A Halloween Dream

Had a very strange dream last night. In some dreams I’m one person all the way through. In others, I’m observing from above as an omniscient presence. But in last night’s dream I “head-hopped,” moving from person to person depending on the scene.

The dream began on an oil exploration ship. Our team had brought aboard a slimy substance dredged from the ocean’s bottom and we had it in a glass case that looked a bit like a crystal coffin. I was one of several scientists gathered around the case as another scientist showed us how the slime moved when shocked.

At one point, the scientist sent a surge of electricity through the slime and it suddenly began to grow and started sloshing back and forth in the case much like those old wave machines used to. We all panicked and started backing away when suddenly the slime darkened dramatically and thickened into a throbbing chrysalis. In the next instant the chrysalis burst open to reveal, very anti-climactically, a chimpanzee.

The dream switched ahead in time then and I found myself in a rec room on the ship. I was reading a newspaper while two other men played cards. The chimp was wandering around in the room and I understood that tests had revealed him as nothing more than a normal chimp. For that reason he’d been freed of his case. I heard a sound and looked up to see the chimp suddenly attack the two other men and begin tearing at them. Blood sprayed; the men began screaming; I jumped up and ran for the door.

That’s when I began head-hopping. First I was back in the lab where the slime remaining in the glass case started to bubble and birth black blobs of some tarry substance. These broke open to reveal all kinds of apes. There were chimps, gorillas, and orangutans, but they were distorted, looking more human in the shapes of their skulls but with long arms ending in massive slashing claws. They smashed through the glass and I was swarmed under as I tried to flee.

I switched into another man’s head who was running from some howling apes. He dodged through a door ahead of his pursuers and reached the rail of the ship. There was nowhere else to go so he (I) hurled himself over the rail into a bright blue sea. As soon as I hit the water I switched into the head of a man hiding behind a white counter with two others. Apes burst through the door and began searching the room. One guy tried a peek over the counter and the apes saw him and attacked us.

I fled down a hallway and out a back door and slammed it against the apes. I tore off down a corridor toward what I knew was the bow of the ship. I passed another man running the other way and realized there was no safety in that direction. A large, glass-windowed room was to my left and I pulled open the door there and rushed in, thinking to hide among the machinery in the room. But an orangutan loping down the corridor after the other guy saw me through the windows and came after me.

I saw a metal mesh door that opened into some kind of small control room and ran over to it. The door was opened slightly and it took almost all my strength to get it open and get inside. I started pulling it shut just as the orang burst through the outer door into the room I’d just left.

There was a bolt that locked the metal mesh door and I started to slide it forward with the orang coming toward me. But it was very heavy and I struggled, knowing I had only seconds to work. I almost had it in the lock slot when the orang smashed into the metal mesh from the other side. Hot spittle exploded over my face and chest and I could hear an incredible howling from the creature’s wide open mouth. The bolt was touching the lock when the orang’s fingers came through the mesh and grabbed it. We strained against each other, me trying to close it, he trying to force it back to get in at me. At the instant I knew the beast was going to win I woke up.

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NEW Halloween Horror News and Links:

A bit of cool news. L. A. Mitchell did a flash piece called “Home” for Halloween Horror October and won second place in a contest with that same piece. Check out the post here.

Laughingwolf has another freaky flash up: Chance

Vesper has a story up called Fortune

Will Kinshella has entered the fray with his own Halloween Flash

And Avery Debow adds another flash with The Love of the Job

And another from Laughingwolf, who would get an award for most prolific halloween flash fictioneer if I had thought about making such an award. See rider


OLDER Halloween Horror Links:

Flash Fictions

Hell Plate by Lucas Pederson.

freaky flash IX, night, by Laughingwolf.

lobo, also by Laughingwolf.

Non-fiction

Barbara Martin has been running some posts on her blog about horror films. Today she has a piece on Dracula.

Travis has a great true story on his blog called Ghost. Well worth checking out.

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