A Nightmare That Would Make Lovecraft Proud...Interpretations Welcome

I don't think I've ever written about a dream that I've had on this blog, but this one is worth putting down, definitely. I'd like to read any comments people might have on it, I'm not one to interpret dreams, but this one might be worth a try. I have a dream maybe once a year that’s truly memorable, this is the most memorable I've had in a decade, perhaps ever.

I find myself in an old abandoned house without light except for some pale rays of sun filtering through the dusty, cobweb-covered windows, giving everything a gray appearance. It's as if I were in a world drained of color. There is little if any furniture inside, some debris is piled in corners or along where wall meets floor. I walk through the house, finding several rooms not unlike the one I started in and I discover what must be the front door, a blinding rectangle of light until my eyes adjust. The door itself was removed long ago, I walk through it onto the large, covered porch and I had to squint my eyes because the scene before me is so bright.

The world is divided into two halves -- a pure blue sky above and a field of gold below. A slow breeze moves through the gold -- it might be wheat. It's incredibly thick and waist-tall, the field rolls onward for miles, some blue mountains are off in the distance, but they're twenty to thirty miles away. The house itself had lost its paint many years ago to reveal the dark gray, almost black old boards underneath -- some pieces of siding here and there are falling loose. In its time it was a presentable place, but was always somewhat humble. I walk out into the field, the sun is warm and inviting, I explore and go around behind the house where I find a strange sight. There's a wooden fence, or the remains of a fence only perhaps thirty feet in length which is situated fifty feet to the rear of the house.

On either side of the fence are two stout creatures with bodies like a mans', but they're only a head taller than the wheat. They're covered in a dark, patchy fur and wearing leather and animal pelts crudely sewn together. Their heads are mostly bald, revealing a wrinkly, purplish skin. Their faces have shorter fur on them, with small black eyes hidden deep among the fur. Also they have a strange sort of mouth that sticks slightly out from their face -- a cross between a snout of a swine and that of an alligator, with teeth like an alligators; sharp and randomly placed.

But it's what they are doing that is most strange. Around the fence the wheat is somewhat shorter, and next to the fence itself the ground is bare -- the earth underneath is cracked and parched. The creature on the side of the fence close to the house has a pile of small, dark bottles, and he's throwing them over the fence from a distance of perhaps 20 feet from the other creature. The creature on the opposite side tries to catch the bottles with its short arms, and mostly fails at this. The bottles fall to the ground, most land safely in the surrounding wheat only to bounce and roll. However some fall too close to the bare earth -- here they break and the contents literally sizzle on the hot ground. The creature attempting to catch the bottles does occasionally catch one, then it opens the bottle, pulls something out of the bottle and takes a bite out of it, the creature holds the remainder in one hand while attempting to catch more bottles in the other. The only sounds the two make is grunting, one as he throws and the other as he attempts to catch -- and a sick smacking sound that the creature makes as it crudely eats. They do not seem to notice me.

I am curious what's in the bottles, so I walk some distance away from the scene searching for a bottle that was might have been missed and bounced a bit too far. I wade through the waist-tall wheat, finally I discover one hidden on the ground somewhat covered in dirt and dust. It's about the size of a baby food bottle I think, as I wipe away the dust and discover to my horror that a small human fetus is inside of the bottle. It looked like a "pickled punk" one might expect to have seen at a freak show perhaps a century ago. The water is a muddy, pale, putrid stuff while the fetus is a pink pulpy mass. The second I discovered what it was, to my horror the thing began to move. It rolled its head about blindly, its mouth was a small red circle on a pink body that began to open and close like the mouth of a fish out of water. Its little limbs moved and jostled the water about -- and worst of all I could FEEL it move the bottle about in my hand. I dropped the thing and jumped back as if I had been holding a live spider.

I looked up and the two creatures had stopped their sick game and for the first time they were studying me from afar. I walked slowly away, and they soon continued. The field seemed endless, but I walked some distance until the house was a small black box in the distance and the two figures were no longer visible. I stopped and suddenly everything was utterly still. I stared at the house, perked my head and listened. There was no longer any wind, instead a different sound, very distant began.

I looked away from the house in the opposite direction and far in the distance it appeared that a large cloud was casting a shadow on the ground and it was slowly approaching. But there were no clouds. I squinted and saw that the ground was turning black, very far off and approaching. But it was not only turning black and approaching, but it was covering the ground in the opposite direction of the house as far as one could see to one's left and right, as if some black tide were coming in. I stood still as it drew closer I could see what was happening but I failed to understand. The earth itself was being consumed into...literally nothingness. This "force" which consumed the earth left a blackness, as it moved closer I could look down through where the earth once was and I could see stars, galaxies billions of miles away. Now that I had a closer look, I could see that the earth did not just disappear as if covered by a cloud, but it was broken off into "shards" which were the quickly consumed by the blackness. It was as if the edges of a piece of glass where broken off into shards; and the shards quickly melt away like water droplets on a piece of red-hot iron.

But perhaps most horrifying of all was the sound the process made, it was a thundering mixture of two sounds. One was that of large pieces of wood when they're bent and snapped, or the falling of trees -- deep popping, snapping, cracking, squeaking. The other sound which mingled with this was that of a hungry, crackling fire. This grew nearly deafening as it approached. The sky seemed untouched by this process, but I took little time to note this, as it was much closer to me now. The speed of the disintegration of the earth was perhaps at a rate of five miles per hour -- one that could be outrun, but was more than slow and steady. I broke into a run back to the house and saw the earth, matter and reality for what I was sure would be the last time. This was different from just dying or some massive destruction of mankind -- this was a literal destruction of reality itself.

As I got close to the house, the two figures had disappeared. I had perhaps one minute to decide what to do -- obviously it would continue to consume the field and I could not continue to run for what looked to be twenty or thirty miles of field. The house seemed the only place it made sense to go, so I did. I went around to the front and entered, my eyes blind in the contrasting darkness. Immediately I almost tripped and felt my feet kicking bottles around the floor. The entire floor of the house was covered in those sickening little bottles, I had to wade through them to keep from stepping on them in my half-blindness lest I fall, or perhaps worse -- let one of those things out. They rolled along the hardwood floor, clinked against one another -- the entire thing was horrible. I found a place on the floor to sit and I huddled into a fetal position in a dark corner, much like those sick figures in the bottles. The snapping, churning, raging sound outside grew louder and all I could think was, "This is it."

It was at this point that I woke, sweaty and I jumped so violently when the dream ended that I think I woke up nearly in mid-air. I have few dreams that I remember, and the ones I recall rarely have much of a storyline to them. Needless to say this one has stuck out more than any I've had for maybe 10 years. It was so vivid, and yet unlike most nightmares where monsters jump out from the shadows -- this was downright poetic, literary and full of symbolic imagery. As strange as it was, I wouldn't mind having more like it...