Woken by the terror of being exposed for a transgression I might have committed 40 years ago, that’s how this dream ended, or did it? The interesting thing about this brain in my head is that although my waking mind might want to escape a nightmare, the brain has other ideas and insists on continuing the journey of working out what it was processing prior to me stepping out of bed and finding enough wakefulness that returning to the stress of what was being dreamt is over.

I was racing through the panic that something that should remain hidden was going to be uncovered, and somehow, I knew that I’d be implicated in what was unfolding. A mysterious round spot of concrete floor had drawn the attention of new residents of my childhood home, “What is underneath that?” Why should I even know, let alone feel some sense of guilt, about this discovery? Maybe it’s because my brain had already foreshadowed that I’d be the likely suspect due to circumstances that would become evident once things were revealed.

So, with ugly anticipation, I stood by in fear as the thick slab of concrete was broken up. Once a small corner has been opened and I’m recognizing what is about to be revealed, a skeleton is coming into view. Immediately, I recognize the clothes and am drawn into dread that the signs are pointing right at me: I killed this woman and buried her in my childhood backyard. I need to escape and run away from the universe that is about to close in on me! At this moment, I wake up, hoping that a trip to the bathroom will put sufficient distance between me and this horror so that I won’t have to continue the experience. I was wrong.

Who was the woman buried under this slab that has entombed her for the past four decades? Why and how would I have murdered someone and then buried her at the very home in which I had grown up instead of somewhere far away? Dreams move in peculiar ways, and before law enforcement is involved, I watch a news broadcast that shows an old photograph from 40 years ago featuring the woman and the unidentified man with whom she was last seen; it was me. I knew that there’d be no escape.

There must be some hint of memory of how this happened and why, but I can’t find anything. Surely, I’m doomed, and I’m trapped in this restless dream I desperately want to end. First, though, I must figure out why and how I’m implicated in something I don’t seem to know anything about. My conclusion is that based on me in the photo, I must have been between 18 and 20. The first clue explaining things comes to mind: these were the years I was in the throes of drug and alcohol abuse when, more than a few times, I had walked through days in total blackouts. Okay, I can’t find a memory of this, as I was likely so high or drunk that the situation was wiped from my mind.

The next clue that knocked at these non-obvious memories was, “Why did I bury her at my childhood home?” Hey, wait, I wasn’t even living there during the worst of my self-abuse. Be that as it may, maybe I did it because I couldn’t deal with the body at the house I was sharing or the apartment I would take later. So, I’m still likely going to be seen as guilty of the crime.

Cracking a hole into the back patio and then refilling it with fresh concrete would have never flown with my control freak father. He would have investigated that in a heartbeat. Just then, I remember that my father had gone to court due to charges regarding the allegation he’d molested a family member, and then years after, another sibling told me that our father had molested her as well. The cascade opened up; my stepmother once started to complain to me about my father. They’d been divorced some time and she was about to tell me about something that she instantly had regrets about even alluding to, and stopped herself short from sharing that memory. What could it have been?

It’s dawning on me that all fingers point to him, that maybe I’d been inebriated, and he offered to give a ride home to the woman with whom I had been hanging out. This would make sense as only he could have allowed the concrete replacement. Maybe he really did have a predilection for sexually aggressing women and girls, and my desire to see my father as a hero, albeit an angry one, had clouded my vision of the monster he really was.

As I worked this out in my sleepy half-awake state of tossing and turning, the gripping anxiety started to relent to my relief that nothing of the events of those days were in my head as the situation was not of my making.

After a long period of forgotten dreams, where for months I have been lucky to wake up with but the smallest of fragments of what I had just been dreaming still floating in my head, I awoke this morning with the better part of a quite peculiar dream intact.

I am on my way to Missouri. The year is sometime in the future. I am a genetic mutation. I know a place in Missouri where I can make a few extra bucks at a bootleg operation. The farm isn’t making alcohol; they are not taking kidneys, but what they do is clandestine. They are making cheese. Not just any cheese, although at most times, this is just a normal farm, and cheese is a part of the repertoire of products they produce, but today, upon my arrival, they will switch gears and secretly change the recipe.

My mutation is that I am one of the one in 500 men who have developed teats near our hips. I produce man-milk. The farm I am visiting makes man-cheese. The product is illegal, but most would agree that this cheese has no competition. Due to our rareness and since this mutation to our species is new and not yet thoroughly researched, there is a concern that ‘this’ version of a genetically modified organism may produce undesirable results from consumption, so man-cheese is illegal. My dream didn’t tell me if it was illegal in France, too.

A strange side effect of being milked is that there is a correlating relationship to how much urine is produced, and so typically, after milking, I have the most extraordinary lengthy urinations one could imagine lasting minutes. It was during this act of disposal that I think someone reported the operation. We were alerted that the police were responding, and it was time to get away fast.

