I was pregnant with a child not my husband's. I wanted to leave him, but not to join my lover;
I was done defining myself through men. Nor did I want the child. I got a knitting needle, and...
CAUTION: READ THE TITLE!
I find myself at a party in London observing two minutes of silence for the dead of World Wars One and Two. But then, in the park,
blowing across the grass like leaves, were people. The windows imploded. Surely, I thought, there should be a flash before the wind?
I hop on a bus in mythical Greece, and this woman's guardian angel acts racist. OK, I'm an ogre. So?
CAUTION: ANOTHER HANDGUN TRAGEDY
I witnessed strikes in Brighton and Devon through the eyes
of others; but I felt the Cheltenham impact in my own body...
I dream the AIDS epidemic was all a dream. But my lover dreams of the tunnel of light ahead...
CAUTION: AIDS DEATHS
A visit to a world where they fear blue soup ends in death and resurrection, so I'm pissed at my boss--God.
CAUTION: DEATH, REBIRTH, SACRILEGE... JOB BURNOUT
Spies kidnap a girl and move her soul into a madwoman's body.
Can she survive? Recover? Thrive? The TV dance show helps...
A long terrible shiver, and my whole body broke like glass. I may live months, but in that dream I died...
Helping out talking animals until I'm exhausted, I suffer a fatal accident. What am I being warned of?
An dreams a scary woman pulls his guts out and fills him up with brush! He wakes, gets gutted in a feud, and then...
CAUTION: BLOODY VIKINGS!
I was at the beach with my friends. It was fun. But gradually they were
laughing at me, not with me. Then they picked up burning sticks...
CAUTION: GRUESOME
Caedmon can't sing. But he dreams an angel makes him try. Soon he's the first great English poet and singer...
A few years ago I smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, though I knew they were carcinogenic.
I dreamed I had terminal cancer; my denial of the evidence had killed me. I woke, and quit...
I don't even notice the car until it's hit me and I'm dead. Now I have to lie here
forever, even though I know it's a dream. But if you die in a dream, you die...
A vampire wrestler on the Throne of Heaven pins me. Visualization and prayer don't free me--in fact, they get me killed...
God flames me for putting pagan stuff on the Net, and we end up suing each other. Then the riots begin...
CAUTION: HITMEN AND HERESY
Buddhism is a 12-step program; it has its pitfalls for those of us who already detach all too easily...
A English carpenter named Taylor demolishes Netley Abbey despite
dreams warning he'll be crushed by stones falling from a window...
To prove I really am lucid-dreaming, I let a streetcar run me over. Mm, crunchy! Then I find out...
CAUTION: DON'T TRY THIS AT OM...
We're Cubist cartoon characters, trapped in a strip gone mad. But my dad stays calm! Too calm...
CAUTION: SEAS OF BLOOD... OR IS IT RED INK?
Troutmet the moon-pigeon, Burtra the blackbird, a talking acacia,
my dead father and my dead gardener all give me afterlife-advice...
I die young, to get it over with, like chickenpox. As I slowly revive, I face bias against the dead. So..
After I die, I join with others to catch the Devil, who's a bag full of bitter, angry souls. But
he infects some kids. To free the world of evil, we'd have to kill them. Making us evil...
CAUTION: FRUSTRATING AFTERLIFE
I dream I have just six months to live. I go through a dozen phases and moods, preparing for death...
A woman in Stockwith dreamt she'd drown going to market; but her friends talked her back into the trip.
When she fell in the water, they all stood by as she drowned; not one helping her till it was too late...
CAUTION: WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE...
Dinner with Dracula goes well, considering, except for the mayonnaise. But suddenly I'm drowning!
No one sees or hears me. Am I a ghost, am I dead or alive? And how would anyone notice?
Africa. The elephant seemed attracted to a strange wave of white heat. It faded to nothingness. Suddenly we too were enveloped.
I became flame. I was consumed. I was a thought center, alone in a white void. To create a new life I had only to speak the word...
CAUTION: DEATH
A spot on my elbow triggers a dream of being in a suicide clinic, getting the injection, starting to die. Yet
for two years, I put off having that spot checked! Only after a second warning dream do I go in to find...
My only chance of life and freedom is to leap. He raises the gun and fires.
I'm flooded with a soundless explosion of light...
I asked my dreams to show me my Shadow--what I deny. It showed me at least FIVE! And in every
time-branch, a runaway truck crushed me--the Truck of Ideology. Not that I seemed able to avoid it...
CAUTION: RECURRING DEATHS
After 20 years without a child, Maya dreams devas carry her to a holy lake, wash her...
and then an elephant carrying a lotus flower enters her right side. She knows it means...
