Dream: The Peg-Legged Ducks, The Lightening Attack

Dream 20050222, 7:00 AM:There was quite a bit of plot to this dream that I can’t remember. When I woke up, this dream was totally blocked, but I finally managed to re-enter the dream space, and I was pleased to get back in touch. I have been trying to reconnect and get back in the habit of dream recall, and it’s tougher than I had expected.

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First strong image, I was standing with Chris, looking at piles of stuff laid out in the median of a small dirt road. It’s laid out like a garage sale, but it’s mostly personal items – tubes of toothpaste, boxes of Q-tips. I know in the dream that it belonged to some elderly relative of mine who has died; not someone I was very close to, but a great-aunt or similar. We sort through things, trying to decide what is worth keeping, what might be useful. I pick up a small wooden box that has two little metal book-looking banks in different sizes (I have one of these, in real life, that I keep antique coins in). One bank is missing from the case; there are hollowed out spaces in the wooden block shape for three banks, in tiered sizes. I am disappointed that the empty slot is not the same shape as the one that I have at home, or it would make a perfect set. We leave that. I open up a medium sized box, which is entirely full of sealed tubes of toothpaste; I ask Chris if it’s anything that he would use, but it doesn’t seem like he wants to keep it. A bunch of little ducks come out through a gate in the street; some of them have a metal peg, the size of a large building nail, where one foot should be. Chris explains to me that they are altered to make them easier for the old women to keep. He says something about their legs being replaced with spikes, but I can see that it’s only one foot on each of a few ducks, making them look like tiny duck pirates.

We head out; I don’t remember where we’re going. We are traveling in an open-topped horse coach, and I remember watching the horses barrelling along at high speed. There is an approaching coach, and they are some kind of opposing faction to the group that I’m with; we play chicken with them, and they finally veer off, avoiding a collision. One of the sets of horses is golden, and one set is jet black, but I don’t remember which is which, just the contrast.

We go to the house of some woman, I don’t know who she is. She’s black, not fat but soft-shaped, and doesn’t remind me of anyone that I know in real life. I think the image is from a photo I saw of somebody online recently. The house is a nice, fairly modern suburban home, in a neighborhood like the one I grew up in. We have the horse-drawn coach parked in her driveway, and there is a big car port made of very heavy steel girders and sheets, like it’s more of an industrial construction than a home model. She is angry, and I am in a shouting match with her, I don’t recall why. I tell her off in very grandiose terms, and although I don’t remember it now, I come up with a perfect set of epithets to call her by, and deliver them in a ringing shout. She is vibrating with rage at this point. I tell her that I’m going to hit her with lightening; she doesn’t seem to believe that I possibly could. I point to a tall pine tree behind her, and the wet driveway. I make a gesture, and lightening strikes the tree and begins running along the driveway toward me and her; it runs over the ground more like water than like electricity, in a slow trickling stream that branches out like veins or roots. It is a pale, yellow-white color, the color that bioluminescent stuff is in daylight. It reminds me of lymph, or slime mold. I jump up into the air so that I’m not contacting the wet concrete. The lightening is slower than I had anticipated, though, and it doesn’t hit as I’m jumping. I fan my hands, surprisingly enough actually managing to stay in the air for several seconds, while the lightening hits the woman and she shakes and sizzles. I drop back to the ground.

I don’t remember her dying, just being zapped. Then, my friends pull up in the wagon (they had been gone, although I don’t recall their departure) and I get back in. We pull the heavy-duty carport down – I’m not sure whether it’s an accident based on its poor design, which appears to be more stacked than bolted, or if we pull it down on purpose. Riding away, I tell my friends about the lightening fight with the angry woman, and I enjoy relating the things I did and said. It feels a little sadistic, but justified, like I’ve gotten back at somebody who had been upsetting or hurting me and my friends.