Trip To The Twilight Zone

Had another strange dream yesterday. It was sometime between 12 and 3 in the early morning. This one was like some bad episode of the Twilight Zone.

I don't really remember the starting part because it was a blur of images, the only part that I do remember was near the end where I was either on or watching some cross-country bus going from Singapore to Malaysia. It seemed like one of the chartered tour buses that leave Singapore everyday for KL or Genting. However, the bus was dark and a little shabby; with lots of school students going on some school field trip.

I got the feeling that the bus was either going to Penang or KL, but the place where we did stop at eventually looked like a small disused carpark ... the kind you might find at Kent Ridge or one of the overgrown, disused parks or nature reserves on this island. Anyways, I had the feeling that me and some of my friends came here to retrieve a missing friend or associate. The problem with this dream was that, all my "friends" were people I have never seen before in my life. They were all guys, but they don't look like anyone I know at all.

We hopped off the bus... I don't know how... halfway between Singapore and Penang/KL or wherever it was this stupid bus was supposed to go and there was this small road ahead of us veering off the main highway. It cut into some small town or estate and there were some old semi-detached houses or single storey bungalows lining the road, something like what you might see in '60s Singapore or some really rural place in Pongol.

I knew that the person we were looking for was in danger of being hunted by some supernatural dog. I am not sure what kind of creature it was, except that it was very very fierce. We went in shaking rattles and banging pots to attract the attention of the dog so that our friend could escape. Sure enough, the dog spotted us and started chasing after the group. However, at this time, our trapped friend had used the opportunity to escape and we ran to the highway.

At this point in time, the bus that ferried passengers along this Singapore Penang/KL highway was travelling along, and it was only by hopping on this bus… again I did not know HOW we did that, were we able to escape from the dog… which vanished as soon as it realized it was not able to catch up to us.

Since the bus was travelling to that disused carpark destination, we decided to ride it out and just take the return bus to Singapore. But when we got there, I noticed that some transportation or freighting company had set up shop at that place. The owner asked me to look into a problem he had. The problem was that he had big container trucks going to some place along the coastal area, but none of the people he had sent long with the trucks had returned.

Usually only the driver and perhaps one other person rides on these trucks, but strangely enough, it seemed a whole ship’s crew was ferried on this truck. In fact, the guy who managed to make it back to say that all the men had mysteriously disappeared was this old English-looking ship captain with a blue uniform, a hat, white beard and pipe!

Strangely enough, I didn’t even question the captain or the manager of the freight company and decided to ride along with a bunch of men on this container truck going to the sea. The truck had to take a route that deviated from the main highway we were travelling on and used a very very long tunnel to reach the coastal area. I noticed that lots of traffic was rushing in from the tunnel towards the highway, but I never saw any of the cars leave the tunnel because the highway I was on was deserted.

On our side, we were the only ones on a container truck going towards the sea. Very oddly, we floated like a ghost ship on an invisible current just slightly above the rushing traffic and we didn’t exit from where the traffic originated, but drove out a side tunnel. I noticed that the driver didn’t seem to think there was anything strange about what he was doing.

We arrived at what I would term a confined isthmus of land, trapped by the tunnel on one side and by the sea on the other. I saw the coastline, but we could not get down onto the water because there was a sheer cliff which was fenced off by a wire fence. At this place, I saw a small pharmacy… the captain said this was where all his men had disappeared. I had inkling that it had something to do with the strange pharmacy. It was as if the person who ran the pharmacy dispensed some strange drug that made everyone change, on the inside, and they sort of vanished upwards into the cliffs beyond flanking the tunnel that brought us here.

The captain I think knew what I was thinking and asked for a small sample of panadol… but when he opened the packet, it contained a small, brown tablet that looked more like a rough herbal tablets they sell at some Chinese medical halls here instead of the usual white panadol tablets.

It was at this point, the dream ended. I think I might have had a similar dream before as this dream seems familiar, but I have no idea what it means. I’m just putting this down so that if I should ever dream of anything or see anything similar, I will be able to refer to this post.

I have in fact seen stuff I have dreamed about long ago. I would dream of a place a few years ago and then, suddenly one day, while on some trip out of this island, I would end up in said place. I wonder what this all means.