressed in overly-worn clothing, had just joined, as president, a company I owned.  He arrived at my office, a tiny and badly-furnished place that looked to me like a sun porch, pushing a very old photocopier on wheels and dragging  a suitcase.  He opened the case to reveal a few papers and a large air-filled plastic “filler” that took up most of the space.  There were two or three others sitting around the table with us.  I don’t recall the conversation that followed, only that it was very loud and involved vehement disagreements of all the people present.  Then, at some point, it seemed the company owned an office building; three of us were talking to three men, who had a mobile car-wash service, about the possibility of giving us a piece of the revenue from every car-wash sale if we would market their services to every tenant company.

I’m sure there was more, but it’s gone now.  Odd, disturbing stuff!  Especially the fall and death of the person with whom I was discussing Saint Laurent de l’Orange.

 

About John Swinburn

"Love not what you are but what you may become."― Miguel de Cervantes
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One Response to A contemporaneous record of an odd and horrible dream

  1. Pingback: A Homicidal Mood | John Swinburn

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