December 2002

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December 16, 2002

I was at an ice skating rink that was huge. It was the size of a football field and wound down at an angle of about 20 degrees to the right, then disappeared out of sight as it wound back up to the left and encircled whatever was in the middle of this large arena. The track, because of its incline, resembled a large skiing area. I get the feeling that it was nighttime but there were many artificial lights, many of them Christmas lights dangling from gangly green-wired assemblies attached to telephone-pole-like structures lining the interior and boundaries of this arena, that lit the area up rather nicely for some night skating. There were numerous people skating round and round this huge rink, dressed in ski caps and ski-type clothing. I was at the top part of the rink, just on the other side of the apex on my way down to do another round, when I noticed someone behind me had fallen to the ice. After he did, he was immediately skated over by several other skaters, and from here on out this dream became rather disturbing. I don’t know if the skaters were deliberate in skating over this guy, if they were trying to kill him or anything, but I immediately knew that the guy who had been skated over was going to be in some pain. Little did I realize how bad it was actually going to be. I stood there on my ice skates, looking for the person who had been skated over, and noticed two thin lines, indicating the path of someone’s skate blades. The paths were headed toward my direction and as my eyes followed them, the paths started to streak with bright red blood, the blood following in the thin lines the skates had made. Then, finally, I saw where these paths led. There on the ice, several feet from me, was the person who had been skated over. His left leg had a thin red line on it, showing the slice of the skate’s blade, midway through the upper thigh part of the meaty part of the limb. Amazingly, the blade had not completely severed the leg, but like it mattered. The leg was still attached by a few strands of stubborn flesh. I then looked to the person’s head and that’s when I saw the real damage. The guy’s neck had been skated through and, like the leg, it was not completely severed but it may have as well been as it was attached by a measly strand of flesh. I could hear the person start to gurgle and choke on his own blood and he lay there and stared straight up and died in front of me.

Sure, I have violent dreams all the time, but this was pretty disturbing because when I awoke, I felt like what had happened to the sliced skater in this dream had actually happened to my son William. For at least a week after dreaming this, I felt incredible dread as if I had just lost my son or this was some kind of weird precognition that he was going to die or something. I hate dreams like this.