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A recurring dream I've had deserves note because its so weird. Twice now these little creatures have shown up in my head while I sleep, and I can't figure out what my unconscious is trying to tell me.
The first dream came a week or so ago. In the dream, I had been feeding our squirrels on our balcony. My wife and I live in a apartment complex with a balcony, which some of the local squirrels have figured out how to climb up to. Originally, we had intended to create a bird feeder on our balcony, but when the squirrels started showing up to sift through the birdseed for the sunflower seeds, we decided to accommodate them with their own feeding tray. Now, they're the stars of the show and enjoy daily refills of sunflower seeds, peanuts and walnuts. Some of tamer ones (which my wife has given names) will come and take the nuts right from our hands. So in this dream, I was doing an everyday thing, feeding the brownish/red squirrels of Oakland.
The squirrels scattered in fear when the telepathic rodent appeared. It was smaller than a squirrel, a deep rust color, with the tail and overall appearance of chipmunk. It had no interest in the food, and calmly walked to the middle of the balcony, stood on its hind legs and greeted me by name in my own head. Yes, the thing had telepathic powers. Weird, yes, but as occurs to most of us in dreams, bizarre things are taken as a matter of course.
"Greetings, Gil. You will now do my bidding." the chipmunk announced calmly.
"What? You want some food? Sure, no problem; there's plenty," I responded incredulously, "but you can't control me."
"No, Gil, you don't understand." continued the rodent, "You will now do exactly as we say in all things. We now control you."
"Why the hell should I do that? You're just a rodent. You can't really hurt me."
"You'll have to sleep eventually. There are millions of us. We can get into small places." the fiendish furry creature threatened, "We know where your family lives. You have older parents and very small nephews. Your wife would be easy to take out."
I don't really remember much more from that nightmare only that I was very relieved to wake up and discover it had been just a dream. This morning I woke up from another such visit from the mind controlling chipmunks. This time, I was at work. I had left my normal station by the washers & dryers to use a computer over by the cooking appliances. I turned around from the terminal to see the red, small, fiendish rodent once again standing on its haunches, sending me messages. Again it greeted me, and instructed my that I would be getting a tattoo of the chipmunk's symbol on the back of my neck in order to identify me as one of the controlled.
"No!" I objected, "I will not have rodent ink piercing my skin! You're bound to carry all kinds of diseases. Nothing could be less sanitary." It wasn't really that I was objecting to the tattoo (something I've been wanting for some time actually), it was the possible infections I feared. I didn't want to get a tattoo from a rodent; I had already conceded that the thing had control over me.
"Stupid human," the chipmunk said while turning to depart, "you will get the mark from the hands of your own kind." The chipmunk took off through the store, unnoticed by anyone but me. Brenda, one of my coworkers held a sewing needle and small jar of black ink. I noticed at this point that she already wore the little sword tattooed on her neck. She was a slave to the chipmunks as well. With a sigh, I turned and let Brenda go to work on my neck. I felt the little pinpricks as she manually created the mark of the chipmunks on my neck.
Again I awoke relieved that this was just a nightmare. Now its time for me to go to work for real today, slave to capitalist system...
