Usually I make these into a post for Dreamers Often Lie or something, but this one is just a little too unsettling for that.

Last night I had a dream that I was going to be hanged. I don’t remember why. I remember feeling like it was an inevitability, and it was, naturally, something I worried about. Then at some point I decided that, no, I wasn’t going to go along with it. It wasn’t a realization that I could escape, but merely a decision to do so. I just fled. This was basically the start of the story. For the rest of the time I was just living this strange fugitive life. The thing is I never felt like I was in danger of being caught and dragged back to the gallows. It’s just that, when I chose to walk away from the gallows, I chose to live in some sort of grimy sub-existence, scraping by rather than thriving. I wasn’t so much a fugitive as a member of an underclass.

Of course, dreams never quite make sense. So one of the things that did it for me, that made the decision, was the actual experience of being hanged. There was no pain to speak of, but as I imagined it in the dream I experienced it. A short drop and a sudden stop, as they say. It’s been the sort of dream that’s been sticking with me all day.

Cheerful, I know.