I grabbed a couple of Wigglers, threw one to my traveling companion, told him how to ride it, and we were off. A Wiggler is a genetically designed muscular creature about the size of a Frisbee that is three-pronged or Y-shaped. The top two prongs are handles for the rider to hold on to. These muscle-bound handles are attached through a brawny jumble of thick central muscles to a foot reminiscent of a kangaroo foot, only much smaller. To ride the Wiggler, you grab the two handles close to your chest and get on the ground face down. The foot of the Wiggler will keep your torso and face about six inches off the surface, but this requires that the rider wear hard rubber pads on the knees, hips, and elbows, so as you glide over the street, you don’t get road rash.

To get moving, pull up on the two arms or handles, and you go forward, push both, and you slow to a stop. Pull one, push the other to turn, do the opposite, and turn the other way. As the Wiggler flexes its powerful muscle and its foot begins the action for which it was named, the rider is propelled to a speed of nearly 15 miles per hour. The Wiggler is fast enough to evade anyone on foot and nimble enough to move in tight spaces to avoid vehicles.

As the police approach from behind a hill, we have the opportunity to pull around the corner of a house just as the policeman in chase comes into view; fortunately for us, we are no longer visible, but quietly we hide, hoping we have escaped the long arm of the law.

Rarely do I have nightmares, but tonight was one of those rarities. It is not so much the content of the dream I want to convey here today but what might be the impetus behind the ugly dream. On these occasions, when my dreams are filled with violence, it could be typified as being of brutal carnage. Often, the scenes in the nightmare are warlike; they start with pursuit and end with some type of bloody death. It was no different this evening, except the methodology of the last killings was telling, at least in regards to what I have thought might be the trigger of these types of dreams. The method of killing was what appeared to be an electric or high-pressure staple gun; on waking, I could not be certain that it wasn’t a bolt device.

These dreams with gory violence only occur after I have eaten a large piece of meat or a large portion of ice cream. Due to not eating meat for breakfast or lunch and then only eating it at dinner one to two times a week at the most, I have enough vegetarian days where I also remember my dreams, and I do think that on those days, my dreams are devoid of gore. The dreams after eating a vegetarian meal may still be intense, but I cannot remember once when my dreams turned so horrific that I forced myself awake due to what I was witnessing or what was about to happen to me.

The question I would like to pose here in this posting is, has anyone else noticed in transitioning to a more vegetarian diet that they can distinguish a trend in their dreams where violence accompanies their dreams after having consumed animal products?

I’m living in an old western town that hasn’t modernized although it is the present. The tallest building in town is an old five-story hotel that now operates as a gang’s operations center. This gang comprises the local government, law enforcement, and criminals. Typically, I walk the main street without incident. On one occasion, I witnessed Eminem talking with one of the gang members about how, when he first met them he was weak and intimidated and that it was that meeting that made him decide to toughen up.

The gang members are supposed to know who not to rob, but even amongst their ranks, there is corruption, and the town is becoming ever more dangerous. A friend of mine walking with two other people is picked up for questioning and taken to the old hotel. I enter the building, not knowing there is supposed to be a guard here. People I run into figure I must be someone because no one who is not a member just walks through here unescorted.

As I stroll the hallways, I become increasingly uneasy as it is obvious I shouldn’t be seeing what I am seeing and I wonder how it is I can walk along without interference. I step out on a fourth-floor balcony to find out whether the people I am looking for can be seen on the street. This vantage point offers a bird’s eye view of what is happening in town. I see two young men running up the street, popping through two different false walls in the façade of houses along the street.

This is a brave move; normally, they should not have to run and hide, but this is another example of the corruption within the gang. As I walk back into the hallway, I happen upon a man who is lifting a few thousand dollars in cash off of someone else’s desk. He looks at me, and I at him; I sense he is stealing the money; he tries to play it that he was not sneaking into or away from the desk, but I know, and I think he knows I do.

I leave the old hotel and go back onto the street, but as I walk away, it occurs to me that this guy who nicked the money got a good look at me, and I didn’t bother to take in much detail about him as I was already nervous about being there. I am afraid he is going to blame me for taking the money, and I will have a severe problem to deal with soon. I figured I had better return and explain what I saw.

This time, as I walk in, a member of the gang slaps a guard and tells him he is not doing his job and to stop me from entering like that. I am told to wait on the veranda. After some time, I began to think that this was going to be considered snitching, which is not cool either. I decided to change my plans and leave.

But the can of worms has been opened now, and as I am a half-mile back up the road, a looming figure steps up with a heavily pock-marked and shiny dark face, not saying a word. He looks at me with the words on his face, ‘Where do you think you are going?’ Without a word, I follow him back to the old hotel.

Through panic about what I’m going to tell whoever it is I am about to have to talk to, I have to make this believable as I am certain I shouldn’t talk about the money, but then it also crosses my mind that at some point they may learn about the money, come to question me about it and then wonder about the story I told them and why on this opportunity I didn’t explain the missing money. Argh, what to do? Wake up; your bladder is calling.