/yesod

Category: dreams

  • the visit

    —

    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    Halfway through my day I stop and reach desperately for a scrap of dream from the night before, a vague memory that my character Jee came to see me. She had something important to tell me. But the dream is gone, nothing left but a sense of something forgotten.

  • in the shower

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    …as I’m washing my backside, someone peeks in between a seam in the shower curtain — old and wizened, though I cannot tell whether it is a man or a woman. They roll their eyes up at me, almost comical, and purse their mouth in a silent “Oooo…” …and then I wake with a start,…

  • the right to bear arms

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    …I’m stunned to see the President of the United States at the door. He bustles in before I can get my head around his sudden appearance. He is alone and clearly in peril. He slams the door and locks it behind him, thanking me for letting him in. It is strange to see him scared,…

  • precision

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    …with slow, precise snips of the nail clippers, I remove most of my right toenail, somewhat proud to have done it in a single, broad piece. The skin beneath is tender, painful. I hope my wife will not notice.

  • the apartment across the way

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    We’re living in an apartment complex, a bit run down and seedy. But this is all we can afford. In the apartment across the way, a young couple live with their two small children. The woman is slight, dark haired and sickly. Her husband is darker, brows constantly knotted with rage. His mentally-challenged brother lives…

  • david and mickey

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    It’s night and we’re driving, my friend David and me. I’ve known him a long time. Since we were in sixth grade, I think. We’ve stayed in touch that whole time, mostly. Well, we fall out of touch and then back into touch. We haven’t seen each other in years — almost twenty, I think…

  • frantic spider

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    …the spider struggles against the pull of the water as the tub drains, a thin filament of almost wire-like web cast out like a dark line . . . it clenches like a fist in the water, and I feel the tug of the web and pull my hand away, leaving it to it’s fate…

  • the floating eye

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    …and I have no breath to scream as my daughter falls twenty feet to the hard concrete floor, a gasp pressing out of my as I run to pick up her tiny, limp body. “Oh god, her eyes…” I turn away hiding her face from my wife so she cannot see how our daughter’s right…

  • opening night

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    …I find myself in the front row, enduring an abysmal production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” directed by my ex-wife. It’s godawful. Pretentious and ponderous. They’ve changed the language, modernized all the poetry out of it. And, insult to injury, they’ve added songs, turning it into a musical. Only Puck holds any interest. Dark and…

  • great

    —

    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    I would be delighted if my ex-wife didn’t show up in my dreams, however briefly, ever again.

  • lounge act

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    Woke early this morning with a handful of broken fragments from last night’s dreams, losing little shards as the day progresses, memories and images slipping through my fingers and lost for good. Here’s what’s left… …a heartfelt farewell from one of my clients, almost paternal in how touching his words are… …my wife and I…

  • Sunday nap

    —

    by

    T.M. Camp
    in ,

    …there are three children playing at the curb, jumping in and out of a deep puddle of mud and dirt. The oldest of these, perhaps eight years old, stops in the midst of bossing the other two around and turns as he notices me… …and a man’s voice tells me “Look to the world around…

  • brief reunion

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    …we sit together in the small living room, balancing plates on our knees and doing our best to keep up the conversation despite the fact that there are some genuinely difficult conflicts unresolved between a few of us. And the fact that some of us are dead. It’s a surprise to see them, my grandparents.…

  • fragments

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    …a long bodied cat, muscular and lean, stalks through the room — insane eyes, gaping mouth drooling as it swivels its head from side to side . . . its long gray fur matted and ragged, trailing after it in the air… …I turn and see the electrical plug floating in the air before my…

  • afternoon nap

    —

    by

    T.M. Camp
    in ,

    Mind wandering around as I waited for sleep to come, dozy logic moving from Macon Leary to Edward Gorey to Ernest Hemmingway . . . then, the image of a local highway, the flashing lights of police cars against the pale winter sky.

  • eastern promises

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    I find myself on a tour of a city somewhere in Eastern Europe. It is a dank, darkly industrial place — all smokestacks and ornate spires, brick walls stained with soot. Tagging along with a friend from junior high — he has made this trip many times before — I wander through the streets and…

  • payroll

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    …I find that I have overslept and am in a rush to get a stack of deposits to the University’s bank by noon, otherwise all of the faculty and staff paychecks will bounce. The deposit is a stack of checks and slips totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are pink and yellow carbon copies,…

  • the new office

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    …and I’m surprised to find out that not only are each of us getting our own office in the new building, but we’ll have an attached bedroom as well. A few of my coworkers even have bunkbeds. The gossip around the office is that this is to allow for a more Mad Men like atmosphere.…

  • the shadow on the stairs

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    Dozing on the couch while the baby has her bath, I dream… …and at the turn of the stairs I look up to see a shadow slowly slide down the wall and onto the floor, like a black puddle of oil. From this pool, a figure slowly rises — an almost cartoonlike shape of a…

  • daycare rescue

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    Somehow, I have become two people. There is the adult version of me, as I am now. And there is the teenaged version of me. Together, we are plotting to rescue my youngest daughter from her daycare. The details of why she needs rescuing aren’t explained but, armed to the teeth and sick with worry,…

  • a friend in need

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    We’re all a little worried about Patton Oswalt. Having known him since we were kids, it’s obvious he isn’t himself lately. He’s depressed, lethargic, and we’re all little bit worried. But he’s a celebrity. It’s not like we can just check him into a hospital. So my wife and I and a few other friends…

  • the fuzzy pink octopus spider monster

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    This is the first dream I can remember — obviously, it’s not the first dream I ever had. That’s long gone now. But this is the earliest one I can remember… …we’re driving in the car, my two brothers and me. Out mother is behind the wheel. We’re on our way to the grocery store.…

  • just another white trash weekend

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    …for some unknown reason, our family has been relocated to what can only be charitably described as “the bad part of of town.” The neighborhood is a congregation of cheap, prefab homes and trailers jumbled together with only the thinnest of spaces between them. The houses stand (barely) on two hillsides with the street running…

  • the dancing toy

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    …disturbing discoveries in the new house continue as we settle in. (I should mention that this is not our actual house, not the new house we moved into earlier this year, but some alternate, dreamspace version that has that same-but-not-the-same quality which you only find in dreams.) There is the painting in the upstairs bedroom,…

  • an uncomfortable visit

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    …shocked at how seedy the old neighborhood looks, I feel a pang of survivor’s guilt over my own relatively comfortable life now. Through the open door of the apartment, I can see that our old neighbors are sitting down to dinner. I’m stunned for a moment to find that the little boy my son used…