Earl Yorke

I haven’t posted my nightly dreams here for a long, long time, but this is one that I really have to get out of my head. Although I titled this post “The Disease Comes From Sears,” it should really be called: “They Want to Kill My Cat.” This will take a few entries to complete…

Our mission was simple: survey what was going on in the town, then get out… undetected if possible, but we all knew that it would be necessary to question the locals at some point in order to make any real progress. If only we had known what was really going on there… I certainly would not have gone along.

The town we were to work in was one I knew all too well, but the focal point was something that I could not revisit in any of my memories. It was a tower right outside of my high school in York, Maine. It was like something a cellular company would put up to expand their coverage, but this one was different. It was completely black, and had long, gigantic shreds of gray fabric billowing from it in the wind; as if it had once been completely covered.

Does that make any sense? It didn’t for me either, but that’s how it manifested itself in my mind.

I knew that I was not meant to be near it from the beginning, and yet I stayed… entranced by it’s dark, even morbid, presence. My curiousity rendered me powerless to resist it’s… dark charm. It wasn’t the only reason why I remained there, though… the Boss would never had allowed me to leave. I was petrified of this man, the unquestioned commander of my team.

I don’t recall how many people were on this “team,” but a total of six or seven feels right.

Our first task was to investigate the tower… to see if it had any influence over what was going on within the ocean-town that it was erected in. We would climb it several times… always using rope and ridicule. Those who didn’t reach the top before myself and the “boss” were subjected to a seemingly unending verbal assault. At certain points this drove the other six or seven men to tears.

What was at the top? I’ve re-visited the moments in the dream when I found myself there several times, and I still don’t fully understand. Nor do I understand why my team would want to steal my cat upon falling victim to the… disease. This disease changes the whole course of the dream. One minute it’s my team versus the world… the next minute it’s the world versus me.

I’ll add more to this particular entry into my dream journal in a few days. I know that I really haven’t given you guys too much with this entry, but it’s necessary to the flow of the tale. It will come in three parts… each one darker than the last. This was, by far, one of the most disturbing dreams I’ve had in a long time.

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EDIT: …yeah, I totally put a picture of a Sears store up there just because it’s in my dream. Bring on the lawsuit, Sears! We all know that your stores carry the disease!

I’ve now succeeded in confusing the *(&% out of you all. Mission accomplished.

Now this one is funny. I can only remember a little bit of it, but anyone who lives near Ogunquit (or any other tourist trap) will surely get a kick out of it. It is not an epic story. Rather, it is one created from all of my summer memories of various Ogunquit rent-a-cops doing just what they are meant to do: absolutely nothing important. I’m not posting this because it has any relevance to my writing… it will surely not appear in any of my stories. I am just trying to keep this dream journal as complete as possible…

I am walking through downtown Ogunquit, Maine as a number of people stand at the edge of the street cheering something that is passing in the road. I assume that it is just some parade… it doesn’t matter. Nothing in this town matters to me…

I am walking for quite some time before I notice that I am cradling my cat, Sammy (Sammantha, Sammy-Gata, Doctor Jones… we call her a bunch of names) in my arms. Am I bringing her to the vet? Was she missing, and I finally found her on the streets of Brown-Town (respectfully… as I can put it… hehehe, I don’t judge though)? I don’t know the answers to any of the questions that race through my head, even in dreams.

I immediately begin walking in the reverse direction that I had come in, back toward my home, which is a good 1 1/2 miles away… if not more. Conveniently, as soon as I turn around I find myself face-to-face with a stereotype; a rent-a-cop straddling a mountain bike, clad in spandex and a gray-collered shirt boasting the “Ogunquit PD” logo just over his left nipple. Great… what could I have done to attract his attention?

“A cat in public, and without a license,” he observes, giving me that whole I’m powerful look.

Since when did I need a license to carry my cat through “public”? Have any of you ever watched the Blue Collar Comedy Tour? Tater Salad! I say nothing. I wait for him to continue his little power-speech.

“I’m gonna do you a favor,” he says, running a hand up through his high-and-tight hair. He produces a chain-like bracelet from his side-arm holster and places it around my left wrist. I find it funny now that he didn’t actually carry a pistol there. Most rent-a-cops aren’t allowed to carry one. He locks the bracelet with a heavy pad-lock and then pushes me aside, making his way past me down the street.

