I. Lab Rats.

The entire dream seemed to be about us all going in these circles, these cycles, we were placed within by a higher force or intelligence, but we also somehow seemed to be physically bound to a locale as well. Most centrally among my companions was this girl I knew from childhood who used to live across the street from our suburban home. Her and I kissed at some point in the dream and began developing something as these cycles continued.

At one point as her and I were walking along a forest-lined road, I discover that she didn’t recall having ever gone to the beach with me or anything about our budding relationship, and that other events that had happened seemed lost to her as well. The rest of us came to the conclusion that “they” had taken away some of her memories, leaving her with only selected ones, and that this whole thing — the routine, being trapped in this place — was about them testing on and studying us like lab rats.

After I awoke from the dream, as my eyes were still closed and I was going over it, trying to remember all of it, it reminded me for some reason of the movie, The Forgotten, though it took some searching on the net for me to finally find the title of the movie after I got up around 9:30. As I reflected more on the dream after being awake, though, I found it reminded me more of Dark City, which I ended up finding on the net and watching.

Afterward, still feeling tired, I decided to lay back in bed sometime after one in the afternoon, do some relaxation exercises, and try and take a nap. I woke up at about twenty after two after having had a strange experience on the dreamscape.

II. “I Know This Isn’t Real.”

I’m looking everywhere, all around my parents property for two things, neither of which I can find, so I start walking around the block. Interestingly enough, I found one of the items — the wheelbarrow — alongside a dirt road maybe halfway around the block. As to how it got there, I could only assume that someone had stolen it.

I began walking with it back home, but then saw what I recognized as my parents old porch swing a few paces away on the other side of the road. After thinking back for a moment, I thought I recalled her telling one of the neighbors they could have it, so I surmised that this must be the neighbor in question. I then noticed a land line right by the swing with the phone off the hook. With some struggle, as it wouldn’t latch at first, I managed to put it back on the holder.

Finally making it back to my parent’s long driveway, I begin walking as the day descends into night. As I began to approach the house I suddenly realized I didn’t have the wheelbarrow with me. I felt confused, embarrassed, and a little frightened about what I assumed had to have been my absent-mindedness, and walked back down to the end of the driveway to discover that I had indeed left it there.

Once I finally get back to the house, it’s dark, and walk inside. My mother and sister, Eve, are there, talking amongst one another and not even acknowledging my existence. I try to tell my mother about the wheelbarrow, but whatever I do, I can’t seem to get her attention — she just keeps ignoring me and talking to Eve. After the third attempt, I scream, “Fuck it, fine,” and walk around the dining room table, which finally gets her attention.

As I then proceed to walk into the kitchen, where she stands, I scream that I’ve been trying to tell her about something but she won’t listen, and I’ve tried getting her attention three fucking times now. I’m furious. All this hassle and confusion trying to find the wheelbarrow and I can’t get her to even pay attention to me long enough to tell her.

At any rate, as I’m yelling at her in the kitchen she finally looks at me, the first time since I walked in the door, and she just looks me in the eyes and flicks me off before turning around again. In response, I hold up both my middle fingers and stick them in her line of sight.

“Two for you,” I say. “I found your fucking wheel barrow.”

Shorrly thereafter, I sit down on the floor in front of the television with Eve beside me a short distance away, I think on a chair. Then my mother comes in and sits beside me, deliberately hitting me with her knee as she does so. I don’t react. I just sit there angrily, hand on my chin, trying to ignore her, staring at the screen on the boxy television on the floor, just stewing, steaming.

Suddenly, for whatever reason, I begin to suspect that somethings incredibly off about all this. That it was all an illusion, all a dream. For a moment I called myself crazy, as my vision was so damn clear, but I soon became absolutely convinced.

That was when I turned to my “mother,” grabbed her by the shoulders, and screamed as loud as I could, with all the rage swelling in me, “I know this isn’t real,” but no voice came out. I screamed it louder, and this time I could hear it, however faint, but the dream darkens, fades, and for a moment it feels as though I’m in that otherworldly Void I often go to during my astral projections.

Then I wake up.

I’m downstairs at my parents house and the family is around me. My mother wants to say something to me, but I politely tell her to wait a second, as I have to piss. While I do need to pee, it’s also because I want to write down the dream I just had on my phone before my memory of it fades.

