Big Bad Wolf.

As I grew up I had recurring dreams. One main dream really stuck out. The other dreams that haunted me repeatedly had variations and I’ll get to those in future posts, but right now I’ll tell you about the one dream that utterly terrified me as a child. When I say child, I mean I was between the ages of five and twelve. Here it is:

I’m standing in the hallway of a rickety, broken, worn shack. One of those shacks where you can see through the boards of the walls, floors, ceiling, doors….you get the picture. It was all wood, two floors, with a decent amount of rooms and no furnishings – just bare. It was obviously lived in a long time ago, but no person inhabited it any longer. The hallway led to a living room on the left, a staircase leading upstairs on the right, and a kitchen at the other end. Now, according to my dream, my cousin Emily (who’s two years younger than myself) and I were staying in this beaten down abode. Only heaven knows why (I certainly don’t). Here’s the thing though – we were TERRIFIED to go into or even walk past the living room. The living room had a tall stone fireplace. It was also just as worn as the shack, with pieces of stone missing, ashes filling the surrounding area, and a darkness about it that seemed unnatural. If we entered the room or so much as went near it, a white hot fire would spark and begin to blaze on its own. As the fire grew, a wolf, standing on its hind legs (similar to a werewolf, I’d suppose) would climb out of the hearth, growling and gnashing its strikingly sharp canines.  (Something like the below picture – credit to Trower – http://tankman2008.newgrounds.com/)

The wolf would proceed to chase us through the shack and out into what was complete, desolate, barren desert land. The chase continued around the house in circles (much like what you’d see in a Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote cartoon). The next thing I know, my cousin and the wolf have disappeared altogether and I’m left standing in this desert next to the abandoned shack. I felt alone and confused. I then re-entered the house of decaying boards only to wake up.

This dream played over and over a number of times when I was younger. Maybe I was watching too many cartoons, or maybe it really had some significance. Either way, I always woke up terrified.