Death Hotel

I dreamed I was getting a tattoo on my face: a black line.

A simple straight black line, like an em dash, on my face. In the dream I was trying to find the correct position and orientation for this line but I woke up before the process was complete. Upon awakening I knew what I had to do.

I've been using a Sharpie and a ruler to draw a black line a few centimetres long on my face. Trying it in different places. One black line.

With two lines I could have a design or have symmetry. But symmetry cancels itself out, and I don't want a design. The opposite of design is an accident. And everywhere I go, I always try to make things look like an accident.

So the next time you see me I might have a black line drawn on my face. I'll have to try different positions and angles for the black line before I finally get it inked in. It might take several attempts to get the placement perfect.

It might take months.

Posted by philip at 05:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's starting to come to me in snippets, in fragments.

Three men have made a decision. They are starting to work together, serious and determined.

A woman is screaming at them. "What are you doing."

One of the men says, "We're going to die. So we might as well do it with as much style as possible."

Posted by philip at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The first thing I noticed was that the grass on the hospital lawn was such a bright shade of green. It surprised me. Everything had been so grey when I had been admitted in the damp, dreary month of April.

I took a deep breath and wondered what else might have changed in the past two months. Many questions were bouncing around my head as I cut across the parking lot to the bus stop.

Had I pretended to be sick in order to get into the hospital?

Or had I pretended to be well in order to get out?

Posted by philip at 03:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was jolted awake this morning by the rattling sound of a diesel engine starting up.

A truck? Why is there a truck in my driveway? No... not my driveway. Where am I? ...OK. I know where I am.

I tried to chase down the dream I'd been having but it was receding fast. Something was... moving... No, it's gone. I can't remember it.

One sentence remained stuck in my head, balanced on the knife-edge of consciousness, as if it were the last sentence spoken in a conversation just as I was awakened:

"I need you to find the machine that brings women back from the dead."

Posted by philip at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The cat threw up on the wall. The walls contain cancer. The building itself is sick. The walls, the floors, the ceiling.

The bricks and the concrete. The building is rotting away from the inside out.

I sit in the dark basement with one of my boots resting in a puddle. Water drips down from some unseen crack.

It stinks down here. All I can smell is mold and rotting vegetables.

I’m wrapping my knuckles with duct tape to try to stop the bleeding.

Posted by philip at 09:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I dropped my iBook and it fell down the stairs. It fell end-over-end, bumpity bump bump, hitting every single step on its way down to the bottom.

At the foot of the staircase a woman bent down to pick up my computer.

Zoom in on her forearm: smooth and hairless and blotchy.

Posted by philip at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I dreamed I went out through a window. I was outside in the Satanic Garden.

I could reach out and touch the white stucco walls of the mansion, the white trellises with green climbing vines.

You could wander around in the Satanic Garden. The trellises and hedges were arranged in a sort of labyrinth. But there was no chance of getting lost, because you could always keep the mansion in sight.

I walked down a long path that ran parallel to the mansion. At the end of the path was a section of fence that seemed to be glowing in an unusual way.

I knelt down and pulled away a small section of the fence to reveal a secret cubbyhole. There was something hidden inside.

I saw a small black box with a bunch of flashing coloured lights on it. I reached in and pulled it out.

It was a computer map of the whole area.

Posted by philip at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I dreamed it was my turn to go visit the spit whirlpool.

The spit whirlpool was as old as the universe and every living human had to visit it--one person at a time.

In the dream the visit was meant to be some kind of ritualistic thing. Connecting with the universe or some such thing.

I got to the edge of the spit whirlpool and it was this great gobby vortex.

I spat into the whirlpool and watched it whirling down and down and down.

Posted by philip at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm working on an assembly line with a bunch of guys who all look the same.

They're all clones from the carpet factory. They were sent over because the original humans kept quitting the assembly line. In fact, I'm the only real human left in the whole plant. Everyone else is one of these carpet factory guys that roam around like zombies.

It occurs to me that they're only keeping me around because they're planning to eat my brain and turn my body into a rug. I'm trying to think of ways to get out of there.

Apparently there is some legal technicality that will allow me to kill all the clones. Something like, they can legally be suffocated, but not poisoned. Or is it the other way around? I'm trying my hardest but I can't remember.

Then the dream changes and I'm having a whole bunch of sex with a married woman in the back seat of someone's car.

Posted by philip at 03:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I dreamed they were making monument for me in the town square. They had to stand me up on a pillar and make a mold around me.

While I was inside the mold, I was thinking, "Do these people know who I am? If they knew what I had done, would they still think I deserve a monument?"

I was inside the mold a long time. For a while I could hear people talking outside, but after a while the voices stopped.

I could hear birds chirping. Occasionally a police siren would pass the park.

Even though I couldn't see, I got the sense that night was falling. I started to get a boner, which was uncomfortable.

It was really hot inside the mold.

Posted by philip at 10:45 PM | Permalink