The Mysteries of Dreams

This is my first posting here. It's a dream, but here goes:

I was in a gunboat going down a river. I had a camera with a long cord that snaked down inside, belowdecks and showed the men below. They were fighting, and the space was cramped, so things kept getting more and more heated. I was above, on the surface, enjoying the view from the river.

We rounded a bend and I saw American soldiers, marching in the river, in files, hands help up behind their heads in surrender. Driving them was a Russian gunbaoat and they saw us at the same time we saw them. We opened fire on each other, and many of the American prisoners were cut down in the crossfire. The river streaked red.

Behind the Russian gunboat a huge Russian sub rose out of the water. In my dream it was called Leviathan, though I don't know if they have any subs by that name. It dwarfed our boat and bore down on us, pushing us underneath it, under the water, and we sank down deep into a hidden Russian underwater hangar bay. The gates closed behind us, like the mouth of a massive concrete and metal sea monster (complete with teeth), and we waited for the water to be pumped out of the hangar.

I was still outside the boat, underwater, and I couldn't breathe but I couldn't rise to the surface because there were bodies and equipment on top of me. I felt the objects above shift and lift off me, and I frantically swam up, trying to find air in the draining hangar. However, the hangar was still mostly submerged, and there was only a foot of space between the water's surface and the hangar's ceiling. I gulped in air, and I could feel others below me, arms and legs flailing, struggling to get to the surface. Many of them didn't make it.

I regretfully sucked in one last lungful of sweet air, then plunged back under, swam down a corridor, and then another until I found myself coming up on shore, wet sand between my fingers, coughing water and blood from my lungs, sucking greedily at air once again. I had been washed up on shore near a little village with trimmed lawns and picket fences. I didn't want to see water again for a very long time, and couldn't believe I was breathing again.

My best friends, a husband and wife, were in the village and the woman was still pregnant with their baby. I went to a Catholic church, but before I could enter I had to pass by three Celtic cross headstones that had a celtic knot in their center, and the words "faith" on one, "love" on another, and "abandon" on the third. But when I stepped close, this trinity shot jets of steam to purify the penitents. I stepped back and decided to enter through a side entrance instead, a narthex that led straight to a number of confessional boxes.

When I opened the door a shower of water cascaded down. The priests said it was for absolution, but all I could think about was how I hated water now and didn't want to get wet, so I closed the door and refused to go in.

On the steps again, my friends were talking with another couple with an eighteen month old boy. The other dad was holding his son and as we were talking, the boy leaned in unnoticed, close to my neck, and bit me, and began drinking blood like a leech. I pulled him off and when I saw him I saw that all his teeth were jagged, uneven, made for tearing skin.

My friend said his wife had also been bitten and she had begun hemorrhaging and went into premature contractions. He was worried how it would affect the baby and his wife.

I was angry and worried about my friend's wife, and searched for a harpoon I could run the boy through with. My friend said I was a good friend, but that wouldn't be necessary. His wife gave birth on the steps of the church, and at the same time I saw the boy's teeth become normal again, and he was healed. People began to call it a miracle. My friend held up the baby--a girl--and was glad she was healthy and untainted. The boy leaned close to my friend, this new dad, as if he might bite him, but pulled back, shook his head and reconsidered. His bloodlust had vanished.