Michael Murray, age 53
The Dream:
In this dream I am a fighter pilot.
Tom Cruise–Maverick from the Top Gun movie– is my commanding officer and I am his wing man. We are in a pitched battle with an alien race we know little about. We are the world’s last hope. The dogfights are intense and horrible, my fellow pilots blowing up all around me. I have been unable to engage any of the enemy spacecrafts, they’re too technically proficient, but I finally get a lock on one but I do not shoot. Maverick is on the radio, urging me to fire, “ Take the shot, Muffin, take the shot!” But as soon as I put my finger on the trigger an image of the alien pops into my head and all I can think about is the grief all the alien’s friends and family will share when I kill him, and so I never fire.
“It’s not good, it doesn’t look good,” I mumble back to Maverick.
And then Maverick starts screaming at me, and then firing at me. Never in my life have I been filled with such intense feelings of hatred and betrayal. I started firing back at him and now Maverick and I are in a dogfight, and I know that the aliens are controlling our brains, but still, I have nothing but HATE for Cruise. And then he hits me and see his preening, douchebag face as he flies past, laughing. I wake up FURIOUS, a feeling that did not diminish until about 4:00 when my first pot cookie started to kick in.
