Dreams I Hope You'll See

I think it would be more than a little strange if someone asked me to watch them exercise. I can think of a couple situations where such a thing could prove to be extraordinarily interesting. This isn’t one of those times. Still, I want to ask you to watch me.


As an exercise to write without smoking cigarettes, I wanted to try and concentrate enough to describe a dream. Anything can happen in a dream, and that’s why I love the picture for this one. We all know that there is SO much going on in dreams that it would take years to fully describe them with words, if such a thing were possible. And so I thought it would be a good thing to try to condense a dream into the snapshot that it was, because I have a lot of patience without that pesky nicotine. Harrumph.

For me, the hallmark of good writing is the ability for the words printed on a page to become more than what they are. That is, even though I look at a white page of letters, “little bugs”, as Tarzan saw them, I am transported, vividly, to the scene that the author describes. It’s not the same one the author saw, exactly, but I am able to see the one that really matters, and that’s just all kinds of awesome. When you forget you’re in a chair because you’ve been taken away to another world, well that’s good writing.

I had this dream the other day. It really stuck with me.

I’m standing outside. It’s crisp and cold. The sky is ice blue, a stark contrast to the light white and tan of the terrain. It’s so cold. Fence poles don’t move. Shadows do, but they’re slow. There are a few horses standing on the slope above a ditch in front of me. Some are brown and some spotted, and they’re slow too. There is both ice and water in the ditch. Light brown foam splotches a surface that isn’t liquid but isn’t solid, like a giant dirty root beer float. The horses’ breaths waft lazily, puffs of white smoke against a blue sky. I am squinting in the cold and bright, and there seems time to relax and gather thoughts.

Things started to happen, and I was caught, not frozen, but REALLY SLOW.

The person standing next to me (whom I did not know was there) shot one of the brown horses in the ass. I don’t mean in the cheek, like a cartoon, but right up the ass with a large caliber projectile. The report was deafening. The horse’s tail fluffed and for just a second, everything looked normal. It seemed like it took ten minutes for me to snap my head around to see the shooter, and then look back to the horse.

It shuddered, then stood still. The blues and tans of the scene gave way to bright red. Blood came pouring out from beneath the horse’s tail, soaking its legs. It shuddered again, spraying blood on each of its hindquarters. Its head moved left and right, not panicking, but definitely aware that something was very wrong. It shifted weight from one hind leg to the other, and as each gave out, its entire backside went down. It looked absurdly like it was doing a push up. The ground was hard and frozen and sloped toward the watery ditch. Its front legs tried to hold, but the hooves couldn’t find purchase and it slid down.

The horse took what seemed like forever to slide into the ditch. The farther it went, the wider its eyes became. It made no sound, save for the rushing of its breathing. The panic was palpable. I couldn’t move and I couldn’t look away. At the point where it should have gone completely under, it shifted onto its back, having nudged something beneath it. The carcass of another horse floated up next to the struggling one, bobbed a couple times in the dirty foam, then sank again. The water in the ditch was covering a lot of dead horses.

I turned to the person next to me to speak, but no one was there. I turned back to the horse and saw that only its nostrils and mouth were above water, flaring and chomping at the air. The other person, a man, the man who shot the horse in the first place was standing by the ditch. He was watching it drown, watching it edge closer. It bobbed among the other dead horses, and then he just stepped in to the freezing water and sank up to his waist. He pushed his arms in up to his elbows, causing the rigid legs of one of the bobbing dead horses to knock the dying one’s nose beneath the surface. Bubbles popped as the horse went under, disturbing the slushy foam. The sound froze in the cold. I was powerless to do anything. I watched the man grimace, then pull his arms out of the water, revealing hands that were very recently intact, but now had several fingers missing. I knew that having your fingers snapped off had to hurt, especially when it was that cold. I watched his expression. His eyes widened, and his mouth opened, and I couldn’t wait to hear what he had to say…and then I woke up.

And that’s the real bitch about dreams, huh? I don’t know what it means. I just want to know if you can see it. If you can, I’m doing my job. Thanks for watching.