I had this dream last night. I kept waking up sweating and every time I went back to sleep I was back in the same dream. It seemed to carry on all night.
It started with my and my two brothers going to see my cousin. In the dream, he was some sort of gangster who lived in a massive house on the coast. He had a huge swimming pool with an elephant swimming round and round. The elephant swam like a killer whale at a Sea World. It kept leaping up in the air and doing somersaults and splashing back into the pool. Every time it leapt in the air it would hang there for a moment and look over at us with suspicious eyes before diving back down again. A tiger lounged by the pool watching idly while the four of us had a drink in the son.
Beyond the pool was a forest which held my cousin’s menagerie. Countless strange and exotic animals wandered around in there. His huge, luxurious house was behind us.
After a while my cousin said he had to go out. He went off and left me and my two brothers there. A fence separated us from the elephant and tiger. As soon as he was gone the elephant got out of the pool and came up to the fence and was staring at us. The tiger joined him and snarled at us. They were trying to get at us.
Then suddenly a load of armed men burst in out of nowhere and started shouting and saying they’ll feed us to the tiger and the elephant was threatening to kick my head in! The men were my cousin’s gangster rivals and the elephant and tiger were obviously turncoats. Then they started killing all the animals in his menagerie. That really pissed me off so me and my brothers made a break for it and ran into the house’s garage.
When we got inside the garage it turned out to be a massive boxing gym. There were three boxers in there, all sparring at the same time, which is an odd thing to see, even in a dream. We told them what was happening and the six of us set fire to the building. It went up in flames pretty quickly and there was black smoke everywhere. Me, my brothers and the three boxers ran out of the burning house to kick off with the armed men and the tiger and that fucking elephant. There was chaos.
All the animals broke out the menagerie and fled. Monkeys, giraffes, tapirs, you name it, all over the place. Eventually our enemies fled and we ended up running up the road to the town hall. We ran in and shut the door. There were vets in there and I was saying we ought to try and catch my cousin’s animals and treat them for smoke inhalation or whatever. Then I looked out of a high window and saw a hippo running up the road carrying her baby in her mouth. That’s when I though, “shit, what are we doing? What about the hippos?”
I started shouting, “get the hippo in! Get the hippo in!” Then as it came closer it suddenly looked like a six foot kangaroo rat and I said, “hang on, that’s not a hippo.”
Then my alarm went off. Bastard, I was enjoying that.
Bolton the Writer 