Dead Dreams

Most people think that it is impossible to dream about your death. Common myth upholds to dream of your death would cause your own death, however according to experts most dreams of death symbolize a renewal of life or a change in the path of your destiny. Freudians regard all dreams interpreting the two basic drives in life; sex and death.

I came close to dying in my dream after eating a potato taco in a small Mexican village. That night my stomach rumbled and my head was filled with danger, as I read HP Lovecraft. THE TERROR AT INNSMOUTH was not the best story to read before sleep.

In my dream zombies chased me through a garden. I was trapped in a screened gazebo. Their fingernails scratched at the thin barrier.

"Stop." A dirt-covered zombie called out to his minions. "Tell me the secret of human life and we will let you live for another 60 seconds."

"The secret of human life?" I was stumped having only score a C in Philosophy 101, then it came to me. The secret of human life was that even though my end was going to be horrible, I wanted those extra sixty seconds.

"I'm waiting." The undead's overlord was impatient and I rewarded his vice by waking up and saving the human race. I asked several psychic friends for an interpretation of this dream. Most said that dying wasn't bad.

"But I didn't die. I only met dead people."

The majority of the dream-soothers considered this encounter to be the subconsciousness' way of grieving, except none of the zombies had been family members or friends or foe.

The only psychic with any sense was an old gypsy woman on the Lower East Side.

"Some dreams don't mean anything. They just are. Same as death as in life."

I believed her words until dying in a series of dreams in 1982.

I died from nuclear blasts in New York, Moscow, and a Siberian airfield after making love with a Russian airwoman. The dreams occurred over a three month period during the Pershing missile deployment in Germany. I was living in Hamburg. The sex and death aspects of these dreams were overpowered by the premonition of impending doom.

My fear of nuclear holocaust was superseded by the threat of a German pimp, who said that owed him 20,000 for having sex with one of his girls. Ilsa never said she was working. SS Tommy laughed, saying everyone in Hamburg was working for someone.

I fled northern Germany, leaving behind a car and apartment.

No nuclear bombs killed me and neither had SS Tommy.

Not in reality or my dreams.