Curious dream

Account of a dream I had several weeks ago

The dream is a long, rambling one. My recollection of it picks up while I am inside some kind of computer game set in an urban neighbourhood. In the game you play a superhero, but instead of performing the usual superhero feats you instead collaborate with other players and in game characters in fairly low key ways to police the neighbourhood against villains. I play Tarzan (who is evidently counted as a superhero for the purposes of the game). While this is going on (there being no break between game and ‘real life’), I have on my conscience the fact that my family have managed to misplace a sort of pet, and the burden has been laid upon me to find it. The creature is like a large eel, but if it has a body then it has been bunched into the cavity of its head (the reason being that it has been imprisoned in a globe of liquid big enough for the head alone). To make matters worse, despite its fishy appearance there is some doubt as to whether it is able to breathe in water at all. When I finally find it – in a drawer or behind a curtain – I know it has been there for days. Set close by there is a huge bowl of cloudy liquid in excess of a metre high and positioned on some kind of pedestal. I have by now freed the creature from its prison and set it on the surface of the water. Now it definitely only consists of a head and gills, but ironically it turns out to be an air-breather after all. I watch in some horror as the creature gasps and gulps air on the water’s surface. I marvel that it is still alive at all, but the spell is short-lived and it expires. It disintegrates almost instantly into the liquid, making it cloudier still. I manage to overlook the horrible event, however, by considering the globe itself and thinking how cool it would be if I were to purchase a smaller version and set up a diorama of miniatures inside. My friend Chris has joined me by this point, and he hints that I should even think about buying the big globe itself.

Now the dream changes gear, as Chris and I start rampaging around what appears to be a medley of Edinburgh and an imaginary North American city. Chris is on a bicycle and I am running, but we fairly fly up hills and hurtle round corners, upsetting many a pedestrian (about which I feel only slightly guilty). Intermittently we have to evade huge machines, which some malign intent has set in motion to destroy certain zones of the city. Later we pass through a serene area of lofty concrete architecture, with great connecting arches that range over our heads. I declare it to be ‘beautiful’ and ‘comforting’, somewhat to Chris’ amusement and bemusement. Afterwards, and still high up, we come abruptly, and incongruously, to a shoreline. Our mutual friends Simon and Gordon, besides others, have joined us by now. I stand by to watch as they all plunge recklessly into the sea, bordered as it is by huge blocks of rough concrete.

No one seems hurt. We are just retreating from the water’s edge through a cavernous stone tunnel, however, when a harsh voice instructs us to stop where we are and put our hands on our heads. We pause on a bridge as a group of gun-toting, black-clad policeman catch up with us. Although I believe at first that they are simply apprehending us ober the aforementioned ‘rampaging’, I am gripped by icy fear as the leading cop informs us that we have been charged with the murder of a fellow policeman. Smugly he asks us how we feel about dying; with some effort I control my horror and fear. He goes on to say that only one of us is to be charged with the actual murder and executed; the rest are ‘accomplices’ and, he hints darkly, will not be welcome in America again. Despite the seemingly foregone verdict, the policeman informs us the trial will last somewhere in the region of six weeks. Somebody explains that we are on holiday here for only a week; the policeman deliberately does not respond, so irrelevant is this fact evidently. We are still on tenterhooks regarding the identity of the murderer, but the police produce some rather clear underwater footage of Chris using a harpoon gun to shoot a policeman, who was in the act of menacing a girl in our party.

We are left to ponder our fate. I comfort Chris as his parents phone, at what has turned out to be just the wrong time, to tell him that they are back from holiday. With some difficulty he relays a significantly modified account of what has just happened. The picture is grim, but several things lead me to think that our story will have a happy outcome and that Chris and the rest of us will emerge victorious. Firstly, it now seems apparent that we are definitely in some kind of US crime drama. Although not usually associated with the genre, the dinosaurs and sea monsters that dwell on the coast – signifiers of good and wholesome nature – are outraged at our fate. Also, a figure twenty imposed on the ‘screen’ tells me that we are only twenty percent of the way through the story (it would be far too much of a ‘downer’ for the protagonists to be convicted one fifth of the way through only to be definitely sentenced at the end).

Chris is to be taken into custody and the rest of us each have to stump up bail money for ourselves. Amidst the curious architecture of this city, we are now standing on a large balcony at the top of an encircling flight of stairs, like that of an opulent hotel. A fresh detachment of police arrive and inform us that our bail will be eighteen dollars each – a fee which we will have to pay everyday as long as the case is ongoing. As I give my money to a helmeted police officer, he makes some fatuous taunts towards me. I respond by saying that his “comments are irrelevant”, and instruct him to hand over my parole pass straightaway (I can tell by the ensuing atmosphere that I have gained a small victory here).

Finally, Matt Smith [the actor who plays the current Doctor Who] appears at the top of the staircase, ahead of yet another detachment of sinister black-clad figures now occupying the substantial balcony one flight below opposite us. For the moment at any rate I am relieved to find anyone British in authority even if they are, as seems to be the case, in league with the detestable US police. The new arrivals represent an obvious cross section of some secret society of wicked ‘elves’ from the UK. Their leader, sprawled on a bed, is a curious fusion of patriarch and matriarch: bearded, but with breasts and a mermaid’s tail. What the elves have to with situation, beyond an evidently sinister intent, is unclear and unfortunately unrevealed as my recollection of the dream ends here.