Am I the pet in this dream? Is that why he attached this bracelet to my arm? What a silly thing to dream about.

This picks back up where I left of with “The Beach Dream,” but I have titled this second part “The Motorcycle Dream” for reasons that are waiting to be discovered below. Enjoy… I am glad to finally get this one out of my head…

I approach the rest of my family; my grandparents, mother, and aunts. I am fuming, my fists clenched so tight that had it been real I probably would have been drawing blood from my palms. I stop in front of them and begin to speak in a powerful voice that rises over the loud crashing of waves behind me.

“What is wrong with you guys?!” I roar, “How can you sit there drinking while dad and uncle Jeb are beating me down over there?! Don’t you even care?!” My arms flail around violently as I speak… like I am some psycho. I might as well have been one. I was crazy in that dream… that’s the only explanation I can come up with. “Don’t you even care?!” I repeat, jumping up and down like a child throwing a tantrum.

I turn and look down the beach to where I had been assaulted, and find that my father and uncles are no longer there. They are no longer on the beach at all. I relax my clenched fists and take a deep breath, beginning to walk toward my sobbing grandmother. I decide that I am going to apologize to her, then get on my motorcycle and drive home on Shore Road. I don’t own a motorcycle in reality, nor do I know how to operate one. I would like to learn one day I suppose.

She says nothing, just continues to cry. I look down, noticing the rosary that she is holding in her right hand. She is rubbing the crucifix between her thumb and index-finger. I’ll go on the record right now, saying that religious symbols that happen to find their way into my dreams really freak me out. My anxiety flares again at the sight of the crucifix, and intensifies even more as my eyes settle upon a large, hairy, VIOLET-colored spider crawling up my leg. Anyone who regularly visits this site knows very well that I fear spiders more than anything else I can think of.

I panic, swatting the arachnid off of my leg. I run toward my father’s abandoned towel and cooler. I need to calm my anxiety. I feel like I am on the verge of having a heart-attack as I open his cooler and remove a bottle of Yellow Tail brand Pinot Grigio. Dad has already popped the cork, so all I have to do is bite down on the protruding nub at the tip of the bottle and yank it out with my teeth. I spit the cork into the water and tip the bottle straight up, chugging the wine as fast as I can. I will take this moment to clarify that I have never done anything like this in real-life. The thing about this dream that really rubs me the wrong way (above all other things, and there are many) is the fact that alcohol in-and-of itself seems to manifest itself as just another character in it.

I have never been drunk in a dream before, and up until last night I couldn’t even imagine that it was possible. I was wrong. This is where things became very frightening for me. To mix the overall randomness and unpredictability of a dream with a slower state of mind within was… harrowing… especially after what happened next…

Much to my surprise, I do not hurt myself while climbing the rocks. I step onto the street and my eyes settle upon my motorcycle, parked on the Cape Neddick bridge. I don’t know what make and model it was, not that that even matters. It is colored red and black with my trademark skull and crossbones insignia on each rim. There is no doubt in my mind that this bike bel0ngs to me.

I turn to see him climbing up the last of the rocks. He steps onto the pavement. In his right hand is an open bottle of Pinot. He comes toward me as I straddle the motorcycle and prepare to kick-start it (as if I actually know how to do such things!).

My second attempt to get up is a successful one. I amble towards my father and take the bicycle from him, placing my hands on the handlebars and walking it down the street for a bit. I listen to the click, click, click of the derailleur, each click letting me know that I was further from the beach. Soon I am ready to get on the bike, despite my dazed state of mind. For some reason I thinkt myself capable of keeping my balance on it. That doesn’t matter though…

As soon as I swing my right leg over the bike and sit down on the seat I hear it. Before I can even start peddling, the roar of my motorcycle reaches my ears… but that is not all that I hear. Ear-piercing, hysterical laughter rises ABOVE the sound of the engine. I place my feet on the pavement, straddling the bike, and turning to look behind me.

The screwed up thing is that I didn’t wake up there… I still had a few seconds to see them riding off before I came out of the dream. It was insane. There are so many hidden meanings in that dream that I hardly know where to start picking it apart. Any ideas?