First, though, I have to piss, and as I race to the bathroom stuff falls out of my pocket. I decide to pick it up later. Once inside, I pull down my pants but become utterly confused when I see my boxer shorts. They have sort of a patchwork pattern, though the biggest patch is red-colored with tiny white hearts on it.

I’d never buy this. I’d never wear it.

In any case, I start to piss, but accidentally piss on my father’s shirt, which for some reason was draped over the toilet seat.

Something seems off about all this, I think to myself. I can hear my parents outside the door, talking to each other about the trailer they’re helping me move into next August, but by the time I finish up and exit the bathroom, they’re already upstairs, preparing to go to bed.

I pick up the things that fell out of my pocket — some money rolls to roll some change of mine — and then remember that I wanted to write down that dream, but I left my phone in the bathroom, so I walk back in. I’m shocked to find the toilet’s no longer there. In its place is my old computer chair, which had broke. I inspect it, however, only to discover that it’s no longer broken.

“I’m not still fucking dreaming…?”

As soon as I say it, I wake up in bed.

My parents have a bunker on their property — or perhaps more appropriately, a multi-leveled underground city. The initial room is rather bland and vacant save for big boxes of candy, among them KitKat and Reecies cups. The deeper levels have areas akin to an upscale hotel or college campus where you can relax and read or watch television. Some areas mimick natural settings, like a beach and a lake, and others are akin to an amusement park. At some point I recall wondering to myself how my parents managed to afford all of this.

In one area there was a sort of train, but the cars were like glass boxes you sat inside, and as I rode along inside of one along with others, I saw my friend, Elizabeth, working inside a glass booth.

One guy talks me into going into a rather dark and crowded bar with him, where he meets up with his girlfriend. As I’m standing there, some girl leans her back on me and we start talking and there’s some mild flirtation going on. I can finally see her face somewhat and she reveals that her and I know each other from high school — some reasonably-attractive redhead I used to know.

At some point, the electricity goes out in the bunker. Once the lights come back on, as we’re trying to ascertain what had happened, one of the redheaded twins I worked with until recently — the one I tended to focus on specifically — suggests that we take a look at the security footage from the cameras placed all throughout the bunker.

I’m suddenly distracted from solving the mystery, however, when I suddenly remember that my parents are down here somewhere. I needed to check on them to see if they’re all right. I first find my mother, who is hurt, though I can’t remember the details. I go to a higher level so as to get better phone reception so I can call for an ambulance, but before I get a chance to do so, I find my father. I find him on the ground, a few others around him — apparently he’d fallen out of one of those glass box train cars. He had hurt his head, and I could feel the tender, soft, bruised area at the top of his skull.

I then tried to call an ambulance for two, but became very anxious. I wanted to take charge but was terrified I didn’t know how to handle this alone.

I wake up in bed, feeling entirely rested and somehow cleansed, after having had the darkest, most depressing, angriest and horrible dream I can ever recall having.

Getting up out of bed, I sit on my computer chair. I don’t make coffee or even have a cigarette. I don’t turn on the laptop. I just stare off into space, stunned, disgusted, horrified, just marinating in the dark, quiet, still sort of emptiness it had left in me.

Everything in me wanted to believe that the dream didn’t come from me, but from somebody else Eventually, I pushed myself to write it down, but it was difficult, and I couldn’t do it all at once

In the dream, I’m looking at the back of some guy, who feels as though he is an older brother. He’s sitting at my desk and using my desktop. I’m angry at him and he’s acting as if I have no right to be. Either he broke the computer or I want to break it so he can’t use it, I’m not sure which, but I comfort myself by thinking to myself how at least I’ll still have my laptop.

In the next scene, I’m in a van with my family. My mother and father are up front, with my father driving, and other siblings are in the middle seats. I’m in the back seat with my younger brother, who is wrapped up in a tan blanket. From beneath the blanket he reveals three items, all of which are from my past but which I had entirely forgotten about, which he then gives to me. The only item I can remember specifically is an old book at least partially on the subject of UFOs.

There is then some tense conversation between my mother and I in which I prove her wrong about something, though she is unable to admit to it. Rather than cowering and backing down, despite being terrified of her and her power over me, I keep pushing the issue. Doubling down, though through a teasing kind of humor. A part if me is trying to get her to admit to it, though I know it’s unlikely; a greater part of me simply wants to anger her and give her a small sample of how she makes me feel all the time.

