Visions in the Dark

After remembering no dreams for many months, I finally have not only a dream, but a long and detailed dream.


This dream starts off in a huge grocery store filled with fresh produce. Some of the aisles and sections of the store are dirt patches that are growing the actual produce. There are many young people working the fields and organizing the aisles as the place has just opened for the first time. The owner, a middle aged man in deniem overalls and a green plaid shirt is at the entrance of the store brainstorming several ideas about making this unique store more accessable and interactive with customers, like letting them harvest their own produce and things like that. There were many interesting and varied ideas but I have forgotten what most of them were.

I enter the store and beeline for the potatoe patch near the front. I have a basket with me and fill it with dirt and then place a line of potatoes, slanted diagonally, on the top, before coving them with dirt. I head for the cola aisle but I cannot get through because many cases of cola have fallen on the floor in a big pile and are blocking the way. All of the cola cases were coloured purple but it was diet colda, not grape cola, that were in the boxes. A bored looking young man is there slowing restacking the boxes but he seems very unenthusiastic about his job and ignores me when I ask if there is another way to get around the pile.

I head back to the front of the store to look at some more vegatables but something happens (I cannot remember what now) which triggers by post-traumatic stress and I fall on my back to the floor. I am conscious, but paralyzed with fear and unresponsive to the curious crowd that gathers around me. No one makes any effort to help me and one young man takes a picture with his camera phone before two young woman enter the store, see what is going on, and carry me to a more secluded spot to recover. I can hear them talking and for some reason they know exactly what has happened to me and know all about my past and post-traumatic stress. One of the young woman is dressed in a "goth" style while the other is dressed like a punk rocker. Though I do not recognize them from anyone I know in real life, in the dream I felt very close to them like I had known them for a long time.

The dream scene changes and it is suddenly night time and we are on a hill, under a broken and abandoned railway bridge in a small town that I do not recognize. The two girls and I are still together but we have grown younger by about eight to ten years and are now children, even though we are still dressed the same. The three of us are street children and are playing amdist the abandoned scaffolding once put up in an effort to repair the bridge, a project long since abandoned. We are not the ony homeless children in the area as there are many running around, but my two friends and I are "new" and don't really know any of the other children yet. Despite being alone in the dark, we are playing carefree. I am on the hill, under some scaffording near the traintracks when a bright light down the tracks catches my attention. I can see the headlight of a large locomotive making its way over the horizon towards the broken bridge. I can see the outline of a long train behind the light, can hear the rumble of the engine, and feel the shaking of the ground, but no one else can see the train and they continue to play as if nothing is there. I become terrified and my post-traumatic stress kicks in and I fall to the ground paralyzed with fear like I did back in the farm grocery store. I do not consciously think it in the dream but I can sense that the approaching ghost train represents something dark from my past and that is what triggers my pts, not the thought of the trains crashing on the broken bridge.

Some children gather around me, including my two friends, but this time they do not realize what is wrong with me. They try to rouse me with teasing and stuff but I am completely paraylayzed, though I am concious and can see and hear everything around me, and I cannot respond. As the train that no one else can see gets closer my feelings of terror and dread grows. As the train passes group of teenagers wanders in from somewhere and one of the boys in the group takes a picture of me laying on the ground because I am so unresponsive and pale that he thinks I am dead. He and his friends are laughing about all the damn homeless kids in the area but the children get defensinve and chase off the teenagers afterwards by ganging up and throwing rocks and debris. As the teens run off the ghost train hits the broken bridge and crashes into the river below, taking half of the bridge with it. I can see, hear and feel everything and it is so overwhelming that I feel like my soul is being extinguished by the terrifying experience. Though the other children could not see or hear the train approaching it suddenly becomes real to them as it crashes into the bridge and they all flee in terror from the twisting metal and train cars piling up on one another under the bridge.

My eyes finally close and I think I pass out or die from fright but I can still hear and feel the train crashing into the river. When what seems like an eternity of the ground violently shaking and the sound of screaming metal finally passes and I open my eyes and can finally move my body again. My friends and some other children are gathered around me trying to wake me up and they want to know why I passed out. I look around and the train is gone and the bridge is back to the way it was before the crash. The night is quiet and still and there is no evidence that there was a train at all. My friends said that I was playing under the scafforlding when I suddenly passed out and they could not wake me for several minutes. Though there is now no train or any physical evidence of it I know my experience of it was real because the memory of it is so vivid in my mind and the numbing terror that I felt is still lingering in my heart and body.

There is a bit more to this dream, something about riding the tops of cars around town, stealing food, and three fire engines driving off or crashing into the broken train bridge, but the details have become to blurred and I cannot remember them.

There is a some sort of family gathering in a small house. I think it is my grandma's old house, but I am not sure. There are many people , some I recognize as members of my family, and some that do not resemble any person I know in waking life. There only seems to be three rooms; the kitchen, the living room, and the basement. The kitchen does not have a table or chairs but there is a green sofa against one of the walls. The living room is sparse as well and only has a white loveseat and a large screen television. Needless to say, most of the people in the house were standing as they socialized.

There were some people in the kitchen preparing food and some people standing around with drinks. I was in the kitchen but I was not preparing food or drinks, nor was I socializing. I didn't want to be there and I felt very tired and bored. I sit down on the green sofa, curl up on one end and start to drift off to sleep. I can hear my dad come into the room and everyone starts asking him what's wrong with me, as if they can sense the fact that I don't want to be there. I cannot hear exactly what my dad is saying except that he is going around the room and apologizing to everyone.

I wake up when I feel someone sit on the other end of the sofa. I sit up and see that it is Uncle Doug. He is making rude and offensive jokes about women and everyone in the room (which I notice at this point is all male) laughs along with him. I am disgusted but I cannot think of anything to say. Uncle Doug turns to me, grabs my arm and asks if I am "cool" with the jokes he is telling. I scream at him not touch me and to stuff his misogyny up his ass. He gets embarassed and apologizes and asks if I am offended, and even though I am, for some reason I say no.

Everyone starts to head down stairs and I get up off the green sofa so that it can be carried into the basement. I start washing dishes because I am too pissed off to talk to anyone. Dinner is being served in the basement and everyone is down there, but I refuse to join them because I still feel raw about the incident with Uncle Doug.

I climb up on the kitchen counter and look out the window, but instead of seeing a backyard at groud level, the view is from several storeys up and I am looking down upon what appears to be a train station. There are many people walking around or just standing on the boardwalk as a passenger train very slowly pulls out of the station. Out of the corner of my left eye I see a frieght train appear out of nowhere and slam into the back of the passenger train at a great speed. I watch in horror as the frieght train cars pile up on each other and onto the boardwalk, violently crushing some of the people who had been standing there. I feel helpless because I cannot do anything but neither can I look away, even as people continue to be crushed and mangled by the crashing trains.


Then the vividness of the terror and sheer graphic nature of the train crash woke me up.