A Dream About Violence

Last night, I had a strange dream.

It was someone's wedding day and they held the reception at my parent's house in Illinois where we have large yards, a barn, two machine sheds, cornfields and an out of use chicken house. Lots of hiding places. This became useful in the dream when the festivities actually began. I will try and describe this the best that I can.

So this game is every man for himself. Everybody spreads apart, kind of like hide n' seek, and hides while one person searches everybody out. The weird thing is that rather than just finding them and saying, "you're it," the person must inflict enough harm on the person they find that would normally result in their death. However, in this game, rather than dying, they now join forces with the team that seeks out hiders. Once you've joined the seeking team, your wounds heal and you become evil all of a sudden.
Now two seekers are looking for people to "kill." And then three, and the four....

Over enough time, the seeker team builds itself an army. The catch here is that when you become a seeker, your regular senses are of no use to you anymore. You sense movement from all directions and you sense panic. With that said, the main skill that the hider must worry about is finding a hiding spot that has many exit points and sitting there quietly and still while at the same time trying to remain calm.

The fun thing is that the hiders aren't just sitting ducks. It's all fair game. They can hit back just as much. The only difference is that once a hider "kills" a seeker, the seeker is dead.

Now as for me, I manage to remain a hider for the entirety of the dream. My weapon is a giant crescent wrench that weighs about ten pounds. I just hit everybody over the head and that usually does it for them. A second hit was sometimes necessary.

What's even stranger is that nobody in the dream sees this as an act of violence. It's all a game. Some people are just spectators that cheer and laugh and get excited as the game escalates.

Hmmm.