We all walk into the lobby of an apartment complex or hotel, where I see the unoccupied table for the receptionist. On the desk I find old photocopies I’d made during high school of the MJ-12 documents. I pocket them.

Later, in a dark apartment or hotel room, I keep pushing it, pushing my mother to admit she’s wrong about whatever it was she said in the van.

“The holidays are coming up,” she tells me. “There’s consequences.”

I follow her out into the equally dark hallway, where I confront her with what I suspected all throughout my youth.

“You never wanted to have me.”

“No shit,” she snaps back, not missing a beat, showing not the slightest hint of empathy with me or love from her, and it confirms what I’d always felt in my youth: I am an unwanted burden to her. I am worthless to her.

I am nothing, and I am hated.

Later, at my parent’s house, I’m in the kitchen making coffee, though the filter and the filter basket is huge, like it is at work. In the distance, I think I can hear my parents talking, and I don’t feel as though I’m welcome here. There’s this horrible feeling in my chest. As I’m scooping the grounds into the filter, my younger brother enters the kitchen, comes up to me and tells me that my parents are “cutting me off.”

Abruptly, the dream shifts to the next scene. I’m walking down my parents long driveway towards the house with the family and some other guy. He walks just beside me, with a coat that makes me think he’s a cop or an FBI agent, and he’s holding a long gun. He’s talking as if he’s trying to creep me put, assert power over me subtley through instilling a sense of terror through words that seem playful only on the surface. I suspect he intends on murdering me. As he’s talking about the gun and proper gun safety, I finish his sentence for him.

“… and always keep the safety on.”

In a swift moment, I quickly turn around, grab the gun, aim it at him and fire.

It all goes black.

I don’t see the act itself, all is still black, but I know that I then shot my mother as well, then chopped her up in pieces I then rolled up in bedsheets. I then see a flash, like a still image, of the blood stained white sheets wrapped around severed body parts.

I wake up in bed utterly fucking horrified, but also calm, rested, and cleansed, as previously mentioned. This painful and finally gruesome horror story that played out in my head somehow served as catharsis, and it has made me really concerned about myself all day.

After getting over the horror of the dream, as well as the guilt and shame I felt in the wake of this dream, I was able to look back on the dream symbolically.

My mother had looked younger — which is to say as she did when I was a kid and I still hated her for how she treated me. She also carried the same vibe she did back then: always angry at me, dismissive of me, desperate to maintain power over me and unwilling to accept any ignorance or wrongdoing.

This notion was reinforced by the fact that, in the dream, she was unwilling to accept that she might have been wrong about something: to her, this would mean her sense of superiority would be diminished, and she couldn’t have that.

“The holidays are coming up,” she had told me. “There’s consequences.” What the hell did that mean?

Holidays are a break from the routine, robot life, in which you commune with family and friends — those with whom you have the most enduring connections. She was threatening to abandon me, and this notion was reinforced when, after my confrontation with her. during which she confirmed that she had never wanted to have me, my younger brother approached me in their kitchen to tell me that my parents were “cutting me off,” or severing ties with me.

That’s what it meant. My fear of abandonment. My trust issues.

I think that the matricide may represent my intense desire to rid myself of the ill emotional effects my mother had on me in my childhood. For years I would have spontaneous memories and chronic daydreams about arguing with her, often trying to make her feel as small and unwanted as she made me feel. After my mother and I made amends, my old boss, Connie, took over the role in my head, and it still happens. Connie treated me pretty much like my mother treated me growing up, so it makes sense that I would try to distance myself from my issues with my mother as she had been by using Connie as a sort of stand-in. This dream just returned me to the source material, I guess.

The act of killing her in the dream may represent my effort to eliminate those old feelings and their present effects on me, but the chopping-up part still seems like the most extreme, literal form of overkill.

Honestly, the end of the dream still bothers me, still leaves me disgusted with and horrified by myself.

As for the rest of the family, I hardly noticed my father or sisters in my dream. Though I know they were there, they served only as backdrops here. Present, yes, but otherwise ultimately irrelevant. My older brother was only highlighted in what I remember being the opening scene, but I think he was also there throughout the rest of the dream, though after that initial scene only as a member of the backdrop population. My younger brother played a fairly active role, of course.

I have no brothers in real life, though, only two sisters, so what was that all about?

