Dear Shane,
Are dogs welcome at your event? I'd like to bring my dog. Also, what's the weirdest dream you've ever had? I had one last night that was truly spine-tingling. It began with me in my kitchen, where I was thinly slicing some garlic on a chopping board while listening to Classical FM on the radio. After a short advertising break the radio presenter played another tune, and my ears immediately pricked up at the familiar sound of Waltz in D-flat major, Op. 64, No. 1, Valse du petit chien. Indeed, I was quite literally chopping to Chopin, and I found myself desperately trying to match my chops with the exuberant, high-speed tempo of the music. The atmosphere suddenly turned distinctively demonic, and as I glanced down at the chopping board, a wave of terror swept over me as I realised that I was no longer slicing garlic into paper-thin slivers, but launching a frenzied attack against my own fingers - hacking them all into grotesque chunks of bone and sinew.
Unable to stop myself, I continued chopping away while emitting a high-pitched, embarrassingly feminine scream - the kind that can make a man's testicles retract back inside of him to seek the safety of his stomach. I continued screaming as I glanced out of my kitchen window, only to see my next-door neighbour staring back at me, mouth agape and screaming too, his face mirroring my own horrified expression. We continued staring and screaming at one-another for what seemed like an age, until I was further panicked by the thought that my neighbour might possibly have spent the majority of his life living as a feral 'wolfchild' - unable to grasp the complexities of human language and merely mimicking my own mannerisms while watching me, unaware of the desperate situation I was in. Thankfully, this turned out to be false, and I relaxed a little when he shouted out: 'Don't worry! I'm going to find a stick and break the window'. He scurried around the grass, searching for a stick as I continued chopping away at my hand, which at this point was nothing more than a bloodied stump. He stood back up clutching a long, brown stick, and shouted out to me to close my eyes while he positioned himself to take a swing at the window and break the glass. Unfortunately, what my luckless neighbour had managed to find amongst the grass was not a stick at all, but one of the most aggressive and venomous snakes in the world: the black mamba. Before I had a chance to warn him, the snake lashed out and struck him on the throat, resulting in him collapsing to the ground in agony as he began to convulse violently and foam at the mouth. Within minutes some of the neighbourhood cats began to circle around him, aware of the fact that this man could no longer defend himself. The meows were deafening as they called upon the other cats to come and take advantage of the free meal they'd found, and pretty soon thousands and thousands of cats rushed out from every corner and crevice of the street and began to devour my neighbour's face. Some of these cats had distinct anthropomorphic traits and were running on their hind legs, wearing denim jackets and clutching various makeshift weapons; others might not have even been cats at all! In fact, I'm quite sure that one of them was actually just a man who had witnessed the commotion and jumped off the bus in order to join in.
Anyway, at this point I woke up. Drenched in sweat and still panicked by the dream I had just experienced, I sat up for a minute in order to compose myself before deciding to empty my bladder. As I glanced up at the clock I noticed that both the minute and hour hands were spinning around at a furious rate. I presumed this to be the result of a faulty battery, so I stepped out of bed to investigate and made my way across the room. As my feet met with the familiar warmth of the sheepskin rug, I realised that something was wrong. I turned to run back to bed but was instantly swept up by the rug, rolled up tight like a cigar and violently carried through to the bathroom where I was dumped straight into a bath of ice-cold water. I thrashed around like a madman, struggling to breathe as I fought to escape from the rug's grasp and pull myself out of the bath. Finally I pulled myself free and ran as fast as I could for the bedroom, hoping to evade hypothermia by wrapping myself around my sleeping girlfriend's torso to share her body heat.. As I dived back under the sheets and pulled myself in close to her I realised that she felt unmistakably different. Instead of smooth olive skin I found myself embracing coarse and matted fur! Yep, you've guessed it, Shane! This wasn't my girlfriend at all; it was one of the pugnacious felines that had attacked and ate my neighbour earlier, and it had me lined up as dessert! I hadn't woken up at all. I was actually still stuck in the same dream!
To my immense relief I did actually wake up for real after this part, hence why I am able to share my story with you now. I'm sure I speak for all of us here when I say that I look forward to hearing about your most memorable nightmare!