CAUTION: DREAM OMITS TINY DETAIL--IMMINENT DEATH
After murdering his mother, Nero dreams he's losing control: ships drift, statues chase him, and his own tomb says...
Dunne dreamt of a fire with smoke so toxic it killed people on
a balcony in open air! Then came the evening newspaper...
I dreamed I was one of several soldiers about to be executed. I told my girlfriend the dream.
She asked "What were you wearing?" and I burst out laughing as I saw the pun: "Fatigues!"
While my body expels a kidney stone, weird scenes happen on the astral plane. At least I get to dip the pope.
CAUTION: PAIN, PEE, POPE
When I'm stressed, I build a set of luna-moth wings and fly invisibly. Though once a blind man caught me by ear...
Am I on this ship's bridge, or only watching on video? It matters, because that other ship
half a mile ahead just exploded, and the shockwave's about to crush us like a soda can...
CAUTION: NUCLEAR DISASTER
As they lower me into my grave, mourners don't throw dirt but--cottage cheese? I toss it
back, starting a huge foodfight. I climb out to join the fun. Only the poor pastor looks lost...
I'm a child in a Latin American city who's murdered on the street. Then I'm my brother,
seeking my own murderers. I find the General behind it! Unfortunately...
CAUTION: DYING. DYING TWICE. AND THEN NEARLY AGAIN, AWAKE...
I'm a girl in a desert who God tells to preach a new gospel. But the locals, unlike ancient Rome, have guns...
CAUTION: VIOLENT MARTYRDOM
They led me to the guillotine. As the blade struck my neck,
I woke to find my headboard had broken loose and fallen on my...
The foremost wizard of Shakespeare's age dreams he's dead. They're burning his books, but that doesn't bother him...
I'm gloomy about the state of the world, but my alter ego cheerfully explains we're dead and in
Hell--as a demon train rolls up with Elvis Costello on the roof singing "This is Hell I suppose"...
I'm an initiate in a Sung Dynasty monastery. But I have no idea how far the hazing can go...
CAUTION: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME
I live as a small falcon, glad I'm no longer human. But when that life ends...
My little daughter and I hardly notice when a truck kills us. Unseen, I calmly observe the alarm of the living...
I keep getting reincarnated in dull heavens where all is blocked by know-nothings. After the 2016 election...
CAUTION: CAUSTIC
Ko said "Now we have come to where we die." I thought it looked just like the land we'd been traveling,
and couldn't see why we should have to die. Ko grabbed me and pulled me over the cliff...
CAUTION: DYING IN DREAM
I was on a plane... It was almost graceful, the plane actually entered the building before everything dissolved into flame...
CAUTION: DEATH. DEATH TWICE.
I'm a blonde gameshow bimbo. Each week, I'm beaten up. Ha ha ha! But my bruises are real. At last, I...
CAUTION: GAMESHOW FROM HELL
Snakebite! I'm hooked to a health-monitor. If a red light comes on, I'm doomed. But voices start whispering...
I die. But then I find a door in my grandmother's pantry leading to a beautiful library...
Lincoln dreamt his body was lying in state in the White House. A guard said he'd been assassinated. Two weeks later...
I live two complete lives with the same woman in my dreams, then wake up next to her...
A nightmare. I go lucid as the bullets tear through me. Yet I go on with the dream! Why?...
CAUTION: NIGHTMARISH VIOLENCE
The Lynx, my dream-god,
comes for me at last...
Each time, I'm a young Elizabethan man in a grand, new-built country house. In the main room,
I find a man in black by the fire. He comes at me, and as he shoots me point-blank, I wake...
I'm an anima. But we rarely walk the day-world for long. When will I fade? Ignorance isn't bliss, it's paralysis...
As a boy in Australia I briefly died on the operating table. I found myself living among the Mimi,
spirits living in rocks. I grew up, grew old, died--and woke up nine years old again...
All my life, from age three or four, I've dreamed of being a young monk named Stefan
somewhere in southern Europe. And aspects of his short life have shaped my own...
CAUTION: SEXUAL EXPLOITATION
I'm given photos of what a murderer saw, but I recognize these scenes. I am the murderer! At least I've solved the case.
I'm in a bare white room. On the wall, a long fuse sparks. I feel euphoric from ozone--it means I've had a fatal radiation dose...
We stood meekly in line to be beheaded. I tried to accept my fate and commended myself to God... CAUTION: READ THE TITLE!
My best friend and I qualify for new bodies. The new me is taller, but poor Ken may take years adjusting to his new...
Erica dreams that during a protest she's caught in a radioactive flood...
Michael dreams a nuclear forcefield makes his fingertips explode and congeal into weird knobs...
Joanne dreams she meets nuclear mutants with curling black nails great for peeling potatoes...
