Dreams Are Weird

I have seen many writers who claim that they get great story ideas from their dreams. I am not one of them. In fact, I have proven that my dreams really do not belong in any novel format. Why, you ask? Well, as epic, adventurous, or emotionally driven as some of my dreams may be, there is always one consistent problem... THEY MAKE NO FREAKIN' SENSE!

In the dream, of course, everything usually seems justifiable to dream-me. But then there are the dreams that are so out of sync with reality that even dream-me is thinking "none of this makes any sense!". The worst ones are the ones that latch onto to awake me. Something about the intensity of the dream makes me think, "OMG, that was so real!" and sometimes, yes, I think that it would make an awesome novel, or movie, or comic strip, or, etc, etc, etc. Until I try to piece it together that is. When I actually go to link one vivid element to the other, I begin to realize that none of these things actually fit together. So unless I'm just making a dream journal that reads like an acid trip, I'm pretty much just creating a whole lot of nothing - well, maybe evidence to be psych evaluated...

Example? Let's take last night's dream. It was vivid. Adventurous. Emotionally intense. And lacking in all plausible motivation.

Let's title it: The Killer Robot Who Wants Revenge For Reasons That Are Toblerone.

Yup, that seems like a good title to me!

So here we go:

The Killer Robot Who Wants Revenge For Reasons That Are Toblerone.

I am in a hotel. Or a large cruise ship. Or possibly a space ship that is vaguely based on the Enterprise or Voyageur. Whatever it is, I know that it is a return to childhood in some way. Parents, who aren't actually my parents, have brought me and a childhood friend I have never seen before in my life, back to this beloved vacation place that used to be frequented for what seems like every year, until, for reasons unknown, it wasn't. I don't know how long it's been. I don't even know how old I am. In fact, it seems like both my character and my character's age fluctuate from scene to scene. But that doesn't matter. The point is that I know returning to this place, to these rooms that we always ours and only ours, is a very big deal. 

Everything in this big elaborate room (and adjoining rooms) is tearfully nostalgic and a little bit tragic since it has been essentially abandoned since my parents were last here. Yes, my parents are dead now. I think. I'm not really sure. They were here a minute ago and now they've been dead for years. It makes me sad. 

But, Oh, What is this? A robot servant that looks like a 6 foot tall EVE, only with a triangular faceless face that pretty much feels evil to non-dream-me, has somehow survived all this time, lying dormant, and has awoken now, upon my return, ready to serve me and the random people I'm with (it keeps changing; I think I had a kid sister, and then it was real-life friends, and then it was some 8 year old kid that I'm supposedly friends with when I'm momentarily 8 years old as well). If the robot has a name, I don't remember it. But I feel comforted by. Until I go to have a bath...

This bathtub is the size of a kiddie pool. Not the inflatable backyard kind, but the kind that the local rec centre holds swim lessons in. And there is some wide rectangular mechanical trapdoor thing right in the middle. Which is fine when it isn't being activated. But for some reason, every time me, or someone else (apparently my actual husband has now joined me on this creepy vacation), the mechanical door thing slowly descends, revealing sharp fast-turning cogs that may or may not be saw blades. I don't know why we keep moving around it, or why we dismiss it as "That's weird" when clearly creepy robot lady (yes, she's a lady), is controlling the bath for us. 

This is where I begin having my suspicions about her. I choose not to get too close, but I don't want to give any indication that I don't trust her either. I fear what she might do. Apparently deactivation isn't an option - or dream-me just doesn't think about the obvious, which is quite possible since we can't seem to not swim near the trap door thing...

I meet up with old friends elsewhere in this hotel/vessel place. And since I was nearly murdered in my own pool-size bath, why wouldn't we all choose to go swimming in a very small, dark room. Apparently this very private pool was important to me and a friend of mine's parents. Perhaps it was around here that my parents died. Regardless, it seems like a good time to swim, in this windowless room, with the creepy robot who seems very focused on the children (who I may or may not be one of - it's a bit confusing). But it seems that the robot is conflicted. It doesn't actually want the children. It wants the parents. But it wants the parents as they were as children, and since the parents are in fact not children, the robot spends some time hesitating. So she just watches the playful swimming. 8 year old kid who isn't me is splashing in the water. His father is on the pool edge, leaning over, laughing with his son. That is who the robot wants. And now, as she approaches the father, she has a plan to execute her revenge. A spiked metal arm folds out from her sleek white body, and pierces the back of the father's head like an ice pick. At first I think that she has pulled out a chunk of his brain, but then I see that she has somehow sliced him so finely that she has removed his face without any of us noticing that the top layer of his face has been removed. Of course, no one has time to question whether or not this man has a face left. Our attention is on the robot who flies from her first victim straight to the next one: the little boy. In milliseconds she has plopped the father's face over top of that of the son, thereby making the father a child again, and enabling her to drown the boy, content that she has fulfilled her need to drown the father.

I know that I am next. I don't know if I am to be drowned or to have my face torn off, but either way I have decided to run and hide from this psycho machine! I run through narrow corridors, trying to pick a place to hide. Someone my own age follows me, a girl, no idea how she fits into all of this but dream-me knows that she's been with me the whole time even though I've never seen her before now, running. She wasn't at the pool.

I see elevators! And then I see the elevator repair man! Surely someone qualified to repair elevators must know enough about robotics to change robot programming! This was probably my big mistake. I should have asked for his wrench to bash the robot, but no, I explain to the repairman that there is a robot chasing us, determined to drown us for revenge for something that happened years ago. The repairman listens. The robot conveniently is not longer so behind us so that all of this can take place before we see her again.

Little did I know that the elevator repairman does know a thing or two about robots, and he sympathizes with it. "It can't want to hurt you for no reason. And it won't. It's just misunderstood."

"Misunderstood? Are you crazy? It just ripped someone's face off and drowned a kid!"

"Well," says the repairman, "I have this motto... Toblerone. That is my motto. I live my life by it."

Unconvinced and irritated by the useless advice of the only person who could possibly stop this murderous machine, I keep running, with the random girl, until we come down an even narrower corridor which I somehow know is filled with college girls. There are many narrow doors here, dorm rooms and such. With so many doors I have the brilliant idea to duck into the bathroom. The two of us squish down in a stall, trying to figure out how we can both keep our feet from showing below the door and our heads from showing above it. 

We haven't time to perfect our hiding stance. While we were conversing with the repairman, apparently the robot has been kindly asking the college girls to keep an eye out for us. One of the college girls spots us as we are awkwardly arranging ourselves around the toilet, and without saying a word the robot knows what she's seen. She enters the bathroom, either tearing away the stall door or flying over top of it, I don't know which, I can't see, I just duck down and try to cover my face...

And then I'm woken up by my husband. I will never know if Toblerone really was the answer all along, or if I got my face ripped off, or was drowned in the toilet because she seemed really bent on the whole drowning thing.

Perhaps you can see why my dreams don't lend themselves to good novel writing. It would take a whole heck of a lot of alteration to make something like that not feel broken. Nonetheless, it is fun to share these bizarre dreams. And since I can't do anything else with it, I'll just leave it here, on the blog, for you poor souls to try to make sense of.

#sweetdreams