The Meaning of Life

Nightmare: The Meaning of Life

Under the busy city streets — where Bill Murray was acting the part of a spendthrift executive, squeezing his trendy new candelabrum staff topped with a tree of fake skulls into the alternate universe New York taxi — there was a cave.

A very special cave, a hundred meters tall at its heart, lit in soft oranges and blues from the luminescent microorganisms clinging to the smooth rock of the walls. The calm waters at the natural well there in the magical core birthed beings from the depths of their pure unfathomable emotion, bringing them directly into life.

From that strange well of souls tonight emerged a hominid, smooth and pink, with shining, interested eyes, and skin like bubblegum.

“Alive!” It said, in a cheerful, boyish voice, as it took bouncing, exuberant strides forth into the secluded land of wonders which it was created to explore.

“With legs to walk!” Its singsong voice rang joyous through the warm light of the massive cavern.

It jounced down the lip of the great well, soles slapping on the numinous yellow-orange cobblestones, toward a low rocky formation, which was encrusted with tan vines bearing large purple flowers.

“And a nose, to smell!”

It leaned to the rocks to catch the fragrance of the flowers on the non-photosynthetic plant, which must have been tuned to some unseen and equally exotic pollinator. The boy-creature’s jejune antics here took on an innocence not shadowed by the pressures and expectations of competitive life or society; this realm seemed to be the hidden bastion of innocent freedom. It seemed to ask no critique, from the impossible observer, which did not come from a mindset similar to its own, asking instead only that we join in the new life’s cheer.

My gift of disembodied sight panned around the curve to show the main body of the cavern trailing away into stranger wonders, still ahead on the gently uneven rolling curves of the cave floor; there were unlikely — or even magical — things ahead, undisturbed by the passage of great time and surely in need of an appreciating observer.

One of these wonders was a pulsating red X, embedded in the rock, against all reason.

The boy-creature walked down the huge rocky hall to stand on the anomalous marking.

“And what’s this?”

As his question rang in the air, I realized that the X in the floor was beating to the tune of my own heart, and something in the discovery was horrifying, like cutting into a fresh, unblemished fruit and finding the inside to be a dry and crunchy secret catacomb of garden-devouring pests, dreaming malicious alien thoughts inside their mottled brown cocoons.

My vision panned back as the boy-creature stood on the horrible, comical red X, and there were new “wonders” now hidden behind the young creature as well; an agglomeration of spiny golden spheres, perhaps eight feet tall, now hovered over the purple flowered vines.

The ground shook with explosive force, and terrible fanfare burst into my mind. A massive, towering leg touched the cavern floor. It was a vaguely purple shade of off-white, like steel or cadaverous flesh, and the curve on top of its great flat foot was just barely visible at the top of my vision, perhaps fifteen feet off the ground.

The second leg entered view; it landed on the red X, squashing the boy-creature against the rock with mountainous force. The leg lifted then, revealing the pink remains — and whatever life left in them still felt awareness — pressed into the uneven rock.

The leg came down again with obvious malicious intent, suggesting that this godlike abomination had been flung from the well with the sole purpose of bringing unexpected, shocking, pervasive pain, and annihilation.

The grim fanfare continued as the monolithic leg stomped on the boy-thing, showing new mutilations in the innocent body each time it raised.

At last, the thing walked onward, pounding the ground with earthquake force, leaving me in my fixed direction of sight to question what was left of the young life, and how awful its last moments must have been.

Then a cylinder of steely material, larger than a tanker truck, slammed into the rocky X-marked floor of the cave, unmaking the solemnity, imprinting horror over the fresh grief. The titanic length of unyielding material raised and barreled down again, forcing the resilient body of the small life form apart, driving it further into the crannies of the rock with each blow.

After some length of time, it ended, and the dream was temporarily wiped from my memory.

Bill Murray, still looking a spry 30, examined the Mexican restaurant he had just installed in his office building floor. Upper management came down to scold him for his latest insane expense, and again he left the building to talk to the popular occult street priests and compare high class attire. After their conversations, my mind descended to the cave.

The dream repeated from there in its entirety, with slight variations.

My memories came back each time the boy-creature stood on the red X. X marked the spot where the terror returned, with a new feeling of dread and inevitability.

Again I saw the golden orb demon overseeing the brutal annihilation, again I wondered what deadly sensations overflowed in the little body as its spinal and cranial nerves or their analogues were crushed and splayed against the rock, again I wondered if after sight and limb had left the creature, could it still feel the explosive rhythm of the attack?

I don’t know how long the dream cycled before I woke up — I can only remember two instances. Was Bill Murray’s cameo a reference to Groundhog Day? If so, when did my subconscious decide it was going to torment me with repetition — at the beginning of the dream series, or sometime after?