In Jungian thought, there's the concept of the Big Dream; as opposed to someone's regular dreams, which are recurring and contain standard themes, such as falling off a cliff or being late to an exam, a Big Dream is out-of-the-ordinary, strange, vivid. I've had one or two Big Dreams, one of which I can remember as my first. It's been at least a decade, however, and so my memory of it may be even more fragmented than a dreamer's memory normally is, but the broadest strokes remain lodged within my mind.
It took place at a birthday party. Not mine; it was the party for a little girl. She was blond, with long, straight hair, and a thin, seemingly maturely-proportioned body. We all sat -- don't ask who 'we' are, please, I couldn't tell you -- around a long, narrow table beneath a large canopy-style tent. It was pitched in a grassy area within a park. The sun was shining, but beneath the canopy, it was very dark; the light was having a hard time penetrating the sides of the canopy, even though they were open.
Adults circulated around us all; tall, shaded figures, who could not be gazed at directly. They were constantly bringing things from somewhere; food, gifts, tributes, toys, amusements. All of these went directly to the little girl, who tossed away the previous one without a thought the moment another item arrived. She both played with these items, and burbled in conversation with the rest of us sitting at the table.
Occasionally, there was a gift brought forward which, for some reason or another, the little girl was displeased with. At that point, she stopped talking and stared at it, uncomprehending. Then, abruptly, she starts screaming.
Even now, with the space of ten years -- at least -- on the dream, thinking of her outraged screams produces a direct physical reaction. My entire body clenches; my heart rate has increased, and I'm warmer than the room should make me feel. Her screams are the worst sound in the world, magnified by their proximity. Her entire body warps in the fury of her rage; her hair is not black and standing on end, her pleasant face contorted into a horrifying mask, her teeth revealed to be remarkably sharp. She resembles a harpy, in retrospect, her hands mutating into talons.
The adults hurry to find some other item to distract her with, and, as they do so, the children closest to her begin to melt away; where there had been a large cushion between myself and her at the head of the table, there is now slightly less of one. Finally, some adult shoves a new toy into her field of vision, and she returns to her original form.
Another dream I've been recalling rather often lately was a dream about the apocalypse. Of pink cosmic foam.
Yes, foam.
It ran something like this: In some godforsaken, jungle-infested part of the world, a research team stumbled across an enormous statue carved into the side of a cliff, in a distinctly non-human shape. Engraved in the tablets the creature is holding was, in archaic but understandable English, the following information:
FROM OUTER SPACE
ALL DEATH REIGNS
MANY WILL PERISH
SANCTUARY BELOW
At the creature's feet, there was an entrance to a vast underground complex of tunnels and caverns, which seem tailored for human inhabitance. There was bio-luminescent algae on some of the larger rooms, and carefully-carved stairwells between rooms, and even what appears to be a vast chamber for meeting, which rough-hewn benches in the floor.
At first, this is seen as some sort of strange hoax, or an archeological oddity, but then, a few years later, word came from the astronomers: space appeared to be vanishing.
It was a vast, inky blackness spreading across the sky; within a year, half the milky way was obscured behind this strange cloud. As it came closer and closer to the solar system, telescopes began to be able to make out what it was: an enormous amount of soft-pink bubbles. It was instantly labeled "killer foam" in the press, and, as it swallowed the Oort cloud, humanity began racing to defend against it.
Most nations decided to attempt to build vast domes over their populations, relocating them to urban centers and sealing them in. A few hardy folks believed it was harmless, and refused to go. And yet others remembered the statue in the jungle and fled for it. As the foam engulfed the moon, the giant domes closed and locked their doors to the outside world.
It arrived silently, with pink orbs drifting down through the atmosphere and piling up on the ground; at first no larger than hail, and then slowly getting larger and larger. Most of those who were foolish enough to stay outside the domes were swiftly overcome by boulder-sized bubbles crushing their homes.
The domes themselves lasted little more than a week, as the pressure of the ever-increasing mass of foam swiftly overcame these pinnacles of human engineering. As soon as a failure in the dome occurred, foam would rush in, crushing all those inside with devastating swiftness.
Two weeks after the arrival of the foam, all that remained of humanity was the group who had taken refuge beneath the statue in the jungle.