Serial Killer Grandma
This post presents dark themes, reader’s discretion is advised.
I was desperate to run away from my job then. That, combined with dark materials my brain had collected from horror movies, made my dreams very much like a graphic farce. Yes, it looked graphic, but I got genuinely confused and gave a “huh!?” when I had it.
The serial killer grandma appeared
The dream didn’t have an elaborate plot. It’s quite simple: A serial killer grandma killed many retired soldiers by peeling their skin with a shovel. That didn’t happen in front of me (in the dream), but I knew it. The grandma looked like some yakuza boss, wearing gold rings, gold sunglasses, holding an expensive-looking antique cane, with sharp eyes that could pierce through your soul just by looking at you.
An atypical victim
No, I didn’t spend my all night watching the serial killer grandma kill off those innocent men. Rather, one of the victims stood out, not because he fought back, but because his reactions were unusual.
While he was peeled off, he stood firm, undisturbed by the horrible thing happening to him, and yelled, “Do it! I don’t a funeral anyway!” (Meaning, his body would be too damaged to be watched in the funeral, but he was okay with that.)
Just as I thought, “wow he is so cool!” I woke up.
My interpretation of the dream
A graphic farce as it was, there were a few things worth attention.
First, the serial killer grandma. Without that fancy title, she would just be a grandma, someone who is usually depicted as a loving and caring character in stories. That might mean someone IRL who I thought should take care of me, was giving me pressure. Plus, she killed those soldiers one by one, not with personal grudge, but with systematic cruelty, which reminded me of how people working in the same place as me, were grinding through the same cruelty every day.
Second, the soldiers killed. They and the grandma were all old. Shouldn’t they live in rest-home in harmony? And yet the grandma killed them, and soldiers didn’t escape. The grandma felt like an overbearing supervisor. Though people working together belong to the same team, the overbearing supervisors don’t behave like they are teammates, and people below them was too afraid of escaping (losing their jobs) that they choose to tolerate the tyranny.
Third, the final soldier. He was a direct victim of the grandma, but unlike the other soldiers, he didn’t even scream from pain. He refused to act like a victim. He tried to preserve his dignity when in this impossible situation. Hey, that’s me!
Around the time I had that dream, I was told to do something that meant to protect higher-ups (the systemic cruelty) but it’s against my moral principles. I didn’t want to give in (became the final soldier), so I spent days searching for evidence to support my stance. I succeeded, but was also exhausted from the process (still “got killed”). I tried to protect my dignity too, just not by yelling, “I don’t need a funeral!”