Hello void. It has been a while since I've spoken. It's been a while that I 've encountered anything substantial to speak about. I was going to submit a film review. Alas, the motivation was missing. Regardless today, this entry will pose as my dream diary. And as good dream diary entries go, it would require a title. Today's title would be

"I want to slap my nephew"

Before anyone goes on a tirade of battle plans against a child abuser, please note that 'want' marks a feeling of intent and does not exactly refer to an action. I, for one, did not slap my nephew but I sure hell wanted to. Do not get me wrong, I am not a violent person, this fact the closest among friends can attest. I have only raised my hand to my nephew once and I had regretted it immediately, just because the realisation came to me that I was angry not at him but the ugly situation in which I was in. He was merely one of the elements that make for a shitty feeling. This morning I encountered the same, upon waking up from a strange nightmare.

You know how sometimes you encounter a great dream and upon waking, you simply want to return to sleep to continue it again, be it that you were on a literal dream vacation or spending an amorous time with a dream partner. This never works. (I will explain why this cannot happen below) Miraculously, this happened today. It was just unfortunate that it was a nightmare instead. I woke up feeling uncomfortable at 6.30am, by the sound of my alarm, but only after my second wake do I remember details of this nightmare. My send wake up call was my nephew telling me that he is late for school. Before we move on to my waking life, let us visit my dream which has been split into two parts.

Part 1. Dreams never last. And they rarely begin from start to end. In this preliminary dream, my body was not existent. I was there, it simply did not register that I was a human, with rules of reality holding me down. I felt like a specter floating across the dream space. This dream space was a series of chambers separated by steel airlock doors. And these chambers are fit like a tunnel path that stretches across either in a submarine or space station. Each chamber is made of metal. However, being a specter, I felt that you can also look into the chambers from outside like how you may see the characters through walls in film and television. In my mind, I was evacuating these chambers, metal airlocks like the covers of tupperware closing doorways one at a time. And in one of this chambers was a creature that in my dream logic registered as extra terrestrial, not unlike the ones in James Cameron's Aliens' series. In its last seen moment, this alien was jumping towards the closing door with its claws thrust forward. One the door closed, that was that and there was silence. This is when my alarm rang.

Part 2. I decided to snooze my alarm like any other day. I plan my alarm to be 15 minutes before I should wake to allow me this snooze time. This might sound to some people as counter productive but I like this system I have. Upon going back to slumber, I find myself a human, with a human body instead of the specter I was before. We revisit the chambers which are now old and blackened with soot and dust, from where I cannot confess that I know of. You do not really analyse dream logic. To you, it just is. (Haha. Sorry. Bad inside joke.) I realise I am one who knows what existed in these chambers, like a recurring character in an alien series. So I thread the chambers one by one. Opening and closing the chamber locks, one by one. In one chamber, as I stepped foot it, I sensed a movement in the soot. I barely make out through the dust that there was a creature standing only a mere 3-4 meters ahead of me made of skeleton and humanoid in structure, although stretched longer than any human. On its head, I notice a pair of sunglasses. Do not ask me the significance of this. It seemed to be sensing the sound of my entrance and gazes its humanoid head towards the door. As cliché as it sounds, I stood rooted to my ground, not daring to make a sound. But all of a sudden, the creature lunges forward towards the door, right as the lights of the chamber lit up, exposing its horrific glory to me as it flies past and hits its head into the metal door. Almost by instinct I grab hold of its neck, feet flat on the door and I pulled with all my dream might, attempting to dislocate the long neck from the creature's head. Right as I groaned to pull with all my strength, I woke up at the sound of my nephew telling me that he is late for school.

Awake. My nephew annoys me because when he wakes me, he is never late. When school is barely 10 minutes away, it is hard to be. But there he was repeating again and again how it is late and he will be late for school, as I stagger out of bed, grabbing my glasses, cell-phone, house key and a t-shirt, pull myself into the bathroom to splash water on my face, walked out into the living room by the door, dropped myself on the couch and waited just a moment before I had to stand up and walk out the door to send the kids to school. Yes this is pretty much my daily routine.

I force myself to revisit the bathroom for another attempt to wake up before towing my body out the door as my nephews again tell me how it was late. I walked silently throughout the journey, still disturbed by my dream. I believe the feeling of horror, sense of completion and the annoyance of incessant whining did me in. I so wanted to slap my nephew. Alas, what would it accomplish? Nope, nothing much at all. Just another day. Let's hope it gets better.