cracked dreams

I slept like crap last night. Stupid spiders. Stupid black widows haunting my fucking dreams. Normally, I don't dream. Maybe I just don't remember the dreams. And, if I don't remember then, as far as I'm philosophically concerned, they never existed.

I go down to our furnished basement. The stairway is a bit more claustrophobic than normal. My dream perspective reminds me of the old Batman tv show with Adam West; everything is tilted 30-degrees to the left. Sometimes the right. It all depends upon which way I rotate. I discover that our finished basement is only mostly-finished, some corners and patches are unfinished. The exposed studs and joists are dusty and neglected, like open and untended lesion on a leper. Unclean. Wiring and outlets remind me of veins and arteries. Wall studs and framing reminds me of bones. Torn tufts of ragged pink insulation remind me of clotting blood. I walk past the laundry room to the furnace room. Here the sickness is the most palpable. A big patch of ceiling is gone. The carpet is pulled up exposing concrete. The walls on both sides are naught but dusty 2x4's and cobwebbed wiring. I want/need to enter the furnace room, but I'm hesitant to cross this foul ruined patch. Without stepping into the tainted area I inspect the dust and cobwebs. Looking for a cause or a reason for the disrepair, I can't find one, but I do see a golfball-sized black widow nestled between the wall frame and the ceiling. I'm not in imminent danger. So I carefully and methodically analyze the situation. Last year, I found two creepy black widows in my house. One I captured in a jar and the other I murdered with a saturation spray of bug killer. Normally, I don't kill spiders in my house. I let them live. I let them roam my home… unless they're creeping me out, then I jar 'em and release 'em outside. I draw the line the humanitarian line at black widows and egg sacks. Black widows are too dangerous and egg sacks can hold up to half-a-million spider embryos. I summon a can of Raid and one materialized in my readied hand. I spray a sticky-sweet aerosol spider death cloud. I coat the walls and ceiling. I spray. I spray. I spray. As I step back to survey my handiwork, the agitated black widow rappels down the wall on a shimmering thread. She hits the floor and disappears in to the furnace room by squeezing her golfball body under the closed door. She has been poisoned. She will die. I win. As I ponder crossing the raw concrete floor to the furnace room, a gleaming string of silk catches my eye. Another black widow drops from the ceiling and retreats into the furnace room. Two venomous pests? She, too, will be dead shortly. I scan the ceiling again with my can of Raid ready. A bit of movement off to my left. Another black bitch runs down the wall and under the door. Three, eh. Yet another one, who was hiding along the baseboards, makes a dash for the furnace room. Four fucking black widow. I'm still not scared; I'm a bit stressed. What are my options? Go in after them with my half-empty can of Raid. Smash them (they're only spiders). I should probably call an exterminator. Four black widows seams very unusual. Bad stuff. Professional help is necessary, though probably expensive. Fuck it. I'm going in after them. I cross the wound in my home and reach for the furnace room doorknob.

This is when I woke up and remarked, "Funky dream." I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. Every time I was about to drift off into oblivion, a black widow would climb onto the back of my neck. "Holy fuck! There's a black widow on me!" Not really, it was just a breeze tickling my neck hair. Or maybe a black widow would scurry over my arm. SLAP! Not really, it was just the sheet brushing against my arm. Or maybe a black widow would prod my tender calf in search of a juicy spot. Kick! Not really, just a spontaneous itch manifestation.

I'm so tired right now and the only thing I can blame is my retarded subconscious. So, what does a dream about spiders mean, anyway? According to hyperdictionary:

• I'm feeling like an outsider. (I'd rather be inside, because the air-conditioning is so wonderful.)
• I want to keep my distance from a tempting situation. (Hey, I've heard smoking crack is awesome.)
• Feminine power. (Say hello to gyno.)
• A powerful force is protecting me against self-destructive behavior. (Where did I put my crackpipe?)
• Bad luck. (My boss found my crackpipe on my desk.)
• Reward for hard work. (I might get a promotion since I'm now a certified professional engineer… as long as management can look past the crackpipe and gyno.)
• Creativity. ("But sir, it's prescription crack for my gyno.")
• I'm trapped in a clingy relationship. (…with my gyno?)
• Something is sucking the life out of me. (Yeah, my boss can't keep his lips off my gyno.)
• My desires will be realized. (Elevator sex while high on crack?)
• Conflict with a dominant female counterpart. (Yes, mother. I'm sorry, mother. I will clean up the blood now, mother.)
• Feminine entrapment. (Such at the following question: Do you think your man-boobs are perkier than my implants?)

Thanks for not clearing things up, hyperdictionary. Why not tell me what spiders don't represent? The list would be a lot shorter. Screw it. I'll tell myself what the stupid dream meant:

Remember that spider you found last night in the basement next to the washer machine, shenry? You said something like, "That spider looks like a brown and white black widow." It had the same bubble-ass abdomen and chaotic web pattern. The relatively tiny web dweller was guarding an egg sack, so you ruthlessly nuked the biter with a shit-load of Raid. You planned to return in fifteen minutes to remove the egg sack, but you never did. You left half-a-million spider babies to hatch and infest your home. You never got rid of the egg sack, shenry. You never got rid of the egg sack and that's why you had a stupid dream about black widows in your basement.

Thanks, self. I'm so much smarter than hyperdictionary.


Reminder: Dispose of spider egg sack when I get home.
...and so it was written, shenry at 7/14/2004 10:33:00 AM.
...and so it was appended with .