Dreams: Part One: Horsewaterpipe

Dreams August 29, September 1, 2014

Part 1 - Horsewaterpipe

I had these dreams on separate nights, but the mood of each made them brethren, brethren of water.

I was on a hill in a field overlooking a country road with my hand on a horse.

The mare and I stood in the shadow of a great bridge that spanned over the field, the road and beyond. The bridge was much too grand to have been designed for the slender lane; the road’s embankment curved down into deep blankness, and I guessed there was water down there, but it was hidden by the slope.

My left hand rested on the horse’s mane. She didn’t have a saddle, but I understood that I wasn’t supposed to ride the horse, instead my task was to lead her away from the bridge along the road.

I started down the hill, gently gripping the mane, and the horse calmly accompanied me to the road. When we reached the pavement, the traffic on the road increased dramatically. Cars rushed by under the bridge, and the wind from their passing spooked my companion. She snorted, pounded her hooves on the asphalt.

A Mini Cooper stopped under the bridge, the driver waving at me to cross. I shook my head, pointing down the road, indicating we didn’t want to cross. He honked his horn and shouted out the window, “Hurry up and cross, asshole! The pressure is building behind me.”

I ignored him and led the horse along the curb. The guy in the mini drove up beside us and slowed, yelling, “Damn you for wasting my time, horse and man!” Then he sped off, and a surge of violent, noisy traffic followed him. The horse was again startled by the chaos, and she broke away from me and bolted across the road through a narrow gap between the cars.

“Stop, —!” I cried. “—.” She didn’t have a name.

I danced across the two-lane, screaming, “Horse! Horse!”, but the animal just pelted down the grassy embankment toward a muddy and sluggish creek and plunged in. The water eddied around what appeared to be columns of paperback books stacked neatly in groups of four, which were suspended a few centimeters above the surface. Trying to read the title on the volume closest to me, I tripped and crashed down into the water. It smelled like the gator enclosure at a neglected zoo.

The horse swam around the islands of books as if exercising. I called for her to come to me, but she whinnied and doubled around a paperback tower underneath the bridge, then swam in a straight line in front of me to my right, where the creek flowed into an enormous concrete pipe. I pushed through the water to catch her, yet the dirty water rippled before me, revealing the shell of an enormous snapping turtle. The turtle dipped down beneath the surface, its head aimed for my crotch. I squealed, water from its dive splashing into my mouth, and slammed into its carapace with the back of my hand. It retreated for a moment, then sunk back towards my private bits. I grabbed one of the paperbacks from a nearby stack; the pillar didn’t topple, just merely descended one unit from the removal. I cracked the spine of the paperback against the snapper’s outstretched neck, and the creature jolted and swiftly spun in the water, swimming toward the other shore.
Not wanting to get the book too wet, I hurled it onto the nearest bank of the creek and swam after the horse. My errant companion had climbed up into the pipe, where the water was less than a foot deep. I spat out lizardshit water, coughing “Waitwait!”

The horse cantered down through the pipe into a murky green.

I followed.

Dream Part One Over