When I was a youngster, I would dream of fire. I never woke up screaming or anything like that. It was not a friendly fire like one in the fireplace. It was a destructive fire. the dream was nightmarish, but never woke me up. As an adult, no more fire dreams and I'm glad.

I've kept a dream journal for most of my adult years and going back over them now I see a recurring black dog in many of them, often in a pitiful state and some character of my imagination finds charitable means to help him. Oddly the dog doesn't usually play the most important role in my dreams his appearance is more a back drop to some ridiculous drama.

when I was little my recurring dream was that I fell into an abyss and my father was screaming my name not being able to rescue me

Each night Breanna went to sleep dreading the inevitable dream. Recurring always, this dream tormented her with its terror.

She closed her eyes softly, her eyelashes brushing her face, her breath slowing and deepening.

Her breath quickened.

She entered King Soopers to shop with her mother and sister. Everything seemed big in her seven-year-old eyes. They lit up when she saw the prize that made shopping worthwhile: the slide near the checkout lane. As her mother chatted amiably with the clerk, she ran over to the slide, climbed up the ladder, and sat at the top. Just when she pushed herself down, a man walked in with an alligator on a leash. The man had dark sunglasses and was smoking a cigar.

The alligator rushed toward the slide, dragging his owner behind him. Looking bored, the owner continued to smoke. Enormous jaws opened at the end of the slide. Breanna, terrified, tried to grab the sides to stop herself, but her summer dress slipped down the metal like a sled down an icy lane. The owner did nothing, said nothing, thought nothing. Breanna screamed.

Everything went black.

One of my recurring dreams is of elevators, some of them huge and located either on college campuses or in modern, glass corporate buildings. Another is of walking along worn dirt paths alongside of a steep sloped lake.