The problem with it is that I've been feeling horribly faint. The day before yesterday, all the art classes had to arrive at 2pm for a video link with the MoMA people in Queens.

I had a horrific argument with my mother about it later in the day. Her argument was that MoMA isn't in Queens yet; ergo, I must be dead wrong. My argument was that the MoMA people said, "Hi! This is us, and we are in Queens right now!"-- thus making them MoMA people in Queens.

Anyway, I hadn't eaten anything all day, and when I finally sat down, my head swam.

Actually, no, that's an understatement.

It was tossed over the edge of a waterfall and left to fend for itself.

I swear I could've fainted on the spot. It was vaguely scary, considering that normally I've got a pretty good grip on my sense of balance.

And uhm, to return to the original point... last night I was dizzy in the same exact way. I thought I was going to fall down in the shower, even; Unnamed insisted that I hold onto the hand railings that my parents installed for my grandmother to use, and that helped somewhat.

To any of you that were about to say something funny, I say NAKED HORSE.

So, uh... last night I was dizzy, stumbling about, and avoided walking as much as possible.

I don't think anyone else noticed.

I also couldn't type shit worth shit. I can't type well today either, which is greatly encouraging me to stay off ICQ, for fear of people thinking that I am drunk again.

Well, in a way, I sorta am. No food makes me dizzy.

Anyway. What I really signed on to write about what the dream I had last night. It was whacked, long, filled with much more detail than I'll be able to get down, and I have enough time to write about it anyway because my fillings appointment was rescheduled.

In the beginning of it, I was a young boy about yea tall, which would be roughly four feet, or about shoulder-height on me right now. (Which freaked me out terribly when I woke up.) About 15 or 20 people were gathered in a room, including me, my mom (who didn't look anything like Mom) and her boyfriend/stepfather o' mine (nice guy; I didn't like or dislike him much at all). We had all gathered there to stand in neat, even rows and listen to some super-important man in robes, who stood in front of us as a lone and imposing figure all by himself.

He looked a helluva lot like the young Emperor Claudius, except older, with a slightly squarish chin. Definitely not Claudius himself, but certainly reminiscent of him. Same white hair, same red eyes, same pale skin, nose, and six-fingered hands. The robe and sash were also much longer, reaching straight down to his ankles, and everything that was not stark, untouched whiteness had painstakingly embroidered, tiny Korean-esque symbols made of red-gold filiment. The man practically seemed to glow.

He had with him two identical white longbows, one in each hand. They were oddly jointed and segmented, and looked to me like they'd been made from the legs of a giant spider. The skin on my back crawled and squirmed at the sight of it.

He talked about something... and talked... and talked... but all I could think about were those two terrible longbows. I wondered what on earth he had them there for, and what use they could possibly be without any arrows. Perhaps they were only ornamental.

But in my gut, I knew they weren't.

Then he announced that the "ritual" was about to begin. "I would recommend that those of you who are not involved leave now," he said, "Since I guarantee that it will very gory indeed."

He didn't sound apologetic about it.

Everyone else began to shuffle out in a single file. I was about to leave with them, except that I glanced back and noticed that neither my mother nor boyfriend/stepfather were going anywhere. Were they involved in the ritual?

I chose to stay behind and kneel with my face down by my knees, and I covered my eyes with my hands. I didn't want to see the gore, but I did want to listen and figure out what was going on.

The strange thing is, covering my eyes like this only succeeded in making the room disappear, which made the three figures of my mom, my stepwhatever, and the Man in Robes appear to be standing in infinite black space.

What happened next was quick and brutal.

The Robed Man took the strings off of the bows, twisted their halves around, and snapped the two bows together so that they resembled half of the legs of a giant spider-- and they immediately began to twitch and move as if they were still alive.

He wielded this set of legs in his left hand, like a giant claw, and proceeded to hack mom and stepwhatever into pulp.

I seriously mean that. No matter how bad the carnage that Jalopy Greencheese caused, this was several times worse. Jalopy, for example, would stop once the person was dead. Robed Man kept going for several minutes at the dead remains. The goal seemed to be not so much killing someone as it was splattering as much blood as possible.

He eventually stopped, and I uncovered my eyes to look up at the room.

Everything was absolutely soaked in blood. The walls, the ceiling, myself, the Robed Man... and of course, the spider claws (still writhing, even while at rest).

I looked up at the Robed Man.

He looked back down at me-- smirking, as if musing over what to do with this strange kid.

Out of the blue, I said: "I won't say a word of this to anyone, my Lord."

And instantly, he was pleased. Flattered, even, that I'd volunteered without any threat.

Apparently, he didn't consider the situation itself a threat.

Then the dream did one of those shifts, and this was apparently a shift in time, because suddenly I was much older. Still the same person, of course, but about a hand taller than I am in waking life... which would be around 5'9". My hair was straight and came halfway down my back, and I wore tiny round glasses.

Other than that, though, I figure I was pretty manly. Ph34r my manliness! (Strut strut.)

Anyway, there was a war now, and Robed Man was on one side, and I was on the other. I figured that this effectively nullified my promise not to tell anyone, and so I set out upon pulling several all-nighters in a row furiously scribbling down handwritten accounts of the Ritual, which were delivered by hand to the various leaders of our army so that they knew of the power of the Spider Claw. Somehow, the Robed Man captured one of our messengers and found out about this, which pissed him off immensely.

