get out
An empty white room with a high ceiling. Sunlight shining in through small, high windows.
A pair of pliers sits on the floor.
Something is wrong with my eyes. Holy fuck there's something wrong.
An empty white room with a high ceiling. Sunlight shining in through small, high windows.
A pair of pliers sits on the floor.
Something is wrong with my eyes. Holy fuck there's something wrong.
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."
We were careful when we briefed the sniper. The courtyard was bordered by buildings on all four sides, with a tower in each corner. Pathways ran around the perimeter and also digonally across the courtyard, with the fifth and largest tower positioned at the centre of the "X."
The sniper agreed with our assessment that the centre tower would provide the most advantageous position. The target could appear at any time at any one of the towers, such that it would be salutary to behave as though one believed in teleportation.
The focus of the sniper. So intent was he on the task ahead of him, he failed to notice that the photograph of the target we circulated after the meeting was a photograph of him.
The giant is only visible as a silhouette on the city skyline. He shows himself as a shadow in the spaces between buildings.
The giant’s hand is large enough to pick up two taxicabs at once. He plucks the taxis right off the street and raises them to the height of a skyscraper.
The giant squeezes the cars in his massive fist.
A warm rain of gasoline and blood is falling on Montreal.
In the dream, I’m on my way to make peace with Bobby Sands.
Bobby’s my next-door neighbour, but we haven’t been very neighbourly lately. It’s been a long time since we’ve spoken. So long that I can hardly remember what set off the feud in the first place. Something trivial.
Now Bobby’s in jail and he’s starving himself and he’s going to die.
When I pull up to the prison grounds, a silent ambulance arrives at the same time as I do. The sky is clouding over and turning purple. That’s when I realize that I’m too late.
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.
Last night I dreamed I was playing tennis with Sandra Bullock.
I don’t remember who was winning, but Sandra had the serve and it was taking her forever.
“Hurry up and serve,” I yelled across the court.
Sandra started twitching and making funny little jerking motions with her head. She raised her racket in the air and brought it down again.
I kept my stance at the baseline, feeling tense.
Sandra held the ball in front of her. I could see her grip it tightly. The bright afternoon sunlight glinted in her cold, flashing blue eyes.
Sandra Bullock doesn’t have blue eyes!
I ran and jumped over the net and went running at her and I swung my arm as hard as I could and I smashed her right in the face with my tennis racket. The strings of my racket cut into her flesh and passed right through her face, splitting her head into a molecular grid. Blue energy from Sandra’s plasma-brain surged through these cracks in a blinding flash.
Sandra’s body lurched and struggled to remain upright. The tennis ball in her hand was a ticking hand grenade. I leapt backwards, covering my face. The bomb exploded and I was thrown back hard against a chain link fence.
I lay on the edge of the court, unable to breathe. My back was hurting. It felt as if all the air had been squeezed out of my lungs.
Through the dust and haze of the explosion, where the robot Sandra had once stood, I could see a crater in the ground.
There was an armchair in the middle of the crater. A baby was sitting in the armchair, smoking a pipe.
I woke up choking and gasping for breath.
I'm curled up on the couch with my eyes squeezed shut. The robots are coming for me. They're going to stick a fork in me. Stick the two prongs straight up my nose, into my brain.
A robot brain. A machine brain. That's what we'll be left with. Computer screens for eyes. Always watching.
A computer never blinks. Always looking, never seeing. Just a giant pair of machine-eyes staring straight into all the flickering lights.
They don't want you to bleed any more. They don't want you to be alive. They don't want you to shit or to stink, to bleed or to feel pain, they don't want you to feel anything at all.
They need to know the horror... They need to know that I had to cut in order to stay alive. In order to prove that I am still alive.
That's why I did it.
I dreamed I was already a murderer. Everyone agreed it was self-defence; they were quick to reach this conclusion for me.
But did I really have to kill the guy?
I will always be a killer.
I was sitting at a table by myself in a Chinese restaurant. The walls of the restaurant were shimmering constantly in different shades of purple, from lavender to deep dark violet and back.
I had placed my order and I was waiting and waiting. It seemed like it was taking forever for my food to arrive.
In the meantime, I was bleeding everywhere because I'd taken out a Swiss army knife and cut my body in 30 different places.
I've been having this recurring dream where I have to find out who murdered my sister.
Except I never had a sister.
Or did I?
Once in a while I have nightmares. There are a few different types. Some of the scariest are the ones where the dream reality is completely normal with the exception of one small, unsettling detail.
I dreamed I was standing outside the doors of a large one-story brick building. It might have been a medical centre or a dentist's office or some such thing. It was raining out, but there was an overhang I could wait underneath to keep dry.
A concrete walkway ran alongside the building beneath the overhang. At the far end of the walkway, up towards the corner of the building, I noticed an unattended baby stroller.
I started walking towards the baby stroller.
I couldn't see the baby. But as I got closer I could hear it, shuffling around in its seat, making little baby noises.
