Listening to an audiobook on a tape player which is on the bookshelves in the living room, it’s night, quiet, creepy atmosphere. The tape is the BFG, though doesn’t sound like it. I have to climb up on the sofa to reach the tape player, turn it off. The tape keeps playing. I’m very scared. I unplug the player and we’re scared but it keeps playing, at this point I just want to run away.
Something to do with Crash Bandicoot, an old Crash game, non-existent, sewers, in a lecture room, it’s all bright, independent cinema guy teaching, some really weird horror film that’s not just horror but very strange like that Carpenters Barbie film but rather disturbing.
At some point the Scooby gang arrive in the green van – only Scooby himself is a blonde guy in a green t-shirt, who says his name is Zombie and that he likes cheese.
I shout something about, ‘And a fucking tornado!’ and I’m holding onto Oscar to prevent him from getting sucked into it.
Watching the second Hobbit movie and really enjoying it. There is a section in which a character is singing and flying over an Antarctic landscape, beautiful snow and dark blue nighttime skies and snow everywhere, really nice.
Lying in my bed, it’s sunny outside, looking at the tree outside through the blinds. There is a face on the end of a branch, a woman’s face. It bobs about as the wind blows through the trees. The eyes move, and look around, and occasionally look at me, and it’s incredibly creepy. I get the sense that the face just does this and there is no intelligence behind it, but who knows.
Stormy weather. Do I look like McNulty from The Wire?
Later some students are throwing dog poo at each other; I hesitate to pick up a piece of it, but do, and throw it, but it turns into a powder and rains down back on me, gets into my eyes, I’m worried that it’ll do something awful to me. I have to take my clothes off, I’m in a black corridor that has water up to about my ankles, this is a part of school too.
A racing game, like Mario Kart, I’ve never played it before but I’m winning, then we’re racing boats towards sand and a tropical island, then I’m walking around on a shaded beach/inlet on the tropical island. A plane has crashed there or something, there are small children running about. I’m with Sarah (or something close to her), and we know some of the children are ours, but we’re not 100% sure which; we’re trying to gather up the ones that are definitely ours.
Rashida Jones, bed, bus, room. Car crash / train crash – dogs barking when the Devil is near, making strange signs with hands in sleep when is near.
I am worried that we only have a couple of episodes left, and once they are done, I will only be able to think of the ghosts.
Naomi Watts is there too, and when I ask Walton Goggins for an autograph, she signs my notepad-thing too, along with other actors/actresses sitting in the room who walk over. Later we’re walking through a swampy forest, but there are lakes and a nice sky. Peter Jackson is giving us a tour. There is a green-clad man who I think may be Radagast.
She is pregnant and walking with her husband and one other person. Despite that initial outburst I don’t think there is any further suggestion that she was excited to see me.
Strange, sad feeling that I have to leave the Waltons and their 1950s town. I was so happy to be there. Surfing, blue.
She is furious with me abandoning her, and I know she’ll be angrier still if she thinks I’m sane, so I keep pretending I’m not.
Bran from Game of Thrones is somehow surfing at a port, even though he still cannot walk. A huge wave comes towards him, and a flash of light reveals a huge whale inside of it. I’m terrified and shout at Bran to get out of the way.
Rebecca Hall is another soldier next to me. She says, ‘John?’ I say, ‘Yes?’ and she responds simply, ‘Shave!’ I laugh.
A very dark place. Large apartment building, with a pool? Alan has a device that looks a bit like a taser. He says it will show me my relationship with God. He touches me with it and I shake a lot as if being electrocuted, and am scared. People around me are just staring blankly as if their minds have turned off, not paying attention to me. Wake up very scared.
Monster chases me in house. Read poetry to stop him.
Train to somewhere. All of us are whales? We reach an island-type place, where we stay, but then I’m unsure because I’m afraid we’ll get beached if we go onto it. Crying about something, possibly that. View the whales in the sea through a window cut into cardboard.
SAW. A group of people. Some feelings revolving around being stuck in the game, doom, eternity, etc.
On a train going through a completely black (sort of) place, taking photographs of a lobster outside.
In a museum, other people talking to me, some sort of black cocoon that you can go in. It closes around you, and either takes you back in time or teleports you. I am worried, however, because when you step in, it may teleport you to blackness, death, a place that you can never come back from.
John Banning lives in Jolly England and writes some things and dreams too much and hopes you might enjoy his other (published/comingsoon) work in Maudlin House and Rejection Letters.