This post is part of a series. See “Intermittent” for details.
Thursday, 16 October
Dream. Takes place in a house that I don’t recognize. Feels like it is in the US; the people seem USian though they are varied in race and class. Several scenes.
One, in the kitchen. Found: people killed and stuck to the walls, each by a large knife. Their feet do not touch the ground. All are middle aged except one, a teen-aged boy who couldn’t take the sight and killed himself; but then how would he also be hanging from the wall with a knife put through him? The people are hung on the walls in a circle. They are all family, related.
The general “happening” is transformation, mainly death in grotesque ways. People aren’t dying at the hands of people. It is a cosmic or divine force that is the source.
Two, the spot of “spreading” is the kitchen though people in the living room also are affected. There are small pink bugs. They get on people and explode. Their juice burns and kills the people, like acid and a poison. In this scene there is a party going on at night. Someone places a call to emergency authorities when what is happening is realized. These people are not family but acquaintances and couples.
One woman, rather short and large-chested, White, goes into the kitchen for a drink. The bugs get on her breast. She is terrified, speechless, does not motion to shoo them. She goes to the living room to the man she loves but who is unkind to her. He is tall and thick; he smiles and reaches to pick up one of the pink bugs between his thumb and forefinger. He squeezes it and juice pops over her breasts and on his fingers.
The authorities, the CDC [Center for Disease Control and Prevention], arrive after people are dead. The authorities are mystified by what they find–and alarmed.
Three, the scene is in the living room. People sit with each other in horrid anticipation. Authorities have predicted that a phenomenon like the others will happen around a given time. So people have gathered with the knowledge that there is no escape. These people are strangers. Of all the scenes they are the most diverse group by race. I notice more women than men; I actually only “see” women but I don’t know if there are only women present. At some moment, “the wave” strikes and individuals are changed into various bodies and shapes and substances. One woman, a short black woman with closely cut hair, sits in a chair and is changed into something or someone very old–really a corpse of someone/ something, dust dressed in aged poor fabric like burlap.
Four, continuation of scene three but shifts to the kitchen. The sun shines outside. A field of flowers is seen through the window. And outside the window is a line of flying creatures. Their wings beat and they stay in relatively the same position. They are some kind of bird, each one with the face of a person that was hanging by a knife in the kitchen (scene 1). They are smiling and they fly away together across the filed of wildflowers.
In this scene everyone is changed, even the dead.
The final scene shows what wasn’t known at the beginning: that what initially “happened” was not the final transformation. And those originally dead from this phenomenon were not finished yet. Just as those who weren’t initially affected by the phenomenon didn’t “escape” being touched by it. In the end everyone was affected.
The “phenomenon” here reminds me of a movie I saw–The Happening by M. Night Shyamalan, in which plants (theoretically) release a chemical that “short circuits” humans’ survival “instinct”, leading humans to kill themselves rather quickly. It is a kind of justice but a natural phenomenon, and one that humans really cannot “stop” from “happening”.
Post updated: 28 January 2009.
Pink Bugs by Melissa Dey Hasbrook is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