Scott dreams the world goes silent and white, bleaching out. His hands dissolve...
DREAMS: I'm arguing with a worker on our oil rig when a huge piece of steel falls, crushing me instantly.
MONTHS LATER: that very worker gets in an argument with me. I recall my dreams, step back, and...
I froze to death trying to climb an icy peak. But I try again, and this time,
no holds barred. Wow, am I selfish! But alive...
I'm to be martyred. I ask if the man I love can strangle me. Yes! I say farewell to our hermaphroditic genius baby...
Facing death the next day in a Roman arena, Perpetua dreams of the spiritual duel behind the physical one...
My city's invaded and occupied. I become a gigantic Owl and fight with impossible stamina.
But in the end I'm dead, stuffed, on a museum wall. Can I let go NOW?
CAUTION: WAR
I'm in my home town, but at two times at once! Murderous boys explain why: I died here in 1861...
I'm a Brazilian in the Olympic waterfall-jumping finals. The Russian & American cheat--threaten my family.
I snap! Fight recklessly, knocking them off their ropes. We all tumble down the cliff...
CAUTION: BULLYING, VIOLENT REVENGE
Samuel Savage dreamt he rode through a graveyard and saw a new monument--for himself!
His death-date was marked: two years in the future. He died September 1772, on that day...
I search rivers and lakes around the world for someone dead. But the living I meet act as strange as ghosts...
Atop a sea-cliff, I meet a young couple in love. One look at me and they
push me off! When I see I can't save myself, I try to take them with me...
CAUTION: NIGHTMARE BARING UGLY TRUTHS
I had a dream that everyone was sinking, drowning, but still alive. No one
could move, and it was just getting darker and darker with bodies. Lovely...
Lost in the snow, I must give my baby to a stranger or let my dad put him in a box, safe, forever...
John Lee, sentenced to hang, dreamt he walked to the scaffold but the trapdoor stubbornly stuck.
He woke, told his jailors the dream, walked to the scaffold, and...
As the steamroller flattened me I became quite a lovely stained-glass window...
My clinic's euthanasia program is so warm and cuddly I barely notice I'm drifting toward death
til I reach the final form... and it's in Russian. They think I'm a refugee! Don't know me at all...
CAUTION: FLAMES ANTI-ABORTION AND HEALTHCARE IDEOLOGIES
My friend Tanya tries hard to save her marriage, but in her dreams Isidora Duncan,
Carl Jung, even the gods themselves warn her to face their deep incompatibility...
So you die, and to your secular surprise, your soul metamorphoses into...
Gunmen held me hostage in a grand hall; at last they shot me. Next day: the Moscow Theater hostages...
I provoke a shooting! Wandering through time, I forget how much some cultures fear witches...
I loyally served a demon who punished me until at last he sent me to hell. And STILL I didn't rebel...
CAUTION: BLOODY ABUSE
As a toddler I repeatedly dreamed I was a married adult with a daughter
of my own, but the dreams always ended with my husband shooting me...
CAUTION: RECURRENT MURDER
A free-lance torturer chooses me for his victim. He has the right. I bluster, but when I fall asleep at last...
CAUTION: NO PAIN, BUT GORE
I bike up a Hawaiian hill toward a lava fountain. A house catches fire, but it's blocks ahead.
I go a bit closer. Then a heat-shimmer shows deadly gas has crept ahead of the flames...
CAUTION: FATAL MISJUDGMENT
Khodasevich (1939): I dreamt a call announced my friend was dead. Really he was still alive--but not for long...
Sergey (1945): My brother died in January but the news took months to reach us. Just before it did, I dreamed...
Half awake, Nabokov interprets shadows as guillotines and believes he and his wife will be executed...
Blondie Wiggle builds a Video Igloo. But I'm allergic--TV kills me! A BAD omen for our video project...
CAUTION: TV KILLS (BUT YOU KNEW THAT)
DAY: our ex-cat comes back, needing surgery. Dad doesn't want to pay. Big quarrel.
DREAM: Cats, birds, elf-girls; in their asteroid library, a tale of oath-breaking...
Now I'm the one who stole a tooth of jade from the volcano hall. Greed... erupts!
CAUTION: NUDE BIRD-ELF, DEATH BY LAVA
I was dead. A weed grew from my heart; then two streams poured out--not
water or blood but experiences. I asked the weed what it was doing, and it said...
Lost in an industrial maze, my memories hopelessly outdated, I resign myself to the Wheel...
I'm to be beheaded. Guards chant "It's important to enjoy what you're doing."
I know my spilled blood will create a work of art...
I was fatally wounded in a Star Wars battle, so I shot myself in the head.
For a solid minute, there was nothing but blackness...