Okay… this one might mean something. It’s very screwed up, and I’m having many issues analyzing it. Let’s see what you all think of the dream I had last night. To any family members who may find themselves reading this (particularly my father and unlce), don’t take it too seriously… it is just a dream after all. I just want to know what the meaning is…

I am at Cape Neddick beach, a small, sandy crescent just off of Shore Road on the border of York and Cape Neddick. It is a warm evening with purple and red clouds looming over the Atlantic, somehow catching the glare of the setting sun in the west. It is calm, serene… very satisfying to me, though I know not how I got there or why I am so moved by something I’ve already seen dozens upon dozens of times during my life. Still, I am happy. Happy to be alone.

I say nothing, choosing to ignore what had happened and continue my trek down the beach. For some reason I am able to convince myself that my father had hit me by mistake. It is not long before I am struck again though, this time from behind, and I fall face-down in the sand. When I attempt to get back up I find myself spitting out the sand that had entered my open mouth as I cried out in surprise during the fall. I am instantly reminded of trips to the beach in my youth when I refused to eat the sandwiches my parents had packed because of the sand that would ultimately enter my mouth as I ate. Nothing bothers me more than the hard crunch of sand between my teeth.

After I finish spitting out as much sand as I can manage without rinsing with water, I turn around to find that it was my uncle Jeb who had struck me this time. He is standing over me with a look of pure hatred painted upon his face. My father’s expressions match this glare, while my uncle Mike, for some reason, is looking away… toward the colored clouds that had previously entranced me. I close my eyes, ready to cry, but don’t have time to do even that! My father’s bare foot comes up quickly, kicking me right in the jaw and sending me back down to the sand.

I have learned enough at this point to know what they will do if I get back up again, so I run… back to the rest of my family. I am furious with them all even though it was just my father and uncle Jeb who had assaulted me. I have things to say to them all…

I think that this post is already too long and there is so much more for me to tell (the follow up to this post is even longer than this one), so I will leave it at that until tomorrow. This dream really hurt… and I’m so confused by it that I would greatly appreciate any interpretations you all might offer. I know how it looks so far, but I don’t believe that the real meaning is as simple as “Earl is threatened by his father and uncle,” because that is not the truth. Far from it actually. I am more threatened by my uncle Mike than either of those two, and he does nothing to me in the dream. This is so confusing…

“Wake up, Earl,” Taran said, his voice echoing all over, “it’s okay now.”

I opened my eyes, and found all of my followers standing over me. They gazed upon me as if I was some monster…

“It’s okay,” Taran reassured, “We brought some of your blood down below.”

“Wha– what are you talking about?” I asked, confused by what my step-son was telling me. I watched as each and every person in the dark room exchanged nervous glances, their feelings of safety within those walls now disturbed by something that I did not want to know of.

Taran looked to his mother, my wife, Dina, and then looked back to me. “We brought you back because we need you. They have the technology… below…”

“What are you saying to me?” I asked, deathly afraid of his answer. In a way, I somehow knew what he was about to say.

Taran looked to his mother once again, and my fear worsened. They looked so nervous… as if what they had to say would upset me. I already knew that it would, but the nervous anticipation of what would come out of his mouth made their exchange so much harder to bear.

“We cloned you,” Taran sighed, “with some of your blood that was left over after you… were killed by them.”

Cedric began crying, as if he actually understood what Taran had said…

…and I wake up, fully disturbed by the last part of this dream. What did it all mean? This dream, of all things, reassured me of how creative I am, and I am greatful for that… but that is the only aspect of the dream (aside from the bond that I shared with my step-son) that made me happy. The rest left me feeling… well, I suppose “upset” is the best way to put it even though it is very vague. This dream upset me.

…and we arrived in the city of providence. They couldn’t see us yet; the mutants who grouped in the quarry, chopping wood. This wood was for no fire… not to keep each other warm… it was all that they could remember of what they were taught of a life that had abandoned them decades ago.

…and we arrived, all of us. Myself, Cedric, Dina, Taran, D’Anna, and a group of others… outcasts from a world that had destroyed itself long ago. The mutants had survived the devastations of World War III, and so had we… yet we had a reason to be there, and they did not.

