M2: It’s funny that you mention mouths appearing where there were not mouths before. It was scary — when I was like, I don’t know, eight, nine, ten years old I had a recurring dream. This LITERALLY lasted for the better part of five or six YEARS, well into my adolescence, and it was always EXACTLY the same, as if were just a TAPE replaying every time.
The WORLD was FILLED with FACELESS CREATURES. Pretty much everything that was… mammalian… uh, was completely and totally FACEless – except these ROUND MOUTHS – perfectly round mouths – would appear from nowhere, generally in the forehead region, just LINED with these RAZOR-SHARP TEETH –
F3: That’s TERRIFYING!
M2: – LAMPREY-like.
F3: Yeah, I used to be obsessed with echinoderms because they have creepy little mouths like that.
M2: OH YEAH! And, and, like, the, this dream, like, basically, I was surrounded by these things, and some of them were like, vaguely recognizeable as like, people or creatures or animals that I KNEW throughout my life, and, and, there was no real sense of malice for the first good HALF of the dream; they were just kind of, AROUND. And then they started, like – but they stayed at a relative distance. Then, uh, in, er, uh, the, uh, middle-ish, uh, uh, uh, of the dream, or so, they started, uh, just, getting CLOSER. As I was going through all these different places they’re MUCH, MUCH CLOSER, and these MOUTHS start appearing. And they start coming TOWARD me.
F3: This sounds like the zombies in Zelda.
M2: Wuaouh, UEH, I, uh, maybe. This was BEFORE I ever played Zelda, so, but yeah, crazy-crazy.
But th- uh, the DREAM always ended the SAME WAY; uh, like, this MAN and, we-, uh, he’s in, like, a BOWLER hat, and he’s FACEless. And he takes off the bowler hat-
F3: Magritte! Your whole dream was about Magritte!
M2: Well, yeah, it IS very Magritte in that regard but- well, there’s no apple, but instead of an apple there’s this BIG FUCKING MOUTH, and he just, like, LEANS TOWARDS me, and I close my eyes and scream, and I open my eyes, and I’m on this LITTLE GREEN WOODEN DINGHY on the middle of an OCEAN, like, just, OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. And my MOM’S DOG, he was-
F3: Dinghy! (Laughs uncontrollably) Sorry!
M2: He was a BELOVED FAMILY PET. His name was Machette – my mom had THREE STANDARD POODLES named Machette. She brought her first one back-
F3: Like “machette”?
M2: Uh, well, uh, yes. FRENCH pronounciation of “like the word ‘machette’ ”.
Uh, she brought it back, uh, in the 1960s when she moved back – she’d been living in Paris and she moved back to the United States. She’d been working, uh, in the US NATO office, and uh, she was good friends with one of the French ambassadors, and when he moved to a new apartment he couldn’t keep his standard poodle, Machette, so he gave it to my mom; my mom kept her for a couple of years, moved back to the states, and she flew Machette back with her. And every time Machette died, she would get a new Machette.
So I always knew a black standard poodle, female, named Machette. This was like a staple… like a pinnacle… like a PILLAR of my CHILDHOOD, like, the ULTIMATE SAFETY, ‘cause there was always a dog named Machette.
And at the end of this dream, I’m in the middle of this OCean, no land in SIGHT, no sun, no clouds, just OMNIDIRECTIONAL LIGHT. And this faceless Machette comes up out of the water, puts both front legs on the edge of the boat, and this BIG MOUTH appears, and I was like WOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!!!! and then I wake up.
And I literally had that dream once a month for five years.
Yeah. Fucked up. “Mouths appearing where there were not mouths before”… something so specific has to be in some… it has to hit on some eventual – some insecurity or something. I don’t know.
(Fin)
[M2 === Aaron] [F3 === Beth]