Nightmare 52012

Woke up after a terrible nightmare. I was driving across a dark landscape in my Volkswagen, my passenger somebody I didn’t know. It was night, but so black the road over my shoulder was devoured. We stopped at a nondescript house at the side of the road, shaped like a brick with no windows and one door. An orange light over the door illuminated the night. I was expectant about the house, felt like I knew somebody there. I turned around for a moment staring off into blank fields. When I looked back, she was there, only a few inches away from my face. I think she was ---, I wasn’t sure. Her face was a burnt orange. She held a bundle of blankets in her arms, which she handed to me. “Hey!” I said. She moved her head in a careful circle, slowly examining my face. I felt self-conscious and wondered whether my features had changed so much she wouldn’t recognize me. But then she stopped and kissed me. I might as well have kissed a woman composed of ancient paper, it was so dry and featureless. I got in the car with the bundle and drove off. The dream shifted. I was in the corridor of my apartment building with a dolly, moving phantom objects into my home. Walking through the doorway, my apartment turned into a huge industrial loading dock facing a vast parking lot where my car was parked. The left side of the dock was a metal grill, with panels that collapsed into a sort of huge threshing machine operated by means of a lever emerging from the center of the dock. A high wall divided the grille from the rest of the area. Several men were working and laughing here. I rolled the dolly down a ramp to stow it in my car. “I’m finally done with this, guys,” I said. As I approached the vehicle, I passed a beautiful woman. And from around a corner came running -----. He was exercising. He stopped to give the woman his lightning smile. He told a joke, making us both laugh. But they didn’t hear or see me. I became a ghost, an invisible observer. The workers had gone inside for a break. ---- embraced the woman and they moved up onto the metal portion of the dock, which was blocked from view. The couple lay down on the metal and kissed. Renewed laughter filled the air as the men returned to work. The woman disentangled herself from --- and jumped up, running off into the distance. ---- started to get up, but a man with blonde hair, unaware of his presence, pressed the lever. The grille opened up and the he fell inside. I was horrified but couldn’t say or do anything, only watch as if I was at the cinema. He started to shout from below, but the men were laughing too loud. The blonde man clutched the lever in both hands and pulled, causing the machine to start. Immediately the screams. Oh my God the screams. “Ahhhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhh!” Constant and horrible. The men stopped laughing. The one who had pulled the lever froze for a moment amidst the shrieks, terrified and unsure what to do. To stop the screams, he pulled the lever all the way. Silence. My ghostly form floated above the metal, giving me a horrid close-up of what was left below, the man ground into sections. His severed head faced up through the grille, mouth opened in an eternal howl of misery. The worker had stepped around the wall and looked down into the carnage. His face had transformed into animated clay, blue eyes filling with white tears. “It isn’t my fault,” he said. “I didn’t know he was there. You can’t blame me.” Dream Over