April 2024 - The Pure Life of Dreams

April 27, 2024June 7, 2024

Ana Wintour is my Half-Sister

Ana Wintour who lives in Trotto, Napoli is my half-sister. There is a picture with me and my sister in her apartment and I recognize it because Elaine is wearing her sick dress.

Dad is there too, lying on a couch.

And my mum is in there as well, in a separate old-time black and white photo (the small square postage stamp size ones with crinkled borders) and she does not look quite the same, but still it could be her.

I have to crane my neck as I stand on a chair in Ana’s daughter’s house, looking at the framed photo collage placed high up on the wall above the cupboard door. The wooden chair is rickety but close up in the little black and white photo is my mother, I’m almost convinced. She’s looking square on, and in the photo she has straighter hair than usual, and it is short and parted at the side.

It is the color photo from the 70s that really gives it away though.

My dad is lying on the couch in our living room in Coring Road and he’s holding Elaine as a baby up above him; me, I’m in my green shorts, in the background. And next to that photo is the sick dress photo. The dress was so called because it was a woolen, knee length dress with yellow, blue and red hooped stripes top to bottom.

Elaine had a matching woolen hat, I remember, with a matching multicolored pom-pom. My mother loved that dress. Us, not so much.

Once I saw the dad photo I cried out, “That’s us! that’s us!” as if it was proof.

I got down from the chair and Ana’s daughter came in with two others (was one of them Ana? I didn’t think so), and they sat on stiff backed wooden chairs facing us. Ana’s daughter had thick set black eyebrows, long straight dark hair parted in the middle, and she had a long face.

Anyway, judging by the age of Ana’s daughter I figured at Ana must have been my half-sister, even though she’d have to have been born a couple of years ahead of me.

That’s when I asked Ana’s daughter where they were from and she replied “Trotto… Napoli.” Only I couldn’t quite hear the second word. I had her repeat it, she had a thick rolling Italian accent after all, and at first I heard “Trappoli,” but I hadn’t of heard such a place so I settled on Napoli instead.

The dream was clear about the spelling, Ana Wintour not the other one, but why was this so important to me?
Photo from Thought Catalog via Flickr, credit Quote Catalog.

April 18, 2024April 21, 2024

The Woman with Antlers

She’d followed me through the council estate. She wore a white dress that glowed in the dusk as she chased me, and I thought I had lost her, when instead, she surfaced once more.

I was lying on a grassy bank catching my breath, when she pushed her head out from under the grass behind me. Like how could that be? Like the grass was a blanket of sod, parting at the seams to reveal her head first, then her shoulders.

She had antlers that poked out from her long blonde hair. And when I got up to get away from her, she rose up out of the grass and set off after me again.

The grassy area was in the forecourt of the council estate, but instead of double backing I took another route, following the line of the grassy bank towards a brick building that had an entrance into a small dark narrow corridor.

The corridor bent right immediately upon entering, and at far end was a second door that turned right again; and the corridor was only wide enough for only one or two people to pass each other side by side.

As I stepped through the entrance, I saw a small space to my left where I could hide.

Another woman with a plain brown sackcloth dress stepped in after me. She saw me duck left as she continued rightwards along the corridor towards the second door. She looked back at me and I winked at her, winked furiously, trying to signal that she not give my position away. She looked back at me uncertainly, as if she didn’t get it.

Then the glowing dress woman with the antlers entered. She turned right without looking at me (at the same time as I was winking at the woman in brown), then the antler woman disappeared through the other door without looking back. She followed close behind the woman in brown.

“What do you want for Christmas?” Siobhan asked, as I tried to write the story down.

“I don’t know. Why you asking me?” Siobhan pushed a mail order catalog towards me, pictures of beach wear.

“Do you want it?” She pointed at a blue tote bag.

“I’m trying to write, stop interrupting me!”

“Well..?”

“I don’t need to decide now, do I?” I stopped wring.

“OK then fine. Yes,” I said.

