...I am soooooo confused right now. Honest and true.

So, I've been having some really fucked up dreams lately. And you can't go and say that it's the pain killers, 'cause I had these dreams before I started taking them.


So... it's the latest in a series. There's a Chinese Opera mask, and it'll show up, give a line or two of cryptic advice, and then leave again. Like the Cheshire Cat on crack almost.

It calls itself The Specter of Failures Past.

Anyways.

So, this dream starts out, and I'm walking along side this stream. Or river. Or, well, it was a flowing body of water of some kind.

So I'm walking along, and, on the other side, there's this guy, and he's got a horse. And he wasn't mounted on the horse. He was standing on the ground, in front of the horse, with the reins in his hands, fighting with the horse, as it bucked and fought back.

And it was kinda weird 'cause this guy was all fancy, like an eighteenth century Prussian soldier, with this spiffy white horse.

And next to them, was this boat. Like a gondola.

Aaaanyways.

So I'm walking along, and I come upon a skeleton.

And, when I say that I saw a skeleton, that doesn't mean there was a skeleton arbitrarily lying there.

No.

There was a skeleton -- one of those stylized Mexican Dia de los Muerte style skeletons -- standing there.

It then began flailing his hands and forearms -- because, apparently, it was incapable of speech -- and pointing wildly to what looked like a paint can.

But it wasn't a paint can.

Or perhaps, at one time, it had been, but it no longer was. The point is, whatever was in that can wasn't paint.

It was black and ethereal and floaty and -- I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it was a can of chi.

So the skeleton picks up the can of chi, bows his head, and dumps the can over its head. It didn't just drip off, though, the way water (or paint) would. It clung to the skeleton, forming this rather ominous black hooded robe.

The hood totally obscured its face, and the sleeves obscured its hands -- it was totally encloaked in black floaty etherealness.


And then, a deep voice -- the Chinese Opera mask's voice -- blurted out, "That is the Specter of Failures Yet to Come; otherwise known as Death."