I woke up this morning with a disturbing dream fresh in my mind. It had been long and unusually vivid and involved me murdering my landlord.
I am not entirely sure why I had killed him, but at the beginning of the dream he had been alive and then not long after I had killed him, cut him up and put him in a carrier bag and was looking for a place to hide him so I could get away with my heinous crime.
In hindsight this bit was not very realistic. After all a few minutes before he had been a living abover average sized human being and now he fitted into a Sainsburys bag and was not dripping blood and entrails all over the place. I suppose as with many murders the actual details of the crime were a bit of a haze. I must have seen red and one minute my landlord was alive and the next he had been reduced to a bag of bones. I wonder what method of murder I used. I was certainly not concerned about having left any evidence in the house, but slightly concerned that unless I could dispose of the bits left over, that I might be going to prison.
It was slightly concerning that I didn't feel particularly guilty for this awful deed, and was only worried about being found out. I wandered round the streets looking for a bin to hide the remains of the corpse in and finally found a bin that I felt confident I could deposit my bag at the bottom of and which whoever emptied it would not spot what was in the bag.
As I left I felt worried that my finger-prints were on the bag and also started to wonder if a CCTV camera may have picked me up wandering around looking for a bin. But I was confident that no-one would associate me with this motiveless crime. I have never done anything like this before. Surely no-one would associate me with all this. My conscience wasn't troubling me at all, except- and this is where you can see that it was quite an extensive dream - when I went to sleep (in the dream) I was haunted by nightmares where the ghost of the landlord dogged me and I felt terrible, awful despair at what I had done.
But then when I woke up (in the dream) I felt fine again. My only concern was that I might be caught by the police and imprisoned. Then one of the repercussions of my senseless crime hit me. Because of my callous act of violence me and the flatmates I lived with were going to have to move out of our house. Once the landlord's death was discovered, the house would be sold and we'd have to find somewhere else to go. This was my first "waking" pang of remorse at what I had done. There was a part of me surprised at the ease with which I had become a murderer, but I was beginning to accept that I would have to live with that and god willing would not spend the rest of my life in prison. It is somewhat disconcerting to think that I could so readily snuff out a human life, but terrifying that even in the dreamscape I could live the life of a homicidal maniac with no remorse.
Finally I woke up and for a few seconds was not sure if I was still a murderer or not. It had been that vivid a dream. Then it struck me that I don't have a landlord and haven't done so for eight years. Even if you include the Pub Landlord and see the dream as a poorly veiled clue to my secret desire to end the life of Al Murray, I haven't worked with him for almost half a decade. How come in the dream I was not only able to accept myself as a murderer, but I also forgot that I am now a homeowner and have no-one to blame but the poor quality of my amenities and my furnishings except for myself.
I tried to remember what the landlord in the dream had looked like, to work out if he was one of the people I had previously rented from. But he didn't look like any of them (nor Al Murray). How did I fall for this nonsense? And does the fact that I can kill without pause for thought in my dream mean that I might be capable of such a thing in real life?
It was all so realistic (up to a point) that I wondered if I had ever actual murdered my landlord and blanked out the whole thing? If anyone is missing a landlord from eight years ago or more then do let me know and I will turn myself in. Or maybe it is a foretaste of things to come. So apologies to anyone I murder in the future, but you know I think judging by this dream I will quickly be caught, so let that be some comfort to you as I push you into a bath of acid.... or whatever.