I reached the stroller and stepped around in front of it.
It was a baby boy, in a little blue hat. The baby raised its head and looked up at me.
The baby had a Hitler moustache.
It was absolutely terrifying.
At that moment I realized I was torn between my strong aversion to committing violence upon an infant, and my duty to save the human race by splitting open this baby's skull with an axe.
I dreamed I was wanted for murder. It was self-defence, but I knew no one would believe me, so I was running.
I saw the cops pull up to the front of the building and I ran out the back. I was running as hard and as fast as I could. I could feel my pores start to prickle with sweat.
These prickles became more intense as I ran. Pretty soon they were starting to burn. With every step I struggled to breathe as my flesh became hotter and hotter.
All the skin started to peel off my face and my arms. My bones were orange and red.
Then I was lying on a hammock in a submarine. There was a table beside the hammock and I was playing cards with a couple of the guys.
There was a TV on in the background. The news was coming on. I was scared shitless because I knew they would be all over the story of the murder.
There was lots of background noise in the room. The guys didn't seem to be paying too much attention to the TV. I badly wanted to shut off the TV or change the channel, but I knew if I got up to do so I would only wind up drawing attention to it.
So I kept playing cards, and I tried to act as nonchalant as possible, and I prayed no one would notice me on TV.
I dreamed I was hungry but too lazy to cook. So I swallowed a bunch of microwave popcorn and went for a chest x-ray.
The technician pointed the x-ray machine straight at me and powered it up. It made a hum that grew progressively louder.
A muted popping sound began in my belly. It sounded like a whole bunch of kung-fu movies playing at once.
Suddenly my stomach exploded. Popcorn flew everywhere. All the equipment burst into flames as the technician fled the room. I wanted to run, but I was wearing a lead apron.
Then the technician returned to the room carrying a fire extinguisher and a giant salt shaker.
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.
I'm down at the onion farm. Emily is there, telling me all about growing onions. There's a red-and-white striped silo and an old-fashioned tractor.
Smoke comes out of Emily's mouth when she talks even though she's not a smoker.
Suddenly I realize that the silo is on fire. Flames are shooting out the top of it. I go to tell Emily but when I look at her, she grins an evil grin. Through the black smoke I can see flames in her mouth. She gives a low chuckle.
It all sounds sinister, but in the dream it was actually kind of funny.
I'm standing beside the fountain in Centennial Park. They sky is overcast and it feels like it's about to rain.
In the dream I've been waiting a long time, but I'm not sure for what or whom.
Newspapers are blowing around the park in the wind. Sometimes the newspapers will form into the shapes of animals, little cats and dogs that will run around the park and play for a few moments before dissolving back into newspapers.
Some of the newspapers form into the shape of a tricycle. The tricycle just sits there at the corner of a the concrete walkway.
Then I'm lying on my back at the foot of a long sloping driveway. The tricycle starts rolling down the driveway towards me. No one is riding it.
The tricycle speeds up as it comes closer and closer. It's definitely going to run me over. At the last second I close my eyes. When I wake up my eyes are still closed.
I got to dream that I was a helicopter pilot. It was cool!
I had a weird flash where I knew I was dreaming and I could do whatever I wanted. So I flew to Paris and buzzed around the Eiffel Tower looking at fashion models through a telescope.
Some dude in a hot air balloon was yelling at me in French. I just sort of ignored him. Then the whole "this is a cool dream and I'm in complete control" part went out the window, when he stood up and he was aiming a rocket-propelled grenade launcher at me.
The whirling blades of the helicopter transformed into a buzzing blender. I was sitting at the counter of a small-town diner where I had just ordered a chocolate milkshake.
The waitress put the metal milkshake container down in front of me. I looked inside and it was full of little crawling baby mice.
I'm driving one of those little Shriner mini-cars, cruising through tree-lined suburban streets.
Then I drive through a gate and I come out the other side and I'm out on the ice in the middle of a hockey game. It's a playoff game and everyone in the crowd is laughing at me and my Shriner car in the middle of the action.
I'm trying to steer towards the penalty box to get off the ice, but the wheels of the car have no traction and I wind up spinning all over the place. I bang into Todd Bertuzzi and knock him flat on his ass.
He gets up and snarls and raises his hockey stick to club me with it.
I notice that the blade of his stick has a tooth growing out of it.
Quentin Tarantino, the movie director, was in my dream last night.
A bunch of us were out at the bar just sitting around having a few drinks. Quentin was sitting at the table, talking on and on as if someone were interviewing him, only no one was asking any questions, people were just sitting there trying to get drunk.
The door burst open and a seven-foot-tall Russian guy stomped in and said "Who is strongest man in this bar?"
Quentin stood up and said "Well Junior, I guess that would be me" and it looked as though they were going to fight.
Then Frank Sinatra came on the jukebox and my chair started dancing underneath me. The chair carried me right out onto the middle of the dancefloor while it bopped around and the legs of my chair tried to do the Lindy hop.