“No don’t tell me if you don’t want it,” she replied.

“But I’m trying to write, it doesn’t have to be done now.” I pushed the catalog away.

Fine, I thought. If I don’t wake up to write this dream, I’ll forget about the woman in the glowing dress chasing me.

All images generated using DreamUp AI from Deviant Art.

April 10, 2024April 27, 2024

Young and Pregnant

She is thin and bony, young (like in early 20s), and she’s pregnant; and she’s my girlfriend although the baby is from her previous boyfriend.

We go out fairly regularly though sometimes we’ll stay in and paint the flat. Cans of white paint lie spread around, the walls are half done, but the step ladders are up and ready for us continue.

April 4, 2024April 4, 2024

The Fishmonger’s Toilet

My dream has a sense of foreboding.

I am in a flat. It’s night. I think it’s Dee’s flat but she’s away and there is nothing to eat except for two family size bags of cheese puffs. They are unopened and I don’t want to open them without her say so.

The curtains are drawn, and it feels like I’m in a dorm room although we are on the ground floor.

I leave the flat, the sky gunmetal grey, billowing clouds, the bright lights of shops shining in the dark.

I need to find something to eat…

Instead, I am in an Uber coming back to the flat. The driver asks me, “Can I drop you here? It’s just through there,” he points.

We are in a parking lot behind a row of shops or office buildings, like you would find at the back of a strip mall. Presumably my road is on the front side of the building. The Uber driver can’t go any further.

He points at an alley behind two green industrial dustbins, and the other side of the bins, and through the alley, I see the lights of Main Street.

After I am back on the road, after I’ve wandered some distance, I realize I am lost and I don’t know my way back to the flat. I try to Google Maps the way, entering the word ‘Northeastern’ but I keep misspelling it. I try again, only shorter this time: ‘NEU dorms’ but still my phone auto-corrects the spelling.

A group of young students (or are they a family?) pass me by on a narrow market street. I’ll try them, I think, although I never ask for directions.

I’m already missing Dee. Like I should call her.

“Do you know the way to Northeastern?” I ask a tall young man from the group.

He is tall and handsome, short black hair with a square jaw and rugged American-like features. He looks like an athlete.

“Sure,” and he points with a firm palm towards the market building ahead of me.

The market was from where he came. “I’ll help you,” he says. “Through here.” He comes with me into the building and we walk together along narrow paths between the market vendors.

We pass the meat section and cross over to the fish stalls. A fishmonger ahead of us, his fish laid out on chopping blocks looks up at me as he brings his cleaver down on a silver tuna’s neck. A clean strike reveals the clear red meat of its torso. The spine shows as a single bloody circle in the middle of the meat.

“Continue on through there.” The young student points left side of the fishmonger’s.

“Yes, I can make it from here.” I tell him.

And I continue past the fishmonger’s. The shiny market floor tiles are red, they are washed with the water that flushes the entrails of fish to the gutter that passes along the center of the aisle.

Beyond the fishmonger’s is the exit, the other end of the building. I am about to leave when, across the way, I spot a toilet. It is nothing but a large rusted door encased in a wall, a metal clasp slightly open, the door panel with the symbol for a man, barely visible, etched in the panel.

A sign on a metal plate says ‘Staff Only’, presumably it refers to the fishmonger’s, but I reckon they won’t mind and so I enter.

The toilet has dark rough hewn walls but inside it’s bright enough as, from a small opening at the top, the light comes from the fishmongers outside. The light casts a glow across coarse white painted walls and floor.

The stench of stale urine is unbearable. It attacks my nostrils. In the far corner of the toilet is a hole, the end of a sloped floor, where I presume you piss. I am about to set myself to do just that when from somewhere in the ceiling, water pours down the walls and across the floor, presumably to flush the toilet.

The water spills across the coarse floor. It comes close to my shoes, but the stench of piss is still in my nostrils.

I step back enough to avoid the water as it drains down the hole.

Photo in public domain from Raw Pixel.