So he sent a demon cat.

Now, this isn't the first time I've dreamt about a demon cat. Some time last year or two ago, I had a dream about a demon cat latching onto my back, right in that spot between the shoulder blades that you can never reach to scratch when it itches.

This demon cat was much different. When it first arrived, it looked like a tiny, sweet little tabby cat, so small it might still be a kitten.

But then it grew.

It didn't grow normally-- certain body parts grew faster than others. The front legs and torso grew much slower than the tail, back legs, and head. The eyes grew faster than the ears, and the teeth grew faster than the jaw. The jaw itself was dislocated from the skull and was unnaturally capable of stretching and widening in complete independence from what its anatomy would require-- like a snake, only exaggeratedly so. It could billow out its toothy maw from wall to wall, and swallow the contents of an entire room whole.

So, with this kind of beast after me, I did the only thing I could think of-- I ran like a man possessed.

Well, look, wouldn't you?

I still had some paper and writing implements with me as I ran (naughty me, running with pointy quills), so I quickly jotted down a desperate plea to the Witches, and paper-airplaned it to the first messenger in sight. The Witches got the plea amazingly fast, and sent two witches to my aid.

Two... prepubescent... little girl witches... on pogo sticks.

Who promptly whupped the demon cat's ass anyway.

They were absolutely adorable about it, of course. And afterwards, when everyone in the camp was all "YEAH! YOU RULE! YOU SAVED OUR BUTTS!", the little girl witches were adorably shy and embarrassed about the attention. Humble witches.

So then there was much celebration for the purpose of embarrassing the humble witches some more out of gratitude (the poor girls), and the next day, there was a battle. I have to admit that this battle still confuses the hell out of me. I don't know what we were doing, or why. I just know that there was this enemy tower in the middle of a field, and that we were invading in order to take it over.

We had normal fighter dudes, and some three-feet-tall bearded guys with axes. I would suspect them of being dwarves, except that not a one acted a bit like the stereotype of a dwarf. They did not sing "Yo ho ho", they spoke perfect Suburbanite English, and off the battlefields, they were generally about as ferocious as Santa Claus. On the battlefields, they were even a little apolegetic.

"I'm sorry, sir, but you're the enemy and I have to chop your head off." WHACK!

They were good at it, though, so we let them be as weirdly peaceable as they liked.

The enemy consisted of the Robed Man, some dark knights, and a whole shitload of "Lizard Men". (Read: Velociraptors + 10 intelligence.) The Lizards wore very little armour; some wore helmets, while others wore giant metal claws glove-like over their own claws. And they were shifty, sly little bastards. You could come raring right at one, and it would dodge the finest swordsmanship like a pro, then promptly rip off your right arm. Not a good thing.

Somehow, we got far enough into the battle to come close to the Robed Man, who was wielding the Spider Claw again, and whooping serious ass.

A normal fighter dude, who reminded me greatly of Packy even though he was a muscular, studly swordsman, shouted to me that the only way to turn the tide against this man was to put a few curses on him to even things out. In order to do that, though, we needed to know his name.

"So," shouted Warrior-Packy to me, "What's his name?"

"I don't remember!" I shouted back.

"That's not good enough!"

So I turned and looked at Robed Guy as he ripped through our forces like a kitten in a pile of tissue paper. The Spider Claw kept growing more and more complex with each wave of attack, spawning new little legs at the base, and spiralling out and upward like the skeletal structure of a great bat's wing...

For some reason, I immediately thought of fractal mathematics. And that, for some other reason, brought to mind the man's name.

"Erasmus!" I shouted back at Warrior-Packy. "The man's name is Erasmus!"

And the tide began to turn.

That's not where it ends, though. Remember the Lizard Men?

We ran into a batch of Lizard Men. We fought, but the Lizard Men kept getting the upper hand in the situation... and eventually, one got close enough to attack me, and knocked my sword out of my hands. I instinctively threw my hands in front of me and pushed the air at the Lizard-- a dumb thing to do, of course, but hey... panic kills common sense.

Which is good, really, because common sense wouldn't say that the air would knock the Lizard twenty feet back.

And then-- I don't know why or how-- a dragon appeared out of my hands with the shove.

Not a tiny dragon, by any means. It was huge, but thin, like a feathered snake with giant wings, and when it lunged up to its full height, it actually turned out to be taller than the tower everyone was fighting for. In colour, it was mostly a very pale, almost white green, with iridescent feathers that shone in the sunlight.

The Lizard Men stopped fighting, and stared in awe.

I remembered that the Lizard Men worshipped dragons, and it would be unlikely that they would choose to fight against a dragon unless they had a damn good reason. Sensibly enough, the dragon didn't attack the Lizard Men while they stared in awe; it attacked the other enemy fighters, and kicked about as much as ass at it as the uncursed Erasmus had done with the Spider Claw. But unlike the segmented, skeletal Spider Claw, the Dragon was all curves and flesh...

That's about the point that I woke up.

I get the distinct impression that Unnamed was also in the dream. I remember feeling his presence. But for the life of me, I can't remember who the hell he was. Not my mom, not stepwhatever, and not Warrior-Packy. I'd think he was the dragon, but that's unlikely, at best. He doesn't think much of dragons.

He thinks even less of spiders, though.

So... confusion. Yes.

But what a dream to have, no?





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