Tuesday 17 July 2018

Dream: a barbeque in the Himalayas

In this dream, my friend E and I are in the car. It is quite a small and old car, with a slightly musty smell as if it has some history.

At first I am driving, and the man sitting next to me is my husband that I do not recognise. E is in the back seat with her husband who is not actually her husband in real life. We are driving in the Himalayas along a mountain road, with a big snowy mountain range in the distance. We pull into a small village which has a handful of old boarded up shops on our left. On the right the cliff drops away and we can see a long way down into the precipice. Outside one of the shops, I swap with E's "husband" and he starts to drive. When I get out of the car I realise that it is ever so slightly snowing. The sky is completely grey and the atmosphere is gloomy. There are no people around so it's hard to tell which country we are in.

After a while, we stop again on the side of the road where there is a house. A big chimney from the house is spewing smoke. The sense of isolation as we get out of the car is distinct. Wordlessly E moves to the back of the car and opens the trunk.

Quick, we have to hurry if we can catch the end of the barbeque. She says to all of us.

There is a dead body in the boot, a naked woman whose head is twisted at an impossible angle. Her long hair is straggly and covers most of her face. There are no other markings on her body at all, it looks completely smooth as if she were a wax statue.

With each of us taking one limb, we carry her out of the boot. She is really heavy under my hand, and I struggle to think, if she were 60kg we are each carrying 15kg? Without speaking, we somehow co-ordinate carrying her up the driveway. At the front door, we pause and press the doorbell. The door opens and we try to get her inside - the boys are carrying the legs and they get inside, E has the right arm and she gets inside but the body's left arm just catches the doorframe and the rest of them go inside the house without me.

The door slams shut and I am standing there holding the left arm, ripped off neatly at the shoulder joint. It looks completely unreal, as if it were a mannequin's arm. There is no bleeding from the joint, and the cartilage of the shoulder looks manmade too.

The smell of barbeque drifts out of the house now and I know that they are cooking her. I stand dejectedly at the front door, not quite sure what to do with he left arm. The snowflakes fall onto my face and I feel physically and emotionally chilly.

All of a sudden, the three of them burst out of the house and start running towards the car. I follow them, with the left arm. The snow seems to be coming down harder now, and I can barely see where we are going. We get into the car and now my "husband" is driving and I am sitting in the front passenger seat, with the left arm on the ground.

After it is taken off from the body, do we know which one is the left and which one is the right arm? I wonder, then I wake up.  

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