Dream: Moving out just in time
Feb. 28th, 2006 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mokie_edomMoving out just in time
In the dream, my mother and I were back at our old house, temporarily, like when we were sleeping there but still moving things out to the new apartment. We had clearly not yet let go of the old house, in the dream, but were in limbo waiting for something, anything, to happen. It was very late at night, and I stepped outside in my PJs to see what the commotion outside was.
A man and a woman were climbing out of her car. The woman was clearly drunk or otherwise incapacitated, and stumbled off to the side. The man looked at me and said he wanted to ask me something, then advanced up the front steps. I backed away, and he called out to me, "Wait, wait," and I replied that he'd have to stop right there and not come any closer if he wanted me to answer his question. He asked where he could find something, but I couldn't make out the word.
"Kibble?" I asked. "Like for a dog?"
"Nibble," he said. "Pussy." He then began coming back up the steps, faster, clearly threatening.
I told him to find it himself and darted back into the house, locking the door as he reached it. Outside the door he taunted me, trying half-heartedly to get in. I checked the back door, and at some point friends joined him, poking through the few belongings we hadn't yet moved from the gangway beside the house, calling to me inside, and generally intimidating me. The next morning I called the police.
The next night, I heard a noise outside, glanced out, and he was this time on the side porch, and I knew it was different: I had called the police, and that upset him. He was nailing something to the side of the house, and when he lifted his hand, I saw that the large object he was holding was a severed head. He and his friends again roamed the outside, this time less light-hearted, and outside the windows I saw more heads, I saw walls covered in gore and blood, I saw them watching me.
I grabbed the phone and tried to call the cops, but the first call didn't go through, the second seemed to be a wrong number, the third... How hard could it be to misdial 911? Was it 911? Or was it 411? In some countries wasn't it 119? I tried them all, with no luck. Toward the end of the night, as the men outside got louder and angrier, I finally got ahold of someone, a female officer. I gave her my address, but I barely had the first two digits of the house number out before she completed my sentence for me. "--- St., yes, I know who you are. Who do you think you are, wasting our time like this? You deserve what you're getting."
It was my fault, but why? I was confused, but she wouldn't answer, and I fretted to myself, wondering, worrying, about why they wouldn't help me, what had I done wrong, what could I do to fix it. As morning broke my mother and my older sister pulled up, and I ran outside, shouting for my sister to please, please, call the police for me. The men were long gone by this time, but I still desperately wanted the police to come.
When they did, it all got more complicated. My calls should have reached them, but someone was interfering; the woman who answered the phone might've been a cop, but she was clearly working for or with the men outside the house, trying to head off my attempts to call for help. The officers who came also expressed some doubt and exasperation. "You don't recognize ____?" someone said to me; whether ____ was one of the thugs or one of those killed and nailed to my house, I don't know, though one hanged body on the wall as we spoke appeared to turn and watch us walk.
Around this point, I suspect I was partially woken by the upstairs neighbors, because a cartoonish element enters with a Captain Caveman type and his lackeys decked out in skulls and clubs trying to battle the assailants and show me that courage conquers all or something like that, but getting nowhere; in the dream, I put it off to a tape that
Mark sent to me, which makes no sense since it wasn't something I was watching over a TV or monitor but something happening right in front of me.
Notes and explanatory details
#1. This dream followed a robbery at work. As if that weren't explanation enough, the neighborhood is also where I used to live, and from which I recently moved. It didn't seem that dangerous when I was there, but I've since settled into at a new apartment in a safer area and the contrast, especially with the robbery now, has made me realize how unsafe the old neighborhood really felt.
#2. This dream had plenty of time to unroll, since I got a far longer sleep than I'm used to. My brain goes off on disturbing tangents if given too much sleep.
#3. Why did I wait to call the police originally? The dream-night passed pretty quickly, but more than that I think I was concerned with watching the men, not wanting to push things further or force a confrontation unless they actually got into the house. I should mention that I am not this stupid in real life.
#4. The old house did not have a side porch. The side porch came from a house in the area that we almost rented, a house very close to my job. No coincidence that immediately after the robbery I was thanking my lucky stars that we hadn't moved there after all.
#5. When speaking to the female officer over the phone, I gave her the address for the new apartment rather than the old house. I'm not sure about the significance of this, but it feels significant. Perhaps it's simply a sign that I was cutting myself off from the old house and attaching myself to the new place. Or maybe it was just fresh in my brain at the time. I'd appreciate any ideas on this one.
