I cannot be the only author out there who wakes up after a dream and wonders what the heck just happened.
Case in point — last night as I slumbered I found myself being chased by ex-communicated 15th Century Conquistadors.
I should qualify that statement with the fact that I am not in history class at present, nor have I browsed the history channel since I’m in the middle of a semester and truly do not have the time. So … I have no idea how or why these Conquistadors would show up in my dream. I just know they didn’t like me very much.
From what I could gather from the one Conquistador who actually befriended me and attempted to aid in my escape from said ex-communicated faction, I had written a book which exposed something about them that they were particularly displeased with.
Which is ridiculous as I have never attempted to write anything about Conquistadors before. (Though I am sorely tempted to use them now.)
Oh! And the Conquistador who befriended me?
Yeah, he totally looked like Benicio Del Torro. Don’t ask me why, but for the sake of this post let’s go ahead and name my Conquistador friend “Benny.”
So … Benny helps me on this escape, which for reasons unbeknownst to me takes us through an amusement park featuring none other than the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs. At this point in the dream I have established that it is, in fact, one of the most bizarre dreams I have ever had but … Hey, Benicio Del Torro is leading so I’m gonna just go for the ride.
But then we hide in one of those old photo booth things. Because obviously no self-respecting Conquistador will be caught dead checking out a little photo booth regardless of the fact that our feet can clearly be seen under the curtain.
At this point I push the button for the photo booth to take our picture. (Heck yes, I did! It’s Benicio Del Torro!) Only instead of spewing out real pictures, it spits out three totally different photographs. Benny proceeds to explain that said photographs represent what we desire most, what we fear the most, and one lie. In no particular order. So you sort of have to guess which is which.
Bizarre, right?
Anyway, I only got to see one of the pictures before the alarm woke me up. I’m thinking it was the picture for what I feared the most, but I can’t be sure. All I know is that I sort of laid there for a while wondering what had just happened and where that had come from.
I cannot be the only author who has moments like this, can I? I mean, I had a dream where I was Medusa once and that was weird, but Conquistadors? Really?
And if I’m honest, I did use the Medusa dream to write my short story “The Man Who Loved Medusa” so I’m not necessarily complaining. I’ll probably use that photo booth idea somewhere, too. It’s just that these dreams are sometimes so bizarre that I just can’t help mentioning them. I truly hope that I’m not alone in this.
AJMaguire 