Childhood Dream #1: The Green Witch

I’ve decided to do a series of posts about dreams I had when I was a kid. I only remember a few of them, so this may end up being a very short series; who knows. Unfortunately, I can’t remember my childhood dreams with the same detail as I can remember recent dreams, so these will be fairly rough reconstructions.

This first dream is probably the first dream I ever had, and it was a recurring dream through much of my childhood back when we lived in the trailer (so, somewhere before I turned 7, I guess).

There was an evil green witch with long fingernails who was after me and my brothers. She had control of these huge spikey vines that chased us through the trailer, filling up all the rooms.

I ran to get away and ended up hiding in the small bathroom off my bedroom. (In the trailer, the master bedroom was my bedroom, and my parents slept on a fold-out couch in the living room.) I knew if the witch caught me she would scratch my face up with her long fingernails. I could actually see this happening in my mind, with a weird sort of fascination: deep scratches leaving flaps of hanging skin. I was terrified.

She found me in the bathroom. When she opened the door, I ran out as fast as I could, and, dodging the vines, somehow got outside. The witch and her vines charged after me. But my dad was outside; he was always out in his workshop. I knew he would save me.

And he did. I can still see to this day the image of my father, from a distance, swinging his axe down onto the witch, who he’d somehow gotten over a stump. He chopped her into tiny black bits.

Then all the vines went away, and I felt safe again.