Wednesday 23 January 2008

The Boy, The Wolf Costume, and The Suicide

Very strange dream last week. The very next night was another strange dream and I thought I was going to have one of those occasional runs of strange dreams that I have noted down during my life, but I didn't and I didn't write it down at the time. So the second dream has just eluded me. On the edge of my memory banks but I can't quite put my finger on it or pin any of it down. But the first dream has captured me and if I could paint with any competence I'd paint this mural I see before me.

As a class assistant I have brought a group of school children to some woods on an educational trip, but quite soon I am no longer with the school party and they are not important to the dream. We have come to see the wondrous sight of an inhabitant of the woods: a young boy of maybe 10 to 12 years old in his wolf costume. His costume has a wolf-like head-piece connected to a flat section that covers his back and goes down to a wildly elaborate tail piece that stretches high up with a long pole, maybe three times the length of his body. The boy runs partly on all fours with long autumnal coloured streamers or feathers flowing from his tail piece.

He was an amazing apparition, a sight to behold, fleeting across our vision. This was a child of the woods and his purpose was to uphold the nature and ecology. His costume served to scare predators but it also attracted the tourists, and this was the problem. Somehow he and I spoke but it was telepathically. I knew he was very unhappy and was coming to too much attention from outsiders thus damaging the ecology of the woods. He ran to a huge barn like building recently and hastily erected by the baddies, in which appeared to burn the fires of hell, and had a huge apparatus for chewing up the woods of the forest.

Running after him, I stood at the door of this building unable to enter as the red orange burning heat held me back. I pleaded to him with my eyes to not do what he was going to do but he continued and ran up the ladder at the back of the giant tree muncher. He took off his costume and flamboyantly threw it onto the teeth of the tree muncher. I thought that was it and the extent of his protest against the tourists and outsiders. We both watched as his costume was crushed and eaten up.

Then he looked at me. I looked at him. Awake and a week later I can still see into his eyes through the fires of hell and high up on the apparatus. He then looked forward and threw himself onto the giant teeth of the tree muncher. As he travelled along the conveyer until the point the teeth started to crush he was silent. My heart wanted to stop. I wanted to stop him from dying but I couldn't enter the deathly hot building. The big, solid teeth of the tree muncher finally parted to start to come down on his tiny frame as he began to let out a scream. It was only half a scream as I presume his life was extinguished very quickly.

He had either sacrificed himself, and he wanted me to tell his story. Or else, he was just so fed up he didn't want to stay anymore and I shouldn't have been there as a witness. I am not entirely sure which. Either way, I was particularly moved by the quick death and was relieved for him it was so swift, but so sad at the waste.

His death was awful but most of all I remember him in his costume, tail magnificently flowing and fluttering behind him as he bounded along with the green woods as his backdrop.

8 comments:

Chandira said...

Wow. That's quite a dream Doris!

Robert-the-therapist husband says that all people in dreams represent a part of ourselves. Are you feeling like it's all too much, and want to throw yourself into the machine? I hope not!!!
I don't know if that theory holds up.

Those haunting and over-vivid dreams are odd, aren't they? Let it move you to some good.

Jo said...

Wow. Just wow. I have had some lucid dreams in my time, but I can't remember anything quite like this Doris. Very affecting and vivid. Ring up Tim Burton and see if he will make the movie?!

Doris said...

Chandira Certainly an odd dream. But doing away with myself isn't where I am at just now though I do have a certain fascination it is only fleeting. I'd agree with your Robert and I have been thinking about it. The most likely candidate is actually about me as a parent to my son who is soon to be 14. Just recently I've realised I need to go to the next level with son and treat him as a grown-up rather than "keeping" him as the little boy. Ergo, there is a certain death to his childhood, that he has to take more responsibility and I have to take less. Though it was a bit too obvious to have a dream about a pre-adolescent boy that I wonder if that is the meaning either!

Jo One of these days I'm going to have a corker of an epic, enough to be worked up into a film script and make me loads of dosh. But I fear there is not enough here and the "film" would be dull at each edge. Come to think of it, sounds like a lot of films out there!

Anji said...

That's an incredible dream. I can't help wondering if you are worried about something.

Unknown said...

It'd make a great short story!!

Doris said...

Anji That's really sweet of you .... I suppose I have lots to worry about but can't say I am particularly overdoing it now.

Astryngia That and plenty others I have from the past. n another life maybe I'd sit and elaborate and build upon them. Maybe I might one day have a best seller! ;-)

Chandira said...

Yeah, that would make sense. :-) is he into environmental things? I hope so, we need a new crop of young adults that are.

And yes, I think you're right about the word verification thingys getting longer, the more comments you leave.

I wrote to blogger and suggested we all have a 'safe list' of friends we can add that don't have to fill that in every time, but they never took me up on it. Sadly.

Doris said...

Chandira
To some extent he is into environmental thing but more lip service than actual doing. I suppose that is something - but not enough.

Good on you for your suggestion to Blogger - that would be a great idea and one I would use. They might still be working on it as it does make sense!