Of Dreams and Plot Bunnies

My brain can give me some truly screwed up ideas for plots and my dreams sometimes scare the heebie-jeebies out of me. See this is the kind of plot bunny I'd like to visit me. Isn't he adorable? So sweet and innocent and unable to resist. I'm sure there are writers out there that get plot bunnies like that, but not me. No, my bunnies are a whole different ilk and they play very well with my muses who are demanding themselves, demanding, arrogant and OCD, and they never shut the fuck up. Now below, that's the usual kind of plot bunny I get.

CRPitt

Isn't he charming? You've got to love the unkempt hair, the huge teeth, the threatening claws and the way he looms behind that poor, defenseless writer.



Scarlet Frost

That's my boy right there, once he decides he wants a story told, he doesn't let up until it's done, even if it takes a couple years for it to go from plot bunny attack to actual words on paper. And he's a genius at getting the muses involved with their underhanded tricks. But no, that wasn't the bunny that visited me Sunday night. The one that woke me up at 3:30 in the morning and left me awake at least for an hour. No, that was this ugly bastard.

Freaky isn't he?

So I had this dream that involved curses and old magic and possession and people who whould not stop freaking screaming. See in my dream, someone on the outside of wherever we were, I think it was a Scottish castle, was directing vengeful, violent spirits to possess people on the inside, forcing them to relive the last moments of a horrible death. All anybody else in the castle could see was this poor unfortunate soul screaming, their faces gone white, their eyes bulging as they stared off at someone unseen and the screaming went on for hours, sometimes days before the person's heart went out. They died and the curse moved on to someone else. There would be a few moments of blessed silence, profound relief and then the screaming would start somewhere else in the castle. And what made it all even worse was all the people in the castle were a little community of friends and family, so we were watching loved ones going through this and trying desperately to stop it.

Shudders.

Then to make matters worse, as I'm lying in bed, trying to think of happy, bright and colorful things, my husband has one of his nightmares that he gets sometimes when his blood sugars are too low. And when he gets these dreams he makes this sound, a low, moaning kind of undulating wail that I did not handle at all well after that dream. I had to wake him up cause I couldn't handle it that night. It freaked me out even more.

So then, in the light of the morning I thought, you know evil plot bunny dude, that would make for one freaky assed story. And the plot bunny grinned.