In the dream, my mother and I were back at our old house, temporarily, like when we were sleeping there but still moving things out to the new apartment. We had clearly not yet let go of the old house, in the dream, but were in limbo waiting for something, anything, to happen. It was very late at night, and I stepped outside in my PJs to see what the commotion outside was.
A man and a woman were climbing out of her car. The woman was clearly drunk or otherwise incapacitated, and stumbled off to the side. The man looked at me and said he wanted to ask me something, then advanced up the front steps. I backed away, and he called out to me, "Wait, wait," and I replied that he'd have to stop right there and not come any closer if he wanted me to answer his question. He asked where he could find something, but I couldn't make out the word.
"Kibble?" I asked. "Like for a dog?"
"Nibble," he said. "Pussy." He then began coming back up the steps, faster, clearly threatening.
I told him to find it himself and darted back into the house, locking the door as he reached it. Outside the door he taunted me, trying half-heartedly to get in. I checked the back door, and at some point friends joined him, poking through the few belongings we hadn't yet moved from the gangway beside the house, calling to me inside, and generally intimidating me. The next morning I called the police.
The next night, I heard a noise outside, glanced out, and he was this time on the side porch, and I knew it was different: I had called the police, and that upset him. He was nailing something to the side of the house, and when he lifted his hand, I saw that the large object he was holding was a severed head. He and his friends again roamed the outside, this time less light-hearted, and outside the windows I saw more heads, I saw walls covered in gore and blood, I saw them watching me.
I grabbed the phone and tried to call the cops, but the first call didn't go through, the second seemed to be a wrong number, the third... How hard could it be to misdial 911? Was it 911? Or was it 411? In some countries wasn't it 119? I tried them all, with no luck. Toward the end of the night, as the men outside got louder and angrier, I finally got ahold of someone, a female officer. I gave her my address, but I barely had the first two digits of the house number out before she completed my sentence for me. "--- St., yes, I know who you are. Who do you think you are, wasting our time like this? You deserve what you're getting."
It was my fault, but why? I was confused, but she wouldn't answer, and I fretted to myself, wondering, worrying, about why they wouldn't help me, what had I done wrong, what could I do to fix it. As morning broke my mother and my older sister pulled up, and I ran outside, shouting for my sister to please, please, call the police for me. The men were long gone by this time, but I still desperately wanted the police to come.
When they did, it all got more complicated. My calls should have reached them, but someone was interfering; the woman who answered the phone might've been a cop, but she was clearly working for or with the men outside the house, trying to head off my attempts to call for help. The officers who came also expressed some doubt and exasperation. "You don't recognize ____?" someone said to me; whether ____ was one of the thugs or one of those killed and nailed to my house, I don't know, though one hanged body on the wall as we spoke appeared to turn and watch us walk.
Around this point, I suspect I was partially woken by the upstairs neighbors, because a cartoonish element enters with a Captain Caveman type and his lackeys decked out in skulls and clubs trying to battle the assailants and show me that courage conquers all or something like that, but getting nowhere; in the dream, I put it off to a tape that
Mark sent to me, which makes no sense since it wasn't something I was watching over a TV or monitor but something happening right in front of me.Notes and explanatory details
#1. This dream followed a robbery at work. As if that weren't explanation enough, the neighborhood is also where I used to live, and from which I recently moved. It didn't seem that dangerous when I was there, but I've since settled into at a new apartment in a safer area and the contrast, especially with the robbery now, has made me realize how unsafe the old neighborhood really felt.
#2. This dream had plenty of time to unroll, since I got a far longer sleep than I'm used to. My brain goes off on disturbing tangents if given too much sleep.
#3. Why did I wait to call the police originally? The dream-night passed pretty quickly, but more than that I think I was concerned with watching the men, not wanting to push things further or force a confrontation unless they actually got into the house. I should mention that I am not this stupid in real life.
#4. The old house did not have a side porch. The side porch came from a house in the area that we almost rented, a house very close to my job. No coincidence that immediately after the robbery I was thanking my lucky stars that we hadn't moved there after all.
#5. When speaking to the female officer over the phone, I gave her the address for the new apartment rather than the old house. I'm not sure about the significance of this, but it feels significant. Perhaps it's simply a sign that I was cutting myself off from the old house and attaching myself to the new place. Or maybe it was just fresh in my brain at the time. I'd appreciate any ideas on this one.
