THREE TORTOISES AND A CLOWN.

What better way to start this journal than to recall my earliest memory of a dream?

At around aged 7, I had a recurring dream that came to me and scared the living shit out of me. In retrospect, it's actually rather tame, but I was a little wuss. Ha.

It always began with me outside a mansion atop a mountain. It was classic fare - haunted, mysterious mansion, precariously dangling on the cliff-face, bats encircling its tallest spires, masqued by shadows and gloom. In fact, it seemed to be sapping the earth around it of its colour. Where I stood was vividly colourful - beside a giant, intricately decorated paddling pool - the kind widespread in kids' summer gardens. But there were three rather strange creatures in this paddling pool. To call them giant tortoises would be an understatement of the grandest kind. They were colossal. Their eyes, like small, black pebbles, and their wrinkled beaks stretched far into the sky, amongst clouds and birds. Needless to say, I ignored them completely and set off to the spooky mansion. I wasn't a very clever boy at the age of seven, at least in my dreams. Clearly.
I began up the road to the mansion, and upon opening the characteristically ominous creak-ridden door, I entered. I began exploring, and before long, to my horror, the place was crawling with... zombies. Apparently, my seven year old mind didn't exactly stick to the stereotype of vampires or ghosts haunting such places. No, zombies. So, rather than turn and run back to the tortoises, I continued through the labyrinth of passageways dominated by zombies, until eventually one caught sight of me. I panicked, and ran, pushing past zombies. Suddenly, the floor gave way beneath me, and I fell. I was now sliding down what seemed like the sewage pipe, resembling the slide at a waterpark. But less fun. It plunged me into darkness and I continued sliding down what I can only assume was zombie-shit with all manner of beastly things flying past my ears. Bats, cobwebs, spiders (though I can't say I was ever particularly scared of any of those things), and then, it seemed as if the pipe had reached its course. Before I was allowed freedom, a strange, ethereal face appears to me, clearly not real but still terrifying. It laughs, maniacally it always did.

The Joker. Yes, Batman's Joker. I hated him as a kid. Who wouldn't be scared of the pale skin, the blood-red lips, unearthly green hair, bloodshot eyes and bony features? Not to mention he was a sado-masochistic psychopath. The Joker basically invented coulrophobia.
The laughing stopped, and I fell from the pipe; I fell through the sky. Through clouds and birds - down into water. As I looked up, wet with sewage, yet oddly clean from the water in this... paddling pool - I saw three giant tortoises, their beady eyes staring at me from high. I got out, dried myself off and set foot to the mansion once again.
Why? Don't ask me.
I was an idiot child.



PSYCHOANALYSE THAT, FREUD!