I walked into the city, leading our group with my son in my arms and my wife at my side. We walked through the open gates and marveled at the magnificance of it; walls and turrets surrounding a beautiful urban development of the most confusing grasp of technology and taste. It blended Medieval architecture with modern (even post-modern) technology. The turrets harnessed cannons that could only have shot laser beams… or something like that… I couldn’t understand it, and neither could any of my fellow travelers. It was, in a way that I cannot even describe… evil.

I lead them all into the northern-most part of the city as we all marveled at the beauty of the tall, tall buildings that surrounded us. Everyone else seemed very happy to have found such a place, un-blemished by the war that our government had started, but for Taran and I, this place did not seem safe. We had not yet seen the mutants, but we somehow knew that they were there. [It was a dream… I can’t explain it]

“Let’s rest here for a moment,” I spoke, realizing in this dream world that I was leading these people. They all agreed with me, and found their places on the sidewalks of this… empty city.

I passed my son on to my wife, giving both of them a kiss of false hope that we might have found our place, and made my way toward one of the turrets that stood, part of the great wall, near us. Everyone’s eyes watched me as I walked, not fearing what would ultimately happen, but comforted instead by the fact that I was trying to make sure that we were, indeed, safe.

I made my way toward the turret, and upon reaching it I climbed its winding staircase, still weary of the feeling that was welling in my gut. I looked to my followers, and my eye was caught by my step-son… he shared my fear. I continued upwards.

At the top of the turret I gazed out at the horizon… fuck, everything was battered and destroyed by the war, and yet this place was untouched. What seemed like a million atomic bombs had dropped on our country [atleast that is how I recalled it in this dream], and this place was left untouched!

I turned toward the heart of the city… and there I saw them. There were atleast two dozen of them… people, or so they seemed, chopping wood within a quarry of granite in the center of this metropolis. I panicked, beginning to run back down the steps… and then I heard it–

A scream from one of those people reached my ears. I looked toward them, and I saw him… the one who had seen me, pointing in my direction as if he percieved me as the same kind of demon I saw him as.

…and then they all came running.

And I ran, down the winding staircase, toward the people that I was trying to save from the aftermath of an evil called war. Instead, we came to find another evil there… one not dictated by politics, or so it seemed.

As I reached the bottom and touched the streets of this seemingly once-thriving city, everyone was gone. I was all alone… no, not alone…

The mutant people fell upon me, and all that I saw was the vampiric teeth of their leader, the one who had first spotted me. I was forced to the ground, and everything went black. I was dead.

There is more to this dream, and I will post it tomorrow. For those of you who are interested, please tell me what you think of this so far…

I had a dream last night that I was down at Ogunquit Beach with my family…

I am in one of the ridiculously over-priced sundries shops, when suddenly I notice a giant tidal wave through the window, looming on the horizon like the hand of God. As people start to flee from the approaching tsunami, I find myself frantically dashing up and down the beach in search of my family. I know very well that I am not going to leave that beach without them, and that if my search is fruitless that beach will be my grave.

As in most dreams when I face some variety of impending doom, the ultimate cataclysm approaches slowly, and I do end up finding my son, Cedric shortly before it hits. My wife, Dina, and step-son, Taran are nowhere to be found. Though I love them dearly, with my toddler son crying in my arms, my agenda has changed. I need to get him to higher ground.

I am able to get him up the road, running as fast as I can without changing pace. For an out-of-shape guy like myself, this is a marvel (even in dreams). Anyway, there aren’t any large hills within close proximity to Ogunquit Beach in reality, but in this dream… there are, and this hill is very steep. I find myself running up it, still carring my son, and still not faltering from the sprint that I am in. I make it about half-way up before hearing the deafening sound of the tsunami hitting the shore.

I turn around… all of the shops… all of the hotels… the restaurants… the cars in the parking lot… everything is covered in water. I look down at my feet, and am shocked to find that the water has stopped exactly where Cedric and I had… we made just as far as we needed to. Where I now stand might as well be the beach now.

…I wake up covered in sweat, and scared out of my mind…

This was one of the most disturbing dreams I’ve ever had. I would appreciate any comments that might help me to dissect it…