Interpretation: killing a dog with arrows.

Hey everyone,

I'm new here. I usually can interpret dreams very well but I'm stumped with this one and I hope I can get some suggestions here to help figure out what this means.

Last night I had a dream that an army of visceral creatures grew out of bio-hazard waste. I believe the bio-hazard waste is literal in this dream, because in waking life I work at a laboratory and our autoclave broke, and I've been storing the bio-hazard waste until it's fixed. Just think... bacteria festering in closed tubes and vials for a week. :disconcerted: It grosses me out and I'm not looking forward to dealing with it when we get new equipment. So that gives a little context.

So to continue: These creatures mounted an army lead by the most human-like creature to come forth: A brute of a man, possibly a centaur, I can't remember very well, with inky blue, crumbling skin, a haggard face, muscular, with a cross-bow. I decided to try and steal his crossbow to take control and shoot the creatures which were attacking people. Some parts of the dream occurred underwater, where they were swimming with me, and through this whole dream I was trying to defend others from their attacks. It's all very hazy everything that happened.

I tried to sneak over the the centaur-like man (who was probably 15 ft tall) and take the crossbow, but he caught me. I thought he was going to kill me and tried to run away, but instead he handed me the crossbow. He asked me to kill him so that humanity would know they could defeat the creatures. Then he morphed into a white collie, and jumped down into a tube about double his length in diameter and I was standing on a balcony above him. "Fish in a barrel" comes to mind, or "falling down the well" which seems like a metaphor, especially with a collie, potentially making a twisted invocation of Lassie.

I shot arrows down into the dog until he was dead, crying and saying "I'm sorry" over and over. I woke up with a profound feeling of sadness, and strangely, I wasn't afraid of the creatures through the entire dream. I was only slightly disturbed by their putrid-ness (sort of like how I feel about the biowaste at work).

I don't know what to make of the centaur or the dog, though, or the symbolism of the crossbow. Any ideas? Thank you in advance!

Sounds pretty straightforward - you've been worried/grossed out by whatever is festering in those tubes, and in the dream you brought it to rather cartoonish/monstrous life. It wants you to kill it, and since it has taken humanoid form that's tragic (though of course that's only in the dream, nothing tragic about killing off viruses and microbes unless you're really getting oversensitive). I would assume the reason for it turning semi-humanoid was because it was going to talk - to ask you to kill it/them. It pretty much had to become humankind to do that, or at least that seems like standard dream logic. And so it asking you to kill it/them and dropping helpfully into a tube (like the tubes the waste is stored in?) would feel tragic - that's just dream schema playing out I think. That would be my take anyway.

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Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Sounds pretty straightforward - you've been worried/grossed out by whatever is festering in those tubes, and in the dream you brought it to rather cartoonish/monstrous life. It wants you to kill it, and since it has taken humanoid form that's tragic (though of course that's only in the dream, nothing tragic about killing off viruses and microbes unless you're really getting oversensitive). I would assume the reason for it turning semi-humanoid was because it was going to talk - to ask you to kill it/them. It pretty much had to become humankind to do that, or at least that seems like standard dream logic. And so it asking you to kill it/them and dropping helpfully into a tube (like the tubes the waste is stored in?) would feel tragic - that's just dream schema playing out I think. That would be my take anyway.

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Haha, if it is that straightforward I'm a huge nerd. Thanks Darkmatters. It does seem like a test tube! How could I not see that comparison??

I do find killing bacteria like this kind of tragic. I think it's because I hang around microbes all day, growing them up, using them all the time for tests. You end up feeling kind of like a bacteria farmer. Didn't think I'd see them like a "pet" though. Maybe I do, subconsciously.

Still odd the crossbow. I'll need to read more about the symbolism of that, just out of curiosity.

It could be nothing more than that the guy happened to look like a centaur, and we tend to associate centaurs with crossbows. That's the way dream schema work - one image, thought or feeling leads to a whole association-chain of similar ones. If you think about this and study your dreams, you can often see the mechanics of it in operation quite transparently. Example; find yourself on a dark street, first thought "scary", so next thing you're being pursued by something.

And it's not that I deny that dreams can have more meaningful interpretations - I believe they sometimes do, but I also know that often the emotions (which can be overpowering in dreams) can distort your view of what actually happened in the dream, making it hard to believe it was just a normal dream. Powerful emotions tend to make people feel their dreams Meant Something, when most dreams are simply rehashing leftover day residue.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Darkmatters

It could be nothing more than that the guy happened to look like a centaur, and we tend to associate centaurs with crossbows. That's the way dream schema work - one image, thought or feeling leads to a whole association-chain of similar ones. If you think about this and study your dreams, you can often see the mechanics of it in operation quite transparently. Example; find yourself on a dark street, first thought "scary", so next thing you're being pursued by something.

And it's not that I deny that dreams can have more meaningful interpretations - I believe they sometimes do, but I also know that often the emotions (which can be overpowering in dreams) can distort your view of what actually happened in the dream, making it hard to believe it was just a normal dream. Powerful emotions tend to make people feel their dreams Meant Something, when most dreams are simply rehashing leftover day residue.

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I'm happy to have a normal dream and not one fraught with my deepest fears etc. :cheeky:

It falls into place when I interpret it the way you describe. The man-like creature could also be "anthropomorphizing" the bacteria, so it's not all-human but human-like (some of the media that is sitting around is inky blue in color).

I just feel pretty silly that I couldn't see it before. I think, because it was so emotionally engaging, I didn't think it could be so simple; but as you say, distortions from the intensity of dream-feelings could account for that. I wouldn't think such a thing bothered me so much.

(However I've had silly work dreams before, like the fact that there isn't a strainer in the sink and I can drop spinbars down it if not careful. I actually had a dream of all my glassware falling through huge, person sized hole in the sink... and I know other lab-mates that have lab dreams... such as the ethidium bromide (toxic) seeping through walls dream that my colleague had! Perhaps "lab nightmares" comes with the job).

Thank you for giving this perspective. I appreciate it a lot!