DREAM SEVEN.

Strike.

Up until this point, I have been amazed by the sheer clarity and cohesion of my mo[i]st recent dreams, especially as a consistent narrative. I could only compare them in Apollonian Dignity to the series of dreams from 2013 that followed the Adventures of the Joker. About this old puzzle I wrote and raved extensively, covering not only the dream contents but its meanings, plot theories, and even its OMINOUS PARALLELS TO THE DREAMS OF MY FELLOWS, in a slew of revelation. Now this slew attains an erotic climax in the recognition of the fact that I am YET STILL DREAMING THAT STORY. The Faceless Traitor from Dream Number Fifty was of course none other than the Dog Napper that Rob and Mike had identified based on his description alone. Surely it was he who all so slashed Mike’s tires in North Korea, which I am guessing is where Rob’s Home is situated in this narrative. It is all starting to line up more neatly than a line of pawns. Some inconsistencies still nag at me, but to open discussion upon them is not only to express what might be a neurosis but it is to turn this honest record back into a philosophical forum, prone to all of the triggering distortions of an Emotive Debate League. And in the words of an old team-mate from that episode in my life: NO ONE wants Hilary for President. So I shall spare myself and others the torment of such an(al) analysis.

The dream begins where the last left off. W.K. and I had to flee our ransacked barracks. We took the Goat’s Head with us, for Good Luck, wrapping it in some old newspapers so that it would not start bleeding under the dawning Arizona (so I’m guessing: Arid Zone.) Sun.

We had to buy bicycles from the local pawnshop. As we began to peddle West, escaping the Sun that was just beginning to rise behind us, we noticed that we were being followed by a White Van. The van approached steadily and stealthily, but it was still gaining on us at a rate that was slow for a motor vehicle but much too fast for a foot-peddled bicycle. In a frantic move, the White Knight threw the Goat’s Head at the car. The truck did not just squash the head, which fell short of the windshield. It FLIPPED OVER, crashing on its roof, and guzzling fossil fuel from its dead underbelly. W.K, who mere moments ago had been playing E.T. with the Diabolical Scapegoat in his basket between his handlebars, was so shocked that he hit a fire hydrant. Before I could find my brakes, he flipped over, got curb-stomped by Gravity, and was soon covered, as far as his right-hand side was concerned, in oil. It was at this moment that the Joker emerged from the car. He was carrying a flame thrower. I screamed at the Joker not to do it. The Joker asked: do what? Don’t kill him, I replied. Don’t light him on fire, man. It was like Tarantino all over again. The Joker replied: I wasn’t about to. But now I will.

The last time that I felt this way was upon witnessing my dog’s injection in a Prior, Recent Dream. The White Knight screamed as half his face was burnt off. The Joker ambled away, content in spite. Out of the van emerged the Faceless Man. He walked through the fire like a daemon, took the White Knight’s bicycle, and then took his leave upon it, the bicycle tires having turned to flaming circles.

I was about to chase him. But then an other Beast appeared upon the scene. To my shock and awe I beheld an enormous wurm writhed now in flame and oil emerging from the midst of the flames. Upon it rode a suit of armour. The wurm plopped painlessly down, running with a hundred legs towards my comrade. The black suit of armour swept up W.K’s charred body and burst forth onto the shore of this Lake of Fire. It was at this moment that I realized several things. One was that the suit of armour was not merely black; it was BLACKENED. The Knight’s suit jacket was still white in certain places, not unlike my own suit jacket is where it brushed concrete. Yet unlike my own suit jacket in Actuality, it was not made white in those parts where it had once been black. The human zebra that now walked towards me, carrying my comrade in its arms, was once a White Knight as well, but it had turned to black. I could not see its face, for it was vizored, but I noticed that the Blackened Knight was all so short of stature. He walked in an effeminate fashion that leant new meaning to the word “gentleman”. He quivered as he carried the other White Knight, a fallen soldier, and when he whistled for his steed, who was comprised of a hundred phalluses, there was a breathiness, and really a breathlessness, in the whistle.

The steed was awkward to ride, especially with my crotch upon its flesh and only two layers of clothing segregating us. Add to that a heterosexual’s delight at riding with his burnt buddy before him, clinging to two penises for dear life, and an effeminate gentleman, my knight in shining armour, behind me. It was quite the experience.

We flew across the Sierra Nevada. My friend behind me said, in a distinctively exasperated tone prone to the occasional fit of glossolalia, but that might have been only a speech impediment heard over the sound of rushing air (as he had to shout to fight the wind and his sound waves left a wake behind us), that the Dick Centipede could only travel by night, so we would have to outfly the Sun. I asked politely, albeit shoutingly, if the beast had a scientific name. My Saviour replied, but I could not make out for certain the nature of his response. It could have been any where from “I am not an etymologist” to “I am an entomologist”. So I cut my losses.

We landed in San Diego Bay, atop the roof of Mr. A’s Restaurant. The Saviour said that this skyscraper was the safest place for us to hide and heal. He ran into the stairwell at a pace surprising for any one dressed entirely in iron, or whatever it was that had, instead of iron, kept his body from burning up like the victim of a Bronze Bull.

As the sky was just beginning to intimate a shade of indigo, I spoke to W.K. Really, he spoke to me. (Pardon the revision; I was told once by a Mystic to be more attentive to emotional detail in my dream records. My poetic style of delivery was described perhaps as being a “stream of consciousness”, though in reality those emotions that we can express outwardly are more akin to the conscious ego. The result of this was that I BEGAN TO write in a manner more AKIN to stream of consciousness, which states one thing as a fact and then quickly revised it as though it spoke too soon. No omniscient narrator would ever do that. But that’s what I get [and what YOU get, I guess, if there’s any chance a receiving end on this thing.] for trusting an old Gypsy Grifter who needs you to be “specific” (as though the Unconscious were Specific and the ego were Vague!!) so that she can “analyze” your dreams in a manner that appears to be suited to YOUR purposes.) He told me that now that his right-hand side was singed irreversibly, the right hand path was lost to him. I called him Gotham’s White Knight and gave him a Quarter. At this moment, the door of the stairwell suddenly burst open. The Blackened Knight came lumbering forth, stuttering. I could only make out this much news: that both of the White Rooks were dead. They were struck by lightning atop a tower in North Korea. Apparently, the North Korean government had learned how to manipulate the weather in order to produce political assassinations.

The Saviour Knight urged us to follow him, but I felt strongly and palpably that W.K. had to rest. As W.K. began to mutter, I leaned in, ignoring the B.K’s pleas. Gotham’s White Knight told me that he knew who the Joker was. The Joker was the Other Bishop. The Faceless Man was the White King. And both of them were working with the North Korean Government. But the Joker was betrayed by the White King, so the Joker burnt the White King’s face off. Now no one knows whether the Joker will remain loyal to the White Side or will go over to the Dark Side.

At this point, I heard two things at once, as though in symphony, but perhaps I simply lost my sense of time and everything felt like it was happening at once. I must have briefly visited the Dream Time. It was like being high at Black’s Beach that night with Rob. At once I heard the Dick Centipede Rider screaming over the sound of Thunder. It was like a piccolo playing over a dozen crash cymbals and ten timpanis. I felt water touch me. It splashed upon my comrade, as though to heal him, and he retracted from the sting of the water as though it had been a poisoned barb. I told him it was fine. I told him it was only water. But he said: it’s acid. It is poison.

Lightning struck and I woke up.

I write Goats, not Tragedies.

Dm.A.A.