Slasher Nightmares

I rarely have nightmares about slasher films or slasher icons but last night I had a really vivid one involving Michael Myers.  The dream started out pretty innocent.  I was sitting in a classroom and comedian Ron White was the teacher.  For some reason “Time Passages” by Al Stewart kept playing over the intercom system.  Eventually, White made a speech concerning the greatness of the band Bad Company before dismissing the class 30 minutes early.  There was great jubilation as the class strolled out of the school,  laughing at all the poor souls still trapped in boring lectures for the next half-hour.  And then the dream turned really dark and sinister.

Suddenly, I was at a hospital and Michael Myers was slaughtering everyone.  This was a young, fast Myers wearing the original mask.  It was obvious Myers was after someone but I never found out who.  Myers went from room to room killing everyone in his path.  An elderly Dr. Loomis, myself, and several others hid in a brightly lit observation room with the hopes Myers wouldn’t find us.  Of course, he knew where we were.  Instead of busting into our hiding spot, Myers walked into the room across the hall and slaughtered the women an children hiding there.  He wanted us to hear the screams and watch the slaughter of the innocent.  One little girl with a slashed throat hosed down the room’s window with arterial spray.  After the screaming stopped, Michael burst into our room.  Loomis, hero to the end, distracted Myers long enough for me and the others to escape.

Outside the hospital, the nightmare was even worse.  The back of the hospital sat along a cliff overlooking a beautiful beach.  Patients, family members, and staff were jumping from the cliff and from the roof of the hospital.  Somehow Myers’ madness had infected most of the people in the hospital which resulted in mass suicides.  A couple of doctors who leapt from the roof bounced when they hit the concrete steps and rolled like rag dolls.  A hippy chick, her face covered with a serene smile, sat on the curb oblivious to the falling bodies.  She turned her head, examined the remains of a broken No Parking sign, and then shoved her face on to the busted pipe.  The metal dug into her eye and nearly ripped the flesh from her face.  She was still smiling when the pipe pierced her skull.

The dream shifted to morning and I was now hiding in a beach house not far from the hospital.  Most of the other survivors were elderly patients (including the late actor William Hickey)  and a few family members.  Corpses covered the beach.  Those trapped in the surf rolled like driftwood when the waves washed over them.  They bobbed in the water and danced like dead marionettes on invisible strings.  One ancient crone tried to go outside, she thought the bodies in the water were still alive, but her son quickly pulled her away from the doors.  And then I woke up.

Bad nightmares, the kind that leave me shaken and jittery for several hours after I’m awake, usually get written down in a notebook.  Since this one had such a heavy slasher influence, I decided to skip the notebook and preserve it on Retro Slashers.  Over time the dream will fade and be forgotten.  But if I read about it I’ll instantly remember the horrible screams, bones shattering on impact, and the sickening sound of ripping flesh.