My ex-girlfriend, Deirdre, was moving in to the spare bedroom in our house in Clondalkin in a weird attempt to gain access to my life. We were both pretty angry about it and we decided we needed to move out, but it was difficult to know what we should do because there was only three or four weeks left until we were due to leave for the States. I am not used to dealing with people who operate on the kind of level of neurosis and manipulation that would allow someone to stalk another person while pretending that they were acting normally.
Somehow we all ended up walking through Trinity College together - Lindsay, Me, Deirdre, and several other friends from my time in university. It was night-time, and suddenly I had a vision. On top of the old library building in front of us I saw a demon with huge dark wings standing in a cloak of shadow, with burning eyes and a strange, demonic noise issuing outwards - like a cross between the Omen and the Balrog from The Lord of the Rings. I realized that this was the antichrist, who was taking the form of one of Lindsay's ex-boyfriends. He had been in jail for a long time, and now that he was free he wanted her back. He was going to try to gain power over her life, and a big test was coming. I realized all this very quickly and very clearly, but I didn't talk to anyone else about it at the time.
We kept walking, and soon we were at the side of a large, busy motorway. A taxi pulled up beside us and Deirdre stopped it and got in. The taxi was embedded in the asphalt, which was acting as a kind of fluid, so that even though the taxi was only showing from the windows upwards, it was stilll about to drive around as usual. This alerted me that something unusual was happening, and I knew that a test of some kind was coming, so I became highly alert.
Different modes of transport started appearing all around us - buses and more taxis and cars and rickshaws, and I realized we were going to have to choose one of them to be brought to the place where the test would take place. Lindsay started across the road to get in a cab on her own, and I realize that it's incredibly important that we stay together so that I can protect her. We try catching the bus but we end up getting into a cab instead, driven by a young boy. We ask him to take us to an inexpensive hotel, and he says "Okay, how about the Metropole?" Then he starts talking about a famous prostitute with white hair who stays there, and he asks us very indirectly if we would like to have sex with her. I start to shake my head, but Linsday cuts in and says "How much will it cost?" I give her a surprised look, because I would never have expected her to want to do something like this. "Are you sure you want to do this?" I ask her, and she tells me that she likes the idea.
When we arrive at the hotel we're left alone in a waiting room to wait for someone to come and take us to our room. Lindsay starts telling me what I can and can't do with the prostitute - I can masturbate and come on her, and she can "defecate" on me, but I can't touch her or kiss her. I feel that this is wrong or twisted somehow - rules in Lindsay's mind that don't make much sense. She wants the excitement of sexual experience with another person but she's trying to control and restrict the experience because she's scared that I'll like it too much. The way I feel about it is that the idea excites me, but I don't want to actually do anything that is going to risk our relationship.
Anyway, someone comes in and gives Lindsay a cup of coffee, which she drinks, and I suddenly find that I have no pants on, and neither does she. I don't remember either of us taking them off, so this alerts me again to possible danger. It's my dream "early warning system" - if something outside of the normal "reality" of the dream happens, it alerts me to the presence of a threat, a psychic force of evil trying to attack me through the medium of the dream.
A man comes in to talk to us about our room. Lindsay has started to speak strangely, making very little sense, slurring her words and rolling her eyes. I realize all of a sudden that this is the attack, and the man talking to us right now is the antichrist, her ex-lover. "Did you drug her?" I ask him, but I already know - he's drugging her so that she will not be able to protect herself, or to stop me from from doing something (like having sex with the prostitute) that would permanently damage our relationship. He tries to tell me that everything is okay. I take out my mobile phone. "I'm calling the police," i say. "You're drugged her, and i can't allow anything to happen to her.
I have an advantage. i know that the form of attack that is being made comes with its own set of rules and limitations. The man can't harm us directly, but only use the resources and institutions present in the dream to tempt us to harm ourselves. These same rules mean that I am also free to use whatever resources are available to me through the dream - like calling the police. The man is angry but he can't do anything to stop me. He argues with me, and that's when i decide it's time to wake up.
Something strange happens after I wake up - i decide that i didn't say everything i needed to say to the man, so i go as far back down into the dream state as i am able, and say: "I know this was a test, and I'm ending it too early, and maybe we should have followed this through to the end for our own good. But i can't allow any harm to come to Lindsay. If you could explain to me, directly, how this test will benefit us if we allow it to continue, then i would listen to you, but you didn't approach us like that. It was all indirect and deceptive and took the form of an attack, and so i have no choice. i have to do whatever is necessary to protect her. She's my wife."