Dreams of Death
A killer and two dead bodies. That was how my bad dream started.
I was looking into the room of a killer. His name was Paul. He was reclining on a bed whose mattress couldn’t stay flat because of the dead body under it. Its head was turned towards me and its lifeless eyes were staring straight at me. Then there was a large sack from which Paul pulled out a severed head with a small piece of skin still attached to its neck. He tore up that skin like a piece of paper. That was when I started running , asking for help. The killer knew that I had seen him and was after me. Oh, the terror I felt! When I managed to shake him off my trail I went back to his room to gather evidence against him. I was pulling out the bed sheets when he came back. Fear froze me. I was sure that it was the end of me. Then someone came out of nowhere and stabbed him in the heart. Phhew! What a big relief! I woke up.
This kind of dream stands out among others. It doesn’t recede right away into the subconscious. The intense emotions it pulls out of you makes it quite hard to forget. The images hound you for days as if screaming for your attention.
And so it was that after five days of mulling over it, I opened my rarely-used dream dictionary, “20,000 Dreams” by Mary Summer Rain, published by Thunder Bay Press. Though I am skeptical of this author and her book’s pronouncements, I figured that having a psychological/rational explanation is better than being constantly creeped out by the gory images flitting in and out of my consciousness.
I learned that when you dream of death, there is a certain aspect in your life that is dead. It could be your faith, hope, relationship …. anything. A killer is a “fatally negative facet in one’s life”. A decapitated body is something over which you are “losing your head”, something that extremely bothers you. Stabbing represents “unexpected retaliation or an attempt at something.”
Sigh! I suppose something inside me is telling me that it’s time to reflect on my life. Was it Oprah who said that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”? She’s right, you know. Masunod nga ang kanyang advice.