Brothers are clearly not you, yet are related to you, and so if you’re a man and have no brothers in real life, in dreams it would make sense that they would reflect aspects of you and your relationship with those aspects, and perhaps those in your life which you project them and your relationships with them upon.

What does the older brother in the opening scene symbolize? I’m not at all sure. Given that it dealt with me being angry at him using my desktop computer, however, I do have some initial thoughts, what you might call potential interpretations.

An older brother may represent what I fear I might become. As for the desktop he’s hijacked? To me, computers, as well as the internet – which today is more or less synonymous with computers, let’s be frank – represents my ability to explore what I wish to explore and express how I think and feel, be it under my own name or, if I prefer, anonymously.

A desktop, to me, seems more sedentary, rooted in the stable home base – the Jungian persona, if you will – which is to say something I can step away from but for now must come back to. A laptop or a cell phone, I feel, is more nomadic in nature, is something I can always carry with me, something I certainly can yet need not escape from, wherever I may roam.

So maybe the older brother, representing future-me, comandeering my desktop, represents my fears of ruining myself, my name, my Jungian persona in the eyes of those I care about in the future, and the comfort I still have in thoughts of my laptop represent the fact that I can start again under different names, different faces, or even keep it all private – it is something I can take with me, and which no judgements of others can take away from me.

If he broke the desktop, perhaps my fear is that I will render my persona in this lifetime unsalvagable. If I broke the desktop so he couldn’t use it, perhaps that suggests I’m determined to interrupt the current trajectory.

It may be a hell of a stretch, but that’s all I’ve got.

A younger brother in a dream, however, at least one that you don’t have in real life, it is said, may represent yourself as you were when you were younger. And this makes a good deal of sense to me, at least in the context of this particular dream, and for several reasons.

In the scene in the van, for instance, he sat next to me in the back seat, essentially hiding under a blanket — a tan blanket, like the one I always liked to have on my bed when I was between maybe seven and ten and we lived in our first house. As children (at the very least) we tend to hide under blanket because it provides some semblance of comfort and security in our feeble attempt to hide ourselves from what we fear out there in the darkness of our bedroom. I did a lot of hiding from the monsters of my youth behind doors, in closets, beneath beds, and under blankets such as that tan one, so that tracks,

If he represented a younger aspect of myself, it is perhaps telling that he was hiding not just from the rest of the family occupying the van but also from me. Perhaps he represents some aspect of myself I dissociated from my conscious personality as a child out of fear, and so he became stunted in that child-state for that reason, and so manifests that way in this dream. To carry this interpretation further, I can’t help but notice that from beneath the blanket he had given back to me those three items from my childhood that I’d forgotten about. This could suggest that this compartmentalized, childlike aspect of my consciousness was releasing some contents of my past, formerly unconscious, back into consciousness.

The only item out of the three that I managed to recall from the dream, however, was a book dealing with UFOs. Given the sightings and encounters I’ve had throughout my life and the flashbacks of those creatures I had when I was a teenager of encounters I’d had when I was even younger, this is also consistent with the notion of unconscious contents from childhood rising to consciousness.

The UFO subject was again referenced when my family and I entered the lobby of the hotel or apartment complex, however, so this subject was reinforced in particular.

Hotels are said to suggest one is a transformational or transitional period in their life, and a receptionist suggests a need for assistance or guidance. Though I saw no receptionist, I did see the table, upon which I found photocopies of the MJ-12 documents. I had actually made such photocopies as a teen when I found them in one of the countless books I was reading in efforts to build up a context through which to better understand my experiences.

While the issues with my mother were similar in that they were unconscious contents that arose in this dream, I’ve been uncertain as to how it relates to the UFO issue more directly, but I think I may understand now. I think I may understand the meaning and purpose behind this haunting dream as a whole.

As a whole, perhaps the dream reflects my fears of expressing my true thoughts and feelings and memories because I fear that in doing so I will be judged harshly, whether I am truly understood or not, and subsequently abandoned by the world at large, particularly those I care about. It probably also references the people-pleasing habits of keeping my mouth shut and hiding those parts of myself out of that fear — and the guilt I feel when I’ve expressed myself nonetheless. Perhaps, in a symbolic effort to overcome these fears and regain myself, I had to symbolically kill this fear at the roots, and those fears originated in how my mother treated me in my youth.