...anyone want to analyze this dream?...

Weird side effect:

2:25am

The lights had been out for quite some time, but I simply couldn't force myself fall asleep. My hair, still wet from my shower, was dampening my pillow and causing a consistent chill. My eyes pressed shut, I tried to imagine him here with me...

...when suddenly I found myself in a kitchen, intended to be my parents kitchen, but not my parents kitchen. We were celebrating, I'm not sure what, maybe the fact that I was home. There was lots of hugging, and extended family were present. And there were men wearing wife beaters, looking like they had just finished working on some part of the house.

One of them was an old high school crush, who reached out and pulled my mom into a big bear hug. I blushed as if I was in 11^th grade all over again and with my eyes down, pretending to be nonchalant, I prepared my arms for his hug as well, only to be pulled into the grasp of a scruffy, dirty blonde. Not that his hair was dirty blonde in color, just that he was dirty and blonde.

And in this odd dream coma, everyone was much, much taller than me.

There was an elderly aunt in the kitchen, but it was blurry, and I couldn't make out her features to know which aunt it was, so I squinted, only to find her features becoming more melty with a terrifying Voldemort look about her nose (or lack there of.) I stared only because I was so horrified I could look away. She pulled me into a hug and then held onto both my hands as I pulled away, curious for another glimpse at her face.

And this elderly, Voldemort-impersonating aunt, also a giant to my small frame, closed her eyes and tilted her head from side to side, as if praying, I thought. Until her head began to jerk from side to side violently, and I thought she was possessed, and I wondered what voice would come out of her when she finally did speak, and what the voice would say. I unsuccessfully tried to yank my hands away and move toward the dining room where everyone else was gathering for dinner, but she pulled as well, and soon we were swirling, and spinning and swelling around the kitchen and through the dining room and into a wide, open universe, with limitless stars scattered across a black sky.

I gave myself over to the sensation of flying through the air, weightless, spinning, but not to the point of dizziness, so much so that I let it continue for longer than I would have expected.

We spun around and soon we were floating in a dance hall, with an open roof, and other people floating and swirling, and there were lasers, but not the cool rhythmic kind you'd see in a club, more like, one or two, that gave a pink and green hue to the whole room.

And that part of me that was still me somewhere in the recesses of my mind, still awake, still in control, began to say, This is fun, but if this is something demon-y, I belong to Jesus.

Just FYI.

...yep, I totally said it...

And then I was driving. Apparently, I was a camera man/photographer for a local news station. I was traveling with a reporter down our small town streets. A man dressed as the local team's mascot (a chicken) was beaten and battered and bloody signifying yet another loss by his team, and he kept jumping in front of our car, feigning being run over. He was cute, so I slowed down and played along, then rolled down the window and said, So if I park the car, will you lay under it like I ran you over?

Sure, he agreed with a bigger smile than I thought possible.

I dropped off the reporter and parked the car on a side street, then ran barefoot back toward them with my camera. I could hear momentary screams escaping the building entrance where they stood, a building that seemed to be a museum or sanctuary of some sort for all sorts of exotic spiders and tarantulas. I, of course, freaked out and ran back toward my car.

Crash!

Oh shit! A man's voice rang out down the street.

I knew I should, but I just couldn't look away, mostly because I couldn't figure out what was going on, and I was so curious. There stood a giant turkey with several black squiggly, worm-like things hanging from it's mouth, and two men standing back from the scene, laughing callously, perhaps a bit fearfully. I was mesmerized by the whole thing, and kept walking closer and closer, only to realize that the crash had been a cage, which was shattered on the street and the squiggly worms were actually the legs of a tarantula. Thankfully, the turkey was winning.

It was hunting the turkey and the turkey just grabbed it! one man exclaimed.

At least there was only one, I thought to myself.

Then, a huge clump of dry dirt lunged passed the turkey and onto some grass. My eyes, wide with terror, couldn't look away as the dirt cracked apart to reveal a spider, a jumping spider, that in one bound had leapt it's way across the parking lot.

Frozen with fear, I watched in slow motion as he lowered his body toward the ground and launched himself off the pavement, his eight legs spread eagle, gliding, soaring straight for my face.

...and that's when I woke up...or, rather, that's when I ripped myself back into reality...

Shudder. I'm not sure I'll be sleeping tonight.

What was in that spray tan?!

Never again...never, ever again...